On your way to the newly reopened MoMA? If it’s that or something else that takes you to mid-town Manhattan, be sure to check out Sarah Morris’ UBS Wall Painting in the UBS building on 6th Ave right around the corner from the museum. Morris’ mural packs a punch from the sidewalk, towering over passersby and offering an abstracted image of the city grid (including this very building) that’s livelier and more colorful than the real version surrounding it. (On view at 1285 Avenue of the Americas.)
One wall is not enough for Denise Kupferschmidt’s abstracted human figures at Eleven Rivington. On the gallery floor, two feet and a head lie like scattered afterthoughts while solid figures run along the wall as if rendered in an extra bold font. The effect is strong yet comic, drawing us into Kupferschmidt’s imagined population. (On the Lower East Side through Oct 18th).
Installation view of wall mural and sculpture by Denise Kupferschmidt at Eleven Rivington Gallery, Sept 2015.
British artist Terry Haggerty’s updated Op Art never stops moving when you are in front of it. The simplest device – twisting and tapering the end of parallel lines – turns this installation in Sikkema Jenkins & Co’s back gallery into a dizzying experience. (In Chelsea through Nov 16th).
Terry Haggerty, forward/reverse, latex paint on walls, 2013.
Explaining that his carefully color-calibrated combinations of shapes are meant to evoke both fragmentation and interconnectedness, Philadelphia-based artist Odili Donald Odita applies his characteristic geometric abstractions directly to the walls creating an optical AND physical impact. (At Jack Shainman Gallery through Nov 16th).
Odili Donald Odita, Rain Forest acrylic latex wall paint, dimensions variable, 2013.
When iconic Minimalist/Conceptualist artist Sol Lewitt moved to Italy in the 70s, his palette veered dramatically toward the colorful, evident here in what the New York Times has called ‘2,448 sq ft of visual sumptuousness.’ The huge installation is one of the approximately 1,200 wall drawings the artist conceived of in his lifetime, and is an arresting blast of color and form. (at Chelsea’s Paula Cooper Gallery through October 12th.
Sol LeWitt, installation view of ‘Wall Drawing #564: Complex forms with color ink washes superimposed,’ (1988) Paula Cooper Gallery, Sept 2013.
