Intercut with circus and festival ads and excerpts from Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl,’ Allen Ruppersberg’s pointed yet ambiguous texts – one asks, ‘Is one thing better than another?’ – question the status quo in eye-catching day-glo color. (At Greene Naftali Gallery in Chelsea through Oct 21st).
Like fuzzy slippers or stuffed animals, Beijing-based artist Lin Tianmiao’s woven wool forms look comfortable and harmless. On closer inspection, this room-sized installation of text on carpets in English and Chinese at Galerie Lelong represents a collection of words used to describe women, from the derogatory to the empowering. Titled ‘Protruding Patterns,’ the piece encourages visitors to walk among ideas that have manifested as form. (On view through Oct 21st in Chelsea)
Liz Craft’s speech bubbles, made into faces by the shapes of protruding ceramic mushrooms, are a standout in JTT’s summer group show, Dirge, which considers how artists engage with accounts of history. Here, Craft merges contemporary text-message bubbles with pre-electrical light (a candle). The mushroom face suggests a voice from 70s counterculture speaking from the void. (On the Lower East Side through July 28th).
Richard Artschwager’s two-foot tall wooden exclamation point – which shapes artistic language out of the forms of language itself – adds a note of excitement to Jane Lombard Gallery’s summer group show. (On view in Chelsea through July 28th).
In an homage to the way that reading has shaped her view of the world, Diane Samuels’ ‘First Lines’ inscribes the first line of text from each of the over 1,700 titles in her personal library on the pieces of handmade paper that make up this stunningly detailed wall hanging. (At Pavel Zoubok Gallery in Chelsea through May 20th).
