At age 92, just two years after his previous major multi-gallery solo show, Ellsworth Kelly is back at Matthew Marks’ Chelsea galleries (all four locations) with works so bold that a New Yorker critic was prompted to call this Kelly’s ‘all-time most thrilling gallery show.’ Here, an elegantly minimal blue shape could be a stylized arrow pointing upwards, the measure of an angle and much more. (Through June 20th).
Ellsworth Kelly, Blue Angle, painted aluminum, 90 x 150 x 4 1/8 inches, 2014.
Huge whispering heads with combined features of several people tower over visitors to Tony Oursler’s latest solo show at Lehmann Maupin’s Lower East Side space. Inspired by his wariness of facial recognition technology, Oursler creates hybrid faces composed not of a unified whole but of identifiable parts ready to be stored as info in a database. (Through June 14th).
Tony Oursler, CV (15), wood, LCD screens, inkjet print, sound, performed by Jason Scott Henderson and Joanna Smolenski, 106 x 71.5 x 30.5 inches, 2015.
Late Bay Area painter Joan Brown’s self-portrait at age 31 includes her dog and third husband (artist Gordon Cook) standing outside the San Francisco Opera House. Hovering on a sidewalk that recalls a conveyor belt and an inverted red carpet, Brown and her partner pause stiffly in an urban landscape curiously devoid of other people. (At George Adams Gallery in Chelsea).
Joan Brown, Gordon, Joan and Rufus in Front of S.F. Opera House, oil on canvas, 2 panels, 80 x 30 5/8 inches and 80 x 60 inches, 1969.
New York abstract painter Jacqueline Humphries imports the digital world into her latest paintings, bringing the painting surface in and out of focus with swirls of silver and purple and using overlays of dots to suggest ellipses or colons thereby signaling interrupted communication or expectation. (At GreeneNaftali in Chelsea through June 20th).
Jacqueline Humphries, :::, oil on linen, 100 x 111 inches, 2014.
Photos taken just last year on a road trip between Zurich and Tehran are the subject of Tehran born, Zurich-based artist Shirana Shahbazi’s solo show at LES gallery On Stellar Rays, but her printing technique (two-color lithography) and age-old scenery create timeless, captivating scenes. (Through June 14th).
Shirana Shahbazi, Wuste, two-color lithography on Zerkall Butten paper, 20 ¼ x 26 inches, 2014.