Kathryn Andrews’ ‘June 21’ is strangely cheerful, though balloons that were fresh on June 21st (the day Perrotin Gallery’s summer group show opened) have turned to a commentary on the passage of time. (On the Lower East Side through August 18th).
Tel Aviv-based artist Guy Yanai’s subject matter – houses, domestic interiors and portraits of plants – is sedate but his blocky, early video game aesthetic gives the paintings a jittery edge. This plant appears to hover in space while reaching for the top edge of the canvas with an energy foreign to most potted plants. (In Chelsea at Ameringer McEnery Yohe through August 18th).
Robert Mann Gallery’s ice-cream themed summer group show runs the gamut from glossy commercial images of fake ice cream to this gritty 1950s shot by Harold Feinstein of New York urchins enjoying a treat while Christ appears to ‘let the little children come to him’ in the background. (In ‘I Scream, You Scream’ at Robert Mann Gallery through August 18th).
After years of traveling to the U.S./Mexico border, photographer Richard Misrach and experimental composer Guillermo Galindo joined forces to create sobering images and sculpture inspired by struggles of migrants determined to overcome the border’s many obstacles. This installation view of their exhibition at Pace Gallery in Chelsea features an instrument made by Galindo of items recovered from the region and Misrach’s photos of tires drug behind border patrol vehicles to make a path in which footprints can be detected. (On view through August 18th.)
A figure reclines in front of a baguette, friends walk in the woods and here, a young woman chats on the phone while resting on a huge container of an oversized art supply in ceramic sculpture and plates by Berlin-based artist Isabelle Fein. These diminutively sized snippets of life are an essay on the charms of the everyday. (At Jack Hanley Gallery on the Lower East Side through August 18th).
Patrick Jacobs – known for meticulously crafted dioramas set into the wall – offers another marvelously detailed scene in Pierogi Gallery’s summer group show ‘Double Down,’ which features artwork that involves doubling. Here, a toilet and its reflection suggest plumbing abundance in otherwise cramped quarters. (On the Lower East Side through August 12th).
Rachel Harrison’s heavily textured, expressionist painting is electrified by fuchsia shorts, a dramatic punctuation at the end of the artwork. The shorts drag a potentially intellectual AbExp artwork into the banality of everyday life; now, it’s not hard to imagine the artwork on its way to the beach or the mall. (In ‘Feedback’ at Marlborough Contemporary through August 11th).
Rife with appealing contradictions, Tyler Haughey’s photo of a New Jersey coastal motel is attractive for its saturated colors and modernist angularity but not as a model of contemporary hotel design. Devoid of people and sometimes pictured out of season, the motels in Haughey’s series ‘Ebb Tide’ both evoke nostalgia and picture an on-going culture. (In ‘At a Languorous Pace’ at Sears Peyton Gallery in Chelsea, through August 11th).
Tree fungus and corals inspired the Haas Brothers’ signature accretion vases; joined by the LA duo’s silver plated lamps (at rear), walnut furniture and paintings, they open Marianne Boesky Gallery’s summer group exhibition with an appreciation for the strange and lighthearted. (In Chelsea through August 11th).
Globe-trotting photographer and writer Teju Cole’s new book ‘Blind Spot’ explores perception through shots including this grid of curtained balconies in Beirut, an image that suggests diversity packed into a small space. Alongside is a text in which Cole bemoans a lost roll of film while acknowledging that his original viewing experience is what he most values. (On view at Steven Kasher Gallery through August 11th).
Aliza Nisenbaum’s portrait of Kayhan, sprawled on the floor surrounded by newspaper pages, is a standout in FLAG Art Foundation’s huge and engrossing group exhibition, ‘The Times,’ which gathers a range of artwork related to or inspired by the New York Times. Nisenbaum’s portraits of undocumented immigrants offer a portal into lives deliberately lived in private; here, Kayhan’s apparent comfort may not apply beyond these walls. (On view in Chelsea through Aug 11th).
Vladimir Salamun’s marble ice cream scoop stars in a deliciously food-themed show at Allan Stone Projects. Monumental and crafted in traditional art materials, this slow-to-melt pop art monument to the pleasures of taste becomes a treat for the eye as well. (On view in Chelsea through August 11th).
