Gardens are sites of beauty and loss in Ebony G. Patterson’s rich, cut-paper collages currently on view at Hales Gallery in Chelsea. Draped forms mimic hanging roots and abundant flora that obscure personal items (a doll, a purse) belonging to individuals who are not present. Cut and ripped holes in the assemblage speak to violence that has turned a lush environment into a funerary display. (On view through Dec 20th).
David Shrigley explores a new side of the banal with his monumental stone ‘Memorial,’ a tongue-in-cheek celebration of the short-lived usefulness of the shipping list. (Presented by the Public Art Fund at the entrance to Central Park at 60th Street and Fifth Ave, through Feb 12th).
Iranian American artist Siah Armajani pays homage to New York School poet Frank O’Hara in this sculptural concept for a tomb. The table is a resting spot for a coffin and a gathering place for a collection of free-spirited chairs that merge with the table and resist sitting still. (At Alexander Gray Gallery through Dec 17th).
A never-ending scroll of words runs on all four walls of Metro Pictures‘ upstairs gallery, naming National Security Agency and Government Communications Headquarters surveillance program code names, gathered and presented by New York artist Trevor Paglen. Minimal and in black and white, the piece resembles a memorial, perhaps to freedom from observation. (In Chelsea through Dec 20th).
Trevor Paglen, installation view of ‘Code Names of the Surveillance State,’ November, 2014 at Metro Pictures.
In response to the disastrous 2008 Sichuan earthquake that killed thousands of school children in their shoddily constructed schools, Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei constructed this snake of backpacks as a memorial. Below, a pile of porcelain river crabs indirectly stands in for censorship and recalls a huge feast of crab initiated by Ai Wei Wei as a protest against limitations on free speech. (At the Brooklyn Museum through August 10th).
Ai Wei Wei, Snake Ceiling, backpacks, 2009. He Xie, 3,200 porcelain crabs, 2010.
