Sally Saul’s new ceramics at Rachel Uffner Gallery engage today’s difficult times with humor by bringing out the absurdity in some of our anxieties. Here, waves defy nature to encircle one swimmer and finger-like peaks rise up in to threaten unwanted contact. On the other hand, the small size and delicate nature of the waves make them look almost playful. (On view on the Lower East Side through Jan 30th. Masks and social distancing are required).
Marti Cormand’s last solo show at Chelsea’s Josee Bienvenu Gallery involved meticulously painting replicas of rediscovered artworks that had been considered ‘degenerate’ in the Nazi era. His current series of oil on Polaroid paintings at the gallery involves painterly additions to photos found in his childhood house in Spain, continuing an engagement with recovered imagery from the past. A hazy view inside a refrigerator, and a parrot in an arctic landscape suggest that Cormand is focusing on the strange or magical in the everyday; his swimmer similarly transports us, triggering memories of nature at its most inviting. (On view through August 15th).
Is this vacationer’s vacant stare an expression of total relaxation or haunting anxiety? Sketchy hands and underdeveloped legs put the focus on this man’s shadowy head and torso in ‘Another Side of Bad Blake,’ a drama wrapped in a portrait by Brooklyn painter Daniel Heidkamp. (At Chelsea’s Morgan Lehman Gallery through Aug 23rd.)
Daniel Heidkamp, ‘Another Side of Bad Blake,’ oil on canvas, 2012.
