Jung Eun Hye’s black and white conte crayon drawings of her dog Jiro, now on view at Ricco Maresca Gallery, are a testament to the artist’s appreciation of and love for an animal she rescued nine years ago. Jiro comes across as spunky, wise, laughing in various iterations. Jung enhances the dog’s vivacity with lively patterning and flowers and plant life that add interest to each composition. (On view in Chelsea through Feb 17th.)
Double-takes are the norm at James Welling’s show of recent photographs at David Zwirner Gallery as the iconic West coast artist continues to make images that take time to understand. In this photograph of rocks and the sea in Prouts Neck, Maine, printed in UV curable ink that adds to the images’ rich color, Welling recalls Winslow Homer’s and subsequently, John Marin’s paintings in this historic spot. The ocean is placid in Welling’s rendering but the overlaid patches of color that he adds create a visual disturbance that mimics the crashing waves and stormy surf that Homer captured. Interested in the patterning created as he cleaned off paint rollers on newspaper for another project, Welling started adding these ‘prints’ to his photos, altering areas of color to create complex images that emphasize the malleability of photography (On view in Chelsea through Feb 10th).
Swiss fiber artist Francoise Grossen moved her textiles moved off the loom in the ‘60s, creating bold and colorful sculpture that existed in three dimensions. This large piece from 1977 is a highlight of the Shah Garg Foundation’s first public exhibition of its museum-quality collection featuring over eighty artists. Abstract and constructed from manila rope, this sculpture was nevertheless inspired by functional objects including rope bridges, ship lines and the ancient Incan recording device, the quipu. On the wall beyond Grossen’s piece, a more contemporary textile-based work by Tau Lewis uses recycled fabric to form a head inspired by Yoruban mask drama. (On view through March 23rd in Chelsea, at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in Sept ‘24 and Kemper Art Museum, St Louis in Sept ’25).
Visitors to Chelsea’s FLAG Art Foundation encounter a wall of beautiful and colorful portraits by Billy Sullivan made over forty-five years at the entrance to FLAG’s hugely enjoyable group show ‘Friends and Lovers.’ Featuring work by over fifty artists and partly inspired by Alice Neel’s expressive portraits (the show includes her 1952 painting of her son, Hartley), the show is a hotbed of better and lesser-known talent and includes work by artists who have lately shown standout work in New York. Among many highlights are Jerrell Gibbs’ portrait of a dapper young man in a lively interior sitting before an image of Picasso’s iconic dove and Ruby Sky Stiler’s inclusive grouping of male, female and child models that exist in both 2-D and 3-D. (On view through Jan 20th).
Known for its outstanding collection of paintings from the Hudson River School, an early-to-mid 19th century movement that pictured the sublime in the landscape north of New York City, the New York Historical Society’s current exhibition ‘Kay WalkingStick / Hudson River School’ invites new perspectives on what is considered the first ‘American’ school of art. Kay WalkingStick, an artist of Cherokee descent, has for decades researched Native American histories in locations around the country, picturing specific landscapes overlaid with designs from local indigenous communities. Here, a Haudenosaunee pattern from the New York region indicates Native American presence in the landscape despite an absence of pictured people. The museum pairs WalkingStick’s depiction of Niagara with one foregrounding the power of the Falls by Louisa David Minot, one of the few female Hudson River artists, who referred to the scene as representative of conflict between Britain, the US and Native Americans around the War of 1812. (On view on the Upper West Side though April 14th).
