Merrily Kerr - new york art tours

Olivia Erlanger, ‘Spinoff’ at Luhring Augustine Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show April 11, 2025April 11, 2025No Comments

Three large dioramas dominate Olivia Erlanger’s solo show at Luhring Augustine Gallery’s Tribeca space, miniature recreations of oddly empty environments. Visitors first encounter a vista dotted with sandy colored hoodoos topped by an incongruous and illegible pink road sign. Further into the gallery, a sharply receding view of a formal garden recalls Versailles’s controlled natural environment. Finally, an apparently post-apocalyptic scene of towers and large buildings surrounded by snow-covered ash changes the mood from strange to worrisome. In keeping with Erlanger’s interest in human made or alien environments, and joined by graphite drawings of unpeopled places, this stark, intriguing exhibition invites us to ponder post-human landscapes. (On view through April 19^th).

Olivia Erlanger, Green Sky, balsa wood, resin, snow #15, plaster, foam, acrylic, aluminum, graphite, shoe polish, LED, plexiglass, driver, 50 x 32 x 36 inches, 2024.

David Kennedy Cutler, ‘Second Nature’ at Derek Eller Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show April 9, 2025April 9, 2025No Comments

David Kennedy Cutler’s bed, his shorts, his plants and more personal items line the walls of Derek Eller Gallery in the form of paintings that foreground the artist himself as subject. At a time when artists often conceive of and manage artwork that is actually produced by others, Kennedy Cutler’s hands-on, labor-intensive process underscores his role as maker, albeit one who uses digital tools. Starting by photographing objects in his studio, digitally altering the images, printing on canvas and cutting the surface to create a pop-up effect, then adding paint to the result, the artworks blur the line between media while also multiplying the original represented object. Alluding to the increased representation of self via social media, Kennedy Cutler represents what he identifies as, ‘a scattering or stuttering of our consciousness,’ a potentially freeing state. (On view in Tribeca through April 12^th).

David Kennedy Cutler, Wild, inkjet transfer, acrylic and clear coat on canvas, armature wire, 49.5 x 35.5 x 3.5 inches, 2024.

Sharon Core, ‘Facsimile’ at Yancey Richardson Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show April 7, 2025April 2, 2025No Comments

Irving Penn’s flower photographs, featured in Vogue’s annual Christmas issues from 1967 – 1973 and published in a volume titled ‘Flowers’ in 1980, are the launching point and raison d’etre of Sharon Core’s new body of work at Yancey Richardson Gallery, ‘Facsimile.’ Meticulously shot and printed, the crisp clarity and stunning color of Penn’s images give way to freer renderings in Core’s renditions of Penn’s photos, which she painted using cyan, yellow and magenta Epson UltraChrome inks on Canson Photo Rag paper and then printed as an editioned book. In her past work, Core has grown flowers that she’s then shot for still-life photos. Other projects involved photographing her own recreations of food that has been depicted in famous artworks. Here, she also considers the life of a subject prior to being captured in an image, but now the precursor is the medium of painting itself. Since the invention of photography, its function in relation to painting has been debated; here, Core reveals in the complexities, ultimately forcing viewers to confront our own expectations. (On view in Chelsea through April 12^th).

Sharon Core, installation view of ‘Facsimile’ at Yancey Richardson Gallery, March 2025.

Ozioma Onuzulike, ‘Who Knows Tomorrow’ at Marc Straus Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show April 4, 2025April 2, 2025No Comments

Regulated by a grid format, yet pleasingly undulating, Nigerian ceramic artist and professor Ozioma Onuzulike’s wall-mounted textiles at Marc Straus Gallery are immediately eye catching. Resembling the babariga, a traditional West African men’s garment, closer inspection reveals their construction from palm kernel shells with ‘embroidery’ patterns created of ceramic pieces. Conjuring both the global trade in palm oil and its precedents in the slave trade, Onuzulike’s materials reflect complex histories by also evoking a regal fabric. (On view in Tribeca through April 26^th).

Ozioma Onuzulike, Starched Babariga with Top-to-Bottom Embroidery, natural palm kernel shells, earthenware and stoneware clays, glazes, recycled glasses and copper wire, (37kg; 5,396 natural and ceramic palm kernel shell beads), 72 7/8 x 57 1/8 x 4 inches, 2024.

Ozioma Onuzulike, (detail) Starched Babariga with Top-to-Bottom Embroidery, natural palm kernel shells, earthenware and stoneware clays, glazes, recycled glasses and copper wire, (37kg; 5,396 natural and ceramic palm kernel shell beads), 72 7/8 x 57 1/8 x 4 inches, 2024.

Linda Gottesfeld, ‘Road Trip’ at George Adams Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show April 2, 2025April 2, 2025No Comments

Landscapes viewed from a car crop up regularly in 20^th century art, but Linda Gottesfeld’s landscapes viewed ON a car at George Adams Gallery offer a different take on the road trip. Painted directly on the metal panels of cars, Gottesfeld’s views of highways, gas stations and verdant roadside greenery are made uncanny by the shapes of their supports. Here, an image on a wheelarch suggests that something has been cut away while three open sections at center not only disrupt the illusion of the painted sky but hint at motion with their angular shapes. (On view in Tribeca through April 5^th).

Linda Gottesfeld, 17 North, oil on metal 31 x 44 inches, 2000.

Tyler Mitchell, ‘Ghost Images’ at Gagosian Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show March 31, 2025March 26, 2025No Comments

Tyler Mitchell’s striking new photos in his show ‘Ghost Images’ at Gagosian Gallery aim to picture ‘unseen presences that are deeply felt.’ A young man seems to fade into a wooden wall in a nod to a self-portrait by mid-century photographer Frederick Sommer, while a young woman in ‘Gwendolyn’s Apparition’ appears multiple times in the same image striding or standing on a dusty road. Here, Mitchell prints his image on fabric, hanging it loosely from a frame in contrast to the tautness of the kite, both hiding and revealing the young man holding it. (On view in Chelsea on 24^th Street through April 5^th).

Tyler Mitchell, The sky is cold but the wing blood hot, dye-sublimation print on fabric, walnut artist’s frame, 62 x 44 ¼ x 4 inches, 2024.

Rebecca Shore at Derek Eller Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show March 28, 2025March 26, 2025No Comments

Chicago artist Rebecca Shore’s paintings at Derek Eller Gallery picture rigidly controlled environments dominated by angles and sharp edges – a bedroom with perfectly unrumpled beds, a wall with geometric wallpaper and a grid of rectangular frames – yet each image subtly disrupts order. Those beds have strangely curvy headboards, and from the window of the geometrically wallpapered room are trees with barren trunks and branches that fan and curve irregularly outward. Here, a bungalow’s rectangular shape takes up most of the picture’s space, but the calligraphic designs of the fence, the random patterning of flagstones, and a curving path to a natural scene beyond suggest decorative caprice or the allure of the unknown natural world. In the window, lace curtains featuring robotic dancers under a whimsical mobile complete the rebellion against stiff geometry. (On view in Tribeca through April 12^th).

Rebecca Shore, Untitled (23-12), acrylic on linen, 2023.

Aaron Gilbert, ‘World Without End’ at Gladstone Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show March 26, 2025March 26, 2025No Comments

It’s night, and a young couple pause on a sidewalk. The man turns to say something to his petite companion, who gazes forward with a faraway look. Nestled against his back with her hand tenderly resting on his shoulder, the woman is connected to her surroundings but apart from them, her mind on something else. One of the first paintings in Aaron Gilbert’s powerful show at Gladstone Gallery, the scene introduces the artist’s typically introspective characters and the dominance of corporate logos in what might otherwise be an everyday scene. Instead of being ordinary, however, the glow of a giant AT&T graphic acts as both replacement for a sun and as a halo behind the figures suggesting their otherworldliness. Palm trees on the box in the man’s hands also point to a place distant from the shop-front behind the couple, a portal that they may have access to, if only mentally. (On view in Chelsea on 24^th Street through April 19^th).

Aaron Gilbert, Window, oil on linen, 18 1/8 x 24 1/8 inches, 2025.

Jane Rosen, ‘Variegated Stones’ at Bienvenu, Steinberg & C

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show March 24, 2025March 19, 2025No Comments

Jane Rosen’s elegantly streamlined glass and stone bird sculptures at Bienvenu, Steinberg and C inspire admiration for the natural world without dramatizing it. Similarly restrained but more roughly stylized canids conjure relief carving traditions from around the world, while ink and gouache paintings on weathered-looking paper both reveal the artist’s thought process and present her subjects as if drawn from an ancient text. (On view in Tribeca through April 5^th).

Jane Rosen, Roussillon Bird, hand blown glass, French pigment and limestone, overall dimensions: 53 x 10 x13 in, figure: 14 x 6 x 8 in, 2023.

Walton Ford, ‘Tutto’ at Gagosian Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show March 21, 2025March 19, 2025No Comments

Known for large watercolor, gouache and ink paintings that picture the animal world through the lens of human (mis)understanding, both historic and contemporary, Walton Ford’s new work at Gagosian Gallery focuses on animals in the menagerie of the wealthy early 20^th century Italian heiress Luisa Casati. Here, one of her pet cheetahs gazes from the prow of a gondola on a foggy night in Venice, where Casati lived in a palazzo later owned by Peggy Guggenheim. Explaining his motivation for the show, Ford says he wanted, “…to paint pictures about the world’s fastest animals living a fast life with a wild woman in Venice.” (On view in Chelsea on 21^st Street through April 19^th).

Walton Ford, Forse che si forse che no, watercolor, gouache, and ink on paper, 84 x 60 inches, 2024.

Clare Woods, ‘A Kinder Time’ at Stephen Friedman Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show March 19, 2025March 13, 2025No Comments

Clare Woods’ lush, oil on aluminum painting of arranged flowers and potted plants at Stephen Friedman Gallery in Tribeca convey a wildness at odds with their domesticated subject matter. Mixing paints directly with her brush and employing just a handful of colors, Woods’ streamlined process involves applying the medium to the metal surface itself, the smooth sheet offering little resistance. Starting early, donning noise-canceling headphones and working alone in the studio, she doesn’t stop until she’s finished a painting. The resulting immediacy and energy of the process enlivens her traditional subjects, resulting in surprising freshness and visual pleasure. (On view in Tribeca through April 12^th).

Clare Woods, The Victory Garden, oil on aluminum, 2025.

Robert Indiana, ‘The Source, 1959 – 1969’ at Kasmin Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show March 17, 2025March 13, 2025No Comments

Robert Indiana is known for his iconic LOVE design, first coming to the public eye as MoMA’s 1964 Christmas card and then appearing in the form of painting, sculpture and an extremely popular US Postal Service stamp. Plagiarized in countless forms from t-shirts to posters (it was unfortunately not copyrighted by Indiana) the graphic tends to overshadow a lifetime of work. Kasmin Gallery’s current show (in advance of an upcoming exhibition at Pace Gallery) builds appreciation for Indiana’s broader contribution to mid-century art by situating his best-known piece in the context of a decade of his production from 1959 – 1969. This period (and the show) begins with paintings featuring dramatically pared down forms, including a spherical orb recalling an orange shared on a Manhattan pier by Indiana and Ellsworth Kelly when both lived on Coenties Slip. Here, Indiana records the shadow of an easel that Kelly gifted him in a painting that is both artwork and conversation between two art practices. (On view in Chelsea through March 29^th).

Robert Indiana, The Gift (Easel), oil on canvas, 40 x 36 inches, 1960.

