Tag: childhood

Becky Suss at Jack Shainman Gallery

During the pandemic, many people became extremely familiar with their domestic spaces.  Philadelphia-based artist Becky Suss turned up the intensity on her introspection by moving back into her childhood home with her young child and proceeding to paint scenes of her childhood bedroom from different points in her life.  Now on view at Jack Shainman Gallery, the new work reveals how she mined her memory for details from her past, creating scenes within scenes; here, each window in the dollhouse represents a setting from a different children’s story. (On view in Chelsea on 24th Street through June 18th.)

Becky Suss, 8 Greenwood Place (my bedroom), 84 x 60 x 2.5 inches, oil on canvas, 2020.

Marti Cormand in ‘Flora/Fauna’ at Josee Bienvenu Gallery

Marti Cormand’s last solo show at Chelsea’s Josee Bienvenu Gallery involved meticulously painting replicas of rediscovered artworks that had been considered ‘degenerate’ in the Nazi era.  His current series of oil on Polaroid paintings at the gallery involves painterly additions to photos found in his childhood house in Spain, continuing an engagement with recovered imagery from the past.  A hazy view inside a refrigerator, and a parrot in an arctic landscape suggest that Cormand is focusing on the strange or magical in the everyday; his swimmer similarly transports us, triggering memories of nature at its most inviting.  (On view through August 15th).

Marti Cormand, Swimmer (nedador), oil on polaroid, 4.20 h x 3.5 x inches, 2019.

Martin Honert’s ‘Gang’ at Matthew Marks Gallery

Known for meticulously hand-making sculptures inspired by his childhood drawings, German artist Martin Honert’s ‘Gang’ from 2002 accompanies new work at Matthew Marks Gallery in Chelsea.  Do the cheeky boys with the shifty eyes exist just in the bigger boy’s imagination?  Or is that bike really in danger of disappearing?  (At Matthew Marks’ 502 West 22nd Street space through Oct 26th).  

Martin Honert, Bande/Gang, steel, polyester and paint, 2002.