West coast light and the pleasures of color define Hilary Pecis’ recent work at Rachel Uffner Gallery and Timothy Taylor Gallery’s current on-line show ‘Dwelling is the Light.’ Working from a photo archive that includes the homes of friends and family, Pecis creates vibrant portraits that leave out actual individuals but make you wish you could meet the characters who’ve created such sunny environments. (On view at timothytaylor.com through May 15th).
Exhibition walkthroughs and artist interviews have abounded since the pandemic cut off access to physical gallery spaces, but few videos have been as engaging and personal as Rebecca Morris’ recent Q & As with painter friends at bortolamigallery.com. The untitled work here from New York Art Tours’ archive (May ’16) prefigures the silver and gold paint and the play between organic and inorganic shapes prominent in her show installed through June at Bortolami Gallery in Tribeca.
Louise Bourgeois’ spiders may be her best-known work (this image from New York Art Tours’ archives captured a bronze arachnid appearing to scale a wall at the American Museum of Natural History), but for 70-years of the late artist’s career, drawing played a key role in expressing states of mind. Hauser & Wirth Gallery’s inaugural on-line exhibition features a selection of drawings from 1947-2007 that channel Bourgeois’ unconscious and personal history.
Titled ‘Pathological Color,’ James Welling’s on-line exhibition of photography at David Zwirner Gallery assaults the senses with intense color contrasts generated by the artist’s experimental practice in Photoshop. This detail of a photo by Welling from New York Art Tours’ archives features images of dancers layered with modernist buildings and landscapes, each suggesting performance on a different kind of stage. Aiming to explore our perception of color, Welling draws on ‘pathologies’ described by Goethe, who considered the impact of particular colors on the senses. For more images, including early examples of his technique, visit David Zwirner Gallery’s on-line Viewing Room.
Iranian-born artist Fatemeh Baigmoradi’s burnt photographs recall her father’s attempt to avoid arrest by burning his photos of events that tied him to an oppressed political minority after the Islamic Revolution in Iran. The artist connects the resulting images – characterized by beautiful halos of color – to a Persian painting tradition that painted a glow around the heads of featureless holy figures. Her installation, seen here in detail, is a standout in Laurence Miller Gallery’s ‘GRACE’ exhibition, a multi-faceted and fascinating exploration of gender, race and identity. (On view in Chelsea through Feb 22nd).
