Elizabeth Glaessner at PPOW Gallery

Titled ‘Phantom Tail,’ Elizabeth Glaessner’s show of new painting at PPOW Gallery in Tribeca dissolves distinct separation between human and animal bodies in order to probe possible forgotten connections to nature.  Searching for what the gallery identifies as “collective primordial knowledge,” Glaessner imagines creatures with long horse-like or spider-like legs and here, sphinxes with tails curling to meet their flying hair.  Created using poured pigment and solvent, the washy figures elude definition, as if perceived in a fever-dream.  (On view through March 19th).

Elizabeth Glaessner, Two Sphinxes, oil on canvas, 70 x 85 inches, 2022.

Kara Walker at Sikkema Jenkins

Kara Walker’s monumental installation of an eroticized, African-American sphinx last summer at Brooklyn’s Domino Sugar Factory was a run-away hit for its sheer size and painful exaggeration of an American stereotype. At Sikkema Jenkins in Chelsea, Walker presents work surrounding the project, including watercolors and the sphinx’s severed hand, preserved for the time being in its defiantly rude gesture. (Through Jan 17th.)

Kara Walker, installation view of Afterword at Sikkema Jenkins, Dec 2014.