Josh Sperling describes his shaped canvases as “simple, beautiful, and fun” in a recent Perrotin Gallery video that touts the pleasures of looking. He can add ‘huge’ to describe fifteen-foot tall Hocus Pocus, a centerpiece of his current show at the gallery. Evoking flowers or ripples from raindrops in water, the assemblage of eighty-four separate paintings is pure enjoyment. (On view on the Lower East Side through Feb 16th).
What do you do as a tune-loving artist with no talent for making music? German artist Gregor Hildebrandt’s answer has been to make art with music-related objects, creating walls with records pressed into clam-shell shapes and ‘paintings’ with cassette tape replacing brush strokes or lines. In the background of this installation view, VHS tape stretched against the wall creates a fluttering surface, as ephemeral as a musical note. (On view on the Lower East Side at Galerie Perrotin through Dec 22nd).
Inspired by the DeLorean in the movie ‘Back to the Future,’ Daniel Arsham imagines the car as a relic from even further back, a remnant of the past now studded with sparkling patches of quartz crystal and pyrite. Alongside a similarly eroded Ferrari and a pile of obsolete consumer electronics, Arsham points out that given time, our castoffs revert to objects of desire. (On view at Perrotin through Oct 21st).
It can be easy to focus on the bright, pop side of Takashi Murakami’s production, even as his cute, anime-inspired characters sprout fangs. His current solo show on all three floors of Perrotin’s Lower East Side gallery continues to probe darker sides of life (a strain in his work that’s grown since Japan’s 2011 tsunami and earthquake) by engaging with select paintings by Francis Bacon. Here, Bacon’s famous painting of rival and friend Lucian Freud is springboard for Murakami’s own alternative characters – multi-eyed alien creatures that suggest humor and menace in equal measure. (On view through June 17th).
Citing Alexander Calder’s mobiles and Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ beaded sculptures as touch-points, Jean-Michel Othoniel presents ‘black tornados’ at Perrotin on the Lower East Side. Made of aluminium beads threaded onto a steel armature, the glittering twisters reflect light and suggest movement while presenting natural phenomenon as glamorous ornament. (On view on the Lower East Side through April 15th).
