Chelsea Seltzer & Theo Rosenblum reduce a kid’s party to essentials – cake and pizza – then bring the refreshments to life in this wonderfully absurd sculpture at Asya Geisberg Gallery. Both delicious and disgusting, funny and disturbing, innocent and sinister, Seltzer and Rosenblum’s character pushes all kinds of buttons. (On view in ‘Alive with Pleasure’ at Asya Geisberg Gallery in Chelsea through Aug 3rd).
The text on this box – ‘Enjoy your delicious moments!’ – is supposed to be an encouragement to appreciate pizza, but it’s also a good way to describe the feeling of realizing that this realistic food box is actually a meticulously crafted, hand painted wooden sculpture by trompe l’oeil master Matt Johnson. (At 303 Gallery in Chelsea through Feb 25th).
Known for her unnerving, expressionist renditions of fashion models, New York painter Katherine Bernhardt steps into new territory with food-centric pattern paintings whose collective title, ‘Stupid, Crazy, Ridiculous, Funny Patterns’ accurately introduces their surprising, bold and humorous nature. (At the Lower East Side’s Canada Gallery through March 9th).
Katherine Bernhardt, Steaming Hot Coffee and Cigarettes and Pizza, acrylic and spray paint on canvas, 2013.
Chelsea and 57th Street gallery Marlborough Gallery has now put an anchor down in the Lower East Side, launching a new space at 331 Broome with the lightheartedly delicious ‘Pizza Time,’ a show dedicated to the slice. It includes this collage by Catherine Ahearn that marries painting and photo as serendipitously as olives and mushrooms. (Through Oct 6th)
Catherine Ahearn, Untitled (pizza 3), multi-media, 2011.
