Tag: Bortolami Gallery

Madeline Hollander at Bortolami Gallery

Initially trained as a ballet dancer, Madeline Hollander incorporates movement into her artistic practice in surprising and delightful ways.  Her current solo show at Bortolami Gallery in Tribeca titled ‘Entanglement Choreography’ presents a grid of six mirrored pods on round pedestals which at first glance belie the magic of peering inside.  Each sculpture houses a tiny rotating dancing figure, abstracted like a Matisse nude, which at a certain angle appears to both float above the pod and be contained within it.  Nodding in the title to the notion in physics of quantum entanglement, when two separate particles demonstrate a connection with each other as if moving as if in a dance, Hollander’s partners manifest what Einstein called ‘spooky action at a distance.’ (On view in Tribeca through March 2nd).

Madeline Hollander, Entanglement Choreography VI (figs. 6, 12, 18, 24), 24 x 24 x 32 ½ inches, 2023.

Cynthia Talmadge at Bortolami Gallery

The streetscape in this painting by Cynthia Talmadge at Bortolami Gallery is a rendition of the gallery’s actual Tribeca location, but created in a pointillist painting style, the place doesn’t quite seem real.  Appropriately, each picture depicts a scene in the imagined life of ‘Alan Smithee,’ a pseudonym used in place of a real film director’s name when (s)he has lost creative control of a film and disowns it.  Talmadge pictures Smithee in various Hollywood haunts (the Scientology Celebrity Center, the Beverly Hilton) and later in New York as he ditches his west coast lifestyle and disastrous film career in favor of a shot at Broadway.  Redemption eludes Smithee but the story – also told with details of Smithee’s life on the cover of various issues of Playbill – entices with its conflict between big dreams and dashed hopes.  (On view in Tribeca through Feb 25th).

Cynthia Talmadge, Maserati (39 Walker), oil and canvas with wood frame, 30 x 24 inches, 2022.

Leda Catunda at Bortolami Gallery

Titled ‘Geography,’ Brazilian artist Leda Catunda’s current exhibition at Bortolami Gallery offers personal interpretations of the landscape in the form of fabric-based sculptures sourced from materials created by the fashion and decoration industries.  Here, ‘Mapa Mundi’ juxtaposes the built environment (represented by swatches of plaid) with green areas inhabited by chickens.  She adds rocks from a shoreline, a few bucolic scenes of country life and ominous patches of flame, all surrounded by flowing waters.  Zones of striped colors suggest unknown aspects of life on the planet, in Catunda’s vision, a place created by our desire to define ourselves through images and design.  (On view through Dec 23rd).

Leda Catunda, Mapa Mundi, acrylic and enamel on fabric, wood, plastic, velvet, voile, flags, rug and foam, 90 ½ x 118 1/8 inches, 2022.

Sonia Gechtoff at 55 Walker

Wholly abstract yet suggesting recognizable forms, late painter Sonia Gechtoff’s canvases invite and resist interpretation simultaneously.  Successful from a young age with shows at the San Francisco Museum of Art (now SFMoMA) and the De Young Museum, Gechtoff’s move to New York’s male-oriented abstract expressionist art scene in the late 1950s slowed her career and recognition.  Her current retrospective at 55 Walker (run by Bortolami, kaufmann Repetto and Andrew Kreps Gallery) contributes to correcting the record of her importance, showcasing work from the ‘50s to 2017, the year before her death at age 91.  It includes ‘Celestial Red,’ a composition dominated by circular forms evoking the planets and moons of a solar system, and behind them all, a powerful, glowing celestial body not fully known or seen. (On view in Tribeca through Aug 26th).

Sonia Gechtoff, Celestial Red, acrylic on canvas, 77 ¾ x 78 in, 1994.

Naotaka Hiro at Bortolami Gallery

Framing an artwork is normally a secondary consideration to making it, but in Naotaka Hiro’s new works at Bortolami Gallery, the frame includes a wood panel onto which Hiro works directly.  After securing the panel a foot above the ground, Hiro lies underneath and records the position and movements of his body in acrylic, graphite, grease pencil and crayon.  The resulting abstraction continues the artist’s exploration of the body, specifically what can and cannot be seen except through camera or mirror.  Represented as gouges at center, striped and scale-like patterns and asterisk-like marks, the physical and spiritual aspects of the body merge in a unique self-portrait.  (On view in Tribeca through Aug 26th).

Naotaka Hiro, Untitled (3 Rings), acrylic, graphite, grease pencil, and crayon on wood, 58 1/8 x 42 x 2 in, 2022.