Tag: steel

Cal Lane at C24 Gallery

Cal Lane’s steel sculptures of lacy underwear – incongruous in their industrial material vs subject matter – are real attention grabbers but take a back seat to altered found materials in the artist’s mini-retrospective at C24 Gallery in Chelsea.  Though they appear light and whimsical, these shovels from 2016 recall steel sculptural panels commissioned by the MTA for Knickerbocker Ave station which were inspired by the area’s architecture.  The wheelbarrow is one of the show’s best pieces for pushing the material, achieving a surprising delicacy via intricate patterning.  (On view through May 10th).

Cal Lane, Untitled (Wheel Barrow), plasma cut wheel barrow, 55.5 x 25.5 x 6 inches, 2007 and 3 x Untitled (Shovel), plasma cut steel and wood, 2016.

Keith Tyson at Hauser & Wirth Gallery

To say that British artist Keith Tyson’s art practice is expansive is something of an understatement; for decades, his painting and sculpture have aimed to show the connectedness of all things.  Drawing from thousands of paintings created over more than twenty years, grids of images now on view at Hauser & Wirth Gallery in Chelsea suggest links between neural networks, the vastness and changeability of space, mathematical concepts and much more.  Here, meteorites embedded in stainless steel prompted Tyson’s mind-boggling question in a recent catalogue essay: “What were the odds at some point in the distant past, when these chunks of matter were on their particular trajectories through outer space, that they would all end up together here in this piece of work?”  (On view in Chelsea through April 2nd).

Field of Heaven, stainless steel, meteorites, 23 5/8 x 23 5/8 x 23 5/8 inches, 2016.

John Pai in ‘The Unseen Professors’ at Tina Kim Gallery

Dense and complex, this piece by octogenarian sculptor John Pai, now on view in a show of work by three 20th century Asian-American sculptors at Chelsea’s Tina Kim Gallery, evokes a scientific or mathematical model in flux.  Piece by piece, Pai welded short steel rods together in a hands-on practice he likened to drawing.  Reflecting subconscious activity and taking inspiration from music, science, architecture and more, Pai’s dynamic constructions elicit wonder at complex structures in our own thought processes and the world around us.  (On view through January 29th. Note holiday hours and closures.)

John Pai, Slice of Wave to Go, welded steel, 23.5 x 32 x 30.5 inches, 1980.

John Chamberlain at Gagosian Gallery

At over nine feet tall and titled TAMBOURINEFRAPPE, this 2010 sculpture by John Chamberlain at Gagosian Gallery pulses with the percussive rhythms and energy.  Vertical lengths of steel placed parallel to each other create a base like a fluted classical column or pleated dress while diagonal strips of metal raise the eye up to a crown of shiny steel decorated with colorful curving lines.  Featuring work from the ‘50s to the ‘00s, this exhibition demonstrates Chamberlain’s expressive manipulation of his material. (On view on 21st Street in Chelsea through Dec 11th.  Masks and vaccination proof required).

John Chamberlain, TAMBOURINEFRAPPE, painted and chrome-plated steel, 116 ¾ x 90 x 86 ½ inches, 2010.

Carol Bove at David Zwirner Gallery

Crushed tubular steel in an electric orange color provocatively juxtaposes and compliments salvaged sheets of rolled steel in Carol Bove’s dramatic sculptural installation at David Zwirner Gallery.  Titled ‘Chimes at Midnight’ after a 1965 Orson Wells film in which two characters speak of mortality, the sculptures’ industrial materials summons the past while soft, malleable-looking orange segments speak to a future in formation.  In its reckoning between past and present, the sculptures continue Bove’s engagement with history in her current sculptural commission on the façade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  (On view at David Zwirner Gallery).

Carol Bove, installation view of Chimes at Midnight at David Zwirner Gallery