Joan Jonas, ‘Empty Rooms’ at Gladstone Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show March 14, 2025March 13, 2025No Comments

Though twelve paper sculptures hang from the gallery ceiling, a grid of drawings covers one wall and a video projection takes over another in Gladstone Gallery’s cavernous 21^st Street space, Joan Jonas’ new installation ‘Empty Rooms’ feels more subtly presented than many of her past multimedia works. Overhead, boxy forms dominate the gallery, floating like geometric clouds or 3-D kites and lit from within like lanterns. Made of wrinkled paper (along with lights and steel frames), the sculptures connect with a towering grid of similarly textured paper bearing drawings of leafless trees. Featuring the silhouette of a turbine and a young woman, a monochrome video adds a human actor to this enigmatic but intriguing view of the natural world. (On view in Chelsea through April 12^th).

Joan Jonas, Empty Rooms (installation view) at Gladstone Gallery, March 2025.

En Iwamura, ‘Mask’ at Ross and Kramer Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show March 12, 2025March 12, 2025No Comments

Titled ‘Neo Jomon,’ Japanese ceramic artist En Iwamura’s sculpture at Ross and Kramer Gallery updates ancient Japanese pottery with a new consideration of the age-old ‘cord’ pattern. Pulling a tool over clay that has started to harden, Iwamura achieves a textured effect that can look deceptively like fabric, even at close range. Inspired by the mask collections in Osaka’s National Museum of Ethnology, which he visited while growing up, Iwamura infuses his forms with both mystery and humor. (On view in Chelsea through March 22^nd).

En Iwamura, Neo Jomon: Black Mask (Crack), glazed ceramic, gold, 31 x 31 x 9 inches, 2024.

Silvia Sleigh in ‘Every Leaf is Precious’ at Ortuzar Projects

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show March 10, 2025March 5, 2025No Comments

Four paintings in Ortuzar Projects’ exhibition of work by iconic feminist artist Sylvia Sleigh feature Paul Rosano, the subject of this boundary-breaking portrait from 1975. Clothed, nude and scantily-dressed, the musician and life model appears in poses usually filled by female figures in western art histories. More brazenly posed than the Renaissance Venuses or holy figures to whom Sleigh alludes, yet in pleasing contrapposto and surrounded by feminizing flowers, Sleigh’s male figures still have the power to surprise. (On view in Tribeca through April 5^th).

Sylvia Sleigh, Annunciation: Paul Rosano, oil on canvas, 90 1/8 x 52 ¼ inches, 1975.

Tatsuo Miyajima, ‘Many Lives’ at Lisson Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show March 7, 2025March 5, 2025No Comments

Everything changes, everything interacts and everything goes on forever. Japanese conceptual artist and sculptor Tatsuo Miyajima embeds these concepts in his new work at Chelsea’s Lisson Gallery, presenting sculpture in which countdowns of LED numbers speak to Buddhist concepts of transformation. Here, however, a circular panel is part of a series inspired by ancient Babylonian star maps that recorded observations of the cosmos on clay tablets. Intended to point to constantly changing life beyond earthly boundaries, the series takes the mind both back in human time and far beyond human experience and understanding. (On view through April 19^th).

Tatsuo Miyajima, MUL.APIN – no 3, LED, IC, electric wire, painted wood panel, switching power supply, 35 3/8 x 35 3/8 x 3 inch, 2024.

Deborah Druick, ‘Past Present Tense’ at Nino Mier Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show March 5, 2025March 5, 2025No Comments

Who are the stylized female figures in Deborah Druick’s paintings at Nino Mier Gallery? With their faces hidden behind a fan, a bird, hair or even painted out, Druick not only gives nothing away but drives home the women’s anonymity. At the same time, their abundant, characterful, wig-like swooshes of hair hint at a liveliness below the surface. Similarly, Druick’s abundant patterning of the women’s dress and their backgrounds flattens the figures, making them less life-like while also suggesting agency via bold fashion statements. The contradictions entice. (On view in Tribeca through March 22^nd).

Deborah Druick, Plumage, flashe paint and acrylic on linen, 24 x 18 inches, 2023.

Bo Bartlett, ‘The Skippers’ at Miles McEnery Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show March 3, 2025March 3, 2025No Comments

Beach-goers and surfers look out to sea and a small group of people gather as if for a memorial while an artist at work on his beach chair records it all in an intriguingly mysterious 22’ painting by Bo Bartlett at Miles McEnery Gallery. The same tone permeates this painting of a young person pausing in the innocent pastime of stone skipping, perhaps to notice two girls walk by or, more ominously, to gaze out at a smoking blaze on the horizon. Warm sand and blue skies belie the watchfulness and foreboding of Bartlett’s new work, suggesting the impending end of an idyll. (On view through March 15^th).

Bo Bartlett, The Skippers, oil on linen, 46 x 66 inches, 2024.

Laura Owens at Matthew Marks Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show February 28, 2025February 28, 2025No Comments

Known since the ‘90s for paintings that question what a painting is, LA artist Laura Owens pushes the boundaries again with must-see immersive artworks at Matthew Marks Gallery. An old metal desk once installed at the gallery entrance was shipped to Owens’ LA studio, fitted with interactive elements (a moving roll of tape, a drawer that slides open on its own) and now welcomes visitors into a show of surprises. In the first room, Owens flips walls and canvas, painting trompe l’oeil wires, candy and more on the walls, while the show’s five canvases hint at patterns derived from wallpaper designs. In the back space (pictured here), patterns, floating clouds and flowers take over walls set with small panels that open and close to reveal hidden pictures. In another gallery, visitors are invited to gently handle books handmade by the artist, a reversal of the usual prohibition against touching and a trigger for our pleasure in discovery. (On view through April 19^th).

Laura Owens, Untitled, oil, acrylic, silkscreened Flashe, sand and flocking on clay-coated paper mounted to aluminum panels, egg tempera on panel, video, and sound (runtime 80 minutes), 184 1/8 x 258 5/8 x 532 7/8 inches, 2025.

Todd Gray, ‘While Angels Gaze’ at Lehmann Maupin Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show February 26, 2025February 26, 2025No Comments

As a winner of the ’22-’23 Rome Prize, photographer Todd Gray spent six months in Rome absorbing the city’s contrasting ancient and contemporary architecture and translating those time shifts into complex images. Already known for sculptural, photo-based artwork juxtaposing African landscapes with European architecture built with wealth extracted from its colonies, Gray’s new work at Lehmann Maupin Gallery showcases the extravagant beauty of Rome’s built environment, troubled by symbols of exploitative practice. Here, a ceiling from an early 19^th century Neoclassical villa decorated with cavorting nude figures is punctuated by the mast of a slave ship model in the Maison des Esclaves (House of Slaves) museum on Goree Island in Senegal. An image from the Hubble Scape Telescope acts as portal between the two places, allowing a kind of passage between locations and back in time. (On view through March 22^nd).

Todd Gray, Blues Ship (makes me wanna holla), 3 pigment ink prints on Dibond in artist’s frames, 41 x 61 1/8 x 2 ¾ inches, 2024.

Julian Opie at Lisson Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show February 24, 2025February 22, 2025No Comments

How present can you be while on your phone? British artist Julian Opie offers his take on the question with a presentation of four nearly 10-foot-tall striding figures at Lisson Gallery in Chelsea, two of whom gaze down at digital devices. Blatantly present due to their size, but mentally removed, the figures are emblematic of our distracted times while also monumentalizing digital connectedness. Initially created for an exhibition in Busan, Korea, the figures could come from anywhere yet retain distinct characteristics in a mix-up of specificity and universality. (On view in Chelsea through April 19th.)

Julian Opie, Red phone, Auto paint on aluminium, 119 1/8 x 54 3/8 x 19 1/4 in, 2023.

Saya Woolfalk, ‘The Woods Woman Method’ at Susan Inglett Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show February 22, 2025February 22, 2025No Comments

For the past 20 hears, Saya Woolfalk has centered her multi-media art practice around her invented, utopian world in which cultural and even physical hybridity leads to empathy towards other beings. In advance of the artist’s mid-career retrospective at the Museum of Art and Design in April, Susan Inglett Gallery in collaboration with Leslie Tonkonow Gallery present a compact but enjoyably diverse selection of Woolfalk’s work from the last c. 9 years in a range of media, from prints on paper and silk to glass fused with plant material. In this print, Woolfalk pictures a composite figure of apparent spiritual importance holding two planet-like orbs in her hands, framed by natural growth and prominently anointed with a multi-colored disc. (On view at Susan Inglett Gallery in Chelsea through March 15^th).

Saya Woolfalk, Encyclopedia of Cloud Divination (Plate 3), archival inkjet print, silkscreen, silver leaf, chine colle on Hahnemule Photo Rag Ultra Smooth, 40 x 30 (image), ed of 14, 2018.

Nathalia Edenmont, ‘Out of Body’ at Nancy Hoffman Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show February 20, 2025February 20, 2025No Comments

Told many years ago that her eggs would never allow her to bear a child, Nathalia Edenmont pursued the theme of reproduction with a plan to transform discarded goose eggs into art. After performing the difficult task of cleaning the eggs, however, Edenmont found the associations too painful and shelved the project. Meticulously staged photographs of models wearing dresses composed of flowers or fruit followed, along with collages composed of butterfly wings, each alluding to fertility and beauty. More recently, however, Edenmont returned to the goose eggs, cracking them gently with her hands in patterns and here, setting a smaller hen’s egg in a larger goose egg. Not stopping at photography, for which she is known, the artist’s current show at Nancy Hoffman Gallery includes her recent sculpture, which substitutes strong materials for fragile. (On view in Chelsea through March 22nd).

Nathalia Edenmont, [sculpture, foreground] Out of a Fertile Summer Sun (Vincenzo), pure white Statuario marble (Carrara) on labradorite base (Madagascar), 23 ¾ x 27 ½ x 17 ¾ inches, 2024. [background] Out of Golden Rays of a Fertile Summer Sun, Photograph on Canson Platine Fibre Rag, 55 x 46 inches, 2024.

Thomas Schutte, ‘Women’ at Gagosian Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show February 17, 2025February 13, 2025No Comments

On the heels of Thomas Schutte’s career survey show at the Museum of Modern Art, the German artist’s provocative ‘Women’ sculpture series from the late ‘90s to 2006 at Gagosian Gallery invites viewers to take a closer look at one of Schutte’s most engaging and uncomfortable bodies of work. Arranged on cold, steel tables in reclining poses like odaliques, familiar from countless paintings and sculptures throughout European art history, the figures signal failure (one figure is pressed flat as if by a giant hand) and trauma (a rigidly tense gingerbread man-like cutout flings an arm into the air). A deflated sculpture with mask-like face and melting limbs recalls the distortions of Picasso’s nudes while others recall Henri Matisse’s or Aristide Maillol’s posed women. Reacting in the past to the constraints inherited by a post-war German artist, Schutte has presented models or proposals as artwork. Similarly, the Frauen exist on uncertain ground, both challenging and reinforcing objectification of the female form at a scale and a degree of polish that defies audiences not to engage. (On view through Feb 22nd).

Thomas Schutte, Bronzefrau Nr. 13 (Bronze Woman No. 13), bronze on steel table, 70 ¾ x 98 3/8 x 49 1/8 inches, 2003.

