Category: Hottest Show

Jane South at Spencer Brownstone Gallery

A metal panel bolted closed on a grimy subway wall, a garage door and barred windows of an industrial building and other snapshots of the built environment are among the inspirations for Jane South’s new wall-mounted assemblages at Spencer Brownstone Gallery.  Posted to her Instagram account as #streetsources and #subwaysources, the photos speak to the long and varied life of the structures surrounding us as translated into canvas, tarp, batting and other materials.  (On view on the Lower East Side through April 5th).

Jane South, Mark, acrylic, canvas, batting, fabric, thread and mixed media, 105 x 109 inches, 2019.

Gladys Nilsson at Matthew Marks Gallery

Proto-surrealist James Ensor and the fantastical Netherlandish painter Hieronymous Bosch figure as influencers on Chicago Imagist Gladys Nilsson’s odd characters, no surprise, given their pervading oddness and ambiguous identities.  This symmetrically arranged meeting of two couples, elderly, possibly blind, and with facial features straight out of a folk tale challenges belief even before spotting the tiny horns tucked into their mouths.  Are they communicating in honks?  Are they tooting at each other to avoid colliding on the sidewalk?  The fun is in the guessing.  (A selection of work from 1963 to 1980 is now on view at Matthew Marks Gallery in Chelsea through April 18th).

Gladys Nilsson, Honk, acrylic on panel in artist’s frame, 13 1/8 x 15 ¾ inches, 1964.

Krzysztof Wodiczko at Galerie Lelong

Abraham Lincoln morphs into a teenager, a senior, a woman in glasses and other characters in Krzysztof Wodiczko’s ‘A House Divided…’, as interviews shot with a variety of Staten Island citizens with varying political views are projected onto two replica of the Lincoln Memorial at Chelsea’s Galerie Lelong.  In some exchanges, friends acknowledge their differences while respecting each other; in other conversations, barriers remain high.  Wodiczko’s goal is to encourage the exchange regardless, making dialogue the goal of his art production.  (On view through March 7th).

Krzysztof Wodiczko, A House Divided…, 4K video projection on sculpture, figure height: 98.4 inches, 2019.

Fumika Koda at Sato Sakura Gallery

Taking in stray cats changed young artist Fumika Koda’s painting career, focusing her practice on the feline subjects and driving her to find intimate ways to portray their habits and personalities, often in connection to the seasons.  Koda even aims to empower the cats, as she puts it, “…giving them their power back over the people who left them,” but it’s her evident respect for the cats’ beauty and intelligence that stands out.  (On view at Sato Sakura Gallery through March 28th).

Fumika Koda, Dreaming, mineral pigments, gelatin, silk, 10.7 x 10.7 inches, 2019.

Nigel Cooke at Pace Gallery

British artist Nigel Cooke has long blurred the line between abstraction and figuration, but recent monochromatic paintings on raw canvas at Pace Gallery convey new urgency and dynamism.  By contrasting surface areas of relative calm with intersecting webs of paint receding into the distance, Cooke suggests that focus can be achieved and released, instantly altering our perspective on the environments surrounding us.  (On view through Feb 29th).

Nigel Cooke, Gazing, oil and acrylic on linen, 88 9/16 x 64 9/16 inches, 2019.