Young Chicago-based artist Alex Bradley Cohen channels the vibrant color and inventive perspectives of David Hockney’s 80s paintings in expressively distorted portraits of friends and family now on view at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery. Against a fiery orange carpet and cool blue background beyond the terrace, this subject comes across as both guarded and open, inviting viewers to engage further. (On the Lower East Side through Nov 10th).
Like Fernando Botero’s swelling human figures, Jordan Kasey’s monumental painted bodies transport viewers out of the everyday. Kasey’s figures, however, have the ponderous heaviness of stone enlivened by a sometimes-electric color palette, a dynamic that gives her massive paintings unique energy. (On view at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery on the Lower East Side through March 17th).
Eleanor Ray’s sunny Texas, Wyoming and Utah landscapes at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery are an enticing alternative to dreary mid-winter New York City. Despite their size (c. 6.5 inches high), the tiny oil paintings communicate wide open spaces suffused with light; here in ‘Wyoming Window,’ the silhouette of a window next to a view from another window turns the sun into an almost tangible presence in the room. (On view on the Lower East Side through Feb 10th).
If Ruby Sky Stiler’s latest sculptures at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery seem less curvy than usual, it’s because her latest work departs from the powerful, sometimes monumental female figures she’s known for, zeroing in on dads and kids instead. The subject of men with their children is so rare in contemporary art that it’s initially hard to grasp that the bigger figures aren’t women. Odder still is each group’s repose – wouldn’t these kids be playing soccer with dad or at least a card game? Stiler shatters stereotypical gender roles with aplomb. (On view on the Lower East Side through Oct 7th.)
Young Brooklyn-based British painter Tunji Adeniyi-Jones brings Yoruba deities, Matisse’s dancers and Chris Ofili’s Trinidadian characters to mind in bold, rhythmic paintings at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery on the Lower East Side. (On view through Dec 23rd).