Eight large paintings of winter coats by Canadian super realist painter Karl Funk at 303 Gallery ostensibly deny the season; instead, isolated against icy white backgrounds and turned as if to ignore viewers, they’re as chilling as a blast of AC. Inspired by the negotiation between public and personal space on a crowded subway car, they’re a beautifully rendered insistence on privacy. (On view in Chelsea through August 18th).
Sperone Westwater’s lively group painting show, Pictograph, considers artworks that communicate in an engagingly ambiguous way. Katherine Bradford’s duo could be embracing, but the title ‘The Argument’ suggests that the washy emanation on the left could be an inner voice or an important influencer to the tie-wearing figure on the right. (On view on the Lower East Side through August 4th).
Marlborough Contemporary’s summer group exhibition ‘Feedback’ includes a wall of painted fiberglass sculptures by John Ahearn & Rigoberto Torres as the show considers collaborative practices in art – in this case between artists and community residents. (On view in Chelsea through August 4th).
Nicola Tyson’s freewheeling firewood sculptures embody a grace that belies their origins in the woodpile. Stripping each piece of dried firewood of its bark, Tyson assembles fleshy ‘dancing figures’ as disproportionate assemblages of thick and thin segments that bring to mind human bodies, trees and robots. (In ‘Somebodies’ at Petzel Gallery in Chelsea through Aug 4th).
Valerie Hegarty’s deliciously bizarre watermelon rind takes a bite out of summer at Asya Geisberg Gallery’s fanciful summer group show of ceramic sculpture. (In Chelsea through August 11th).
In his photo collages of cityscapes, shot at different times of day from the same vantage point, Bejing-based artist Ji Zhou creates a harmonious view from fragments. (At Klein Sun Gallery in Chelsea through August 3rd).
Like a group of goddesses on Mount Olympus, Maria Berrio’s trio of milky-skinned mothers and their infants appear to lounge above the mortal realm in this collage by the New York-based Columbian artist. Accompanied by a menagerie of animals and framed by the constellations, Berrio exaults the mothers’ nurturing role. (On view on the Lower East Side in ‘All That Glitters’ at Rachel Uffner Gallery through August 2nd).
These extravagantly eccentric boots by London-based Canadian artist Zadie Xa (created with Benito Mayor Vallejo) are part of Xa’s costuming for a performance inspired by Korean spiritual ritual. Installed unobtrusively at Chapter NY, which is hosting an exhibition by San Juan, Puerto Rico gallery Agustina Ferreyra as part of Condo New York, they offer a glimpse of Xa’s fabulously invented performances. (On the Lower East Side through July 28th).
Liz Craft’s speech bubbles, made into faces by the shapes of protruding ceramic mushrooms, are a standout in JTT’s summer group show, Dirge, which considers how artists engage with accounts of history. Here, Craft merges contemporary text-message bubbles with pre-electrical light (a candle). The mushroom face suggests a voice from 70s counterculture speaking from the void. (On the Lower East Side through July 28th).
Real time seismic activity interrupts the shifting abstract patterns on Daniel Canogar’s curving panels, merging art and distant, powerful forces. Peeling off the wall on flexible LED tiles arranged on an armature, ‘Echo’ strains for our attention and gets it. (At Bitforms on the Lower East Side through July 30th).
Known for creating fiber art without a loom, late artist Claire Zeisler sometimes evoked the natural world in works that seemed to pour and pool like water. Here, a vivid red piece evokes fire, lava, blood and more, eliciting strong and even conflicting responses. (At Michael Rosenfeld Gallery in Chelsea through August 4th).
Mairead O’hEocha’s floral still life evokes paintings by 17th/18th century painter Rachel Ruysch while offering a more abstracted take on the genre. Flowers from around the world which may have bloomed at different times combined in the Netherlands to testify to Dutch trade power. Here, the rose at center signals waning strength as it begins to lose its petals. (At Callicoon Fine Arts hosting mothers tankstation limited, Dublin, for Condo New York on the Lower East Side through July 28th).
Monira Al Qadiri’s video ‘Travel Prayer’ combines footage of a camel race with the text of a traditional prayer for travel. Once, children were regularly injured and trafficked to race the animals, now camels are directed remotely by robot jockeys with mini whips. The prayers request for traveling mercy is powerfully apt. (At Station Independent Projects through July 23rd).
Mounting material and hand-dyed mop head strands onto vinyl, French artist and Mexico City resident Yann Gerstberger makes bold, nearly abstract textiles that suggest tantalizing stories and histories. (At Lyles and King on the Lower East Side through July 28th).