Camille Henrot, ‘A Number of Things’ at Hauser & Wirth Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show February 14, 2025February 13, 2025No Comments

Green rubber playground flooring transports visitors into an unexpected perceptual experience in Camille Henrot’s first New York solo show of playfully odd sculpture at Hauser and Wirth Gallery. Marked with a matrix-like grid that’s calming yet at the same time reminiscent of a guillotine paper cutter, the pattern reinforces the artist’s ongoing interest in the structures that organize society. Paintings inspired by etiquette books, sculpture that looks like abacuses (both the kind used as tools and children’s toys) and this group of dogs on leashes offer varied takes on relationships and power relations. (On view in Chelsea through April 12th).

Camille Henrot, installation view of ‘A Number of Things’ at Hauser & Wirth Gallery, Feb ’25.

Giorgio Morandi at David Zwirner Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show February 12, 2025February 14, 2025No Comments

Sixty years after his death, Italian artist Giorgio Morandi’s enigmatic still life paintings continue to exert remarkable influence. Coming on the heels of a much-talked-about show of the artist’s work on the Upper East Side by Rome-based Galleria Mattia De Luca last fall, David Zwirner Gallery’s current Morandi survey features work from the Magnani-Rocca Foundation (located near Parma, Italy) collected by musicologist and friend of Morandi, Luigi Magnani. The gallery’s first two rooms show how Morandi rejected organic still life, portraiture and metaphysical interests (akin to Giorgio deChirco and Carlo Carra) to arrive at the still life paintings of everyday objects that would occupy him for over forty years. Here, a cluster of vessels placed precariously close to the edge of a table testify to the artist’s constant experimentations with spatial arrangements and shifting tones. (On view through Feb 22nd).

Giorgio Morandi, Natura morta (Still Life), oil on canvas, 17 3/8 x 18 7/8 inches, 1948.

Jennifer J. Lee, ‘The Falls’ at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show February 10, 2025February 6, 2025No Comments

Four paintings of models in jeans – visible only from thigh to waist – line the wall of Jennifer J Lee’s current show of paintings at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery like products in an online store. Lee’s characteristic small-scale renditions of clothing, food, and people recall and derive from the kind of photographic images we encounter in daily digital life and even the scale of her work – the show’s largest painting is just 22 x 15 inches – operates more in keeping with the size of a screen than an expansive picture plane. Nevertheless, painted on thick jute, its weave rough enough to suggest pixelation, Lee’s painting are resolutely material, smartly engaging the phenomenon of image-saturated life one oil painting at a time. (On view in Tribeca through Feb 22^nd).

Jennifer J. Lee, Lee jeans, oil on jute, 15 x 13 inches, 2024.

Nick Cave, ‘Amalgams and Graphts’ at Jack Shainman Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show February 7, 2025February 6, 2025No Comments

Nick Cave’s stunning sculpture ‘Amalgam (Origin)’ at Jack Shainman Gallery’s newly renovated Tribeca location radically scales up the artist’s iconic Soundsuits, wearable sculptures that make sound as they are moved. Designed as a protective gesture in response to the 1992 beating of Rodney King’s by LA police, Cave’s first Soundsuit was made of twigs; this 26’ tall bronze adds full branches in a melding of human and natural forms that reaches nearly to the gallery’s 29’ tall ceiling. (On view through March 29^th).

Nick Cave, installation view of ‘Amalgam (Origin)’ at Jack Shainman Gallery, Tribeca, bronze, 309 5/8 x 201 x 227 inches, 2024.

Francesca DiMattio and Caroline Coon at Stephen Friedman Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show February 5, 2025February 4, 2025No Comments

Contemporary renditions of Attica vases rudely merged with modern footwear (high heel pumps and a cowboy boot) by American ceramic artist Francesca DiMattio at the entrance to Stephen Friedman Gallery offer a rethink of traditional genres, as do paintings by British artist Caroline Coon in the artists’ lively, two-person show. While Coon’s stylized figures (see Adam and Eve in the background of this photo) challenge notions of idealized bodies, DiMattio continues her imperfect interpretations of the pretty fancies of 18^th century Meissen porcelain. Here, the excessively textured surface of this vessel enhances the saccharine effect of a flower-decorated heart, both foils to the built-in cleaning spray bottle that hints at the labor required for comfortable domesticity or art-production. (On view in Tribeca through Feb 26^th).

Francesca DiMattio, Meissen Tide, glaze and gold luster on porcelain, glaze and enamel on stoneware pedestal, 31 x 13 x 15 inches, 2025. Background: Caroline Coon, Adam and Eve in Ladbroke Grove, oil on canvas, 59 ½ x 47 5/8 inches, 2007.

Roe Ethridge, Hand with Dramm at Andrew Kreps Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show February 3, 2025February 12, 2025No Comments

Photographer Roe Ethridge takes us to the beach in his latest solo show at Andrew Kreps Gallery, a destination not quite in synch with a New York winter but nevertheless refreshing with its vivid colors and enjoyable in its inclusion of deliberately imperfect subject matter. ‘Rainbow over Shore Front Parkway’ captures a rainbow in a stunning, multi-hued sky over beachfront dunes that have recently been constructed as a massive barricade in an ongoing coastal resiliency project. Nearby, model Irina Shayk in a captain’s hat grins with extra exuberance in an outtake from one of the photographer’s commercial fashion shoots. The aquatic theme continues with this intense image of a candy-colored spray nozzle, caught as it releases a jet of water into a distinctly unnatural, green environment. (On view in Tribeca through March 1st).

Roe Ethridge, Hand with Dramm, UV cured pigment print, 34 x 44 inches, 2023.

An-My Le at Marian Goodman Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show January 31, 2025January 29, 2025No Comments

Recalling a circular full-room installation in her MoMA retrospective last year, An-My Le’s ‘Grey Wolf’ series in her current show at Marian Goodman Gallery continues to explore immersive environments. While the earlier presentation juxtaposed diverse landscapes and histories, the current exhibition features color views of the stark Montana countryside where large-scale agricultural production and nuclear missile launch sites mark the land. Hung tightly in a small, curved enclosure, the photos situate viewers in a landscape seen from above, a cockpit-like, Gods-eye perspective that points to human impact on the landscape. (On view in Tribeca through Feb 22^nd).

An My Le, installation view of Grey Wolf, installation comprised of 7 vinyl prints (each 48 x 64 ½ inches), 2024 at Marian Goodman Gallery.

Per Adolfsen at Nino Meier Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show January 29, 2025January 29, 2025No Comments

Visitors to Per Adolfsen’s solo show of colored pencil drawings at Nino Meier’s Tribeca space can shrug off the cold temperatures outside and bask in the warmth of the Danish artist’s vividly colored landscapes. Having decided to take his practice out of the studio and into the natural world, Adolfsen explains that he depicts scenes that are based on real places but which offer an exploration of emotion through color and his choice of environment. Inspired by Edvard Munch, Paul Cezanne and Caspar David Friedrich, Adolfsen aims to elicit feeling in his audience while prompting respect for the environment. (On view through Feb 8^th).

Per Adolfsen, Blanket in a Forest, colored pencil on Hahnemuhle paper, 35 1/8 x 25 5/8 inches, 2024.

Na Kim at Nicola Vassell Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show January 27, 2025January 21, 2025No Comments

Mood and atmosphere are the subjects of Na Kim’s serial paintings of an imagined young woman, now on view at Nicola Vassell Gallery in Chelsea. Gazing impassively from a dark interior, standing against an abstracted landscape so that her hair joins with the horizon line, or immersed to the shoulders in a dark pool, a solitary figure conveys subtly different emotions heavily dependent on the color and lighting of her surroundings. Idealized, planar faces sometimes recall Paula Modersohn-Becker’s self-portraits while yellow, green and red tones bring Fauve portraiture to mind, but the focus of Kim’s work is reflected light and surrounding shadow that suggest various psychological states. (On view in Chelsea through Feb 22^nd).

Na Kim, Untitled: 8, oil on linen, 30 x 24 inches, 2024.

Simphiwe Mbunyuza at David Kordansky Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show January 24, 2025January 21, 2025No Comments

At over five feet tall, Simphiwe Mbunyuza’s monumental ceramics at Chelsea’s David Kordansky Gallery entice with their strong presence, striking color and unusual protrusions. Bumps inspired by traditional Xhosa ritual vessels, house shapes that recall cylindrical South African dwellings and horns pointing to the importance of cattle in Xhosa life signal Mbunyuza’s engagement with aspects of his culture and upbringing including his spiritual identity. The latter manifests in the sizes of the works, the larger pieces connecting to ancestors while smaller pieces are associated with the artist and his living relatives. Arranged specifically in the gallery and characterized by colors representing South African landscapes, Mbunyuza’s ceramics offer access to material and immaterial worlds. (On view through Feb 22^nd).

Simphiwe Mbunyuza, MTHIMKHULU, ceramic, 63 x 53 x 51 inches, 2024.

Louise Nevelson, Mirror-Shadow VI at Pace

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show January 22, 2025February 11, 2025No Comments

At the entrance to Pace Gallery’s exhibition of late work by iconic modern artist Louise Nevelson, the contrast between one all-white sculpture and many black-painted assemblages creates a dynamism that is revisited in the diagonals and curving forms of the artist’s sculpture from the 70s and 80s. Nevelson’s oft quoted intent to “join the shattered world, creating a new harmony” is joined by an attempt to picture the sublime, manifest in works with titles referring to moonlight, reflections, night frost and here, mirrors and shadow. (On view in Chelsea through March 1^st).

Louise Nevelson, Mirror-Shadow VI, wood painted black, 1985, 9’ 9” x 11’ 7” x 1’ 9”, 1985.

Vija Celmins in ‘The Writing’s on the Wall’ at the Hill Art Foundation

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show January 20, 2025January 15, 2025No Comments

Small-scale and monochrome, the works opening the Hill Art Foundation’s group exhibition ‘The Writing’s on the Wall: Language and Silence in the Visual Arts,’ feel calculated to go unnoticed. This is all the more reason to mentally detach from attention-grabbing work in nearby galleries and ponder a few lines from Adrienne Rich’s 1978 poem ‘Cartographies of Silence,’ printed on a nearby wall label: “Silence can be a plan rigorously executed…Do not confuse it with any kind of absence.” Nearby, the solitary word ‘dance’ typed repeatedly across the top of a paper by Christopher Knowles, a washy gray watercolor overlaid with a rigid grid by Agnes Martin and a stonily silent bronze bust of James Baldwin by Larry Wolhandler are alive with feeling unreliant on speech, a key intention of the show’s curator, Hilton Als. Here, Vija Celmin’s giant eraser, crafted from balsa wood and paint, strongly suggests that expression is a process of laying down and removing. (On view in Chelsea through March 29^th).

Vija Celmins, Pink Pearl Eraser, acrylic on balsa wood, 6 ¾ x 19 ½ x 3 ¼ inches, 1966-67.

Svenja Deininger Paintings at Marianne Boesky

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show January 17, 2025February 11, 2025No Comments

Though given ample space on Marianne Boesky Gallery’s wall, this painting by Austrian artist Svenja Deininger converses with the paintings around it like individual words work together to make up a sentence. Before the holidays, Deininger’s paintings appeared next door at the gallery’s other location; newly installed in the gallery’s single large space, they can be considered singly, in sequence or all at once. An adjoining mustard yellow monochrome canvas and another small painting featuring fan-like shapes call further attention to color and form in this untitled painting, a standout piece that evokes a large head amid architectural or design elements. Though individual pieces offer enjoyable juxtapositions, the show’s greatest pleasure in in tracking evocative and subtle connections across multiple canvases. (On view through Jan 24^th).

