Mernet Larsen at James Cohan Gallery

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Fascinated for decades by Post-Impressionist artist Paul Cezanne, painter Mernet Larsen applies her own delightfully eccentric perspectival distortions to her French forebear’s iconic imagery in new work at James Cohan Gallery.  Larsen diversifies the cast of characters in ‘The Bathers (after Cezanne)’ adding bikinis to figures more robotic than robust and emphasizing artificiality in the human figures that replace Cezanne’s stabilizing triangle of trees in the original. A diving figure heading into flat waves akin to the slats in Japanese Bunraku puppet theater (which allow figures to move through water) and a woman to the left literally holding up the top of the painting add dynamism and complexity.  By alluding to Cezanne but shifting away from his focus and results, Larsen emphasizes the choices behind a painting’s design and nods to the many iconic painters who have moved beyond inspiration to find their own unique results.  (On view in Tribeca through March 16th).

Mernet Larsen, The Bathers (after Cezanne), acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 59 ¼ x 39 ½ inches, 2023.

Gerald Lovell at PPOW Gallery

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Tourist photos of Cala Deia in Mallorca tend to focus on the picturesque geometries of limestone houses rising on the island’s hills.  New York-based painter Gerald Lovell’s on-the-ground version of the age-old village at PPOW Gallery instead ushers viewers up a hilly street.  Embraced between a rocky outcrop on the right and the warm tan colors of the buildings on the left, greenery on one side and characteristic green shutters on the other, a pedestrian might feel the upward pull of the narrow lane toward more discoveries. Lovell’s current solo show features paintings of his friends as well as his recent travels and, he explains, celebrates the life he is getting to live.  (On view in Tribeca through March 9th).

Gerald Lovell, Portals (Cala Deia), oil on pastel, 60 x 48 inches, 2024.

Tuli Mekondjo at Hales Gallery

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Displaced as a child from her native Namibia, Windhoek-based artist Tuli Mekondjo considers her country’s past in textile and photo-based work now on view at Hales Gallery in Chelsea. This piece’s title, ‘Khaxatsus (Gibeon), 1863,’ refers to the original and the colonial names for the hometown of IKhowesin chief Hendrik Witbooi, who is recognized for his military action against German colonizers in the late 19th – early 20thcentury.  Posing in a photograph with his family and surrounded in a frame of lace at the center of this textile piece, Witbooi is pictured as family man as much as national hero.  (On view through March 9th).

Tuli Mekondjo, ‘Khaxatsus (Gibeon), 1863,’ image transfer, silk, linen, sheer fabric, cotton yarn, lace, tracing paper, soil, plants, and rusted enamel cup, 67 ½ x 50 x 2 inches, 2024.

Maureen Gallace at Gladstone Gallery

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Maureen Gallace’s signature small-sized oil paintings, now on view at Gladstone Gallery, are a welcome reprieve from February in New York, her renditions of bright yellow roadside flowers, the sun rising over Long Island Sound and crashing ocean waves promising that winter will eventually end.  Recent life changes find her living in a house by the beach in Connecticut where she takes account of her surroundings in paintings that isolate pleasurable impressions.  (On view through March 9th).

Maureen Gallace, Late August, oil on panel, 9 x 12 inches, 2023.

Thomas Hirschhorn at Gladstone Gallery

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Known for gallery-filling installations made of cardboard and packing tape, Paris-based artist Thomas Hirschhorn marshals these materials to transform Gladstone Gallery’s 21st Street location into a room resembling a destroyed command center or gaming parlor.  Titled ‘Fake it, Fake it – till you Fake it’ the gallery’s huge space houses rows of desks littered with cigarettes and coffee cups cut roughly from polystyrene and cardboard computers (some with smashed screens) featuring war-destroyed buildings from both real places and video games.  Hanging from lengths of packing tape, images of soldiers taken from video games populate the room’s aisles, their faces covered by emojis, which also hang like mobiles from the gallery ceiling.  Hirschhorn’s deliberately low-tech materials contrast the realistic imagery from the video game (seen in this photo on one screen) and disturbingly blur the line between real and fake. (On view in Chelsea through March 2nd).

Thomas Hirschhorn, installation view of ‘Fake it, Fake it – till you Fake it,’ cardboard, prints, tape, polystyrene, aluminum foil, dimensions variable, 2023.