Satoshi Kojima’s pastel-colored dreamscapes feature a few enigmatic characters engaging in mysterious rituals. Here, two dapper yet sinisterly blank-eyed men either wave goodbye or set out to stop any trains that might roll into a platform that looks like a stage. (On view at Bridget Donahue Gallery on the Lower East Side through Aug 4th).
Brain scans, microorganisms and landscapes inspire Hildur Asgeirsdottir Jonsson’s woven silk textiles. In this detail from the towering, ten foot tall Dynjandi #2, Jonsson evokes the powerful force of a waterfall in her native Iceland. (At Morgan Lehman Gallery in Chelsea through July 28th).
Tariq’s multi-colored shirt and the explosion of lines on the wall behind him – not to mention his colorful crown – merge a man and an abstract artwork in young Chicago-based artist Alex Bradley Cohen’s painted portrait. (In ‘Elaine, Let’s Get the Hell Out of Here’ at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery through Aug 18th).
Two types of chilis, lemongrass and an emergency blanket are some of the unconventional materials Myranda Gillies sourced from stores in her Brooklyn neighborhood to create this loomed work at Susan Inglett Gallery in Chelsea. Granddaughter of famed assemblage artist George Herms, Gillies shares the gallery with his sculpture, inviting a comparison between two artists whose materials are something to talk about. (On view through July 28th).
Working blind in the dark room, David Benjamin Sherry exposes cardboard templates, acetates printed with patterns, his own body and that of his dog, Wizard to light sensitive paper. The vibrantly colored results don’t bear a recognizable likeness of the artist, but they feel intensely personal nonetheless. (At Salon94 Bowery on the Lower East Side through July 27th).
Geometry rules this painting by Toronto-based painter Veronika Pausova, who alludes to domestic environments by picturing curtains, cupboards and flower vases in still life paintings that are both tranquil and tense. This standout from her current show at Simone Subal Gallery, titled ‘Neighbour,’ suggests a nosy neighbor twitching her stylish curtains or the reverse – a neighbor tantalizingly out of our view. (On the Lower East Side through July 28th).
John Williams eschews the cutting edge by repurposing old technology, using overhead projectors to create a series of bold sculptures that recall the experimental quality of Man Ray’s photograms with an extra measure of playful inventiveness. Here, car parts affixed to the gallery wall become hair and a smile, a projected straw is a nose and a slinky funnels light upward into a bright white eye. The other eye must be winking at us as we share the joke. (At Brennan and Griffin on the Lower East Side through July 21st. )
The New York Academy of Art’s annual summer exhibition brings together a variety of artwork for sale at accessible prices – a rare proposition in Chelsea’s booming mega-gallery scene. Susan Siegel’s ‘Big Hair’ is a tiny painting at eight by eight inches, but it packs a humorous punch. Substituting a cow for one of the delicate creatures normally populating Baroque painting, Siegel subverts our pleasure in consuming images of excess. (At Flowers Gallery through July 15th).
New York painter Bennett Vadnais’ ‘House’ is a standout in George Billis Gallery’s summer group exhibition of cityscapes. Several of the show’s paintings zero in details of urban life – a water tower, a segment of a bridge – but Vadnais adds a focus on the passage of time by contrasting buildings from different eras. (On view in Chelsea through July 22nd ).
German painter Marcus Webber draws inspiration from odd moments experienced in daily street life; his paintings titled after public places, like ‘N-Platz (Nolli)’ include odd characters like the robed figures with triangular heads who attract a stare from a circular-headed shopper in the foreground. (In ‘Painting in due time’ at Thomas Erben Gallery in Chelsea through July 28th.)
Eva Lake’s small collages at Lower East Side gallery Frosh & Portman elegantly remix Egyptian and 20th century fashions in a strangely congruous merger of the ancient and modern. (On view through July 16th).
Buildings and monuments in the U.S. capital inspired Rotterdam & Benin-based artist Meschac Gaba’s latest synthetic-hair sculptures. Including (right to left) the White House, the U.S. Capitol and St John Episcopal Church, the sculptures represent a merger of African craft and sites of power. (On view at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery through July 28th).
