In advance of Ghanaian artist El Anatsui’s show of monumental works at the Brooklyn Museum opening early next month, Chelsea’s Jack Shainman Gallery is currently showing elegant new, quasi-textile artworks created from the artist’s signature material – metal sourced from recycled liquor bottles. (through Jan 19th).
The young British artist Lynette Yiadom-Boakye was a standout in last spring’s New Museum Triennial. She’s back with a show of new paintings at Chelsea’s Jack Shainman Gallery titled ‘All Manner of Needs’ in which solitary subjects gaze out at us with searching eyes. (Through October 13th.)
Artist Tyler Rowland was so taken by 19th century Realist painter Gustave Courbet that he spent a year impersonating (in appearance anyways) his forebear. In ‘HiJack!’ a show of work organized by the art handlers at Chelsea’s Jack Shainman Gallery, Rowland’s contribution is a missing Courbet painting (presumed destroyed in the WWII bombing of Dresden), along with the tools necessary to install it (all carefully manufactured by the artist from materials recycled from construction jobs). The layers of reference are complex but readable, making this piece a testament to the continuing influence of art history on contemporary painting while challenging preconceptions of what an artwork should look like. (‘The Stonebreakers (All the Objects Needed to Install a Work of Art), 2004-06’ is on view through Sept 1st. )
