Angel Otero at Lehmann Maupin Gallery

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Brooklyn-based artist Angel Otero adds towers of ceramic and steel to a selection of his trademark textured paintings created with oil skins in his latest body of work at Chelsea’s Lehmann Maupin Gallery. Lauded for suggesting ‘secrets unearthed,’ not ruins but ‘ideas to build on, models to live by,’ in a recent piece by The Village Voice’s Christian Viveros-Faune, Otero’s fired steel and glazed porcelain ‘Slot’ sculptures evidence a remarkable drive to alter his materials.  (Through Nov 2nd).   

Angel Otero, installation view, ‘Gates of Horn and Ivory’ at Lehmann Maupin Gallery, Sept, 2013.

Jonas Wood at Lever House Art Collection

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On the heels of a well-received show at Anton Kern Gallery, LA-based painter Jonas Wood presents giant plant paintings against a wallpaper of basketballs at Lever House this fall.  This juxtaposition of sports and plants (each of which has been sampled from another source, including his own earlier paintings) brings together two of Wood’s interests and pits a speedy sport against the slower pleasures of horticulture.  (At Lever House between 53rd and 54th Streets on Park Ave through Jan 4th).

Richard Serra at Gagosian Gallery

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Tonight is the public reception for Richard Serra’s most recent New York sculpture show at Gagosian’s 21st and 24th Street spaces in Chelsea.  Glimpses like this one of the installation, which has been ongoing since Sept at least, suggest that the exhibitions will be as impressive as ever.  (Through Jan 25th).

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In a radical departure from his monochromatic paintings created by teams of assistants from ash collected from Buddhist temples, Shanghai-based artist Zhang Huan has created a series of oil paintings from his own hand of skulls meant to represent Tibetan Death masks.  Titled ‘Poppy Fields,’ they at first resemble abstract swirls of bright color, which materialize into slightly cartoonish skulls on closer inspection. (At Pace Gallery, 534 West 25th Street, through Oct 26th).  

Zhang Huan, detail from the ‘Poppy Field’ series, oil on linen, 2011.

Ashley Bickerton at Lehmann Maupin Gallery

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Bali-based American artist Ashley Bickerton has long painted tropical paradise inhabited by corrupt, non-idyllic characters.  Now, his nubile female stock character has morphed into a brightly made-up crone with a snaking tongue and necklaces of trash.  As disturbing as she is, it’s a bold new direction for Bickerton, who ups the ante with even stronger contrasts between attraction and repulsion.  (At Lehmann Maupin’s Lower East Side space through Oct 26th).   

Ashley Bickerton, MV1, aluminum, oil and acrylic paint, hair, cement, 2013 (foreground).  Ashley Bickerton, m-DNA_eve1, oil and acrylic on digital print on wood, 2013 (background).