Lily Ludlow at Canada

Lily Ludlow’s angular abstractions at first look like x-rays of Cubist paintings, but her deliberately indistinct canvases (actually sanded down) gradually materialize into charged interactions between nude or semi-clothed characters. (At Canada on the Lower East Side through Dec 14th).

Lily Ludlow, The Knifers, acrylic, pencil, graphite, chalk on canvas, 2014.

Sarah Morris at Petzel Gallery

Part of an exhibition by British artist Sarah Morris inspired by Rio de Janeiro, this graphically slick painting evokes the iPhone’s sliding on/off switches, an active game board or abstracted commuters moving rapidly through the city grid, all of which make for an urban landscape painting that evokes a city on the move.  (At Petzel Gallery through Dec 21st).  

Sarah Morris, Hybrid Solar Eclipse (Rio), household gloss paint on canvas, 2013.