Part of ‘Dream Machines,’ an exhibition that ponders how in daily life, ‘the real and imaginary cease to be contradictory,’ Mernet Larsen’s surreal ‘Sunday Drive’ is both plausible and impossible at once. Her orange-toned factory fresh figures are perfect but creepy, giving viewers pause to reconsider the serendipity of an American tradition. (At James Cohan Gallery’s Chelsea location through July 28th).
Six hundred binders hold plastic sleeves filled with studio waste in a huge installation of books and other material created by Dieter Roth and his son and collaborator, Bjorn Roth currently at Hauser & Wirth Gallery in Chelsea. Every piece of trash less than 5mm thick found its way into a binder in the years 1975-76, resulting in a portrait of the artist told through postcards, cigarette butts, packaging and more. ‘The worse it looks, the better,’ Roth noted on one binder. (On view through July 29th).
The canvas barely manages to contain an angled view of a screened window by painter Susan Lichtman, reflecting an outdoor scene from her Massachusetts home. With one window panel opening toward viewers, the painting appears to project itself into Steven Harvey Fine Art Project’s narrow gallery space, an arresting and dynamic move that belies an apparently tranquil domestic scene. (On the Lower East Side through July 15th).
Though abstract, Joanna Pousette-Dart’s paintings are inspired by landscapes she has experienced in her travels to New Mexico. In this new piece created for Lisson Gallery’s summer survey of select abstract painting, the bright light of day fades to dark night in a progression of curving canvases. (On view in Lisson Gallery’s 10th Avenue location through August 11th).
Bold color and abundant detail prompt Heller Gallery to compare master glassmaker and artist Lino Tagliapietra’s pieces to a mini-fireworks display. This vibrant vessel demonstrates many of the techniques that Tagliapietra used as a glassmaker in Murano and which he has generously shared in his world-wide travels. (At Heller Gallery in Chelsea through August 11th).
From huge charcoal drawings to weighty bronzes, Robert Longo has returned to images of the U.S. flag throughout his career in an on-going exploration of power and politics. Here, the mirrored surface of this flag makes viewers part of an object and a symbol. (At Metro Pictures Gallery in Chelsea through August 4th).
The bottom is about to fall out of 303 Gallery, or so it seems to judge by Ceal Floyer’s ‘Saw,’ a blade projecting from the gallery floor by a painted black circular line. With the menace of a shark’s protruding dorsal fin and a comedic quality of a Wile E Coyote blunder, the sculpture begs the question of what will surface. (On view in Chelsea through July 14th).
Famed art dealer Betty Parsons never gave up on her own artistic practice; this piece from her later years references Native American art, referring in its title to the Oglala Lakota. Created from driftwood she scavenged from the beach near her Long Island home, this colorful organic abstraction demonstrates her interest in mysticism that takes us beyond the every day realm. (At Alexander Gray Associates in Chelsea through July 14th).
These three dynamically twisting wooden seat sculptures by Wendell Castle come from a series titled Free Form, a musical reference that speaks to the artist’s & musician’s life-long interest. Though their solid forms are weighty, they appear to twist like a quick-growing vine. (On view at Friedman Benda through August 11th).
Jenny Snider’s small shaped painting of a car is a standout in Edward Thorp Gallery’s summer group show, its rounded corners and many planes suggesting a cartoonish vehicle with zany passengers taking an unconventional ride. (In Chelsea through July 29th).
How much can a human face tell us? Young Columbian artist Cristina Camacho’s sliced canvases first look like geometric abstraction, then resolve into portraits that hint at humanity or the digital visage of an intriguing but radically strange creature. (At Praxis International Art in Chelsea through July 8th).
Seven hallucinogenic mushroom replica spin like a model of the solar system in Carsten Holler’s ‘Flying Mushrooms’ sculpture at Gagosian Gallery, pointing to out-of-body experience, experienced in person in the gallery. Holler’s first show since 2011 (when he installed a slide and sensory deprivation chambers at the New Museum), this interactive exhibition is sure to be another crowd pleaser. (On view on 24th Street in Chelsea through August 8th).
Vintage color slides are the basis for Isca Greenfield-Sanders’ light infused beach scenes. Impossibly bright, they document a day by the water and suggest sunny memories. (At Ameringer McEnery Yohe in Chelsea through July 1st).
Swedish artist Joakim Ojanen’s odd ceramic heads resemble gourds and various animals, in this case, a bird. The creatures formerly manifest themselves in two dimensions as drawings. Now in the round, they allow Ojanen’s strange vision to inhabit space with us. (On view at The Hole on the Lower East Side through July 7th).
