Michael Armitage’s solo show at David Zwirner Gallery’s elegant new Chelsea space pictures the fates of migrants who have lost their freedom and in some cases their lives in attempting to escape unlivable situations. Bronze sculpture in the gallery’s first room picture suffering bodies and includes an abstracted cruciform figure titled ‘Eli Eli Sabachthani,’ or ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ A second space includes paintings of a woman selling lethal home brewed alcohol and a man scavenging for food. Finally, in the gallery’s largest space, Armitage pictures a sinking raft of migrants and images of extreme hardship. Two profoundly moving paintings of a mother and child and here, a man and baby, suggest the tragic end of a parent and child who are lost at sea yet appear to be passing into another realm. (On view in Chelsea through June 27th).