Svenja Deininger, Untitled, oil on linen, 74 ¾ x 57 1/8 inches, 2024.

Pete Turner at Bruce Silverstein Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show January 15, 2025January 15, 2025No Comments

A giraffe silhouetted against a red sky, white adobe buildings suffused with deep blue light and the brilliant orange of canned peaches stand out amongst the grid of album covers on Bruce Silverstein Gallery’s foyer wall, a testament to late photographer Pete Turner’s renowned and striking use of color. In an exhibition that focuses on jazz album covers selected from over seventy covers Turner created over fifty years, the gallery positions the photographer at the forefront of the mid-20^th century move toward artistic covers that express the identity of the music vs the brand of the record label. Here, Turner’s interpretation of Joe Ferrell’s 1975 jazz album ‘Canned Funk’ suggests (literally) eye-popping surprise amid sweet, curving forms. (On view through Jan 18^th).

Pete Turner, Eye to Eye, archival pigment print, printed c. 2000s, 13 x 19 inches, 1968.

Lubaina Himid at FLAG Art Foundation

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show January 13, 2025January 9, 2025No Comments

Winner of the 2024 Suzanne Deal Booth / FLAG Art Foundation Prize, Lubaina Himid presents two bodies of related but visually distinct work at Chelsea’s FLAG Art Foundation that both offer and challenge the appearance of order and simplicity. Himid’s ‘Strategy Paintings’ picture individuals seated at tables as they negotiate weighty problems hinted at in titles like ‘Pointless Heroism’ or ‘Bitter Battles.’ The figures’ wary eyes and each painting’s palpable tension suggest that solutions might not be found so easily. In a separate exhibition space, Himid lines the walls with sixty-four plank paintings titled ‘Aunties.’ Nearly as tall as the room itself and abundantly decorated with used materials taken from furniture, floorboards, and travel crates, the planks evoke an assembly of benevolent guardians. (On view in Chelsea through Feb 8^th).

Lubaina Himid, installation view of Aunties, sixty-four painted wood planks, dimensions variable, 2023.

Lubaina Himid, detail view of Aunties, sixty-four painted wood planks, dimensions variable, 2023.

Jeff Wall at Gagosian Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show January 10, 2025January 9, 2025No Comments

Cinematic and uncanny, Jeff Wall’s photos at Gagosian Gallery may present banal or fantastical scenarios (or a combination of both) but each arrests our attention with their careful staging and suggestion of hidden messages. Often referred to as ‘near documentary’ and inspired by specific works from art history or events Wall has experienced, his photographs encourage viewers to consider how details cue meaning. The artist has explained that he witnessed the scene in ‘Event,’ pictured here, but he changed the setting and people while still conveying his feelings about what he observed, considering age, class, masculinity, and situational behavior manifest in a single power negotiation. (On view at Gagosian Gallery on 24^th Street in Chelsea through Jan 25^th).

Jeff Wall, Event, inkjet print, 87 7/8 x 66 5/16 x 2 11/16 inches, 2021.

Esther Mahlangu at Ross + Kramer Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show January 8, 2025January 8, 2025No Comments

South African artist Esther Mahlangu’s designs energize Chelsea gallery Ross + Kramer with their vibrant patterns, sacred geometries for which the 89-year-old is internationally renowned. Inspired by the house painting traditions of the Ndebele people and learned from her mother and grandmother, Mahlangu’s abstractions take the form of murals, ceramics, canvases and even this hand painted car, the star of a show featuring 30 paintings made over ten years. (On view through Jan 25^th).

Esther Mahlangu, installation view of ‘Esther Mahlangu: Time in Color’ at Ross + Kramer, Chelsea, Dec ’24.

Kenny Scharf at Sixty White

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show January 6, 2025January 2, 2025No Comments

Renowned for his involvement in the downtown 80s New York art scene, Kenny Scharf coined the term ‘Pop Surrealism’ to describe his energetic blend of cartoon and pop imagery. Now on view at huge scale, the artist’s 1995 site-specific mural ‘The Heads,’ created in 1995 for the Center of Fine Arts in Miami fills Tribeca’s 60 White in all its dream-like glory. Stretching throughout the vast space, the paintings are accompanied by a quote from Scharf recalling dreams of space travel. (On view through January. Check with the gallery for the exact closing date. Note that gallery hours change during the holiday period).

Installation view of ‘Kenny Scharf: Space Travel,’ Dec 2024 at 60 White. Foreground: Kenny Scharf, Poval, oil and acrylic on canvas, 108.3 x 132 inches, 1995.

Mallory Weston in ‘Objects USA’ at R & Company

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show January 3, 2025January 2, 2025No Comments

Looking to turn over a new leaf in 2025? Do it literally with jewelry designer Mallory Weston’s Shattered Begonia Brooch #3, a wearable artwork that pushes boundaries by combining jewelry and textile working techniques. Part of her NODES series, which also features a dangerously spiky-looking prickly pear and enormous monstera leaf necklace, the piece grabs the attention by combining natural subject matter with a digital-aesthetic achieved with a tiled titanium construction. It is on view in R & Company’s sprawling Objects USA, a showcase of 100 objects by 55 makers. (In Tribeca through Jan 10^th. Note that gallery hours change during the holiday period).

Mallory Weston, Shattered Begonia Brooch #3, anodized titanium, nickel, leather and cotton, 2022.

Faig Ahmed at Sapar Contemporary

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show January 1, 2025December 31, 2024No Comments

Azerbaijani artist Faig Ahmed’s new textile works at Sapar Contemporary transform regionally specific carpet styles from his home country into contemporary artwork by radically altering traditional patterns and foregrounding the conceptual aspects of each work. ‘The Knot,’ the title piece for the show, foregrounds and monumentalizes the most basic technique of carpet-making. The gallery explains that this luxuriously dark, central knot, represents the invisible work, stories and histories that go into the making of each piece. (On view in Tribeca through Jan 6^th. Note that gallery hours change during the holiday period).

Faig Ahmed, The Knot, handmade wool and silk carpet, variable dimensions, 36 5/8 x 235 inches (open), 2024.

Ruth Asawa in ’18 Women: 50 Years’ at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show December 30, 2024December 27, 2024No Comments

’18 Women: 50 Years’ at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is a tour de force of painting and sculpture, ceramic, textile and work in a variety of media created between 1918 to 1968 by some of the most influential artists of the mid-20^th century. Among the many standout pieces is Ruth Asawa’s S.391/50, a crocheted brass wire sculpture from c. 1958, which the gallery describes as taking the form of ‘six double-sided, trumpet-like shapes that expand outward from the central void’ in a dynamic composition of repeated looping line. (On view in Chelsea through Jan 25^th. Note that gallery hours change during the holiday period.)

Ruth Asawa, S.391/50, brass wire, 15 x 13 ½ x 12 ¾ inches, c. 1958.

Lorna Simpson at Hauser & Wirth Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show December 27, 2024December 27, 2024No Comments

With almost no warning save for a humming sound and a sudden gust of air, Mississippi tenant farmer Ed Bush witnessed a meteorite plough into the earth one day in 1922, a terrifying and sudden event which Lorna Simpson recounts in 3-D lettering on the wall of her solo show at Hauser & Wirth Gallery. Nearby, painted and silkscreened fiberglass panels picture a surface pockmarked with bullet holes, another allusion to violence that can descend unexpectedly and without reason. In the main gallery, a series of 12-foot-tall canvases feature huge, meteor-like rocks that appear to hover in space, perhaps arrested in their descent but still exuding destructive potential that has, at least momentarily, been averted. (On view in Chelsea through Jan 11th. Note that gallery hours change during the holiday period).

Lorna Simpson, Time Lapse, acrylic and screenprint on gessoed fiberglass, 144 x 102 x 1 ¾ inches, 2024.

The Hall Sisters in ‘My Way: Gee’s Bend Today’ at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show December 25, 2024December 24, 2024No Comments

Lively, colorful, and modern in their geometry, the quilts in Nicelle Beauchene Gallery’s group show of textiles from Gee’s Bend quilters are a standout in the Tribeca galleries. ‘My Way: Gee’s Bend Today’ is the third in a three-part series at the gallery featuring work by the legendary makers of Gee’s Bend, a Black community in Boykin, Alabama. The present exhibition showcases work by 14 artists creating ‘My Way’ quilts, pieces that favor free expression over strict adherence to a pattern. (On view through Jan 4th. Note that gallery hours change during the holiday period).

The Hall Sisters, Star Bright (Quilted by Mary Hall, Doris Mooney, and Elaine Spencer), assorted fabrics, 74h x 59w in, 2023.

Irwin/Bell: The ‘60s at 125 Newbury

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show December 23, 2024December 18, 2024No Comments

Though based in Los Angeles, the mid-century Light and Space movement is well represented in New York galleries, a happy circumstance aided by Pace Gallery’s long-term relationships with key artists. ‘Irwin/Bell: The ‘60s’ at Pace’s Tribeca offshoot, ‘125 Newbury,’ presents work by Larry Bell and Robert Irwin that revisits their early shows in New York, including the premier of Irwin’s aluminum disc paintings in 1968. Installed in a back gallery with a bench inviting visitors to sit and contemplate, this untitled piece from 1967 presents a circular aluminum form that exists materially but appears to be composed entirely of light and shadow. (On view in Tribeca through Jan 11^th).

Robert Irwin, Untitled, sprayed lacquer on aluminum disc, 62” diameter, 1967.

Tong Yang-Tze at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show December 20, 2024December 18, 2024No Comments

Amid the holiday throngs in the Met Museum’s Great Hall, renowned Taipei-based artist Tong Yang-Tze’s monumental calligraphic installation stands out for its stark clarity and gracefully energetic form. Two canvases present phrases that encourage self-reflection and engagement with the new. Here, the saying ‘Stones from other mountains can refine our jade’ derives from a 3,000-year-old classical Chinese text originally intended to encourage an embrace of talent from another country. (On view through April 8^th, 2025).

Tong Yang-Tze, installation view of ‘Stones from other mountains can refine our jade,’ ’24 in ‘Dialogue’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Nov 2024.

Ian Davenport, Beato at Kasmin Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show December 18, 2024February 11, 2025No Comments

It’s always a pleasure to encounter British abstract painter Ian Davenport’s colorful cascades of paint, artworks that result from pouring vividly colored acrylic paint down an aluminum surface. In new work at Chelsea’s Kasmin Gallery, vertical lines give way to a looser order toward the bottom of each painting, or here, on a panel placed on the floor below. Intending to evoke natural forces including air currents and tides while pointing to the colors of Renaissance paintings by artists including Fra Angelico and Caravaggio, the paintings offer both formal and optical enjoyment. (On view in Chelsea through Dec 20^th).

Ian Davenport, Beato, acrylic on aluminum mounted onto aluminum panel, 118 1/8 x 78 ¾ x 93 ¼ inches, 2024.

Ian Davenport, Beato (detail), acrylic on aluminum mounted onto aluminum panel, 118 1/8 x 78 ¾ x 93 ¼ inches, 2024.

Anne Samat at Marc Straus Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show December 16, 2024December 10, 2024No Comments

Malaysian artist Anne Samat’s monumental family portrait at Marc Straus Gallery is a memorial to her late mother, brother and sister. At center, an abstracted figure bearing a ‘no smoking’ sign alludes to Samat’s brother’s fatal illness, yet his form towers protectively over a small standing figure before a small pond. Constructed in everyday materials ranging from rakes to plastic swords and woven with a mix of yarn and rattan sticks, Samat updates Malaysian and SE Asian artistic practices in a powerful installation acknowledging the importance of family and, as the title ‘Never Walk in Anyone’s Shadow’ suggests, self-reliance. (On view in Tribeca through Dec 21^st).