Richard Artschwager’s two-foot tall wooden exclamation point – which shapes artistic language out of the forms of language itself – adds a note of excitement to Jane Lombard Gallery’s summer group show. (On view in Chelsea through July 28th).
Nahum Tevet’s wall mounted sculptures are small-scale but full of action, a workout for the eye. Frames, furniture and machines come to mind amid patterning that recalls mid-century abstraction, cut outs that recall typography, colors that shout and mirroring that makes every element repeat. (At James Cohan Gallery’s Lower East Side location through July 28th).
After serving in the Naval Aviation Photographic Unit during WWII, Fons Iannelli returned to the States to establish a successful career photographing for McCall’s, Life, Fortune and other magazines. Alongside striking images of naval life, and later photos of efficient housewives shot for commercial purposes, Iannelli’s scenes from his 1946 Kentucky Coal Miner series, now on view at Chelsea’s Steven Kasher Gallery reveal the difficult circumstances of family life in the mining community. (On view through August 11th).
How do you make representational painting in the digital age, when bodies no longer have to be near each other to interact? Pieter Schoolwerth ponders this in a multi-step process that involves photographing figures and shadows, drawing them, altering them in the computer, creating them in foam core or wood and printing and painting on canvas. The resulting images are convincingly attractive but unsatisfying – in this enigmatic relief sculpture depicting a student center, various figures are together but don’t connect. (At Miguel Abreu Gallery on the Lower East Side through June 28th).
New paintings made in New York and North Carolina feature spring blossoms and mobile homes in Verne Dawson’s current show at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise. In the foreground of this bucolic but blighted landscape, Dawson portrays a pastoral scene of women bathing and gathering water, not from a sylvan spring but from a ditch. (At Gavin Brown’s Enterprise on the Lower East Side through June 24th).
Though the pool is enticing, this isn’t a tranquil summer scene. Eric Fischl’s ‘Daddy’s Gone, Girl’ suggests that the woman in the voluminous black dress is in mourning for an absent father and maybe a little unmoored. As an update on Fischl’s well-known 1984 painting Daddy’s Girl, it’s a meditation on loss and isolation. (At Skarstedt’s Chelsea location through June 24th).
Roxy Paine’s three new dioramas at Paul Kasmin Gallery continue the artist’s interest in systems of control. Here, a view into a view into a hotel room alludes to the CIA’s experiments in administering LSD to unsuspecting civilians in the 1950s. The meticulously crafted scene illustrates a shocking invasion of privacy and personal well-being. (On view in Chelsea through July 1st).
Subway advertising boards, scraped free of ads before being recovered by new posters, continue to inspire Wyatt Gallery’s ongoing photo series, ‘Subtext.’ In the latest work, he considers his images as portals to more tranquil, meditative environments than the train platform. (On view at Foley Gallery on the Lower East Side through June 25th).
Nicola Lopez mixes interior and exterior walls, façade and skeleton in her bold installation at Jacob Lewis Gallery in Chelsea. Titled ‘Big Windows: Skin: Portals’ Lopez questions the impenetrable quality of anonymous modern glass wall architecture, mounting woodcuts on normally hidden metal studs that support interior walls. (On view through June 30th).
Four hands repeat a gesture with multiple interpretations in the roughly woven lattice of Athansios Argianas’ bright, electroformed copper wall sculpture at On Stellar Rays. Interpretable as OK, perfection (if kissed by the lips), zero or something ruder, the sign is enhanced by a long title that suggests that seeing is as changeable as the sea. (On view on the Lower East Side through June 25th).
Anne Neukamp’s post-analogue paintings picture office tools in large-scale, graphically simple images that look as if they’ve been composed in digital space, yet are manifest before us in oil, tempera and linen. Titled ‘Morsel,’ this tantalizing icon offers a puzzle piece and a mystery envelope, dangling meaning in front of viewers. (At Chelsea’s Marlborough Contemporary through June 24th).
From the front, Ryan Johnson’s ‘Driver’ looks like a single, solid disk. From the side, the form becomes a steering wheel and a driver materializes, instantly morphing the sculpture from a mysterious biomorphic abstraction into an everyday scenario. Johnson’s sense of humor also comes across in his stylized ‘mother’ at rear, a stylized caryatid whose belly makes her all the more dramatic. (At Nicelle Beauchene Gallery through June 25th).
