Sarah Cain pushes the boundaries of what painting can be, literally extending beyond the canvas onto gallery floors and walls and adopting unexpected materials like sequined backpacks and an easy chair. Her current solo show at Broadway in Tribeca features traditional, framed 2-D artworks but also this installation, a combination of expressionist and hard-edge painting that invites the audience to step in and feel the color. (On view through Oct 16th).
Right after the giant fork holding spaghetti and a meatball, the monumental sculpture ‘Dropped Bouquet’ is an immediate draw in Pace Gallery’s new show of collaborative work by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen from the 80s onward. Surrounded by lighthearted works evoking music (including canvas violas, lutes and a trumpet) and flying neckties and pieces of pie, the flowers elicit delight with their cheery color and disorienting scale. (On view in Chelsea through May 1st. Masks, social distancing and appointments are required.)
Why paint? In 1975, Artforum magazine posited the question to artists at a moment when enthusiasm for more contemporary approaches – from conceptual art to video – seemed to have pushed painting out of the vanguard. Lisson Gallery’s summer group show visits responses then and now as painters pushed the boundaries of what could be considered painting. Here, Polly Apfelbaum’s synthetic velvet and dye piece ‘Blue Joni’ takes painting off the stretcher and even off of the wall. (On view in Chelsea through August 9th).
The bottom is about to fall out of 303 Gallery, or so it seems to judge by Ceal Floyer’s ‘Saw,’ a blade projecting from the gallery floor by a painted black circular line. With the menace of a shark’s protruding dorsal fin and a comedic quality of a Wile E Coyote blunder, the sculpture begs the question of what will surface. (On view in Chelsea through July 14th).
With its gothic title, ‘Bloodflames Revisited,’ and catwalk running above a straw-covered floor, this is one of the more unusual shows on view in Chelsea at the moment. The setting is just right for Deborah Kass’ enthusiastic but ambiguous-feeling rainbow painting reading ‘Daddy, I would love to dance.’ (At Paul Kasmin Gallery through August 15th).
Deborah Kass, Daddy, acrylic on canvas, 2008.