Anne Samat, Never Walk in Anyone’s Shadow 2, rattan sticks, kitchen and garden utensils, beads, ceramic, metal and plastic ornaments, handwoven tapestry, 151 ½ x 285 x 77 inches, 2024.

Anne Samat, (detail) Never Walk in Anyone’s Shadow 2, rattan sticks, kitchen and garden utensils, beads, ceramic, metal and plastic ornaments, handwoven tapestry, 151 ½ x 285 x 77 inches, 2024.

Irving Penn, ‘Kinship’ at Pace Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show December 13, 2024December 10, 2024No Comments

Pace Gallery’s current exhibition of Irving Penn’s photographs from the ‘40s to 2000, curated by supremely image-savvy artist Hank Willis Thomas, is compact but impactful, featuring juxtapositions of photos with often radically different subject matter that nevertheless have some affinity. A 1947 studio portrait of New Yorker cartoonists poised on a scaffold hangs near a photo of a careful arrangement of blocks, immediately conveying careful arrangement and balance rather than humor or play. Around the corner, two models in Issey Miyake echo the form of a neighboring image of two weathered cigarette butts, a parallel that crashes together the fashionable and the discarded. Hung on gallery walls constructed to recall the temporary structures Penn used as sets, photos are positioned near each other but on different walls, similar yet different. Here, tangled members of a wrestling family appear opposite an arrangement of seafood, both shot in 1948, demonstrating the ‘visual muscle memory’ that Willis Thomas argues ties together Penn’s 70-year career. (On view in Chelsea through Dec 21^st).

(left) Irving Penn, Dusek Brothers (1 of 3), vintage gelatin silver print, 7 11/16 x 9 5/8, image, ed of 41, New York, 1948. (right) Irving Penn, Bouillabaisse, chromogenic print, 24 x 20 inches, images, ed of 7, Barcelona, 1948.

Installation view. Irving Penn, ‘Kinship’ at Pace Gallery, Dec ’24.

Jiha Moon at Derek Eller Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show December 11, 2024December 10, 2024No Comments

Complex and colorful, Jiha Moon’s ceramic vessels at Derek Eller Gallery entice with their cheeky updates to historic forms and their contemporary subject matter. Dumplings and succulent fruits allude to pleasure while forming the two eyes on this pot dominated by a fake grin. Moon explains that this work is autobiographical, the dark clouds representing the impact on her life of the weather (specifically hurricanes) in Tallahassee, where she lives. The pagoda, boat and two birds refer to Blue Willow Pattern, an English take on blue and white Chinese porcelain with an accompanying love story that alternates between tragedy and happy ending. (On view in Tribeca through Dec 21^st).

Jiha Moon, Banana Thunderhead, porcelain, underglaze, glaze, 16.5 x 11 x 9 inches, 2024.

Pierre Huyghe in ‘Your Patience is Appreciated’ at Marian Goodman Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show December 9, 2024December 4, 2024No Comments

There’s less than a week left to see Marian Goodman Gallery’s huge group exhibition in its new Tribeca location, a beautifully renovated 35,000 square foot industrial building from 1875. Just inside the first room, an iteration of Pierre Huyghe’s ongoing ‘Timekeeper Drill Core’ series involved removing a circular portion of the gallery wall from the old 57^th Street location and sanding down a circle at center to reveal the many times the space had been painted in its over forty years uptown. Smartly installed, the show encourages conversations among circular forms in its initial room – Gabriel Orozco’s bike-wheel sculpture and Nairy Baghramian’s cylindrical abstraction are placed near Huyghe’s piece – suggesting that the gallery’s current manifestation is the beginning of a new cycle. (On view through Dec 14^th).

Pierre Huyghe, Timekeeper Drill Core (MGG 57th St), paint, plasterboard, 2 ½ x 23 3/8 inches, 2024.

Jessie Henson Sewn Works at Broadway Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show December 6, 2024February 11, 2025No Comments

Jessie Henson’s sewn works at Tribeca’s Broadway Gallery resemble elements of the natural world – water, wind smoke, arial overviews of landscape, or segments of the atmosphere – yet remain fully and enticingly abstract. The suggestion of movement created by curving masses of stitches is made complicated by rips in the paper support, torn in the process of repeated handling on Henson’s industrial sewing machine. Further evidence of the process of making appears in holes pierced by a needle but not filled with thread, a device which adds shadow and patterning. Contingent yet complex, Henson’s compositions arrest the eye with their dynamism. (On view through Dec 14^th).

Jessie Henson, Where are you now?, polyester and rayon thread on paper, 82 x 54 x 2.75 inches, 2024.

Jessie Henson, Where are you now? (detail), polyester and rayon thread on paper, 82 x 54 x 2.75 inches, 2024.

Francis Alys at David Zwirner Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show December 4, 2024December 4, 2024No Comments

Driven by the poetic idea of bridging the 7,7 nautical mile wide Straight of Gibraltar, Francis Alys’ solo show at David Zwirner Gallery pictures fanciful connections between Moroccan and Spanish territory in the form of installation, video, painting and more. One painting anthropomorphizes sea cliffs into human forms, while elsewhere a giant child stands in the Straight with two people-packed boats under her arms. In the back gallery, beyond a lightbox displaying news articles about migration across the Mediterranean, a video features a row of kids from Morrocco and a similar line of Spanish youth at the beach, heading into the water carrying toy boats made from shoes (seen here in sculptural form elsewhere in the show). Resembling both personal items lost in migration and suggesting resourceful toymaking, the boats are somber and lighthearted at the same time, expressing continued hope despite harsh realities. (On view through Dec 18^th).

Francis Alys, installation view of ‘Francis Alys: The Gibraltar Projects,’ Nov 2024.

Annie Leibovitz at Hauser and Wirth

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show December 2, 2024November 26, 2024No Comments

A photograph of the top hat and gloves that Abraham Lincoln wore when he was assassinated and a shot of Elvis Presley’s TV pierced by a bullet hole are two images with intriguing backstories in iconic photographer Annie Leibovitz’s mini-survey at Hauser and Wirth Gallery in Chelsea. Less dramatic but more insightful are the many portraits of artists that include Simone Leigh’s hands shaping a piece of clay near a landscape that inspired Georgia O’Keefe, or an Icelandic glacier that vaguely resembles a neighboring shot of Cindy Sherman’s head. Here, Leibovitz’s image of David Hockney, from a period in which he’d returned to the north of England, allows us an enjoyably intimate view of the artist at work. (On view through Jan 11^th).

Annie Leibovitz, David Hockney, Bridlington, East Yorkshire, England, archival pigment print, 2024.

Richard Serra, Every Which Way at David Zwirner

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show November 29, 2024February 11, 2025No Comments

Installed at a diagonal in David Zwirner Gallery’s huge ground floor 20^th Street space, late artist Richard Serra’s 2015 sculpture ‘Every Which Way’ forces a decision from entering visitors who must opt to turn right, left or wind their way between the 16 steel panels. Regardless of how it is approached, the piece invites interaction and a physical comparison between a visitor’s body and the giant, weighty slabs of metal seven, nine or eleven feet tall that Serra likened to architecture. Unlike Serra’s rolled steel sculptures with their curving walls and warm, brown patina, this piece’s abrupt flatness and grey steel surfaces convey austerity. Their arrangement in shorter segments, however, gives visitors agency to explore this minimal but engaging arrangement of form. (On view through Dec 14^th).

Richard Serra, Every Which Way, steel, 2015.

Simone Leigh at Matthew Marks Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show November 27, 2024November 26, 2024No Comments

Simone Leigh’s handsome show of new work at Matthew Marks Gallery in Chelsea features several sculptures of female figures in skirts that, with their substantial size, convey power and solidity. Larger than life, the torso and head of this generalized individual is nevertheless small in comparison to her skirt. Composed of giant ceramic cowry shells, the material nods to past forms of currency and to esoteric spiritual knowledge. Resembling the domed shapes of traditional Musgum architecture, West African spiritual objects, and face jugs from the American South, and alluding to many other aspects of African and diasporic culture, Leigh’s beautiful figures manifest complex cultural heritage and histories. (On view in Chelsea through Dec 14^th).

Simone Leigh, Untitled, earthenware, stoneware, and steel armature, 90 x 73 x 75 inches, 2023-24.

Denzil Forrester at Andrew Kreps Gallery and Stephen Friedman Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show November 25, 2024November 20, 2024No Comments

Grenada-born British artist Denzil Forrester’s current gallery exhibitions at Andrew Kreps Gallery and Stephen Friedman Gallery in Tribeca showcase vibrantly colored moments from London’s dub reggae scene in past decades. A regular club visitor from the 1980s, Forrester sketched by night and painted by day, documenting legendary DJs like Jah Shaka, who he honors here in ‘Tribute to Shaka.’ Figures in the periphery of the painting seem to dissolve, as if the reverb was literally breaking apart form and altering the material realm. (On view through Dec 18^th).

Denzil Forrester, Tribute to Shaka, oil on canvas, 79 7/8 x 107 7/8 inches, 2024.

Jade Fadojutimi at Gagosian Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show November 22, 2024November 20, 2024No Comments

Titled ‘The Generosity of Trauma,’ this painting by British artist Jade Fadojutimi is one of only two works (along with ‘Sulking is a virtue’) in her show at Gagosian Gallery with a title. Typically colorful and energetic with areas that appear to either be plants or zones of pure abstraction, the artist’s new work explores identity through color. She has said, “When I feel emotion, I see a color and that’s how my paintings come to life.’ In tune with global challenges like climate change and displacement and the artist’s personal experience with depression, Fadojutimi’s two works with oxymoronic titles suggest that pushing her practice forward through difficulty gives it its vibrant character. (On view in Chelsea through Dec 21^st).

The Generosity of Trauma, acrylic, oil, oil pastel and oil bar on canvas, 98 7/16 x 68 7/8 inches, 2024.

Alexandre da Cunha at James Cohan Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show November 20, 2024November 20, 2024No Comments

James Cohan Gallery’s austere, white cube front room hosts two equally minimal sculptural forms by Brazilian artist Alexandre da Cunha that allude poetically to labor and the human body. Two precast concrete manholes nestle together, aligning their openings to provide a passage through both forms and pointing to their function as portals for workers. On the wall nearby, a circular form made of shovel handles and backed with colorful fabrics from t-shirts, a cleaning cloth, a bed sheet, a tea towel, a hand towel, a sarong and more again points to the bodies and domestic routines of the individuals wielding shovels in their work life. Industrial or personal in scale, heavy or light, each set of found materials finds beauty in the built environment and its making. (On view through Dec 21^st).

Alexandre da Cunha, (right) Public Sculpture (Touch I), precast concrete, 86 x 86 x 30 in, 2024 and (left) Vitral (Rosetta), shovel handles, t-shirts, cleaning cloth, bed sheet, tea towel, hand towel, sarong, fabric cut outs, 80 ¾ x 80 ¾ x 2 3/8 inches, 2024.

