Bathrooms and all their bodily associations inspired this unforgettable life-sized porcelain and stoneware sculpture by Ann Agee. Another less private domestic object – folk art salt cellars from Florence, Italy – prompted the ceramic sculpture in the artist’s current online exhibition at ppowgallery.com. Merging the functional with the devotional, each artwork features a Madonna and child-like pairing but with a twist – the youngsters are girls. (Online at PPOW Gallery through June 27th).
Behind Toyin Ojih Odutola’s portrait-like drawings (including this 2017 artwork from New York Art Tours archives) are fictional narratives, hinted at through the images but not detailed in words. Her latest body of work opens on-line this week at Jack Shainman Gallery as protesters around the world demand respect for black lives and justice for George Floyd and others killed by police. Ojih Odutola’s new work continues to picture the complexity of black subjectivity in an uncharacteristic pairing of images and texts in which, as the artist puts it, “exactitude is elusive.” Instead, meaning comes from the gap between pictures and words, a place that prompts viewers to consider how their expectations inform interpretation.
Aimed at an artist, the phrase ‘Love Your Work’ can be sincere or suspect. This unforgettable 1999 fresco by Rochelle Feinstein brilliantly isolates the phrase below an envy-green field of paint. Color takes center stage in Feinstein’s latest body of work, now on view online in Sperone Westwater’s viewing room. Inspired by a photo she took in Rome of a double rainbow, the recent work foregrounds the color spectrum and the mutability of art. (Online through June 25th).
‘Klaus on Paper,’ a concisely curated, attractively presented five-artist exhibition of paintings and drawings on paper by Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery stands out among the many new on-line outlets for art. Liz Luisada’s contributions continue to consider the importance of grids and webs; in this painting from her summer ’18 solo show at the gallery, Luisada suggests that human activity creates and causes movement in each system.
Fashion, art history and the relationship between works in an exhibition drive the color choices that make Carol Bove’s hybrid sculptures stand out. Sharp contrasts between aged, found steel and the smooth geometries of urethane-covered forms give pause to consider the relationships between two familiar yet seemingly mismatched materials. This piece (seen in detail) from the artist’s last major Chelsea solo show at David Zwirner Gallery in ‘16 juxtaposes found steel with urethane-covered steel to create a wonderfully misleading suggestion of pliability. When a sculpture’s color can make it appear to have a digital effect, Bove’s at her happiest. She explains this and more on davidzwirner.com where a new on-line exhibition showcases select new works.
