Tag: realism

Bo Bartlett at Miles McEnery Gallery

Underexposed to art as a kid and inspired by American painters like Andrew Wyeth and Norman Rockwell, Bo Bartlett has continued in a vein of realism that presents tantalizing, slightly surreal narratives.  In ‘La Corrida’ or ‘The Bullfight,’ a highlight of Bartlett’s current solo show at Miles McEnery Gallery in Chelsea, the toreador has fallen and the bull eyes the open gate from which the artist has perhaps dashed, leaving behind his jacket and materials.  Flecked with blood, the bull has been provoked and further disaster is coming; the absence of people leaves viewers to ponder the question of culpability.  (On view through Dec 9th).

Bo Bartlett, La Corrida, oil on linen, 88 x 120 inches, 2023.

Toba Khedoori at David Zwirner Gallery

At one end of David Zwirner Gallery’s vast white cube space hangs a detailed painting of tangled, leafless branches by Toba Khedoori; across the room is the artist’s painting of a grid of variously hued blue rectangles.  In the juxtaposition of natural forms vs those that echo the built environment, Khedoori presents dichotomies of art practice: expressive freedom or impersonal rigidity.  While most imagery in Khedoor’s show is centered at the middle of large sheets of wax-coated paper, one painting of tall grasses offers linear forms arranged to depict wildness, bridging the dynamic and measured in one small canvas.  (On view in Chelsea through Oct 21st).

Toba Khedoori, Untitled, oil and graphite on canvas, 27 ½ x 24 ½ inches, 2023.

Rackstraw Downes at Betty Cuningham Gallery

Concrete embraces nature in this painting of a ‘disprized’ location by New York artist Rackstraw Downes at Betty Cuningham Gallery.  From a seemingly unremarkable spot under a u-turn ramp, Downes considers what and how the eye really sees and how a ‘forgotten’ place might yield a bit of wonder.  (On view on the Lower East Side through Oct 14th).

Rackstraw Downes, Under a U-Turn on the Ramp from the George Washington Bridge to the Rte. 9A North, oil on canvas, 23 ½ x 37 inches, 2013.

Julie Heffernan at PPOW Gallery

Over the past four decades, Brooklyn painter and art professor Julie Heffernan has questioned traditional roles for women in fantastical works that channel art history and champion female agency.  Her latest body of work lauds women who have stood up to power in portraits that hang alongside framed paintings that reverse typical art historical power relations.  In the background here, Heffernan’s reworks Rubens’ ‘Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus,’ by replacing a man with a woman on horseback, making her rescuer rather than perpetrator. (On view at PPOW Gallery in Chelsea through Oct 6th).

Julie Heffernan, Self-Portrait with the Daughters, oil on canvas, 79 x 56 inches, 2018.

Clive Smith at Marc Straus Gallery

Once so abundant in the U.S. that their flocks sounded like thunder as they darkened the sky, passenger pigeons were hunted to extinction by the early 20th century. The final survivor, Martha, died in the Cincinnati Zoo over one hundred years ago, but inspired New York-based British realist painter Clive Smith’s painting of a commemorative plate, now on view at Marc Straus Gallery on the Lower East Side. Titled ‘Beak, Claw, Hand, Brush,’ this and other works in Smith’s series equate the labor of beak and hand, soberly suggesting that our own future may go the way of the passenger pigeon. (On view through Feb 9th).

Clive Smith, Beak, Claw, Hand, Brush, (1.9.1914), oil on linen, 54 x 71 inches, 2017.