Cecily Brown, The Five Senses at Paula Cooper Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show November 18, 2024February 12, 2025No Comments

Long inspired by Old Master painters, Cecily Brown’s latest solo show at Paula Cooper Gallery engages with the fruitful collaboration between 17^th century painters Jan Brueghel the Elder’s and Peter Paul Rubens. Brown’s work on paper – etchings, drawings with watercolor and monotypes – reworks aspects of the duo’s collaborative series of paintings ‘The Five Senses’ from 1617-18, abstracting and condensing the space of interior scenes. This lush and engaging painting in the gallery’s main space takes that impulse further, proffering a recognizable plate of oysters with lobster at the center of the canvas while turning the room’s other forms into a fluid, fluctuating space from which faces and forms emerge. (On view through Dec 7^th).

Cecily Brown, The Five Senses, 89 x 83 inches, oil on linen, 2023.

Mulyana, Betty 27 at Sapar Contemporary

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show November 15, 2024February 12, 2025No Comments

Indonesian artist Mulyana’s signature colorful crocheted coral reef sculptures give way in his latest solo show at Sapar Contemporary to clusters of white forms resembling bleached coral. Fashioned in plastic instead of yarn, the new work is every bit as intricately crafted and pleasingly detailed as his previous work, but the attraction is uncomfortable. Made from a material harmful to sea life and speaking to damage done by climate change, the work has an elegiac quality as sad as it is beautiful. (On view through Nov 20th. Curated by John Silvis).

Mulyana, Betty 27, plastic yarn, plastic net, cable wire, 63 x 80 ¾ x 11 ¾ inches, 2024.

Mulyana, Betty 27 (detail), plastic yarn, plastic net, cable wire, 63 x 80 ¾ x 11 ¾ inches, 2024.

Erin O’Keefe at Sargent’s Daughters

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show November 13, 2024November 13, 2024No Comments

Being tricked is fun when it’s New York-based artist and architect Erin O’Keefe doing the fooling. O’Keefe’s new photographs at Sargent’s Daughters in Tribeca look like paintings made with thick strokes of a brush, but what appears to be textured paint marks are actually the edges of wooden blocks that the artist paints and arranges to read like an abstract composition. Some pieces come partly into focus as photos of 3-D arrangements but continue to be ambiguous; others only make sense after some puzzling. With their bright colors and clever composition, the photographs offer an optical workout that is pure pleasure. (On view in Tribeca through Dec 21^st).

Erin O’Keefe, Snake Eyes, unique archival pigment print on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag paper mounted to Dibond aluminum, 42 x 30 inches, 2024.

Alteronce Gumby at Nicola Vassell Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show November 11, 2024November 6, 2024No Comments

If we were on a planet in another solar system, would we see color differently? In his ongoing engagement with intense color, Alteronce Gumby’s scintillating new paintings at Nicola Vassell Gallery refuse to take our experience of the visible spectrum for granted. Inspired by NASA’s James Webb telescope, art historical forebears and travel that has allowed him to witness the vibrant Holi festival in Indian, the Northern Lights and much more, Gumby’s new ‘Moonwalker paintings’ lure viewers in with their rich color and reflective surfaces. Each piece resembles nebula and strata of the earth, taking us both into the heavens and down through geological history. Shaped in a way to suggest speed and defiance of gravity and incorporating semi-precious stones and gems, each piece is infused with the pleasure of transport. (On view in Chelsea through Dec 14^th).

Alteronce Gumby, Waves of Possibilities, lapis lazuli, glass and acrylic on panel, 72 x 90 inches, 2024.

Alteronce Gumby, (detail) Waves of Possibilities, lapis lazuli, glass and acrylic on panel, 72 x 90 inches, 2024.

Jordan Castle at the Hill Art Foundation

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show November 8, 2024November 6, 2024No Comments

Known for painted portraits of family, friends, her students, fellow subway riders, and people she meets on the street in New York, Jordan Casteel pictures her subjects as they choose to be presented. In this tender portrait from a private collection in Casteel’s solo show at the Hill Art Foundation, the family pictured wanted to be in their garden, so they waited half a year to take the photo that would lead to this painting. Planted after the parents, Deon and Kym, lost their daughter Naima due to miscarriage, they planned the garden as a gift to her and a way of honoring life. (On view in Chelsea through Nov 23^rd).

Jordan Casteel, Naima’s Gift (Deon, Kym and Noah), oil on canvas, 94 x 80 inches, 2023.

Ai Wei Wei at Vito Schnabel Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show November 6, 2024November 6, 2024No Comments

Since creating portraits of political prisoners for a 2014 exhibition at the former Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary in San Francisco, iconic Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei has used LEGO or Woma bricks to make pixelated reproductions of politically charged images. Now on view at Vito Schnabel Gallery in Chelsea, a selection of toy-brick built artworks picture famous paintings and news photographs with telling alterations. Ai’s version of Andrew Wyeth’s ‘Christina’s World’ substitutes farmhouses in the work’s background with the artist’s newly built studio in Portugal, a replica of one destroyed by the Chinese authorities. Elsewhere, he adds President Biden to a reproduction of a news photo of the US Navy collecting debris from the Chinese surveillance balloon shot down near South Carolina in 2023. Here, he adds a dark area in the left of a version of Monet’s Water Lilies, representing the dugout where his exiled family was forced to live during the Cultural Revolution. (On view through Feb 22^nd).

Ai Wei Wei, Water Lilies #4, toy bricks mounted on aluminum, 94 ½ x 472 ½ inches, 2022.

Sarah Sense at Bruce Silverstein Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show November 4, 2024October 30, 2024No Comments

Descended from Chitimacha and Choctaw artisans, Sarah Sense employs family basket-making knowledge to dynamically woven photo collages on view at Silverstein Gallery in Chelsea. Colonial documents, maps and her own contemporary landscape photographs are the material from which Sense weaves patterns inspired by specific baskets created by Chitimacha makers that were once part of the dispersed McIlhenny family’s collection, now housed in the Montclair Art Museum, Brooklyn Museum of Art and Worcester Art Museum. The trauma represented by these baskets – produced for collectors as Chitimacha land was continually encroached upon and the community threatened – is not their end message, however. Rather Sense explains that she intends her work as a healing gesture pointing to time’s cyclical nature. (On view through Nov 23^rd.)

Sarah Sense, Montclair Rabbit Study, woven archival pigment prints on Hahnemuhle bamboo paper and Hahnemuhle rice paper, tape, 23 ¾ x 23 ¾ inches, 2024.

Olafur Eliasson, Light Ensemble at Tanya Bonakdar

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show November 1, 2024February 11, 2025No Comments

From his legendary 2003 installation of a sun in the Tate Modern (made with a semi-circle of lights and a mirror) to more intimate light environments and sculptures of colored glass, Olafur Eliasson creates transformative artworks using deceptively simple means. The centerpiece of the artist’s latest solo exhibition at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in Chelsea, ‘Your psychoacoustic light ensemble,’ challenges viewers to rethink how we perceive color, light and other natural phenomena while this time including sound. In the gallery’s darkened central room, low frequency vibrations can be heard, felt and seen as projected lights respond to the sound waves. Inviting us to sit and be immersed in the various stimuli, Eliasson describes our experience as ‘seeing ourselves hearing.’ (On view through Dec 19^th).

Olafur Eliasson, Your psychoacoustic light ensemble, spotlight, glass lens, mirror foil, tripod, transducer, embedded computer system, dimensions variable, 2024.

Martha Jackson Jarvis at Susan Inglett Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show October 30, 2024October 30, 2024No Comments

With their lively, textured surfaces and bold striped patterns, Martha Jackson Jarvis’ large abstract paintings have a strong presence at Chelsea’s Inglett Gallery, but it’s their relationship to the artist’s family history that is most remarkable. Inspired by research into her great-great-great-great grandfather’s service in the Revolutionary War as a free Black militiaman, Jackson Jarvis juxtaposes lines with abstraction to contrast straight paths of travel with the difficulties of navigating the landscape. Circular forms point to abundant life, waving pieces of material suggest topography and lush colors juxtaposed with darker tones speak to the rich variety of the natural world. (On view through Nov 30^th).

Martha Jackson Jarvis, South of the North Star, black walnut ink, oil, acrylic, watercolor, arches cold press 300lb paper, and canvas, 99 x 44 x 3 inches, 2020.

Martha Jackson Jarvis, (detail) South of the North Star, black walnut ink, oil, acrylic, watercolor, arches cold press 300lb paper, and canvas, 99 x 44 x 3 inches, 2020.

Cameron Welch at Yossi Milo Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show October 28, 2024October 23, 2024No Comments

Cameron Welch’s mosaics at Yossi Milo Gallery pack a punch with their energetic collage-like mix of contemporary and historic imagery. Here, Orpheus, the hero of Greek mythology who unsuccessfully descended into the underworld to bring back his wife Eurydice, holds the musical instrument with which he could charm both living and dead. Crafted in ceramic, glass, marble and stone and enhanced with oil and acrylic paint, the artwork not only rethinks a mythological figure but melds ancient and contemporary material tradition. (On view in Chelsea through Nov 9^th).

Cameron Welch, Orpheus in the Garden, marble, glass, ceramic, stone, spray enamel, oil and acrylic on panel, 96 ¾ x 80 5/8 inches, 2024.

Carrie Mae Weems at Gladstone Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show October 25, 2024October 23, 2024No Comments

In an interview accompanying her recent show at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, iconic photographer and artist Carrie Mae Weems said, “I know that I will be living with injustice for the rest of my life,” before going on to express her determination to advocate for change as it is currently needed. Her 7-part video ‘Cyclorama: The Shape of Things,’ now on view at Gladstone Gallery after several museum appearances, combines vintage film of circus acts, footage from Amy Cooper’s notorious 2020 Central Park phone call, and scenes from the January 6^th insurrection with shots of methodically moving contemporary dancers and more in a collage of imagery that ranges from beautiful to horrifying. Projected on a circular screen like a 19th century narrative painting accompanied by changing lights and sound, Weems immerses us in the present moment, amplifying and clarifying the conversations and conflicts of the day. (On view at Gladstone Gallery through Nov 9^th).

Carrie Mae Weems, installation view of Cyclorama: The Shape of Things, A Video in 7 Parts, 2021, 7 parts, duration: 40 min, Barbara Gladstone Gallery, September 2024.

Pieter Schoolwerth Video at Petzel Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show October 23, 2024February 11, 2025No Comments

To appreciate Pieter Schoolwerth’s paintings in his current solo exhibition at Petzel Gallery, it’s advisable to first check out ‘Supporting Actor,’ the CG animation he made with artist Phil Vanderhyden. While the priority given to computer-generated content might be a surprising move for most painters, that’s not the case for Schoolwerth, who has long been interested in how the digital world has impacted the space and time of painting. Starring a digital avatar of musician Aaron Dilloway, who created the piece’s soundtrack, the animation starts with Dilloway’s transportation from art gallery (pictured here) to a bathroom to a bizarre nightclub of gyrating alien-figures. In the gallery’s main space, paintings inspired by the animation combine inkjet-printed paintings with real paint in an ever more complicated consideration of where the ‘real’ lies and which medium plays the role of ‘supporting actor’. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 26^th).

Pieter Schoolwerth, still from Supporting Actor, 4K video with sound by Aaron Dilloway, 2024, installed at Petzel Gallery, Sept 2024.

