Though the pool is enticing, this isn’t a tranquil summer scene. Eric Fischl’s ‘Daddy’s Gone, Girl’ suggests that the woman in the voluminous black dress is in mourning for an absent father and maybe a little unmoored. As an update on Fischl’s well-known 1984 painting Daddy’s Girl, it’s a meditation on loss and isolation. (At Skarstedt’s Chelsea location through June 24th).
From amid sweeping and energetic forms in Ali Banisadr’s painting ‘Myth’ emerge odd faces that suggest a camel (upper left) a clown with a tall, spotted cap (middle left) and a cast of slightly sinister characters. The Iranian born, NY-based artist explained that the paintings in his current show at Sperone Westwater Gallery were inspired by politics in the US; he suggests both mass migration and a barbed wire fence in the sky and a mass of menacing figures in the foreground. (On the Lower East Side through June 24th.)
While traveling near St Petersburg, Russia, photographer Cig Harvey found herself surrounded by goldfinches, and she captured this beautifully composed evocation of freedom. The photo is a highlight of the creatively curated, obliquely political group show ‘Birds of a Feather, ‘ at Chelsea’s Robert Mann Gallery. (Through March 18th).
Sandwiched on the wall between two roughly lettered signs reading, ‘The End is Here’ and the enigmatic ‘You Are Pretty Good,’ Jim Torok’s photo-realist renderings of friends and acquaintances like ‘Jennifer’ bring the artist’s thoughts and his community together in the quiet of the gallery. (At Pierogi through Feb 12th).
Using the covers of old encyclopedias, law books and African American reference books, Samuel Levi Jones makes collages on canvas that question what changes as time passes. Jones employs books as symbols of obsolescence to further represent how the ideas expressed therein can also run their course. (At Chelsea’s Galerie Lelong through Jan 28th).
