Inspired by traditional grave-marking sculpture, Late Malagasy artist Jean-Jacques Efiaimbelo’s artistic practice continues in the vibrant work of his male descendants. Galerie Perrotin’s beautifully installed selection of symbolically rich figurative scenes, carved from the sacred wood Mendorave, includes this sculpture of a music group. Somber but lively, the musicians play Tsapiky music – popular at funerals and other ceremonies. (On view on the Lower East Side through August17th).
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).
Hein Koh’s ‘Big Mother of Pearl’ sculpture injects a note of humor in Paul Kasmin Gallery’s summer group show, ‘Seed,’ curated by Yvonne Force. Force identifies a spiritual generative force in the act of creating art; Koh’s curvy, colorful and rhinestone-glittery shell has just produced a pearl that resembles an eye and a portal into other galaxies. (On view in Chelsea through August 10th).
In a gallery titled ‘the repair annex,’ two new sculptures by Charles Ray depict mechanics absorbed in their work. A man squats in a pose reminiscent of Ray’s own kneeling self-portrait from a few years back but also suggesting supplication or rapt attention to a task. Ray’s meticulous renderings, here in painted steel, can take years to realize and the attention to detail and smooth finish give the piece an elegance and preciousness that connect this subject less to an autobody shop and more to an art history of heroic bodies. (On view at Matthew Marks Gallery‘s 526 West 22nd Street location in Chelsea through June 16th).
Sarah Peters takes her stylized bronze head sculptures to a newly disquieting level in her current exhibition at Van Doren Waxter on the Lower East Side. Riffing on Greek dramatic masks, ancient Assyrian or Akkadian heads, and sex dolls, figures heads like this one embody ziggurat-like architectural form, as if place and priestess had merged into one haunting figure. (On view on the Lower East Side through June 2nd).