Margarita Cabrera at Jane Lombard Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show October 21, 2024February 9, 2025No Comments

Expanding concentric circles of flamenco dresses surround a soft sculpture of a Spanish ship in an eye-catching installation in Margarita Cabrera’s current solo show at Jane Lombard Gallery. The abundant dynamic ruffles of the dress material suggest that though small, the ship is making its presence felt from Spanish arrival in the Americas to the present day. Crafted from material used for US/Mexico border patrol uniforms, the ship and the show’s other engaging sculptures invite discussion of migration past and present. (On view through Oct 26^th).

Margarita Cabrera, installation view of El Vaiven del Mar, Flamenco dresses, uniform fabric, 120 x 168 x 36 inches, 2024.

Paul Anthony Smith Multi Media at Jack Shainman

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show October 18, 2024February 14, 2025No Comments

It’s carnival season in Jamaica-born, Brooklyn based multi-media artist Paul Anthony Smith’s latest body of work now on view at Jack Shainman Gallery in Chelsea. Starting with photos he took during celebrations in Trinidad and Tobago, Smith manipulates the images, prints them, adds paint and employs his signature picotage technique by which he creates patterns of tiny tears in the surface of the painted photographs. Here, as in many pieces, the tear patterns take the form of fences or walls constructed of patterned concrete blocks. Placed between viewers and the celebrants, the barriers allow looking but give viewers pause to question what kind of access we have to the places and cultures pictured. (On view through Oct 26^th).

Paul Anthony Smith, To be titled, unique picotage and spray paint on inkjet, print mounted on Dibond, acrylic paint, 51 ¼ x 81 x 2 ¼ inches, 2024.

Magdalena Suarez Frimkess, Sculpture at Kaufmann Repetto

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show October 16, 2024February 11, 2025No Comments

Magdalena Suarez Frimkess’s lively and charming ceramic sculptures, now on view at Kaufmann Repetto in Tribeca, feature popular cartoon characters rendered in an expressive style. Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, and the Chilean character Condorito, the artist says, “…are the masters of everything for me…they know all the answers for everything. They make fun of everything. Nothing is so serious.” Additional tiles, plates, vessels and sculpture feature Aztec motifs and other indigenous American imagery speak to Suarez Frimkess’ diverse interests and influences over her 95 years of creativity. (On view through Oct 19^th).

Magdalena Suarez Frimkess, Untitled, glazed ceramic, 2 x 6.1 x 6.4 inches, 2022.

Nengi Omuku at Kasmin Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show October 14, 2024October 9, 2024No Comments

Pretty, peachy-pink tones pervade Nigerian artist Nengi Omuku’s paintings on Yoruban sanyan fabric to otherworldly and calming effect in her first New York solo show at Kasmin Gallery. But while several works feature scenes of respite in a garden or enjoyment of community, others hint at troubled political times in Nigeria. Here in ‘Orange Bougainvillea,’ Omuku surrounds faintly visible individuals with flowers as if to engulf them in the beauty of the landscape. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 19^th).

Nengi Omuku, Orange Bougainvillea, oil on sanyan, 86 5/8 x 87 3/8 inches, 2024.

Suzanne Jackson at Ortuzar Projects

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show October 11, 2024October 9, 2024No Comments

After standing out in the 2024 Whitney Biennial and in the Shah Garg Collection’s Chelsea exhibition last winter, Suzanne Jackson’s hanging environmental installations and works on paper at Ortuzar Projects offer a more in-depth look at the artist’s remarkable assemblage. Jackson has likened her studio to a compost heap where materials are broken down and recomposed; here in ‘9, Billie, Mingus, Monk’s,’ she repurposes many different kinds of paper and cloth along with her signature acrylic gel medium in a dense yet floating record of marks and decision-making. Praised for its music-like fragility and manifestation of joy by Hilton Als in the New Yorker recently, the piece’s earth-toned colors and solid presence are a standout in the show. (On view through Oct 19^th in Tribeca).

Suzanne Jackson, 9, Billie, Mingus, Monk’s, acrylic, acrylic gel medium, flax paper, Bogus paper, Stonehenge paper, tissue, linen, nursery burlap, produce bag netting, canvas and wood, double-sided, 64 x 65 x 5 ½ inches, 2003.

Josh Kline at Lisson Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show October 9, 2024October 9, 2024No Comments

Among New York artist Josh Kline’s most memorable sculptures are his huge FedEx boxes filled with packing peanuts and disassembled, 3D printed Fed Ex employees. Like that chilling indictment of exploitable or disposable labor, Kline’s scathing new work at Lisson Gallery considers the precarious position of artists and other creatives. In the age of AI replacing humans, expensive MFAs and prohibitively expensive costs of living, what is the roll of artists? Taking his own body as model, Kline’s scattered 3D printed heads, arms and legs suggest a complete merger between worker and product. Printed with Kline’s own Chase credit card and titled ‘New York Artist,’ Kline suggests that he is both consumer and consumable in the ‘art industry.’ (On view in Chelsea through Oct 19^th.)

Josh Kline, New York Artist, 3D-printed sculpture in acrylic-based photopolymer resin; Ikea chair, denim, UV protective coating, and museum wax, 2024.

Karen Bennicke at HB381

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show October 7, 2024October 2, 2024No Comments

Karen Bennicke’s richly colored ceramic sculptures are a puzzle, their cubist forms appearing at first to represent street art, alien bodies, signage, or toys. Once visitors to her exhibition at HB381 spot the maps of Manhattan on the gallery’s back wall, however, each tangle of lines and shapes materializes into a segment of the island’s street map. We can’t see but we can imagine that work, leisure, recreation and every aspect of city life takes place in the locations pictured, a representation of possibility more than experience. At the same time, Bennicke’s sculptures speak to histories of settlement and the myriad decisions that went into what our urban environment looks like today. (On view in Tribeca through Oct 19^th).

Karen Bennicke, MP IVA, terracotta, slab built, 40.5” H x 13.5” W x 9.25” D, 2024.

Sky Glabush at Stephen Friedman Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show October 4, 2024October 2, 2024No Comments

Sky Glabush, a Canadian artist who lives and works in the countryside outside of London, Ontario, takes inspiration from nature and early modernist art. His arresting landscape paintings at Stephen Friedman Gallery in Tribeca alternate electric orange and yellow toned scenes with tranquil blues and purples, conveying a breadth of responses to an abundantly varied natural world. Marked by their geometricized orderliness, Glabush’s huge paintings of forest scenes emphasize a linear quality that’s echoed in the vertical forms of gallery visitors standing before them. Vibrant and driven by pattern and form, Glabush’s landscapes enticingly argue for the transformative and wondrous aspects of the natural world. (On view through Oct 17^th).

Sky Glabush, River Through Trees, oil and sand on canvas, 96 x 72 inches, 2024.

Hilary Pecis Still Life at David Kordansky Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show October 2, 2024February 11, 2025No Comments

Hilary Pecis’s still-life paintings at David Kordansy Gallery are anything but still. Vibrant colors vie for attention with bold patterns in scenes that are empty of people but feel bursting with activity. Here, a yellow tablecloth tilts at an impossible angle to show viewers a mid-meal scene from multiple perspectives at once. Though the food looks good, it’s our appetite for color and design that is whetted by this dynamic painting. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 12^th).

Hilary Pecis, Lunch in Frogtown, acrylic on linen, 74 ½ x 64 x 1 5/8 inches, 2024.

Joel Shapiro at Pace Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show September 30, 2024September 25, 2024No Comments

Perhaps best known for abstracted sculptures that resemble human figures in motion, Joel Shapiro has, in the past decade, memorably suspended forms in the air in explosive installations. Once again situated on the gallery floor, Shapiro’s new work at Pace Gallery is no less dynamic. ‘Splay,’ (foreground) resembles an energetically sprawling figure, another piece abstracts an ocean wave, and the show’s central sculpture ‘ARK,’ projects colorful forms outward from a mass that appears to stand on the gallery floor on tiptoes. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 26^th).

Joel Shapiro, installation view of ‘Out of the Blue,’ Pace Gallery, 510 West 25th Street, Sept 2024.

Karen Knorr at Sundaram Tagore Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show September 27, 2024September 25, 2024No Comments

Inspired by sources from European folk tales to fables from India’s Panchatantra, Karen Knorr’s extravagantly beautiful mini-retrospective of photographs at Sundaram Tagore Gallery taps into the complex relations between humans and animals. In her most recent body of work, Scavi, the artist pictures excavated sites in southern Italy that were covered by the 79 CE eruption of Mount Vesuvius. To these she adds images shot elsewhere of animals, creating surprising connections. Titled ‘Bacchus in Attendance, House of Neptune and Amphitrite,’ this image from a garden courtyard in Herculaneum features a leopard seated before a glass paste mosaic of Neptune and his wife, Amphitrite. Associated with the god of wine, Bacchus, the leopard becomes a stand-in for the deity in a regal portrait of three divinities. (On view through Oct 19^th).

Karen Knorr, Bacchus in Attendance, House of Neptune and Amphitrite, Herculaneum, 58 x 72.5 inches, 2024.

Anthony Cudahy at GRIMM Gallery and Hales Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show September 25, 2024September 25, 2024No Comments

Anthony Cudahy’s simultaneous gallery shows at Hales Gallery in Chelsea and GRIMM Gallery in Tribeca are titled ‘Fool’s Gold’ and ‘Fool’s Errand,’ positing the artist as quixotic figure pursuing his own vision. True to form, Cudahy’s bold colors, unharnessed to realistic representation, highlight figures or elements of an interior background. Here, he draws our attention not to his friend, Sammy, in the chair, but rather to the glow of the bookshelf and a minimal still life with lemons. Aiming to celebrate wonder in the everyday, Cudahy tilts Sammy’s head and angles his legs to guide our eye to books that might guide the mind into a world of thought and fruits which are in conversation with art history. (On view in Chelsea at Hales Gallery and in Tribeca at GRIMM Gallery through Oct 19^th).

Anthony Cudahy, Sammy, oil on linen, 72 x 72 inches, 2024.

Aki Sasamoto at Bortolami Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show September 23, 2024September 18, 2024No Comments

Performance is key to New York artist Aki Sasamoto’s practice, but for her latest show at Bortolami Gallery, she outsources the action to her sculpture and to gallery visitors. Titled ‘Sounding Lines,’ after the devices used to test water depth from a vessel, the show consists of handmade sculptures resembling giant fishing lures and lengths of long springs stretched across the gallery between them. Occasionally, a motorized arm causes one of the springs to dance around and unaware visitors to react with surprise. Delightful yet disconcerting, the installation foregrounds our own response to (literally) alluring art. (On view in Tribeca through Oct 19^th.)

Aki Sasamoto, ‘Sounding Line (black, red, yellow – whip whisk), wood (red cedar), whip whisk, acrylic paint, epoxy, Mylar, plexiglass, stainless steel wire and springs, bronze rod, fishhooks, stainless-steel hardware, steel, AC motor, speed controller, timer, 9 ¼ x 27 x 1 ½ inches, 2024.

Steve Wolfe, Anna Karenina at Luhring Augustine

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show September 20, 2024February 12, 2025No Comments

Late San Francisco artist Steve Wolfe’s trompe l’oeil versions of books, boxes of books, book covers, sketchbooks and records at Luhring Augustine’s Tribeca space continue to testify to the personal significance of iconic works of art, literature, music and more. Here, Wolfe’s recreation of a Penguin Classics edition of Tolstoy’s ‘Anna Karina’ – made with oil paint, enamel, ink transfer, modeling paste, canvas and wood – looks used but intact. Other ‘books’ have ripped or dingy covers, indications of having been well-used, while dated cover art offers its own history of design. Wolfe’s New York Times obituary from 2016 included the newspaper’s critic Holland Cotter’s note that “…the histories trapped in the work are what warm up the optical tours de force.” Eight years after Wolfe’s passing, his work continues to fascinate not just for the pleasure of his sculptural skill but for the personal connections and memories the volumes evoke. (On view in Tribeca through Oct 19^th).

