Tag: flowers

Yayoi Kusama at David Zwirner Gallery

Giant steel flowers, undulating yellow and black polka dot pumpkins and a selection of over thirty vibrantly patterned paintings by Yayoi Kusama at David Zwirner Gallery deliver the delight and pleasure expected of the iconic Japanese artist’s work.  The daughter of plant nursery owners, nature has always played a role in Kusama’s over 60-year career; via flowers and plants, Kusama’s latest New York show presents a message of love for life, even as select painting titles allude to dark times and the difficulties of family life.  Three steel sculptures titled ‘I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers’ is a natural background for selfies, enlisting gallery-goers in spreading Kusama’s upbeat message.  (On view in Chelsea through July 21st).

Yayoi Kusama, I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers (foreground), stainless steel and urethane paint, 98 x 111 x 106 inches, 2023.

Josefina Concha at Praxis Gallery

Chilean artist Josefina Concha’s textile-based sculptures, now on view at Chelsea’s Praxis Gallery, are immediately intriguing for their color, form and technique as well as their playful engagement with art history.  Situated front and center in the gallery is a table covered with undulating fabric, an update on Judy Chicago’s famous Dinner Party installation with a new guest list that includes Concha’s expressive, sewn paintings of Alice Neel, Velasquez and Francis Bacon installed over the table.  Elsewhere, a vibrantly colored, minimal panel pays homage to Agnes Martin while these two clustered organic forms recall the open blooms of Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings. (On view through June 2nd).

Josefina Concha, Skin Foundations, sewing on canvas, 70 7/8 x 65 3/8 inches, 2023.

Hayal Pozanti at Timothy Taylor Gallery

Although it’s their vibrant color that leaps out, Hayal Pozanti’s oil stick paintings of the natural world rely on shape to reinterpret the landscape as a conduit to emotional states.  Over many years, Pozanti has devised her own language of forms, here rendered in curving and organic masses as blushing, enormous pink flowers. Via her new, large-scale paintings at Timothy Taylor Gallery’s new Tribeca location, the artist not only celebrates her recent move to the Vermont countryside but explores how intense color can release strong feeling. (On view through May 27th).

Hayal Pozanti, Magic Music We Make With Our Lips, oil stick on linen, 2023.

David Hockney at Pace Gallery

Cloudy skies do little to dampen the luminosity of this iPad drawing by David Hockney, now on view in a solo show of the artist’s new work at Pace Gallery.  Created with the help of six iPads, this garden landscape scene is both disjointed – two different elevations combine at center, rain cloud patterns repeat – and harmonious thanks to continuous views of the flat, yellow-toned foreground.  Made lively by shifting clouds and rings spreading on the water, the scene’s combination of perspectives and vivid colors turns an otherwise mundane garden scene into a delight for the senses.  (On view in Chelsea through Feb 25th).

David Hockney, 10th – 22nd June 2021, Water Lilies in the Pond with Pots of Flowers, six iPad paintings comprising a single work, printed on two sheets of paper, mounted on Dibond, 82 ½ x 78 ½ inches, 2021.

Emily Mullin in ‘RGB’ at Yossi Milo Gallery

Can art compete with nature?  Emily Mullin’s ceramics at Yossi Milo Gallery, presented on wall-mounted shelves and offset by a rectangle of background color, are crowned by show-stealing floral arrangements.  Yet like the flowers, which will change as the piece is displayed, Mullin sees her hand-made ceramic pieces as unique individuals, almost characters.  Together, this quirky assemblage of sculpture, support and background challenges expectations, existing, as the artist puts it, “…between the space of representation and reality.”  (On view through August 12th in Chelsea).

Emily Mullin, xtravaganza, Lime Raku fired vessels, powder coated steel, flora, 17 x 21 ¼ x 8 inches, (flora dimensions variable), 2022.