Awash in light, Hung Liu’s painting of an American sharecropper from near Jackson Mississippi belies the difficulty of this Depression era woman’s life as originally pictured in a photo by Dorothea Lange. Liu lifts her subject from the realm of documentary and considers her – via the same image – from an alternative angle. (At Nancy Hoffman Gallery through Oct 22nd).
Under the direction of photographer Sandro Miller, actor John Malkovich plays a series of unexpected roles in a recent body of work at Chelsea’s Yancey Richardson Gallery. As Warhol’s Marilyn, Arthur Sasse’s Albert Einstein and here, Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother, Malkovich’s face makes some of art history’s most iconic images eerily unfamiliar. (Through July 8th).