Organic shapes snake around and into a wooden box in this work by Brazilian artist Maria Nepomuceno, suggesting that whatever is inside cannot be contained. A trumpet-like ceramic form introduces the idea of broadcasting sound, offering the possibility that an unheard song might further animate this alluring organism. (At Sikkema Jenkins & Co through June 30th).
Round the corner into Metro Pictures smaller back gallery and suddenly you’re in the valley of an enormous wave, dwarfed by a ominous black swell that prompts terror even on dry land. The scene is the highlight of Robert Longo’s show of huge, charcoal drawings, a body of work that pictures refugees, CIA prisoners and Ferguson protesting football players in a tour de force of contemporary conflict. (On view in Chelsea through June 17th).
Charles Harlan’s artwork happens at the meeting place of man-made and natural objects, so it comes as no surprise to see him engage repeatedly with boats. For his current show at JTT Gallery on the Lower East Side, Harlan disassembled a boat belonging to a late family member of JTT Gallery owner Jasmine Tsou, turning it into two objects that evidence the effects of time and nature on a once-cherished object. (On view through June 17th).
A cherry pie, a smashed chocolate bunny and this giant piece of cake by Peter Anton are highlights of an asylum for sweet-lovers created by the artist in Chelsea’s Unix Gallery. A response to the idea that the American addiction to sugar borders on the insane, Anton’s super-sized sculptures push the idea to extremes, prompting visceral reactions so much sweetness. (On view through June 17th).
David Kennedy Cutler pushes the idea of self-display by putting a scanned and printed effigy of himself in a vitrine in his latest solo show at Derek Eller Gallery. Wearing one of his signature plaid shirts, further enhanced by a kale and bread pattern, Kennedy Cutler refers to his role as consumer as the audience consumes his artwork. (On view on the Lower East Side through June 25th).
Guy Goodwin’s large paintings on cardboard forms are among the most unusual and enticing in New York galleries now. Projecting over a foot from the gallery wall, they’re cross between painting and sculpture that the artist likens to a ‘plush booth’ where a visitor might rest and contemplate. (At Brennan and Griffin on the Lower East Side through June 18th).
Marinaro Gallery’s huge 2nd floor windows invite glimpses from the street of the artwork inside; upstairs on the gallery wall, Ridley Howard occupies a similar vantage point in ‘Over the Star’ as he portrays two women with guarded postures laughing together. Awkward or intimate, their joke is irresistible, inviting us to keep watching. (At Marinaro Gallery on the Lower East Side through June 18th).
Leo Villareal’s light sculptures have transformed the San Francisco Bay Bridge, the walkway between buildings at DC’s National Gallery and many other high profile sites. On a smaller scale but with no less mesmerizing impact, Villareal has transformed Pace Gallery’s 24th Street location with hanging stainless steel bars displaying an ever-changing combination of LED lights. (On view through June 17th).
This comically alarmed puffer fish is apparently startled by the empathy of an unnamed individual; in a thought bubble, the fish remarks that ‘his great melancholy eyes swim in a mist of commiseration.’ As comment on warming seas and endangered wildlife, the painting pits emotion vs action. (At David Zwirner Gallery’s 519 West 19th Street location).
The heart of Anselm Kiefer’s latest exhibition at Gagosian Gallery is a series of large-scale handmade books crafted from cardboard covered in plaster and painted with watercolor. Titled ‘Walpurgia,’ after an 8th century English nun, this lush, flesh-colored rendering of flowers echoes the erotic nature of the new paintings. Though the subject matter seems like a departure for Kiefer, it continues work begun in the 70s for which he merged the landscape and female bodies. (At Gagosian Gallery’s 21st Street location through July 14th).
From amid sweeping and energetic forms in Ali Banisadr’s painting ‘Myth’ emerge odd faces that suggest a camel (upper left) a clown with a tall, spotted cap (middle left) and a cast of slightly sinister characters. The Iranian born, NY-based artist explained that the paintings in his current show at Sperone Westwater Gallery were inspired by politics in the US; he suggests both mass migration and a barbed wire fence in the sky and a mass of menacing figures in the foreground. (On the Lower East Side through June 24th.)
