‘You break it, you buy it’ does not apply at the Austrian art collective Gelatin’s latest solo show at Greene Naftali in Chelsea, where the point is to send art objects flying in order to ‘finish’ them. Pressing the pedal to send objects like these crashing to the floor feels as wrong as dropping a baby, regardless of their artistic merit (or lack thereof). (Through Nov 13th.)
Toba Khedoori is known for her monumental paintings on paper devoid of human subjects, but in her latest show at Chelsea’s David Zwirner Gallery, she makes a major shift to small-scale oils on canvas. The size change lessens the works’ dramatic impact but a mood of still isolation remains, prompting writer Julian Bismuth to compare each new work to, “…a puzzle piece removed from its set and held up to the light.” (Through October 27th).
LA artist Julian Hoeber’s first NY solo show features a recreation of an old roadside attraction, a ‘gravitational mystery spot’ in which the laws of gravity were altered. Inside a plywood and metal-framed cube, the trick is a simple sloping floor and ceiling which non-the-less demonstrates how easily our perception can be tricked. (At Harris Lieberman, Chelsea through October 20th).
The new art season officially roared to life again this week with dozens of major shows opening in the last few nights. Leonardo Drew’s installation at Chelsea’s Sikkema Jenkins & Co is one of the outstanding offerings thanks to a huge, gallery-filling installation composed of rough lengths of burnt wood as well as more tidy but no less ambitious wall relief sculptures. (Through October 12th.)
Imagine perusing bedroom sets in IKEA and finding a quarrelling married couple bedding down for the night. Israeli artist Guy Ben-Ner is half of the couple starring in his own hilarious 18 minute 2007 video ‘Stealing Beauty’ that he shot without permission with a small camcorder in IKEA stores in New York, Berlin and Tel Aviv. As he, his wife and two kids discuss the ramifications of capitalism on their family life, they pretend to read from the store’s libraries, shower in the bathroom and sip drinks in the kitchen, creating a provocative dissonance between public and private life and questioning the personal impact of political ideology. (‘Stealing Beauty is in ‘Idea is the Object’ at D’Amelio Gallery, Chelsea, through Aug 24th).