Iconic photographer Malick Sidibe – who will be 80 this year – pulls out more joie de vivre from his famous archives of Malian night-life with images shot at parties over the decades. Here, three young men dressed as secret agents let us in on the fun of their masquerade. (At Chelsea’s Jack Shainman Gallery through April 23rd).
New York artist Titus Kaphar disrupts each of his works, cutting figures out of a canvas to consider the impact of absence, whiting out and redrawing figures or peeling back a layer of canvas to literally reveal a back story. Here, a colonial-era man’s portrait is shredded and stretched to shatter any illusion of a tidy personal narrative. (At Chelsea’s Jack Shainman Gallery through Feb 21st).
Titus Kaphar, Stripes, oil on canvas and nails, 59 ½ x 51 x 1 ½ inches, 2014.
Split down the middle and at the sides, this cast body in aluminum by LA artist Naotaka Hiro, succinctly describes a divided psyche, even summoning an animal body. The cast negative space between the legs resembles a phallus but was created by absence, making this enigmatic artwork strikingly poignant. (At Flag Art Foundation in Chelsea through August 8th).
Naotaka Hiro, Four-Legged (Toe to Heel), aluminum, wood, 18 x 20 x 65 inches, 2014.
Chelsea is slowly coming back to life, post-Sandy. Yancey Richardson Gallery just reopened a show of panorama photos by Hellen van Meene including this portrait of an exquisite girl in a dilapidated interior, taken in Heiloo, Netherlands in ’08. (Though Nov 24th.)