Displayed on a lightbox, Canadian artist Rodney Graham’s staged photographs are enticing, glowing portals into the past. In this unlikely scenario, a jazz drummer from yesteryear uses his kit as a table for a traditional meal of Salisbury Steak. (At 303 Gallery in Chelsea through June 2nd).
From wood to polycarbonate and from the Whitney’s outdoor sculpture terrace to the museum’s gift shop, Frank Stella is bent on examining star shapes in endless materials and sizes. At Marianne Boesky Gallery in Chelsea, this ‘Corian Star’ is in the medium size range for Stella (at just under four feet tall), but its color scheme and unlikely material makes it an immediate draw. (On view through June 17th).
A swirling, starry sky crafted from braided electrical wire hovers over a curving organic landscape made from keyboard keys in this detail from Ethiopian artist Elias Sime’s collaged wall panel at James Cohan Gallery. Abstract yet suggestive of a landscape, this piece is testament to the resourcefulness of turning manmade objects – discarded electronics – into objects recalling natural beauty. (On view at James Cohan Gallery’s Chelsea location through June 17th).
New media artist Jim Campbell is known for deliberately low-res projections of crowds and individuals in movement. The focus of his current solo show at Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery – images and video from January’s Women’s March in DC – is serendipitous subject matter for the artist. In this layering of still images on a lightbox, many people (and metaphorically, points of view) come together to suggest a mass action. (At Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery in Chelsea through June 17th).
Chelsea’s skyline – dotted with construction cranes – is a constant reminder of how much the neighborhood and city is transforming; for an even more eye-popping view of how much the city has changed, visit legendary street photographer Martha Cooper’s photos at Steven Kasher Gallery from the 80s. Here, Cooper captures a two-car painting by Duster Lizzie that demonstrates how transgressive ambition changed the landscape of New York. (At Steven Kasher Gallery in Chelsea through June 3rd).
Man meets nature in this bronze sculpture by Deborah Butterfield, who has cast wood and marine debris collected from the Gulf of Alaska into one of her signature, horse sculptures. Butterfield’s sensitive renderings of horses bring us closer to the natural world; here, they poignantly speak to nature’s endurance in the face of environmental degradation. (At Danese Corey Gallery in Chelsea through June 23rd).
How much can a line graph really tell you about the world? Canadian artist duo Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens offer a tongue-in-cheek response to this question and the quest to present data in graphical form with sculptures like this one, that aims to illustrate ‘one man’s progress learning paths of least waste.’ (At Jane Lombard Gallery through May 26th).
Body-building and fashion magazines provide the material for Dominique Paul’s riotous collages of hybrid humans and altered insects. Using 17th and 18th century illustrations of plants and insects by artist Maria Merian as a framework, Paul mixes old and new in a bizarre but intriguing microcosm. (At Miyako Yoshinaga Gallery through May 27th).
Long strands of clear and white plastic beads by late artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres are an austere version of the usually colorful plastic beading hung in homes. Here in the huge, Spartan spaces of David Zwirner Gallery (which marks joint representation of the artist with Andrea Rosen Gallery with this show), the curtain has the sobering effect intended, heightening our awareness of passing from one state to another. (On 20th Street in Chelsea through June 24th).
A devotional sculpture of Mary melds with the body of an anonymous girl in this provocative sculpture by northern Italian artist Gehard Demetz. Though each figure looks fragmented, the merger seems neither violent nor ecstatic (along the lines of Bernini’s Saint Teresa.) Instead, the girl is absorbed by the inner life shared with the saint. (At Jack Shainman Gallery through June 3rd).
Roni Horn once said that glass can convey ‘the most ideal expression of color.’ In two same-but-different cast-glass sculptures at Chelsea’s Hauser & Wirth Gallery, a tranquil, blue form immediately invites visitors to draw near and marvel at the reflections of light on the water-like surface of a substance that is neither fully liquid nor solid. (On view through July 29th).
Working from his own detailed photographs, Chinese artist Xiaoze Xie, transforms images of books on dusty library shelves into atmospherically lit bridges to the past. Oil paintings from his latest solo show at Chambers Fine Art in Chelsea include this New Testament translation from Oxford University, wrapped volumes from Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu and tomes from the Morgan Library in New York. (On view through June 17th).
Walead Beshty’s exhibition at Petzel Gallery opens like a revenge drama on uncooperative office equipment, with this sculpture composed of a monitor, skewered by a steel pole and spewing out its interior components. Rather than commenting on frustration or alienation with technology, however, Beshty’s piece expresses his ongoing interest in exposing behind-the-scenes aspects of conceiving of, creating and displaying art. (On view through June 17th).
