Titled ‘DIVAS’ and resembling Henri Matisse’s curvy cutout forms, Marina Adams’ acrylic painting at Timothy Taylor Gallery embodies the dynamism and bold tones of the late modern master while engulfing gallery visitors in over six feet of color. Inspired by textiles, Native American pottery, Hilma af Klint’s paintings and many more cultural predecessors, Adams canvases can look familiar but offer their own unique experience through their scale and vibrancy. (On view in Tribeca through Oct 25th.)
Marina Adams, DIVAS, acrylic on linen, 78 x 68 inches, 2025.
Below a sign made of hessian and felt reading ‘Never Be Cool,’ Jonathan Baldock’s ceramic sculpture ‘She’s Sassy’ at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery obeys the message with her fiery-red color and engaged stance. Other ceramic sculptures continue the British artist’s series of colorful mask-like faces while multi-media works reference the Bremen Town musicians as human, animal hybrids. Baldock’s bodies-as-vessels continue to explore the breadth of human identity, foibles and fun included. (On view in Tribeca through Oct 11th).
Jonathan Baldock, She’s Sassy, glazed ceramic, 25 9/16 x 11 13/15 x 14 9/16 inches, 2025.
The ‘morning bathers’ in Celeste Rapone’s painting in her solo show at Marianne Boesky Gallery are nothing like the idealized figures suggested by the title. While a gargantuan bird dominates a bird-bath, a female figure struggles into wakefulness by turning the garden hose on her slumped, semi-clad body. Inside, a discarded pair of underwear on the floor accents the orange-tones of goldfish in a flower vase, a quote from Henri Matisse’s tranquil still lives. Despite the order and attempted cheer of the bright-yellow living room interior, Rapone’s main character has some reckoning to do…when she comes around. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 18th).
Celeste Rapone, Morning Bathers, 72 1/8 x 72 inches, oil on canvas, 2025.
New stone, glass, silver and gold mosaics compliment stylized sculptures inspired by Pre-Columbian culture by Pedro Reyes in the Mexican artist’s latest solo show at Chelsea’s Lisson Gallery. Adding bright notes of color and presenting a compact vocabulary of small-scale decorative forms, the small, wall-mounted mosaics recall architectural fragments. One piece featuring scrolling forms is titled ‘Mitla,’ a reference to the Zapotec archeological site rich with patterned architecture. Here, ‘Chaac’ recalls the Mayan deity associated with rain, thunder and lightning. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 18th).
Pedro Reyes, Chaac, silver and glass mosaic, 18 ¼ x 11 ½ x 1 ½ inches, 2025.
What is music when you can’t hear it? ‘Silent Disco,’ a new video work by British artist Sonia Boyce at Hauser and Wirth Gallery in Chelsea, features headphone-wearing people dancing to music that the audience can’t hear. In an added twist, the dancers are listening to two separate channels, dancing near others who may or may not be hearing what they are. The dancers’ interactions, movements and obvious enjoyment become subject matter, positioning dance in a new light and maybe even tempting gallery visitors to join in with their own moves. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 18th).
Sonia Boyce, Silent Disco, 3-channel colour video with sound, duration 9:42 min, 2025.
A decade of monumental charcoal drawings by iconic Pictures Generation artist Robert Longo occupies all four of Pace Gallery’s public exhibition spaces, making the show one of the most impactful of the new fall season. The notion that behind every picture is another picture is intrinsic to Pictures artists and describes Longo’s practice of sourcing images from the media, repurposing fleeing moments in the news cycle as permanent marker of historic moments. The current exhibition includes images from Ukraine, fires in California, ISIS-destroyed sculpture at the ancient site of Ninevah and here, ice sheering off icebergs in Newfoundland. Beautifully crafted in meticulous detail with stunning use of the charcoal medium, each drawing is a powerful reminder of the events shaping the world now. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 25th).
Robert Longo, Untitled (Iceberg for Greta Thunberg), charcoal on mounted paper, 2020.
Amid soft waves of hair and a dark, indistinct background, a face looms toward the surface of a self-portrait by Romanian artist Diana Cepleanu, arresting for its piercing eyes and a tangle of light and color across one cheek. Similarly, the artist’s seemingly abstract painting ‘Ray’ focuses on a curious manifestation of light, as if a beam was emerging from a natural environment to powerful effect. Three decades of work at Kaufmann Repetto in Tribeca introduces Cepleanu to New York as a painter who pulls the extraordinary from quotidian life. (On view in Tribeca through Oct 24th).
Diana Cepleanu, Self-portrait, oil on canvas, 15 x 15 inches, 2023.Diana Cepleanu, Ray, oil on canvas, 21.7 x 19.8 inches, 2021.
Using glass, paint, light and other materials, Spencer Finch makes artworks that mimic natural effects, such as fog in an Emily Dickinson poem or the atmosphere of Monet’s Giverny. Now on view at James Cohan Gallery, his latest body of work pays homage to the decades-long influence of Japanese aesthetics on his practice. Watercolor paintings overlaying contemporary views of New York and Hiroshige’s One Hundred Famous Views of Edo from the mid-19th century offer fragmentary but tantalizing glimpses of urban landscape. Here, Finch’s stained-glass panels installed over the gallery windows create the effect of light reflected in a New England pond, recalling moon-viewing traditions in Japan. (On view through Oct 4th in Tribeca).
Spencer Finch, Moonlight (Reflected in a Pond), stained glass, dimensions variable, 2025 and on the floor, Fourteen Stones, concrete bricks, 2025.
Delicate-looking yet holding down an entire wall, Kay Sekimachi’s eye-grabbing monofilament sculpture has an ethereal presence that contrasts the smaller yet seemingly weightier woven pieces in her mini-retrospective at Andrew Kreps Gallery. Select works from the ‘50s to the ‘90s show Sekimachi’s inventive approach to weaving, which the 98-year-old fiber-artist has developed over an almost 80-year career. Having learned double-weave technique in the ‘50s from German American textile artist Trude Guermonprez, Sekimachi developed the practice to create sculptural works that could be hung to dynamic effect. (On view in Tribeca through Nov 1st).
Kay Sekimachi, Large Green Monofilament (Study for Los Angeles Bonaventure Hotel Commission), green monofilament, 102 x 24 x 15 inches, 1972.
Along one wall of New York-based Columbian artist Maria Berrio’s solo show at Hauser and Wirth Gallery, she depicts three Cumbia dancers in the guise of the Fates from Greek mythology, known for spinning a thread that will start, influence and end the life of each human. What if this thread should be stolen from them, repurposed and deified, spun into banners and flags? Throughout the show Berrio follows this storyline while also foregrounding female figures who seem to counter the misuse of the thread: an oracle on a horse, a levitating female figure and this young woman who walks with a brilliantly abundant banner. Using her signature Japanese papers with watercolor painting, Berrio’s vibrant artworks offer a hopeful starting point for dreams. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 18th).
Maria Berrio, Songlines, collage with Japanese papers and watercolor paint on linen, 118 1/8 x 92 ¼ x 1 3/8 inches, 2025.Maria Berrio, Songlines, collage with Japanese papers and watercolor paint on linen, 118 1/8 x 92 ¼ x 1 3/8 inches, 2025.
Shortly after leaving post-war Nigeria in the early 70s to join his uncle in Central Africa Republic, Samuel Fosso opened his own photo studio at the age of 13 and began making the photos that would rank him among the most important 20th century African photographers. Now on view at Yossi Milo Gallery, a selection of work from ‘75 to ‘78 demonstrates the teen’s inventiveness and records Fosso’s experience of contemporary pop culture through self-styling. In the gallery’s back room is work from the photographer’s 2008 ‘African Spirit’ series (also currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art) for which Fosso dressed himself as important leaders in the African diaspora from Dr Martin Luther King to Angela Davis by way of tribute. (On view in Chelsea through Nov 8.)
