Romanian artist Dan Perjovschi’s window installation at Chelsea’s Lombard-Freid Gallery remains from pre-Hurricane Sandy, though his installation of politically attuned drawings made directly on newpaper front-pages had not yet opened when this photo was taken – exactly three weeks after the storm. It’s a poignant plug for critical thinking.
Installation art pioneers Edward & Nancy Kienholz’s 1985 sculpture ‘The Ozymandias Parade’ is heartfelt and bitter enough to give pause to both post U.S. presidential election gloaters and wound-lickers. Depicting a national leader and his deputy falling from horses and a top ranking general riding an elderly taxpayer’s back, it also reveals the results of a poll taken this fall prior to the installation asking, “Are you happy with your government?’ The answer was ‘no.’ (At Pace Gallery, 510 West 25th Street through Dec 22nd).
Xavier Gravas is adrift in the contemporary, communication-saturated world. Consternation bows the perfect swoosh of his arching eyebrows. His full lips are set grimly together. He is an invented character that his creator, Aukland-based artist Peter Stichbury, calls a ‘Superfluous Man.’ Haunted by a sense of insignificance, Xavier peruses personal perfection to exquisite and troubling effect. (At Chelsea’s Tracy Williams, Ltd., through Dec 22nd).
Charles Ray’s sculptural self-portrait is stunningly perfect – his body has the unflawed, fluid shine of poured mercury – and relentlessly banal – he sports an everyman physique and needs to tie a shoelace. This first impression holds true to the man vs machine process he used to create the sculpture: a digital drawing is recreated as a clay sculpture which becomes the model for a computer controlled machine that sculpts the sculpture from a solid piece of steel. (At Matthew Marks Gallery on 22nd Street through Jan 12.)
Nina Chanel Abney says she’s ‘living in an age of information overload,’ and her new paintings prove the point by piling up disguised references to mass media content, from politics to advertising. This detail – from an over 20-foot long mural titled ‘I Dread to Think’ – surprisingly jumbles race, religion and gender in two female deities. (At Kravets/Wehby Gallery and Anna Kustera Gallery on 21st Street in Chelsea through Nov 24th).