Titled after the Japanese dolls that return to an upright state if knocked over, Spanish artist Jorge Palacios’ sculpture ‘Okiagari-Koboshi’ is so strikingly shaped, it’s viewers eyes that will keep returning. Resembling a muscle-bound arm extending a slender fist or an oversized 3-D piece of punctuation, the tension between slim and full organic forms offers many interpretations. (On view at Danese Corey Gallery in Chelsea through May 4th).
Spanish artist Lino Lago’s recent ‘Reality (Show)’ series jumbles art and artifacts from pop culture and art history together on the flat surface of a canvas. This shaped artwork in the form of a chair, part of the same series, allows collectors to make their own groupings. (At George Adams Gallery in Chelsea through Feb 11th.)
Spanish artist Cristina de Miguel offers an update on Picasso’s 1905-6 Boy Leading a Horse with a version that crops the boy (as if shot on film) and adds expressionist patches of color reminiscent of the post-war CoBrA group. The horse’s expression – he’s in on the joke? – adds humor. (At Freight and Volume on the Lower East Side through July 10th).
Seven striking new aluminum sculptures by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava are a bold contrast in color and form to the buildings lining Park Ave (even elegant Lever House in the background). They’re reminiscent of Calatrava’s evolving transportation hub downtown, designed in a similarly organic form to suggest the wings and flight of a bird. (On view on the Park Avenue Mall between 52nd and 55th Streets through early November.)
Santiago Calatrava, S4, painted plate aluminum, 2015.
When a New York Times critic praised 18th century Spanish painter Luis Melendez’s intensely realist still life paintings at the National Gallery of Art in ’09, he was captivated by Melendez’s stunning ‘near-photographic verisimilitude.’ In her photographic homage to Melendez, New York photographer Paulette Tavormina closes the gap between painting and photo with assemblages of fruit, vegetables, meats and various kitchen items that extoll the beauty not only of Melendez’s work but of the bounty of the natural world. (At Robert Mann Gallery through March 21st).
Paulette Tavormina, Still Life with Jamon Iberico, after L. M., archival pigment print, 26 x 48 inches, 2014.