Samuel Fosso, work from the series ‘Autoportrait,’ installed at Yossi Milo Gallery, Sept 2025.
Two forms lie in the foreground of this painting by Austin Martin White at Petzel Gallery, possibly representing an animal (red) and person (blue) though they’re so abstracted it’s hard to say. Loosely based on mid-century artist American Bob Thompson’s ‘La Mort des Infants,’ itself a version of French 17th century Laurent de la Hyre rendition of the same theme, the figures are perhaps too horrific to picture, referring to slain children and mothers, victims of Biblical King Herod’s murderous decree that children under two be slaughtered. Informed by the recent, 1963 church bombing in Birmingham, Thompson processed contemporary events through the lens of the past; here, White’s painting continues the tradition. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 18th).
Austin Martin White, the dream of the afternoon nap (after B. Thompson), acrylic medium, pigment, rubber, spray paint, vinyl, screen mesh, paper, 120 x 150 ¼ inches, 2025.
Led by the Armory Show, New York City is abuzz with art fairs this weekend, and one of the most unconventional is free, easy to get to and full of finds. Parked along 22nd Street between 10th and 11th Aves, the U-Haul Art Fair consists of twelve U-Haul trucks and one 95-gallon trash can repurposed as an exhibition venue. Apart from circumventing a tight real estate market and generally slow art sales, the galleries and independent curators of the fair are enjoying high visibility with their location outside some of Chelsea’s biggest galleries. Participants range from LES gallery Post Times showing an absorbing assortment of mini-paintings by Minnesota artists Bruce Tapola and Melba Price to New York based artists Bradley Milligan’s and Dan Gausman’s bin housing Kian McKeown’s kinetic sculpture, ‘Cherry.’ (On view this weekend through Sunday, Sept 7th).
Post Times Gallery at the U-Haul Art Fair.Installation of paintings by Bruce Tapola and Melba Price at Post Times, U-Haul Art Fair.95 Gallon Gallery at the U-Haul Art Fair.Kian McKeown, Cherry, at 95 Gallery Gallery, U-Haul Art Fair.
‘Ruckus Manhattan,’ a legendary sculptural rendition of New York City’s iconic sites created in 1975 by Red Grooms, Mimi Gross and collaborators known as the Ruckus Construction Co., is so huge that it is only occasionally shown. Now, the artists’ version of the Staten Island Ferry has surfaced in the Brooklyn Museum’s main, ground floor gallery along with the group’s recreation of a Times Square adult bookstore and a small selection of supporting artwork by other artists reflecting on the city. Surrounded on the four walls of the museum’s large exhibition space by a mural of the harbor, a visit to ‘Dame of the Narrows’ is the next best thing to actually getting out on the water. (On view at the Brooklyn Museum through Nov 2nd).
Red Grooms, Mimi Gross and The Ruckus Construction Company, Dame of the Narrows, mixed media, 1975.
Opening at Chelsea’s Winston Wachter Gallery just a week before his death at the age of 83, theater director, playwright and visual artist Robert Wilson’s show of video portraits of animals from the last two decades invites visitors to appreciate the wondrous beauty of snowy owls, a black panther, skunks, elks and more. The animals’ movements are limited, which invites gallery visitors to spend time observing their stately forms. Known for staging experimental theater works that stretch time and employ periods of silence, Wilson carries the effect into the video works to sometimes comic, sometimes ethereal effect. (On view through Sept 13th).
Robert Wilson, Snowy Owl (Orange Pantone Owl), seamlessly looped UHD video and audio, 43 in plasma screen, 2006.
Implicit in its title, Tina Kim Gallery’s summer group show ‘The Calling of Home’ presents work by four artists who address the notion of home as a complex space involving multiple geographies and cultural inputs. This tulip petal collage on paper by Jennifer Tee taps into traditions of Indonesian tampan textiles, which were gifted at ceremonies marking different stages of life. Woven by women in Lampung, located on the important historic trade route between Java and Sumatra, the fabrics often incorporated imagery of ships as a metaphor for movement. In Tee’s practice, boat imagery and the tulip petals she uses as her material point to her own family’s migration from Indonesia to the Netherlands in the 1950s; titled ‘Ship of Souls,’ this piece goes further to suggest passage into the spiritual realm. (On view in Chelsea through Sept 6th).
Jennifer Tee, Tampan Ship of Souls, tulip petal collage on paper, framed dimensions: 78 ¼ x 69 5/8 x 2 inches, 2016.
Titled ‘Don’t’ Ask,’ painter Allison Katz’s 10th Ave High Line billboard poses nothing but unanswered questions. Not only do we not find out why the chicken crossed the road, we might now wonder if the rooster was being followed, and why and what the bold double-yellow, do-not-cross road markings might mean in the relationship drama between rooster and hen. In the midst of Chelsea’s busy built environment, the billboard’s closeup on the visually pared-down scenario of birds and road acts like a giant magnifying glass, zooming in on what might be a curious happenstance or an element in a deeper narrative. Graphically bold and suggesting comedy, Katz’s set up is an enjoyable launching point for conversation or imagination. (through August in Chelsea).
Allison Katz, installation of ‘Don’t Ask’ at 18th Street and 10th Ave, July 2025.
The Met Museum’s popular ‘Sargent and Paris’ exhibition featuring 19th century American expat painter John Singer Sargent’s exquisite paintings of Europe’s social elite has closed, but the Sargent family continues to be a focus of attention in a small show in the American galleries featuring Sargent’s younger sister, Emily Sargent. The two were close and traveled and painted together, producing this pair of watercolors possibly made while in Cairo and included in the family heirs’ recent gift of 26 pieces by Emily Sargent. While Emily carefully delineates the market architecture, John’s more fluid approach evokes an almost spectral ambiance. (On view on the Upper East Side through March 8th, 2026).
Emily Sargent, Courtyard Scene, Cairo, 1890s, watercolor, opaque watercolor and graphite on paper.John Singer Sargent, Marketplace, 1890s, watercolor, opaque watercolor and graphite on paper.
A group of arrestingly odd characters have turned up lately in the Met Museum’s Fifth Avenue medieval galleries; three dapper wise men, a mysteriously cloaked Mary and a half-dressed saint associated with the plague stop foot traffic with their large size and idiosyncratic details. A wall text points out that in Europe’s bustling cities c. 1500, sculptors enlivened familiar holy figures with details inspired by contemporary life. Here, a limestone rendering of St Catherine of Alexandria from Lorraine, France ca 1475-1525 reads a book as she dominates a figure representing the ruler she refused to marry, reflecting, “the promise that virtuous rulers will triumph over corrupt tyrants.” (On view at the Met’s Fifth Ave location in gallery 305).
Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Workshop of Jan Crocq, Limestone with traces of paint, French, Lorraine, ca 1475-1525.
Fossilized auto paint from car production lines (aka ‘Detroit agate’), data mined from protesters using social media and the patterns of Namibian termite mounds are all materials for Agnieszka Kurant’s recent sculpture, now on view in Tribeca at Marian Goodman Gallery. Whether her source inspiration comes from the activity of generations of factory works, millions of social media users or termites, Kurant’s work points to contemporary means of mass data collection, the uses it’s put to and the new ideas and forms that it can be used to generate. Here, a living 75-year old bonsai tree is joined with a 3-D-printed version of its possible future self, an appendage that not only visually predicts how this juniper bonsai tree species will evolve in the future but impacts its present growth. (On view in Tribeca through Aug 22nd. Note summer hours.)
Agnieszka Kurant, Semiotic Life, 75-year old bonsai juniper tree, 3D-printed resin, enamel paint, ceramic flowerpot, soil, grow lamps, 22 x 30 x 15 inches, 2022/2025.
