Category: Don’t Miss

“If Ms Walker retired today she would leave behind one of the most trenchant and historically erudite bodies of art produced by any American in the last 15 years, only a portion of which is in the Whitney show,” wrote New York Times critic Holland Cotter of Kara Walker’s powerful survey show at the Whitney Museum. Pilloried by some prominent African American artists in the late 90s for trafficking in negative black imagery, Walker’s signature installations of black-paper silhouettes on white walls, drawings, projections and texts mine America’s past and present race relations in all their ugly complexity. For viewers unafraid to confront controversial issues head on, this is the show not to miss. (On through Feb 3rd).

For more information, visit the Whitney Museum’s website or read Holland Cotter’s review in the New York Times.

For many New Yorkers, Chris Ofili’s name will bring to mind the brou-ha-ha around his painting of the Virgin Mary supported by two clods of dried elephant dung, exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum in 1999. Ofili’s choice of materials aimed to beg the question of what kind of art he should make as a Caribbean-British artist, a topic that he revisits in a show of new work at David Zwirner Gallery. A recent move to Trinidad appears to have influenced the subject matter and style of his recent paintings, with languid characters, intense colors and tropical landscapes making references to European masters like Gauguin and Matisse, who ventured abroad in search of the exotic. With several standout paintings and sculptures, Ofili peels back another layer of his complicated identity, making this the ‘don’t miss’ show of the moment.

For more information on Chris Ofili’s ‘Devil’s Pie’ exhibition, visit David Zwirner Gallery.

Feminism is dead? Think again. Touted as, ‘The first international exhibition exclusively dedicated to feminist art from 1990 to the present,’ ‘Global Feminisms’ at the Brooklyn Museum proves that women around the world (with quite a few art stars among them) are making artwork about specifically female experience. The show opens the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, implying not only that feminism is here to stay, but that the artwork identified under that title will be continually worthy of a significant swathe of Brooklyn Museum real estate. Judge for yourself if this controversial investment is truly groundbreaking or ‘a false idea wrapped in confusion,’ as New York Times critic Roberta Smith recently put it. (Show closes July 1st.)

For more information on Global Feminisms and the Elizabeth A Sackler Center for Feminist Art, visit The Brooklyn Museum’s website.

Attention all photo enthusiasts, don’t miss three shows set to close April 7th. Selections from Mitch Epstein’s series, ‘American Power’ may feel a little disjointed – images representing family and romantic power relations are shuffled in with photos depicting refineries, fuel processing plants and the wreckage of Hurricane Katrina – but are still a sobering visual essay on the cost exacted by American energy consumption. Justine Kurland’s subject matter is likewise tied to the American landscape, but her photos of mothers and their children posing nude in the wilds are idyllic scenarios suggesting a thwarted yearning for prelapsarian perfection. Meanwhile, over at 303 gallery, Karel Funk’s photorealist paintings (OK, it only looks like photography) prove it’s not just God who can count every hair on your head. Check out the lavish attention paid to the minutest detail of his male subjects, including the wispy locks on one magnificent hipster in the back gallery.

For more information on Mitch Epstein, see Sikkema Jenkins & Co, for Justine Kurland, see Mitchell-Innes & Nash and for Karel Funk, visit 303 Gallery’s website.

Exhibition closings come in waves; the next set is due to break on February 10th. Don’t miss Stan Douglas’s video ‘Klatsassin,’ a murder and revenge story set during a gold rush in 19th century British Columbia, at David Zwirner Gallery. Presented in Douglas’ characteristic looping format, with 850 possible permutations, the entire effort runs over 70 hours, both teasing and enticing viewers with an elusively juicy plot. Though their subject matter is decidedly less dramatic, at least two other shows merit a last minute trip to Chelsea. Dike Blair’s tiny, mundane, but mysterious still life paintings at D’Amelio Terras Gallery muster a murky noir feeling, while Charles Long’s elegant, white sculptures at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery recall Giacometti but were actually modeled on bird droppings, giving them pedigree in an art world long obsessed with bodily function.