Brooklyn-based artist Dave McDermott’s ‘The Purgatorial Moment (with Piano)’ evokes dread or nostalgia, depending on how your childhood music lessons went. Floating blocks of color and the slanting line of a player’s back suggest a zone of intense concentration in a tiny house filled with the effort of music making. (At the Lower East Side’s Thierry Goldberg Gallery through June 2nd).
Dave McDermott, ‘The Purgatorial Moment (with Piano), oil, canvas, wax, 23K gold, yarn on panel, 2013.
Amy Bessone’s pencil holder fists unite in vague protest in her current solo show at Salon94 Bowery on the Lower East Side. A nearby poster warns, ‘Don’t Truncate Me!’ Already truncated, the hands become resistance tchotchkes. (through June 14th).
Amy Bessone, installation view of ‘In the Green Room’ (foreground is ‘Number…(Numbers),’ ceramic, pencil, 2013).
Mark di Suvero’s huge new steel sculpture ‘Little Dancer’ at Chelsea’s Paula Cooper Gallery belies its title at 19 x 36 x 15 feet. Still, in comparison to the larger structure, spiraling forms hanging from the larger, angular structure are as graceful as tons of steel can get. (Through June 29th).
Mark di Suvero, Little Dancer, steel, 2010-12.
Mika Rottenberg’s acclaimed films evoke fascination and repulsion in equal measure as we watch eccentric characters labor to create ambiguous products in claustrophobic, factory-like settings. With jagged, candy-colored sheets of polyurethane resin propped against the wall at Chelsea’s Andrea Rosen Gallery, Rottenberg transforms her signature mix of sweet and grotesque into sculpture. (through June 22nd).
Mika Rottenberg, ‘Texture 1 & 3, Texture 2, part a, Texture 3 & 4,’ polyurethane resin, acrylic paint, installed dimensions variable, 2013.
Marianne Vitale’s ‘Diamond Crossing’ at Zach Feuer Gallery is one of the most minimal and therefore surprising installations in Chelsea right now and consists entirely of a five-ton section of decommissioned railroad track meeting in a junction. Like the burnt bridge and a bullet-riddled outhouse in her last show, it’s an iconic relic of the American landscape. (through June 15th).
Marianne Vitale, Diamond Crossing, steel, installation view, 2013.