Elger Esser’s serene, light-infused photographs often juxtapose nature’s vastness with humankind’s comparatively limited efforts to create the built environment. In two images from 2019, now in Bruce Silverstein Gallery’s summer group show ‘In Sequence,’ Esser restricts his view to a relatively small, yet deeply tranquil scene of water and trees. Printed on silver-coated copper plate, the photographs’ glow recalls 19th century landscape photography and earlier northern European painting but surpasses precedents in the intense communication of mood via light. (On view in Chelsea through Aug 29th. Note summer hours.)
Elger Esser, Belle Ile sur le Risle I, direct print on silver-coated copper plate, ed of 3 + 1 AP (2/3), 13 x 16 7/8 in, 2019.Elger Esser, Belle Ile sur le Risle II, direct print on silver-coated copper plate, ed of 3 + 1 AP (2/3), 10 3/8 x 13 inches, 2019.
Steve Keister’s graphically bold mixed media creations at Derek Eller Gallery came about with the discovery that Styrofoam and cardboard packaging often come in shapes recalling Mesoamerican design. Using some of these pre-formed shapes as casts, Keister developed plaster molds that would allow him to make sculpture in ceramic slip. In combination with flat and heavily geometric paintings, the sculptural face seen here in ‘Contrapposto’ is a cultural hybrid, blending influences from Latin American design, western art and Modernism. (On view in Tribeca through Aug 22nd.)
Steve Keister, Contrapposto, glazed ceramic and acrylic on wood, 30 x 24 x 4 inches.
With titles like ‘Clutch,’ ‘Trespass,’ and ‘Cradling,’ Nathalie Khayat’s new ceramic sculptures at Marianne Boesky Gallery suggest emotionally evocative human actions in clay form. Yet each centers on a merger of architectural solidity (aided by stoneware construction) and plant-like organic growth, upward and outward. Weighty and deliberate yet offering the notion of development within those restraints, Khayat situates her practice in the experience of living in the crossroads city of Beirut, where she has described a tenuous and fluid quality to life. (On view in Chelsea through Aug 15th. Note summer hours.)
Nathalie Khayat, The Devouring of You, glazed stoneware, 21 ½ x 23 x 19 ½ inches, 2025.
303 Gallery’s summer group show ‘Seasonal Drift’ includes artwork by gallery artists that makes strange our notions of time and space. Simultaneous with her similarly themed solo exhibition at Pace Gallery, a few blocks to the north, Alicja Kwade’s contribution at 303, ‘Trial Turn’ from 2019, employs minimal materials – steel rings and bricks – to prompt us to consider our place in the universe. Typically elegant, the sculpture suggests oversized jewelry or the playfulness of hula hoops yet employs utilitarian (and ancient) building materials in a way that evokes gears or the functioning of machinery. Numbering 12, 24, 36 and 48 on the four rings, the bricks create a system like those we create to navigate and manage life. (On view through Aug 8th).
Secret satellites, cloud formations as analyzed by AI, and known but unidentified objects orbiting in space have been subject matter in artist and geographer Trevor Paglen’s always-illuminating photographic practice. The images on view in Paglen’s current small exhibition at Pace Gallery emerged from hours in the field but are less geared toward educating the public about classified government activity than foregrounding the believability of images he’s taken over the past 20+ years that include ‘novel aerial phenomena.’ Here, a gorgeous sky near a weapons testing facility in Utah plays host to a strange orb that, we are told, Paglen may or may not know the origin of. (On view in Chelsea through Aug 15th).
Trevor Paglen, Near Dugway Proving Grounds (undated), dye sublimation on aluminum print, 32 x 40 inches, 2024.Trevor Paglen, (detail) Near Dugway Proving Grounds (undated), dye sublimation on aluminum print, 32 x 40 inches, 2024.
If anything, the ocean can be thought of as old, though Emily Sundblad’s poetically titled solo show at Bortolami Gallery, ‘The Adolescent Ocean,’ offers a playful, alternative take. Sundblad’s vividly colored compositions assemble flowers, animals, and Munch-like lovers to suggest moods informed by many types of input – from the natural world to art history. In this painting, she even includes the word ‘Evocation’ at bottom right, though colorful flowers, waving palms, roiling waves and a flaming ship in the distance convey much with images alone. (On view in Tribeca through Aug 8th).
Emily Sundblad, The Adolescent Ocean, oil and pastel on linen mounted on panel, 28 x 48 inches, 2025.
Whitfield Lovell’s immediately absorbing set of fifty-three charcoal-on-paper portraits in DC Moore’s summer group show ‘Interlayered’ pairs the faces of Black men and women with playing cards from a vintage deck, suggesting that as each card has its unique identity in a group, so do the individuals assembled here. Lovell typically finds his subjects in late 19th and early 20th century photos sourced from a variety of places, from flea markets to photo archives; isolated from their settings, each person has remarkable presence. Paired with cards, Lovell suggests that in life, alone or together, they might play and/or be played. (On view through Aug 6th).
Whitfield Lovell, The Card Pieces, 53 charcoal drawings on paper with attached playing card, 12 x 9 inches (each), 2018 – 2022.Whitfield Lovell, The Card Pieces, 53 charcoal drawings on paper with attached playing card, 12 x 9 inches (each), 2018 – 2022.
Taking its title from Mark Twain’s comment about heaven and hell that he had ‘friends in both places,’ the artwork in Nicelle Beauchene Gallery’s summer group exhibition ranges from the sublime to the nightmarish in theme. Dana James’ painting ‘The Sandbox’ would seem to fall into the former category with its organic, curving forms and light palette, though darker areas and the contrast in two conjoined canvases between smoother and more gestural abstraction adds complexity to this enjoyable canvas. (On view through Aug 15th. Note summer hours.)
Dana James, The Sandbox, oil, acrylic and pigment on canvas, diptych overall 48 x 30 inches, 2025.
Playfully describing his work as ‘window sandwiches,’ Brooklyn artist Dustin Yellin seals images from books and magazines, paint and street trash in layered glass sculptures that delight with their creativity and tiny details. Now on view in his solo show at Almine Rech Gallery, this image of a human figure with waterfalls for arms and a head that looks as if the sun is exploding from a volcano is host to dozens of little climbing, rafting and parachuting human figures. Blurring the line between man and nature, Yellin questions the role of the spirit in human life with the title ‘God Shaped Hole (Study).’ (On view in Tribeca through Aug 1st. Note summer hours.)
Dustin Yellin, God Shaped Hole (Study), glass, epoxy, collage, acrylic paint, 19 ¼ x 8 1/8 x 6 ½ inches, 2024.Dustin Yellin, God Shaped Hole (Study), glass, epoxy, collage, acrylic paint, 19 ¼ x 8 1/8 x 6 ½ inches, 2024.
Growing up is complicated. Nevertheless, ‘The Kids are Alright,’ a sprawling, salon-style summer group show curated by Helen Toomer at Tribeca’s Timothy Taylor Gallery suggests by its title that obstacles can be surmounted. A textile piece by Anya Paintsil pictures a weeping child comforted by a loving mom, Dominic Chambers’ painting shows young people joyfully fly kites against an apocalyptically red background and Gehard Demetz’ wooden sculpture disturbingly positions a youngster at the center of a giant grinding device yet pictures the youth as entirely serene. Brazilian artist Marepe, known for repurposing found objects in his sculpture, contributes a cluster of hanging nets with openings through which one might have tossed the colorful plastic balls resting within. If life is a game, this piece suggests you need some luck to play it. (On view in Tribeca through Aug 1st. Note summer hours.)
Marepe, Uteros [Wombs], net, aluminum, and plastic balls, 128 x 110 x 144 inches overall, 2023.
