Jennifer Packer’s portraits of friends and family don’t fully materialize before us; a fading foot or face that hasn’t quite come into focus keep each sitter’s identity unfixed. Here, in a captivating portrait titled ‘The Body Has Memory,’ Packer suggests that past experiences manifest physically in the body. (On view in Chelsea at Sikkema Jenkins & Co through Jan 19th).
A superabundance of color and curving forms characterize Brazilian artist Maria Nepomuceno’s ‘imaginary nature,’ as she calls her sculpture composed of woven straw, beads, ceramics and resin forms. With direct links to the human body – beads are cells, straw references skin – the artist’s life affirming constructions celebrate nature in its eye-popping variety. (On view at Sikkema Jenkins and Co in Chelsea through April 7th).
Large new paintings by Arturo Herrera suggest movement across the canvas, as if wind or gravity partnered with the Berlin-based painter to drag earthy, autumn tones over a now partially obscured pattern. Usually involving half-seen layers, Herrera’s works continue to obscure and reveal. (At Sikkema Jenkins & Co. through Jan 20th).
The title of Josephine Halvorson’s exhibition of new painting, ‘As I Went Walking,’ refers to a verse in Woody Guthrie’s ‘This Land is Your Land’ about trespassing; Halvorson’s weathered signs and tattered boundary markers suggest that ownership of the land is not so easily claimed. (At Sikkema Jenkins & Co in Chelsea through Nov 22nd).
The U.S.’s dark and violent past continues to inspire Kara Walker’s new paintings and drawings; here, Walker presents a portrait of Grandison Harris, a 19th century man enslaved and assigned to rob graves to supply the classrooms of anatomy students at a Georgia medical college. After the Civil War, financial constraints forced his decision to return to the college and continue to supply bodies until his eventual death and burial in the same cemetery that he revisited in his working life. (On view in Chelsea at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. through Sept 16th).
