Every morning, Zimbabwe-based artist Portia Zvavahera and her grandmother would recall and share their dreams, now, the artist paints imagery from her nocturnal subconscious to promote healing and reject negative energy. In her first New York solo show at David Zwirner Gallery, spectral forms and owl-like figures surround the characters, representing both spiritual danger and deliverance. (On view in Chelsea through Dec 18th).
From pattern drawings based on wicker chairs to meticulous renderings of blossoming plants, Ruth Asawa’s artistic practice focused on remarkable elements of everyday life in addition to the hanging wire sculptures for which she is best known. David Zwirner Gallery’s current exhibition of the late artist’s drawings and sculpture, which includes these ceramic casts of friends and visitors to her home, aims to reveal her integration of art and life inspired by her avant-garde background, busy household and active community. (On view through Dec 18th on 20th Street in Chelsea).
Alice Neel’s desire to ‘bear witness’ to the humanity she encountered resulted in a range of portraits, from bohemian downtown artists to her Harlem neighbors to colorful characters seen on the street. ‘Conversation on a Bus’ from 1944 exaggerates the features of two chattering friends but at the same time lures us into their animated conversation and, in the eyes of the woman in the brown hat, hints at the pleasure of intimacy with a friend. Despite the Met’s recent extensive survey of Neel’s work, this selection of paintings from Neel’s early decades at David Zwirner Gallery feels fresh and full of revelation. (On view on 20th Street in Chelsea through Oct 16th.)
Crushed tubular steel in an electric orange color provocatively juxtaposes and compliments salvaged sheets of rolled steel in Carol Bove’s dramatic sculptural installation at David Zwirner Gallery. Titled ‘Chimes at Midnight’ after a 1965 Orson Wells film in which two characters speak of mortality, the sculptures’ industrial materials summons the past while soft, malleable-looking orange segments speak to a future in formation. In its reckoning between past and present, the sculptures continue Bove’s engagement with history in her current sculptural commission on the façade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (On view at David Zwirner Gallery).
Twelve untitled light sculptures from 1995 by Dan Flavin transform the white cube into a bath of color at David Zwirner Gallery’s 19th Street Chelsea location. Spaced along two walls, the color configurations change with each sculpture, inviting visitors who walk from piece to piece to reconcile cool and soothing blues and greens with intense reds and yellows. (On view through Feb 20th. Masks and social distancing are required.)