Before they teamed up in 1943 to famously educate a New York Times critic about developments in American modernism, writing, ‘We favor the simple expression of complex thought,’ Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb worked in a style vastly different from the models of abstraction each would come to pioneer. A joint show at 125 Newbury demonstrates, however, that they were edging closer to their signature styles in paintings of their friends and surroundings in the ‘20s and ‘30s. Here, Rothko’s bathers dominate a monochrome beach with their large, flat forms and, contrary to the summer weather, convey a chill with their hunched postures and turned backs. (On view in Tribeca through July 25th).
Mark Rothko, Bathers on the beach, watercolor, graphite on watercolor paper, 11 ¼ x 15 ¼ inches, 1934.
Sam Moyer’s monumental ‘Fern Friend Grief Growth’ is the anchor of her show at the Hill Art Foundation, an exhibition made richer by including artworks by major contemporary artists who share Moyer’s interest in pushing the possibilities of materials. This ‘stone painting’, as it was called when shown at The Parrish Art Museum last summer, employs painted plaster and segments of recycled marble to picture delicate plant structures that carry literal and (in the title) metaphorical weight. Nearby, Liz Glynn’s partial recreation of Rodin’s ‘Walking Man’ sculpture abandons the heaviness of the original bronze like a shed skin while her nearby stainless-steel tumbleweed sculpture is more solid and lasting than the original. From Isamu Noguchi’s ponderous ‘Woman with Holes’ to Robert Gober’s representation of an open window, the dynamic of contrast between weight and lightness generates continual interest. (On view in Chelsea through Aug 1st).
Sam Moyer, Fern Friend Grief Growth, marble, acrylic on plaster-coated canvas mounted to MDF, 120 x 240 x 1 inches, 2024.Sam Moyer, (detail) Fern Friend Grief Growth, marble, acrylic on plaster-coated canvas mounted to MDF, 120 x 240 x 1 inches, 2024.
Robert Indiana’s 2013 Whitney Museum retrospective aimed to look beyond his popular ‘LOVE’ logo to a career that examined the complexities of American life. In spring of this year, Kasmin Gallery’s focus on the late artist’s early career and Pace Gallery’s current career-spanning show again argue for Indiana’s importance as a Pop artist who probed darker aspects of U.S. history and identity. At the exhibition entrance, the words ‘USA’ and ‘FUN’ are joined by the word ‘APOGEE,’ which suggests that the first two words represent notions alien to each other. Elsewhere the words EAT and DIE are provocatively conjoined in one work while another bears the phrase ‘A divorced man has never been the president.’ When Indiana focused instead on numbers, as he does in this series of ten monumental sculptures installed on Pace Gallery’s terrace, the meaning derived from his own personal experience, as he considered each digit as a reference to important events and places in his own life. (On view in Chelsea through Aug 15th).
Robert Indiana, ONE Through ZERO (The Ten Numbers), cor-ten steel on painted aluminum base, conceived 1980, fabricated 2003.
Before settling in New York in the mid 1950s, Carmen Herrera transformed her practice from biomorphic to geometric abstraction during a five year stay in Paris (1948-1953). Work from that time at Lisson Gallery in Chelsea sees her experimenting with variations on each style not in a linear progression toward purged form but rather with a varying vocabulary of geometric and curving shapes. Seen here, the largest piece she’d made to date, Early Dynasty’ (1953), employs just two colors in a play between foreground and background shapes that creates lively spatial complexity. (On view in Chelsea through Aug 1st).
Carmen Herrera, Early Dynasty, oil on canvas, 48 x 48 x 1 ¼ inches, 1953.
Jane Lombard Gallery’s summer group show ‘Soft Structures’ is an immediate ‘wow,’ enticing visitors with ten textile-centric artists’ inventive use of materials. At the show’s entrance, Woomin Kim’s huge soft sculpture of fingertips with wildly decorated nails charms with its humor and vibrant color. Nearby, Crystal Gregory’s knit cotton and silk netting, embedded with pewter and cast in concrete pits the various strengths of textile, metal and concrete while Elodie Blanchard creates pleasingly wonky ‘ceramic’ vessel forms from fabric, leather and mylar balloon. As summer group shows are increasingly replaced by solo shows in New York galleries, this exhibition argues for the vitality of the group showcase. (Curated by independent curator Jen Wroblewski. On view through Aug 8th in Tribeca. Note summer hours).
Woomin Kim, Sontop II, fabric, embellishment, fiberfill, 53 x 65 inches, 2024.Woomin Kim, Sontop II (detail), fabric, embellishment, fiberfill, 53 x 65 inches, 2024.
Inspired by a Grand Canyon rafting trip in 2021, New York photographer Sally Gall focused on the rugged landscapes of the Colorado Plateau to make ‘Vertical World’ a series of striking photos now on view at Winston Wachter Gallery in Chelsea. While Gall’s more recent photo series have featured man-made objects seen from surprising angles – laundry-lines from underneath that look like flowers, distant kites in the sky which appear to be flat, abstract designs – her new work gives attention to the natural colors and patterns of rock surfaces. The title of this piece, ‘Visitor,’ draws our attention to a small cactus in the foreground of the photo, a curvy interloper in the geometric barrenness of a vast wall of rock. (On view through July 18th in Chelsea. Note summer hours.)
Compact yet full-bodied, unexpressive yet communicating feeling, South African artist Claudette Schreuders’ figurative wooden sculptures have an uncanny presence in her current solo show at Jack Shainman Gallery. Medieval church figures, Baule sculpture and historic wooden representations of people in western dress made for the colonial tourist trade influence the form of Schreuders’ sculpture, but new pieces featuring the artist’s son, husband, dog and herself at work on a sculpture keep the subject matter close to home. In this sculpture, simply titled ‘Work,’ Schreuders invites us into her studio to witness the process of creation, a sustained intimacy between maker and made. (On view in Chelsea through Aug 1st. Note summer hours.)
Claudette Schreuders, Work, jelutong wood and paint, 36 5/8 x 13 3/8 x 19 ¾ inches, 2025.
Ricco Maresca Gallery’s summer group show, ‘American Vernacular: Art and Objects by Unknown Artists’ ignites curiosity with a selection of folk-art objects and quirky functional forms by unknown makers. Dominating one wall, a Venetian blind from the late 50s – early ‘60s post-dates McCarthyism but nevertheless suggests patriotic peeping. Nearby, a unique red, white and blue voting booth curtain documents the addition of a decorative touch to a polling station while a sample flag display featuring nesting flags predates Jasper Johns’ avant-garde flag paintings by c. forty years. (On view in Chelsea through Sept 13th. Note holiday hours and summer hours.)
Artist Unknown, Monumental Venetian Blind / Flag, Painted metal strips, canvas webbing, 86 x 116 in., ca. 1958-64.Artist Unknown, Unique Voting Booth Curtain (Miller and Davis Co. Minneapolis, MN), Paint on canvas (in museum standard custom white frame), 43 1/2 x 29 1/4 in., ca. 1920-30.Artist Unknown, Salesman Sample Flag Display, Printed cotton (professionally mounted), 58 x 36 in., 1912.
Can humans live in harmony with nature? Indonesian artist Agus Putu Suyadyna’s new paintings at Sapar Contemporary featuring an astronaut in various lush, natural environments suggest that the possibility is tantalizing but unrealized. Whether holding a sunflower or embracing a chimpanzee, the astronaut’s protective gear testifies to an alienation from the natural world that is compounded by the ominous reflection of a barren landscape in the visor of their helmet. Though the title of this painting, ‘Playful Nature is the Future’ suggests sympathy with the environment and pictures fertile fields in the background, viewers are confronted with a giant bubble prompting us to ask how fantastical our thinking about nature might be. (Curated by John Silvis. On view in Tribeca through July 7th. Note holiday hours and summer hours.)
Agus Putu Suyadyna, Playful Nature is the Future, acrylic on canvas, 78 ¾ x 70 7/8 inches, 2024.
