New York-based artist Woomin Kim describes Korean street markets with nostalgia, as places to hang out with friends or enjoy snacks. Accordingly, her textile works on view at Chelsea’s Susan Inglett Gallery depict market stalls as colorful and inviting places to buy everyday items or marvel at the abundance and variety of goods. Here, a ribbon store offers towers of stacked wares, alluring in their patterns and possibilities. (On view through July 29th.)
While traveling the world in his various roles as art dealer, artist, art activist, art impresario, and beer and cheese maker, John Riepenhoff has made time to appreciate the night sky from a variety of vantage points, from urban rooftops to wilderness. In the latest from his ongoing series of sky paintings created in the dark of night and now on view at Broadway in Tribeca, he continues to configure the heavens in surprising ways, filling canvases with vertical dashes or elliptical forms that suggest a view from inside a rain storm. Blooms of purple-reddish color and scattered flecks of orange or yellow light further encourage appreciation for the wonders of nature. (On view through July 15th).
Clementine Keith-Roach’s sculptures at PPOW Gallery combine found vessels with casts of her own body to explore her experience of motherhood. During her first pregnancy, the artist felt as if she was a ‘labouring vessel’ and made the connection literal by joining carefully painted limbs to used and worn ceramics. Paired with her husband Christopher Page’s paintings depicting mirrors with no reflection and cloud-filled windows, the exhibition explores interiority in both the physical and psychological realms. (On view through July 1st in Tribeca).
The late artist Robert Colescott, painter of the iconic art-historical remake ‘George Washington Carver Crossing the Delaware,’ addressed racial stereotypes by confronting them head-on. Here, in ‘Nouvelle Cuisine’ from 1988, now on view at Tribeca’s George Adams Gallery, Colescott lifts the cover off of the inequitable power structure in this fine dining establishment. Hidden labor and a trash can full of wasted food speak to behind-the-scenes realities ignored in the candle-lit dining room. (On view through July 1st).
Known for huge paintings of sunsets, giant sculptures of dark sunglasses and other emblems of life in Los Angeles, Alex Israel continues to channel the allure of Hollywood and its environs with wave paintings and a fantasy street scene sculpture at Greene Naftali Gallery. Titled ‘Sunset Coast Drive,’ the 44-foot-long strip of fictional and real buildings includes Israel’s own studio at one end and his favorite burger place at the other. In the foreground of this photo, Israel revives a mural he painted on a building in Venice, CA before it was painted over. The rest of the gallery is dominated by vividly colored acrylic on fiberglass panels depicting crashing waves inspired by Hokusai and surfing logos. Their bright colors are alluring, but abstracted to the point of resembling reaching hands, the waves may be less innocuous than they first seem. (On view in Chelsea through June 25th).