Iconic Brazilian Neo-Concretist Lygia Clark explored the experience of space in both two and three dimensions, in paintings and her famous bicho (critter) sculptures that could be handled and manipulated. At Luhring Augustine Gallery in Chelsea, 2-D pieces, like this study for a modulated surface, suggests the organic world with tones that allude to earth and sky. (On view through June 17th).
Rachel Harrison’s latest solo show at Greene Naftali Gallery seems to step away from the overt politics of her most recent shows, instead questioning the value and role of art (as presented in an imagined conversation between several famous artworks featured in a gallery handout). In this piece, what appears to be a bald eagle in a bandana is held at gunpoint, a symbol of power reduced to a captive state as the color of money dominates. (In Chelsea through Jun 17th).
Brooklyn performer, writer and sculptor Lee Relvas offers tantalizing fragments of figures in her first solo show at Callicoon Fine Arts, enticing her audience into trying to grasp who and what is being portrayed. In the front, a sculpture titled ‘Deciding’ wears a friar’s belted robe, a twisting figure at rear is ‘Thinking,’ and a reticent woman is ‘Withholding.’ (On the Lower East Side through May 21st.)
In this boldly textured, late-career work by the Spanish artist Josep Grau-Garriga, soothing blue color and thick nautical-like rope recall the sea. Part of a handsome exhibition that presents work from the last forty years of the artist’s life, including early work evoking political violence, this piece evokes summons both the tranquility of the beach and excitement of the sea. (At Salon94 Bowery on the Lower East Side through June 3rd).
After WWII, Todd Webb moved to New York City and took to the streets, enthusiastically documenting the eccentricities of the everyday – from quirky storefronts to colorful characters. (On view in Chelsea at The Curator Gallery through May 20th).
Two teardrop shapes stand side-by-side on the gallery wall in Trish Tillman’s exhibition of evocative sculpture at Asya Geisberg Gallery. ‘Dressed’ identically in red, teal, and blue stripes and ruched black leather, the anthropomorphized fashionistas shelter a slim yellow protuberance as alarming as a pharoah’s ureaeus.
Life revolves around interior décor in Margeaux Walter’s photos at Winston Wachter Gallery in Chelsea. Matching hair colors, clothing and food to the floor tiles, Walter asks if lifestyle dictates design or vice-versa. (On view through May 13th).
In an homage to the way that reading has shaped her view of the world, Diane Samuels’ ‘First Lines’ inscribes the first line of text from each of the over 1,700 titles in her personal library on the pieces of handmade paper that make up this stunningly detailed wall hanging. (At Pavel Zoubok Gallery in Chelsea through May 20th).
A horizon line made of charcoal surrounds visitors to Teresita Fernandez’s haunting installation of burnt and burning landscape at Lehmann Maupin Gallery on the Lower East Side. Though Fernandez has explained that she wants to question the reality of the ‘virgin’ landscape described by early European settlers in North America by pointing to existing slash and burn farming methods, this handsome installation tantalizingly offers many interpretations. (On view through May 20th).
A landscape is never just a beautiful view in Ori Gersht’s photographs. A past series pictured tranquil scenes not far from a former concentration camp; the more recent ‘Floating World’ images – shot in Kyoto’s formal gardens – play up the multi-layered meanings of meticulously planned spaces like this one by combining reflected and inverted images. (At CRG Gallery on the Lower East Side through May 21st).
Colorful patterns of birds, swirling handprints resembling flowers, floating bodies and looping text fill this small, intense painting by Mexico-based artist Domenico Zindato. Though isolated in triangular fields bounded by lettering, the small, anonymous characters shoot rays from their fingertips, making them pulse with energy. (At Andrew Edlin Gallery on the Lower East Side through June 4th).
A figure with a body made of rebar hunches over an iPad in Siebren Versteeg’s solo show at Bitforms Gallery, scrolling through social media, distributing ‘likes’ willy nilly. Just as a real body is not necessary to consume content, existing media is sufficient for making more art – on the walls, paintings made with software that mines Internet images mimic the form of Jay DeFeo’s famously massive ‘Rose’ painting, built up from years of accumulated paint. (At Bitforms Gallery on the Lower East Side through May 28th).