Dante’s famous 14th century epic poem ‘The Divine Comedy’ led him from the inferno to purgatory to the heavens on a spiritual journey that inspired Tammy Nguyen’s trio of exhibitions at Lehman Maupin’s Seoul, London and now New York galleries. Taking Dante’s pathway as a loose framework for her own consideration of the forces that shape our world, she combines abundant and diverse imagery to suggest the complexity of history. Recurring images of Frankenstein recall the global impact of Indonesian volcano Mount Tambora’s massive volcanic eruption in 1815, which created stormy weather patterns that kept Mary Shelly indoors inventing her famous character. Images of President Eisenhower’s head and segments of his 1961 farewell address warning of the rising military industrial complex appear alongside eagles that symbolize soaring American political ambitions while also recalling Dante’s encounter with an eagle who snatches him up to fly onward. Competing notions of progress appear in the show’s densely layered, imagery-rich paintings, their own complexity suggesting an unstoppable progression of myriad events that impacts both present and future. (On view in Chelsea through Aug 15th).
Tammy Nguyen, Beneath the Shadow of its Wing, watercolor, vinyl paint, pastel, silkscreen printing, rubber stamping, hot stamping, and metal leaf on paper stretched over wood and gator board panel, 70 x 48 x 2 inches, 2025.Tammy Nguyen, (detail) Beneath the Shadow of its Wing, watercolor, vinyl paint, pastel, silkscreen printing, rubber stamping, hot stamping, and metal leaf on paper stretched over wood and gator board panel, 70 x 48 x 2 inches, 2025.
Positioned in two rows of eight large sculptures, Michelle Im’s ceramic renditions of Korean Air flight attendants at Dimin Gallery stand at the ready, prepared to meet the needs of passengers with a bottle of wine, pot of tea or a demonstration of correct seatbelt usage. Though all subjects wear sincerely pleasant looks, the title of each figure (supplied by the artist’s mother) suggests particular character traits, such as the propensity to talk a lot or show grace. In one of two sculptures named by Im herself and pictured here, the artist applies a family name meaning ‘to lead the world with her words’ to this figure with her obligingly tilting head, offering a thought-provoking tribute to professionalism and service. (On view in Tribeca through July 11th).
Michelle Im, Gyu-Jin, ceramic, epoxy, enamel, acrylic, 42 x 16 x 11 inches, 2025.Michelle Im, (detail) Gyu-Jin, ceramic, epoxy, enamel, acrylic, 42 x 16 x 11 inches, 2025.
Thomas Demand’s photographs at Matthew Marks Gallery are a litmus test for how carefully we look at images, requiring viewers to take more than a quick glance. Despite the allure of their large size (this one measures over six feet across) many appear to represent relatively mundane scenes, at least until the feeling that something is ‘off’ leads to the realization that each artwork is a photo of a carefully constructed, life-sized paper and cardboard sculpture replicating an image from the media. Demand’s new work pictures an intercepted shipment of methamphetamines hidden amongst watermelons at the US/Mexico border and a closeup of a melting ice shelf that alludes to climate change. Here, an image recreating a memorial at the site of the 2022 racially motivated shooting at a Buffalo supermarket turns Demand’s time-consuming practice of meticulously replicating the various flowers, signs and candles into an additional act of homage to those lost. (On view in Chelsea through June 28th).
Thomas Demand, Memorial, Framed UV print, 47 ½ x 82 inches, 2025.Thomas Demand, (detail) Memorial, Framed UV print, 47 ½ x 82 inches, 2025.
Reminiscent of microorganisms or animal-like forms yet created with cast-off plastics, Zimbabwe-based artist Moffat Takadiwa’s wall mounted sculptures at Nicodim Gallery embody what he calls ‘post-colonial hangover.’ Sourced from dumping sites and factory cast-offs, the artist explains, the materials are evidence of stalled industry. Manipulated into a ‘Second Life’ per the show’s title, however, the artworks speak to the resourcefulness and creativity driving Takadiwa’s practice. (On view in SoHo through July 3rd).
Moffat Takadiwa, Fashion Brands (d), computer and laptop keys, toothbrushes, buttons and various accessories, 69 ½ x 55 inches, 2025.Moffat Takadiwa, (detail) Fashion Brands (d), computer and laptop keys, toothbrushes, buttons and various accessories, 69 ½ x 55 inches, 2025.
‘Carnival’ at Jeffrey Deitch’s cavernous SoHo gallery packs in a miniature train, a merry-go-round, a bevy of costumed mannequins and dozens of artworks in a tour de force of surprise, discomfort and optical overload. Featuring works by renowned artists from Red Grooms to Derek Fordjour and others less well-known in New York’s gallery world (including works by late circus magician Johnny Eck who lived an active life without much of his lower body), the show’s inclusive approach mixes in Mardi Gras and burlesque costumes, boldly designed sideshow posters and even a devotional wax figure of Saint Agnes. Amid abundant oddities, Marnie Weber’s self-portrait as a clown and behind, Karon Davis hugely frowning clown attest to the power of art that like carnival, operates outside social norms. (On view in SoHo through June 28th).
(Foreground) Marnie Weber, Self-Portrait as a Clown, costume on mannequin, foam, wood, resin, acrylic, gold leaf, rope and casters, 84 x 64 x 37 inches, 2007-2020. (Background left) Karon Davis, Sad Clown #1, plaster, metal leaf, glass eyes, chicken wire, steel, acrylic, and MDF wood, 36 x 36 x 16 inches, 2025. (Background right) Kenny Scharf, MOODZZ, acrylic on linen with powder coated aluminum frame, 48 x 60 inches, 2022.
Based on angular forms but deviating from strict linearity, Jovencio de la Paz’s textiles at PPOW Gallery invite contemplation and close inspection. At short range, deep textures become apparent in some woven panels, creating a surprising, almost sculptural dimensionality. Traditionally trained as a weaver yet working with a digital Jacquard loom, de la Paz manipulates design software to produce results in their Warped Grid series that offer a new take on the traditional ‘waffle weave.’ The show also includes a series of warped circular forms impacted by the thickness of the thread, an aspect ration error that de la Paz describes as a ‘queering of geometric proportions.’ Work in the final gallery was inspired by the archaeological site of Mitla in Oaxaca, Mexico, where weaving patterns on the walls of the necropolis’ structures act as portals between worlds. (On view in Tribeca through June 21st).
Jovencio de la Paz, Warped Grid 6.1, handwoven jacquard textiles, cotton, wool, linen and indigo, 60 x 96 x 2 inches, 2025.Jovencio de la Paz, Detail of Warped Grid 6.1, handwoven jacquard textiles, cotton, wool, linen and indigo, 60 x 96 x 2 inches, 2025.
Lorna Simpson’s painting retrospective ‘Source Notes’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art starts with an alluringly strange image of a woman and her leashed cheetah swapping faces. Nearby, bullet holes resemble a constellation in the night sky and a huge meteorite hovers in the air in acrylic and screen print works that picture natural phenomenon in unexpected ways. The sense of surprise extends to monumental works that combine female heads taken from mid-century Ebony and Jet magazines with Arctic landscapes that are a deep rich blue color vs the expected white of ice. In this image titled ‘Specific Notation,’ a chic model with a penetrating gaze appears to be semi-buried in or perhaps emerging from a craggy, weathered landscape in a conflation of human and geologic time. (On view through Nov 2nd).
Lorna Simpson, Specific Notation, ink and screenprint on gessoed fiberglass, 2019.