Steve Wolfe, Untitled (Anna Karenina), oil, enamel, ink transfer, modeling paste, canvas and wood, 7 ½ x 5 x 2 ¼ inches, 1987.

Gina Beavers, Comfortcore at Marianne Boesky

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show September 18, 2024February 11, 2025No Comments

Titled ‘Comfortcore,’ and inspired by a Scandinavian concept of snug interior décor, Gina Beavers’ show of sculptural paintings at Marianne Boesky Gallery pictures chunky blankets, cheerful cushions and thick towel sets which together poke fun at the rampant marketing and consumption of coziness. Having recently moved into a home of her own, Beavers explains that online searches for furnishings led to ceaseless ads for similar products. Here, in a thick, 3-D painting she cut from foam and built up with putty and paper pulp before painting, Beavers collages together so many items with similar prints that it’s hard to tell where the products start and stop. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 5^th).

Gina Beavers, Full circle in Jungle, oil, acrylic, putty, paper pulp, foam and wood stain on panel, 60 x 51 x 5 ½ inches, 2024.

Leonardo Drew, Number 427 at Galerie Lelong

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show September 16, 2024February 12, 2025No Comments

At the entrance to Leonardo Drew’s current solo show at Galerie Lelong is a huge, ten-foot-high grid of panels, each hosting a rich abundance of fragments, yet this towering, orderly artwork is overwhelmed by the dynamic chaos of a floor-to ceiling installation in the main gallery beyond. The materials – wood, plaster and paint – appear to be weathered fragments from a natural disaster but are in fact deliberately distressed and arranged in clusters around the gallery’s two main columns. In his urge to reinvent, Drew has reused elements from previous installations – projects for Art Basel in ’22 and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in ’23 – to respond to the specifics of Galerie Lelong’s industrial-architecture-turned-white-cube by banishing its austerity and taking over the space. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 19^th).

Leonardo Drew, installation view of Number 427, wood, plaster and paint, 3 parts, overall dimensions variable, 2024.

Wangari Mathenge at Nicola Vassell Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show September 13, 2024September 11, 2024No Comments

Wangari Mathenga doesn’t dream the way most people do. Able to dream while awake and be awake yet dreaming, Mathenga eventually realized that her sleep patterns were atypical and, in her recent body of painting at Nicola Vassell Gallery, pictures herself between states of consciousness. Though we see her pajama’d figure lying down, the artist’s interest is in the brain in an active sleep state and her pictures emerge from data taken from the cameras she set up in her home and the dream journals she keeps. Originally intending to paint the dreams she recorded, Mathenge instead focused on her own moving figure in canvases that offer intimate insights yet picture a state of consciousness accessible only to her. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 19^th).

Wangari Mathenga, I’ve Learned How to Fly (Bedimmed Boundaries), oil on canvas, 55 x 82 inches, 2024.

Mitch Epstein at Yancey Richardson Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show September 11, 2024September 11, 2024No Comments

Over the past several decades, photographer Mitch Epstein’s series have memorably pictured conflict over land, energy consumption in the US, and landmarked trees in NYC; his latest body of work at Chelsea’s Yancey Richardson Gallery, ‘Old Growth’ continues to picture the land in a stunning homage to ancient trees across the country. A redwood emerges from fog, a striated bristlecone pine stands at attention and this enormous sequoia towers over a tiny human in images that aim to inspire the protection of forests in light of their beauty and essential function in the environment. (On view through Oct 19^th).

Mitch Epstein, Congress Trail, Sequoia National Park, California, from the series Old Growth, 45 ¾ x 36 ¾ inches, 2021.

Hilary Pecis at David Kordansky Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show September 9, 2024September 9, 2024No Comments

The title of Hillary Pecis’ current New York solo show at David Kordansky Gallery, ‘Warm Rhythm’ perfectly describes the vibrant colors and abundant patterning of her new paintings. Set in LA and often inspired by scenes she encounters in her cross-country runs or daily life in the city, her paintings both sooth and excite with their tranquil subject matter rendered in bold color. The delectable quality of a still life with half-eaten lunch or this cozy scene with cat, reading lamp and mug carries over into delight at an orange house set against lush greens of a verdant front yard or the blooms spilling out of a vividly painted flower shop. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 12^th).

Hilary Pecis, Pepita, acrylic on linen, 44 x 34 x 1 ½ inches, 2024.

Roy Nachum at Mercer Labs

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show September 4, 2024February 9, 2025No Comments

Billed as a ‘museum of art and technology,’ Mercer Labs has generated buzz since opening in Spring ’24 across the street from the Oculus Transportation Hub in lower Manhattan. The 15-room immersive experience is a partnership between Roy Nachum, an NYC-based multi-media artist whose work has ranged from cover art for Rihanna’s 2015 ‘Anti’ album to photorealist portraiture collaborations with blind individuals, and developer Michael Cayre. In its current iteration, all rooms have been programmed with Nachum’s work, offering essentially a museum-sized solo show designed to overwhelm the senses with projected images in mirrored rooms. Signage in braille, an audio installation and a display of portraits previously shown at Chelsea gallery ‘A Hug From the Art World,’ nod to Nachum’s interest in creating accessibility for people who are sight-impaired, though the overall experience is designed to impress visually. Here, in a room titled ‘The Dragon,’ 507,000 LED lights powered by Dragon02 technology developed by Ledpulse create images via vertically-hung strings of LED lights. Mirrored walls, floor and ceiling amplify the effect, which Mercer Labs describes as like ‘passing through a hologram.’ (On view at 21 Dey Street. Tickets at https://www.mercerlabs.com).

Installation view of ‘New Nature’ at Mercer Labs, August 2024.

Installation view (detail) of ‘New Nature’ at Mercer Labs, August 2024.

Petrit Halilaj’s Met Museum Roof Commission

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show September 2, 2024August 31, 2024No Comments

Sketches of flowers, two conversing birds, an eye, a huge drawing of a house and other line drawings are realized as free-standing steel sculpture in Met Museum’s current Roof Commission by Kosovan artist Petrit Halilaj. Titled ‘Abetare,’ after a textbook the artist used in school to learn the alphabet, the installation’s monumental size is belied by its delicate and casually rendered forms, all based on drawings the artist found on school desks in Kosovo and other Balkan countries. Prompted by the planned demolition of his old school, one of the few buildings that remained from the artist’s war-torn hometown, Halilaj preserved the markings of kids from years past, creating a language of drawings that expresses the thoughts and experience of young people. (On view through Oct 27^th).

Petrit Halilaj, installation view of ‘Abetare,’ Met Museum Roof Commission, summer ’24.

Annette Messager at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show August 30, 2024February 14, 2025No Comments

‘Don’t Forget to Call Your Mother,’ a compact show of photography from the 70s onward from the Met Museum’s collection, showcases complex portraits built from pieces of information rather than a traditional physical likeness. Snippets from Larry Sultan’s family’s home movies and an image of a solitary bathrobe by Sophie Calle point to specific memories that shaped an individual’s identity, while Darrell Ellis worked with his late father’s photo archive and Sadie Barnette creates a neon-edged photo collage memorial to San Francisco’s first Black-owned gay bar, owned by her father. Annette Messager’s collection of small, framed photos of eyes, mouths, torsos and other body parts arranged against the wall in a dense, circular cluster by twine and nails creates a collective portrait of an unknown group. Titled ‘My Vows,’ the images suggestively connect belief and the body. (On view on the Upper East Side through Sept 15^th).

Annette Messager, My Vows (Mes Voeux), 106 gelatin silver prints, bound between glass and cardboard, black tape, twine and acrylic push pins, dimensions variable, 1990.

Cannupa Hanska Luger at City Hall Park

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show August 28, 2024July 16, 2024No Comments

Near a text describing City Hall Park as the ‘refuge of the people, the cradle of liberty,’ Native American artist Cannupa Hanska Luger’s steel sculpture of a bison skeleton recalls the deliberate mass slaughter of the animal from the mid-to-late 19^th century. Part of the Public Art Fund’s annual art programming in the park, the solitary sculpture is smaller than past installations but meaningfully and impactfully placed at the park’s dramatic southern entrance. Titled ‘Attrition,’ the piece speaks to sustained attack on the lives and culture of Native American peoples by the near eradication of bison, yet the bison skeleton’s mechanical, plated design and obviously durable material conveys strength and resilience. (On view through Nov 17^th.)

Cannupa Hanska Luger, Attrition, cast steel, 2024.

Tavares Strachan in ‘Afterlives’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show August 26, 2024August 1, 2024No Comments

Installed under the Met Museum’s central interior staircase, the atmospheric Byzantine Crypt is host to the exhibition ‘Afterlives,’ a show of contemporary art that engages with life after death. Tavares Strachan’s ‘ENOCH,’ titled after the Biblical character who, rather than dying was ‘taken up,’ is one of the show’s standout pieces, a monument to Robert Henry Lawrence Jr., the first Black American astronaut who died in a flight crash in 1967. The small bronze sculpture resembles an Egyptian canopic urn, a vessel intended to hold partial remains of a deceased person, but is surfaced in gold, adding to the precious quality of the piece. An edition of the sculpture was launched into space as a small, 3U satellite in 2018, symbolically completing a final mission. (On view through Jan 25^th, 2026).

Tavares Strachan, ENOCH (display unit), bronze, 24k gold, steel, radar retroreflectors and sacred air blessed by a Shinto priest, 14 3/8 x 3 ½ x 4 1/8 inches, 2015-17.

Francisco Ratti in ‘Misshapes’ at Praxis NY

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show August 23, 2024August 5, 2024No Comments

If figures appear at all in Praxis NY’s summer group show ‘Missapes,’ they pose in place or rarely dominate. Instead, still lives are a commanding presence, particularly Francisco’s Ratti’s large indistinct arrangements of objects that simultaneously look low-res digital and handmade. The Argentina-based artist’s practice involves drawing on a cell phone screen, then transferring his images to canvas. Here, ‘Naturaleza’ (Nature) is a pleasant, conventional arrangement of flowers, plants and food stuffs but includes a more realistic painting of a tree trunk inserted onto the larger painting’s surface. Gashed and supporting a haphazard sign warning that a property is being monitored, the tree imagery complicates what a painting can offer at one time. (On view in Chelsea through Aug 30^th).

Francisco Ratti, Naturaleza, acrylic on canvas, 59 x 78 ¾ inches, 2023.

Paula Wilson at 55 Walker

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show August 21, 2024July 23, 2024No Comments

Art and life meld in Paula Wilson’s engaging, pattern rich paintings and print work at 55 Walker as she depicts domestic environments and desert landscapes like those around her home in the small town of Carizozo, New Mexico. Images of rugs on canvas, attached to wooden slats and mounted on the wall, depict plants, abstractions or entangled lovers while paintings of stained-glass windows are simultaneously images of an interior, glass art and a landscape beyond. Wilson, who prints and sews her own clothing, gives this towering figure a dress created from a cinched rug painting, further connecting various creative endeavors in one fertile practice. (On view in Tribeca through Aug 30^th).

Paula Wilson, Becoming, acrylic and oil on canvas, 162 x 52 inches, 2024.

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