Kang Seok Ho at Tina Kim Gallery

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The short lag times between reading late artist Kang Seok Ho’s paintings at Tina Kim Gallery as abstractions and then understanding them as representations of the human body generates little thrills of discovery.  In this untitled painting, the energy of the bold floral pattern is overwhelming; a second later, two arms to either side resolve vivid leaf-like shapes into the pattern on a skirt, seen from behind.  Abstraction becomes decoration, fine art becomes fashion, and flatness turns into curving form in just seconds while reading this vibrant and monumental painting.  In selected paintings from c. 20 years at Tina Kim, radical cropping (Kang worked from photos he took or found in mass media sources) allowed the artist to zero in on bodies without faces, the better to put the focus on form over identity.  Inspired by Asian landscape painting, Kang connected his contemporary vision of life with histories of rendering the natural world, rooting observations of the now with enduring imagery from the past.  (On view through July 29th in Chelsea).

Kang Seok Ho, Untitled, oil on canvas, 92 ½ x 80 ¾ inches, 2005.

Eden Seifu at Deli Gallery

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Self-taught young Seattle-based painter Eden Seifu’s second solo show at Deli Gallery in Tribeca pits joy against terror in spiritually-oriented paintings brimming with energy.  In ‘Our Joined Hands Make a Landing Strip for Angels,’ a loving couple’s clasped hands create a pathway in the air on which tiny angels dance while ‘I Don’t Care if the Black Dog Gets Me’ pictures the horror of an attack on a young woman.  Here, the title figure in ‘The Angel of Pilgrimage’ holds a shell, a symbol for the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage in Spain, reminding viewers of the pathways on which we all, with more or less awareness, tread. (On view through July 21st).

Eden Seifu, The Angel of Pilgrimage, acrylic on canvas, 28 x 22 inches, 2023.

Lee Friedlander at Luhring Augustine Gallery

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From Boston to San Diego, Lee Friedlander’s black and white photos of urban landscapes turn mundane street scenes into extraordinary coincidences of arranged forms.  In Friedlander’s hands, any vertical object in the environment can bisect a scene into separate vignettes – people standing on the sidewalk as seen through car windows seem to occupy their own separate worlds while on this highway overpass in Dallas, a guardrail divides one location into two radically different places.  45 photos from Friedlander’s 60+ year career selected by filmmaker Joel Coen, now on view at Luhring Augustine Gallery, demonstrate Friedlander’s impressive ability to reframe our view of the world.  (On view through July 28th).

Lee Friedlander, Dallas, gelatin silver print, image 8 ½ x 12 ¾ inches, 1977, printed 2023.

Elizabeth Peyton in ‘Face Values’ at 125Newbury

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Marlene Dietrich simmers with irritation in a photo by Irvin Penn, the face of Georg Baselitz’s mother is both frightful and beautiful with purple, red and yellow color, and Piet Mondrian breaks his own profile down into a robot-like assemblage of flat planes in 125 Newbury’s absorbing group exhibition ‘Face Values’ in Tribeca.  From mechanical to emotive, around twenty visages from the 20th – 21st century employ a variety of techniques – from Zhang Huan’s ash on linen to Julian Schnabel’s broken crockery – to explore the expressive quality of the human face.  Here, Elizabeth Peyton’s portrait of John Lydon portrays the 70’s Sex Pistol’s singer in a thoughtful pose at odds with the punk’s public persona.  (On view in Tribeca through July 28th).

Elizabeth Peyton, John Lydon, oil on canvas, 1994.

Esteban Cabeza de Baca at Garth Greenan Gallery

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Queens-based artist Esteban Cabeza de Baca’s parents met while working as union organizers for United Farmworkers founders Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta; in Cabeza de Baca’s colorful narrative paintings at Garth Greenan Gallery in Chelsea, he pays homage to both family and labor history.  Here in ‘Huelga,’ or ‘Strike,’ Chavez and Huerta walk down a row of grapes, a reference to a nation-wide boycott of the fruit led by the duo as they fought for fair wages and decent working conditions for farm workers.  (On view through July 21st).

Esteban Cabeza de Baca, Huelga, acrylic on canvas, 72 x 72 inches, 2023.