At over six feet high and ten feet long, this 2022 painting by German avant-garde artist Heinz Mack adds a dramatic burst of color to the cool metallic and minimal tones of the artist’s solo show at Almine Rech Gallery. Along with Otto Piene, Mack founded the artist collective ZERO to launch art into new directions post-WWII, avoiding popular expressive styles and focusing instead on light and motion. A small, monochromatic canvas from 1958 at the show’s entrance varies from heavier to lighter paint application in vertical bands, creating a vibrating effect. Around the corner, Mack amplifies the same sensation with aluminum sheet embossed into vertical grooves that reflect light and the colors of the larger, more recent paintings in the room. In a Almine Rech Gallery video, the 94-year-old Mack explains that these newer, vibrant works present color in its own space, each tone carrying its own amount of light. (On view through June 14th).
Heinz Mack, Untitled (Chromatic Constellation), acrylic on canvas, 82 x 123 ½ x 1 ¼ inches, 2022.
In Alicja Kwade’s sculptural practice, clocks signal not just the movement of time but of organizational systems humans put in place to make sense of the world around us. Kwade’s 2015-16 installation in Central Park involved a 16’ tall functional clock with a rotating face, and past work on paper employed scatterings of clock hands affixed to paper to record the amount of rainfall over time during a storm. The artist’s current show at Pace Gallery again incorporates clocks, this time suspended in reflective stainless-steel cylinders and signaling cyclical movement and change. Nodding to Aristotle’s theory of causes in the exhibition title, ‘Telos Tales,’ Kwade adopts the Greek philosopher’s explanation of change in terms of its causes asking with this piece, ‘Causa Efficiens’ where change comes from. (On view in Chelsea through Aug 15th).
Alicja Kwade, Causa Efficiens, stainless steel, powder coated stainless steel, patinated bronze, clock and sound installation, dimensions variable, unique, 2025.
Michael Armitage’s solo show at David Zwirner Gallery’s elegant new Chelsea space pictures the fates of migrants who have lost their freedom and in some cases their lives in attempting to escape unlivable situations. Bronze sculpture in the gallery’s first room picture suffering bodies and includes an abstracted cruciform figure titled ‘Eli Eli Sabachthani,’ or ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ A second space includes paintings of a woman selling lethal home brewed alcohol and a man scavenging for food. Finally, in the gallery’s largest space, Armitage pictures a sinking raft of migrants and images of extreme hardship. Two profoundly moving paintings of a mother and child and here, a man and baby, suggest the tragic end of a parent and child who are lost at sea yet appear to be passing into another realm. (On view in Chelsea through June 27th).
Michael Armitage, Untitled, oil on Lubugo bark cloth, 79 x 59 ¼ inches, 2024.
At over eleven feet tall, Takashi Murakami’s acrylic on canvas remake of Utagawa Hiroshige’s 1857 woodblock print featuring a bridge and a samurai neighborhood in Edo (later Tokyo) makes a dramatic statement at the entrance to his current show at Gagosian Gallery. Drawing on Hiroshige’s mid-19th century ‘100 Famous Views of Edo,’ Murakami creates his copies with silkscreen and acrylic paint and fills in details that the much smaller originals lack. In some iterations of the prints, Murakami adds in tiny versions of his characteristic colorful manga-inspired figures. The show includes replica of paintings by Van Gogh and Monet, both of whom were deeply influenced by the popularity of Japanese prints in 19th century Paris, highlighting the importance of influence and imitation in art history. Ironically, the notion of copying even extends to the carp banners depicted in this print, which represent civilian versions of military streamers. (On view in Chelsea through July 11th.)
Installation view of ‘Japonisme – Cognitive Revolution: Learning from Hiroshige’ with Takashi Murakami, Hiroshige’s 100 Famous Views of Edo: Japanonisme Reconsidered – Suido Bridge and Surugadai, acrylic on canvas mounted on aluminum frame, 137 7/8 x 89 inches, 2024-25.
Summer never looked so good as in Hope Gangloff’s paintings of a vivid red barn, a spectacular lightning strike seen from a front porch and friends lounging lakeside, but the standout piece of her latest solo show at Susan Inglett Gallery is a double portrait of close-up magicians Matthew Holtzclaw and Prakash Puru. Employing a wizardry of her own in recording the texture of each man’s suit and a wide range of tones in their faces, Gangloff delivers a knock-out work whose intense colors and typically distorted proportions give the piece its distinct dynamism. (On view in Chelsea through June 7th).
Hope Gangloff, Matthew (Holtzclaw) and Prakash (Puru), acrylic on wood panel, 80 ½ x 48 inches, 2025.
Tomma Abts’ small abstract paintings at David Zwirner Gallery defy language, their dynamic forms and rich colors existing to provide stimulation to the eye. Recurring spiraling shapes evoke wheels with uneven spokes or a curving staircase. Other canvases feature angular forms emanating from a central point. All suggest centrifugal force, including the less geometric composition ‘Saske,’ pictured here. A profusion of soft feathery forms in yellow, turquoise and pink tones recall Edgar Degas’ paintings of 19th century stage performers and provocatively contrast the hard, light-catching metallic surface of a cast-bronze segment to the left. (On view in Chelsea through June 14th).
Tomma Abts, Saske, acrylic on canvas and cast bronze in two (2) parts, 18 7/8 x 15 inches, 2024.
Inspired by natural forms from skin to plants and animals, Chilean artist Josefina Concha’s sculptural textiles pull away from the wall with lively dynamism. Each thick, textured surface is created from machine-sewn lines of thread that cause the surface to buckle, resembling fungi, growth rings of trees or the patterns of geodes. Featured in Praxis Gallery’s group exhibition ‘Walking Lines,’ this piece – titled ‘Charco’ (pool) – is a standout in an excellent show of work by Latin American artists who are expanding textile traditions. (On view in Chelsea through June 3rd).
Josefina Concha E., Charco, sewing on canvas, 66 1/8 x 54 3/8 inches, 2025.
Internationally renowned for his stop motion animations made from charcoal drawings, South African artist William Kentridge’s drawings for his new nine-part film series are the focus of his first New York solo show at Hauser & Wirth Gallery. “The studio can be understood as an expanded head,” the artist says by way of introduction to ‘Self-Portrait as a Coffee Pot,’ a show that likens the artist’s creative process to percolating coffee. Though the films play one-by-one in the back gallery, visitors first encounter drawings and work on paper that emerged from enforced studio time during the Covid lockdown. Here, a full wall drawing featuring peonies (‘a backdrop for conversation in the studio’ according to Kentridge), Leon Trotsky’s head and the words ‘Let Me Live Again’ appear over pages from an accounts ledger, not only nodding to a recent project considering Russian composer Dimitri Shostavovich’s relationship with authoritarian power but generally touching on themes of freedom, renewal and power. (On view in Chelsea through Aug 1st).
William Kentridge, Drawing for Self-Portrait as a Coffee-Pot (Let Me Live Again), Indian ink, charcoal and collage on found paper from cash sales book, 2021.
Despite their subdued grisaille palette, Olivia Jia’s intimately-scaled paintings at Margot Samel Gallery entice with their crisp, realist renderings of artworks, artists and nature. Here, a bronze ritual vessel features on one page of an open book opposite an ornamental comb, their relationship a mystery, the pictured book a product of the artist’s imagination. Jia has explained that her upbringing in the U.S., cut off from family by distance and from the material culture of her parents’ homeland has prompted her to paint artifacts that stand in the gap. Though we know from the painting’s title that the featured photograph of the young woman is Jia’s grandmother, the picture is partially obscured and rests on a sheet of broken glass or mirror; though the significance of each item is clear, the meaning is not, allowing us to share in Jia’s desire for deeper connection. (On view through May 31st).
Olivia Jia, Night Studio (bronze ritual vessel, horn comb with painted bird, branches, two lilies, portrait of my grandmother), oil on panel, 16 x 20 inches, 2025.
