Whether they hover over desolate wastelands piled with junk or barren city streets, Masakatsu Sashie’s floating spheres add another ominous note to already bleak, futuristic landscapes. Composed of old machines or cobbled together from an assortment of panels and featuring text that appears to be ads, the orbs grimly foretell a post-human world. (At Jonathan LeVine Gallery through Nov 12th).
Does your furniture say something about your personality? Japanese design group Nendo goes a step further, suggesting that chairs themselves have personality, as demonstrated by fifty stainless steel seats. All were inspired by manga and intended to convey mood or attitude. Enhanced by swirling projections on the gallery walls, the chair in the foreground looks like it’s just arrived from another dimension, eager to please. (At Chelsea’s Friedman Benda through Oct 29th).
We are like characters in a disaster movie, writes photographer Hiroshi Watanabe – though terrible events loom, we carry on with life as usual. Here, snow-covered persimmons make for a beautiful image but one that warns of a fast-arriving, harsher season. (At Chelsea’s Benrubi Gallery through Aug 26th).
Above a barely noticeable landscape of frothing waves and neon-colored bridges, a strange assortment of alien characters array themselves like a contemporary, psychedelic thangka in Keiichi Tanaami’s ‘Vision in the Womb.’ The Japanese icon blends eroticism and the lingering terror of Tokyo’s firebombing in a hallucinatory scene that stuns in its creative profusion. (At Chelsea’s Sikkema Jenkins & Co through April 23rd).
Originally inspired by a coffee stain on paper, Kyoto-based artist Teppei Kaneuji elaborated on this Dagwood-esque sandwich to the point of amusing absurdity. Here he combines pieces of wood and plastic food in a mix of ‘natural’ and ‘fake’ that conveys the fun of stacking blocks and the specter of excess calorie consumption. (At Jane Lombard Gallery through Oct 17th).
Teppei Kaneuji, Muddy Stream from a Mug (Sandwich), coffee, paper, wood, plastic objects, urethane resin, 19 ½ x 12 x 10 inches, 2015.
