Bharti Kher at Perrotin Gallery

New Delhi-based British artist Bharti Kher breaks and recombines clay figures she’s collected over the years, inventing hybrids that combine supposed opposites – male and female or divine figures from different faiths.  Her show at Perrotin Gallery on the Lower East Side is no longer open to the public, but Kher shared her process in an insightful video shot during a residency in the UK.  This piece, Ardhanarishvara, represents a manifestation of the Hindu divinities Shiva and Parvati.  Roughly joined from mass produced figurines, they’re far from divine perfection.  Instead, they represent the artist’s ability to remake the known world, in this case with mysterious materials packed into conjoined bodies.

Bharti Kher, (foreground) Ardhanarishvara, cement, clay, wax, bronze, 54 1/8” x 9 5/8”, unique, 2016.

Kathy Ruttenberg at Francis M. Naumann Fine Art

Kathy Ruttenberg’s signature human/animal hybrids debuted on New York City streets this winter as large-scale sculptures in the Broadway malls project, a public art project located between 64th and 157th Streets on Broadway.  This macquette for a sculpture on 157th Street, currently on view at Francis M. Naumann Fine Art, brings her storytelling back to an intimate scale as a human-bodied stag pursues a quixotic romance with a confined mermaid.  (On view on 57th Street at Francis M. Naumann Fine Art through March 8th).

Kathy Ruttenberg, Fishbowl Maquette, ceramic, acrylic, wood, plaster, 20 x 24 x 26 inches, 2016/18.

Zhang Hongtu at the Queens Museum of Art

Chinese landscape painting meets Monet’s haystacks in clever cultural hybrids by Queens-based Chinese artist Zhang Hongtu at the Queens Museum. (Through Feb 28th).

 Zhang Hongtu, Monet, Study of Pi Ma Ts’un and Jie So Ts’un, oil on canvas, 2007.

Tony Oursler at Lehmann Maupin Gallery

Huge whispering heads with combined features of several people tower over visitors to Tony Oursler’s latest solo show at Lehmann Maupin’s Lower East Side space. Inspired by his wariness of facial recognition technology, Oursler creates hybrid faces composed not of a unified whole but of identifiable parts ready to be stored as info in a database. (Through June 14th).

Tony Oursler, CV (15), wood, LCD screens, inkjet print, sound, performed by Jason Scott Henderson and Joanna Smolenski, 106 x 71.5 x 30.5 inches, 2015.

Keith Edmier at Petzel Gallery

Grace Kelly, Venus and U.S. First Ladies are the elevated subjects of NY sculptor Keith Edmier’s enticing if eclectically-themed solo show at Chelsea’s Petzel Gallery. Here, an orchid developed for former first lady Laura Bush and replicated in dental acrylic is equally attractive and creepy, its waxy appearance and unnatural color suggesting embalmed beauty. (Through June 20th).

Keith Edmier, The Pink Orchid c. 1875-90 (Blc. Laura Bush ‘First Lady’ AM/AOS), dental acrylic and acrylic paint on Tennessee marble base, 15 x 11.5 x 8 inches, 2015.