Stony-faced men in paintings titled ‘Angry Dads’ or ‘Uncles’ contrast images of young men with distant looks or softly downcast gazes in Salman Toor’s tour de force character studies in the Tribeca venue of his solo debut at Luhring Augustine Gallery’s New York locations. Ever present in both shows is the uncomfortable coexistence of the artist’s traditional upbringing in Lahore, Pakistan, and the life he has made for himself in New York’s queer diasporic south Asian community. This pairing of a defiant youth with a wall of disapproving older men encapsulates the drama, frustration, and absurdity of the conflict. (On view in Chelsea and Tribeca through June 21st).
Salman Toor, ‘Boy, Dads,’ pencil, charcoal, and gouache on paper, 10 1/8 x 10 ½ inches, 2024.
Nature and music inspired Swiss weaver Silvia Heyden, a maker who embodied movement in vibrant tapestries now on view at Tribeca’s Charles Moffett Gallery. This panel, ‘Vortex (High Water),’ evokes the flow of rock-studded, shallow waters of the Eno River in North Carolina, where she settled for a time with her family. Though she created fiber works for over sixty years, Heyden made music with her violin for even longer and explained that as she played, she could visualize an interpretation of the music on the loom. (On view in Tribeca through June 7th).
Silvia Heyden, Vortex (High Water), 40×5 x 45 inches, 2012.
Known for picturing the people of Mali as the country emerged from the colonial era into independence in the mid-20th century, Malick Sidibe’s black and white portraits at Jack Shainman Gallery record the leisure activities and self-styling of his photo studio customers. In a collaboration with local Malian artists, Sidibe selected painted glass frames that enhanced his portraiture. Here, Mali’s tricolor flag and similarly colored flowers adds a lively, decorative note to a handsome portrait. (On view in Chelsea through May 31st.)
Malick Sidibe, Untitled, signed and dated on verso, vintage silver gelatin print, glass, paint, cardboard, string, wood frame, 14 x 10 ¾ inches (image), 1984.
Painter Lauren Portada explains that her early morning trail runs make her extra-aware of the natural world, but the sense of immediacy she conveys in her landscape paintings at Deanna Evans Projects is indebted to her technique. Using dyed, torn and tarnished scraps from her own recycled paintings, Portada creates representational outdoor scenes with pleasing trompe l’oeil effects that add interest by incorporating areas of abstraction. A snowy hillside with distinct trees has an ambiguous, patterned ground for example while a Maine sunrise shows up as a reflected orange triangle behind trees in the foreground. Here, a segment of peeling birch catches the light to reveal a multitude of colors in its white bark. (On view in Tribeca through May 24th).
Lauren Portada, Specimen, acrylic on linen over panel with painted collage cut outs, 12 x 10 inches, 2025.
Late photographer Peter Moore captured images of iconic performance art in NYC from the early ‘60s on, documenting events by Yayoi Kusama, Trisha Brown, Nam June Paik and others that are now the stuff of legend. Not only did he record artists, musicians and dancers, Moore also turned his camera on amusing signage and scenarios that presented themselves on the city streets. Now on view at Paula Cooper Gallery, accompanied by Claes Oldenburg’s drawings of his own performative take on street life, Moore’s photos from the ‘60s to the ‘80s demonstrate his attentiveness and an appreciation for the lighter side of life. (On view in Chelsea through June 14th).
Peter Moore, untitled (Dash Exterminating), gelatin silver print, 10 ¼ x 7 inches, 1977.
Dozens of performers noiselessly cluster backstage waiting to go before the audience at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in a performance orchestrated by Brazilian artist Laura Lima. All actors, or ‘ballerinas’ as the gallery terms some of them, are sculptures created by Lima’s studio and include beekeeping clothes modified to suggest a space suit, a hammer and a sickle, each sporting a long ‘Greek’ dress, and a black and red cross a la early 20th century artist Kazimir Malevich. Sent out on a pulley system along one gallery wall and powered by an offstage bicycle, the inanimate figures are given life by lights, sound and careful movement of the pulley. Strangely absorbing, the installation and its dancing figures reward visitors who are game for interpretation. (On view in Chelsea through May 30th.)
Laura Lima, installation view of ‘Bale Literal,’ at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, May 2025.
Groans of pain and the sound of encouraging voices greet visitors to Carolyn Lazard’s solo at Artists Space where two videos and an installation of linoleum flooring center on women’s medical experience. While most visitors will overlook the show’s soft institutional flooring, the drama of a birthing scene in ‘Fiction Contract’ grabs the attention immediately. Peering over the shoulder of a team of midwives in Elmhurst Hospital in Queens as they run into difficulty delivering a baby, our absorption little reduced by the fact that the patient and infant are mannequins. Part of a training exercise facilitated by the Maternal Mortality Reduction Program, the simulated scenario encourages audiences to consider the complexity of birthing situations, the professionalism of staff and the importance of funding to ensure equitable health care. (On view through May 10th in Tribeca.)
Carolyn Lazard, still from ‘Fiction Contract,’ single-channel video, color, sound, at Artist’s Space, April 2025.
Spotlit and spaciously installed on elegantly understated grey walls at James Cohan Gallery, Kennedy Yanko’s abstract sculptures delight with their formally complex compositions. Continuing her signature combination of scrap metal and sheets of dried and folded paint, Yanko’s latest sculptures are restrained in size but rich in evocative color and dynamic form. The first piece in the show incorporates a crushed metal cannister that looks as soft as a duffel bag. Another sculpture features curlicues crafted from metal fencing surrounding a twisting sheet of paint skin in colors that complement the fragments of color on the metal. Here, rusting metal compliments a deep red swathe of paint. (On view in Tribeca through May 10th).
Kennedy Yanko, Remembering the Future, paint skin, metal, 40 x 24 x 15 inches, 2025.
Happiness is Danish sculptor Jeppe Hein’s stock-in-trade. Past work includes brightly colored benches he calls ‘social sculptures’ that invite strangers or intimates to stop and converse, walls of water that dare interaction and shiny balloons of metal that appear to float on the ceiling. A new installation at Chelsea’s 303 Gallery presents a ceiling bedecked with swathes of fabric evoking waves, home to alluringly shiny lacquered plastic fish and other animals. The text ‘expect a miracle,’ spelled out in balloon-like letters at the gallery front door is both poignant and hopeful. (On view in Chelsea through May 31st).
Jeppe Hein, installation view of ‘Expect A Miracle,’ at 303 Gallery April 26th, 2025.
Raised in Japan and living in LA since the ‘70s, Takako Yamaguchi melds Japanese and Western art in richly decorative paintings that sample from kimono textiles as readily as Art Nouveau aesthetics. Large works from the ‘80s, now on view in Tribeca at Ortuzar Projects, picture landscapes that include European-derived architecture and geometric structures in isometric perspective alongside a stylized representation of the natural world. Dominating all are shapes the gallery describes as sperm-like, undulating and spreading across the surface of the artwork as if to “inseminate the past with futures then unknown.” (On view in Tribeca through May 31st).
Takako Yamaguchi, Le Temps Mele, oil and bronze leaf on paper, 48 x 83 inches, 1984.
Though painting dominated Abstract Expressionist Willem de Kooning’s career, his bronze sculpture ‘Standing Figure’ takes over a room of paintings in a standout show of the iconic artist’s work at Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea. Showcasing pieces from the ‘40s to the ‘80s, including major loans from MoMA and the Guggenheim and organized with the support of the Willem de Kooning Foundation, this expansive exhibition offers the opportunity to consider work from different periods of de Kooning’s career in light of his continual reference to the human body. Placed in proximity to nearly figurative work from early career to the pared down, elegant abstractions of his final painting years, this monumental bronze recalls de Kooning’s observation that “even abstract shapes must have a likeness.” (On view in Chelsea through June 14th).
Willem De Kooning, Standing Figure, bronze, 148 x 252 x 80 inches, 1969-84.
Polish art/tech studio Ksawery Komputery’s interactive light installation in the form of an Atolla jellyfish is a highlight of The Hole’s lively video-game inspired show ‘LFG’ in Tribeca. Pointing out both that the cultural influence of contemporary art is tiny in comparison with that of digital games and that such games don’t appear often in art world settings, this group show argues for more digital artwork in galleries. Though not all pieces make use of digital technology, the standouts do and include a pickax-wielding dragon projected on a 3-D printed sculpture by Kevin Bray, Luke Murphy’s light installation on a slumping, fragmented screen and Ksawery Komputery’s dazzling, sound-responsive deep-sea creature. (On view in Tribeca through May 24th).
Ksawery Komputery, Bios, oil paint on wood panels in 3 pieces, interactive light installation / led, 3d print, custom hardware and software, 28 x 12 inches (main structure) + 196 inches (long LED strips), 2025.
Strikingly intimate in their clarity, British photographer Richard Learoyd’s new portrait and still life photographs at Pace Gallery arrest with their beauty and rich color. Here, however, Learoyd eliminates saturated tones to allow the focus to rest on the texture and minute details of two subjects. Viewers standing in the gallery corner before these two photos are brought into an unexpected relationship with the thoughtfulness, possibly inflected by melancholy or ire, of the sitters. Created with his signature room-sized camera obscura, Learoyd himself is not immediately in front of the subjects as he takes the photo, adding to the sense of interiority in the images. (On view in Chelsea through April 26th).
Richard Learoyd, (left) Untitled Head, multi-layered pigment print and hand-applied gesso on canvas, 59 ½ x 59 ½ inches, 2024; (right) Head 2, multi-layered pigment print and hand-applied gesso on canvas, 59 7/8 x 59 7/8 inches, 2024.
Two angels visited vanessa german last fall, one sharing a word – Olmec – and the other urging the artist to continue to practice the spiritual in her art. The resulting series of monumental head sculptures in “GUMBALL – there is absolutely no space between body and soul” at Chelsea’s Kasmin Gallery are extravagantly rich in their ornamentation, masterful in their collage technique and abundant in references to the sacred. Also a writer, german is as generous with her words as her materials and recounts (@vanessalgerman) not only the visitation that inspired the heads but explains that she has developed her work to include energy-bearing stones, stars, words, numbers and animal forms. Here, a head with elaborate decoration and a quilted backing bears a long, poetic list of not just of materials but of concepts on the gallery’s checklist, ending in ‘have faith.’ (On view in Chelsea through May 10th).
vanessa german, bring light in through the top of your head, wood, plaster, foam, plaster gauze, sweet kisses, love, gold chain purse, rose quartz butterflies, the sound of horns honking out of the hotel window, cut glass, lucky feet in rose quartz from the window of the eye, have faith. 79 x 51 x 43 inches, 2025.vanessa german, bring light in through the top of your head, wood, plaster, foam, plaster gauze, sweet kisses, love, gold chain purse, rose quartz butterflies, the sound of horns honking out of the hotel window, cut glass, lucky feet in rose quartz from the window of the eye, have faith. 79 x 51 x 43 inches, 2025.vanessa german, bring light in through the top of your head, wood, plaster, foam, plaster gauze, sweet kisses, love, gold chain purse, rose quartz butterflies, the sound of horns honking out of the hotel window, cut glass, lucky feet in rose quartz from the window of the eye, have faith. 79 x 51 x 43 inches, 2025.
Indigenous Argentinian weavers Claudia Alarcon and members of the Silat Collective carry on tradition, recall their ancestors and convey messages from dreams and the subconscious with textiles featuring abstracted designs from the natural world. Now on view at James Cohan Gallery in Tribeca, their woven panels made by harvesting, breaking down, pounding, spinning and dying the native chaguar plant connect visually to modernist weaving by the likes of Annie Albers, who in the mid-20th century visited and collected textiles from the Salta region, home to Alarcon and the Silat Collective. Here, a textile titled ‘The Three Marias’ resembles abstracted human figures joined by one fabric. (On view in Tribeca through May 10th).
Claudia Alarcon & Silat, The Three Marias, hand-spun chaguar fiber, woven in yica stitch, 48 ¾ x 46 ¼ inches, 2025Claudia Alarcon & Silat, (detail) The Three Marias, hand-spun chaguar fiber, woven in yica stitch, 48 ¾ x 46 ¼ inches, 2025.
Tavares Strachan’s book, the ‘Encyclopedia of Invisibility,’ positioned at the entrance to the artist’s solo show at Marian Goodman Gallery, announces his continued efforts to bring remarkable, underappreciated biographies to light via highly engaging sculpture and installation. In addition to works honoring mathematician and aerospace engineer Mary Jackson and singer/songwriter Rosetta Tharpe, the ground floor has been transformed to house a ceramic sculpture of the Bahamian musician and artist Exuma, whose work evidenced his engagement with Obeah spiritual practice. The sculpture stands in an installation of grass, shaped to form a Ghanaian Adrinka symbol indicating bravery, which evokes a rice field intended to supply sustenance across time and space. High on the walls, a text by James Baldwin exhorts readers to choose behavior that benefits the common good while a piano plays a composition inspired by British-Sierra Leonean composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. (On view through April 19th in Tribeca).
Tavares Strachan, installation view of ‘Starless Midnight’ at Marian Goodman Gallery featuring The Birth of Exuma (Eagle Talon), ceramic, rice field installation, ceramic 72 7/8 x 26 ¾ x 15 inches, April 2025.
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 19th).
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’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 12th).
David Kennedy Cutler, Wild, inkjet transfer, acrylic and clear coat on canvas, armature wire, 49.5 x 35.5 x 3.5 inches, 2024.
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 12th).
Sharon Core, installation view of ‘Facsimile’ at Yancey Richardson Gallery, March 2025.
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 26th).
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.
Landscapes viewed from a car crop up regularly in 20th 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 5th).
Linda Gottesfeld, 17 North, oil on metal 31 x 44 inches, 2000.
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 24th Street through April 5th).
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.
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 12th).
Rebecca Shore, Untitled (23-12), acrylic on linen, 2023.
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 24th Street through April 19th).
Aaron Gilbert, Window, oil on linen, 18 1/8 x 24 1/8 inches, 2025.
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 5th).
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.
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 20th 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 21st Street through April 19th).
Walton Ford, Forse che si forse che no, watercolor, gouache, and ink on paper, 84 x 60 inches, 2024.
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 12th).
Clare Woods, The Victory Garden, oil on aluminum, 2025.
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 29th).
Robert Indiana, The Gift (Easel), oil on canvas, 40 x 36 inches, 1960.
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 21st 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 12th).
Joan Jonas, Empty Rooms (installation view) at Gladstone Gallery, March 2025.
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 22nd).
En Iwamura, Neo Jomon: Black Mask (Crack), glazed ceramic, gold, 31 x 31 x 9 inches, 2024.
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 5th).
Sylvia Sleigh, Annunciation: Paul Rosano, oil on canvas, 90 1/8 x 52 ¼ inches, 1975.
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 19th).
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.
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 22nd).
Deborah Druick, Plumage, flashe paint and acrylic on linen, 24 x 18 inches, 2023.
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 15th).
Bo Bartlett, The Skippers, oil on linen, 46 x 66 inches, 2024.
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 19th).
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.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.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.
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 19th 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 22nd).
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.
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.
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 15th).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 22nd).
Jennifer J. Lee, Lee jeans, oil on jute, 15 x 13 inches, 2024.
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 29th).
Nick Cave, installation view of ‘Amalgam (Origin)’ at Jack Shainman Gallery, Tribeca, bronze, 309 5/8 x 201 x 227 inches, 2024.
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 18th 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 26th).
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.
