Charles Ray at The New Museum

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The premise is simple in Charles Ray’s iconic 1992-3 ‘Family Romance’ sculpture  – reduce a nuclear family to the height of its youngest member – but the resulting sculpture is disturbingly complex as it breaks taboos against nudity in the family and renders children in a decidedly uncute way.  It’s a standout in the New Museum’s provocative ‘NYC 1993’ show, featuring groundbreaking work created in/around 1993.  (Through May 27th).  

Charles Ray, Family Romance, painted fiberglass and synthetic hair, 1992-93.

Matthew Fisher at the New York Center for Art and Media Studies (NYCAMS)

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Matthew Fisher’s tidy waves look like carefully coiffured heads rising from the deeps and arranged in careful rows, like a school picture or choir rehearsal in the light of an apocalyptically weird sun.  (At Chelsea’s New York Center for Art and Media Studies through April 12th.)

Matthew Fisher

Andrew Masullo at Mary Boone Gallery

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Andrew Masullo prefers the term ‘stuff maker’ to ‘artist’ as a way of describing his practice.  Crowns, teeth, mountain ranges and more come to mind with this tiny 5×7 inch canvas with its zippy orange, ardent red and preppy pink/green color combo. (At Chelsea’s Mary Boone Gallery through April 27th.)  

Andrew Masullo, ‘5404,’ 5” x 7,” oil/canvas, 2011-12.

Adrien Ghenie at Pace Gallery

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Romanian artist Adrien Ghenie often paints historical figures from Hitler to Darwin, blotting out their features in aggressive smears of paint.  Here, a woman’s comfortable, bourgeois home-life comes under attack as the furniture appears to explode or dissolve into pools of paint as she sends a helpless glance heavenward. (At Pace Gallery’s 534 West 25th Street location through May 4th).  

Adrien Ghenie, Pie Fight Interior 8, oil on canvas, 2012.

Gert and Uwe Tobias at Team Gallery

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Transylvanian twins Gert & Uwe Tobias offer more of the large-scale woodblock prints that have earned them widespread recognition in recent years in their solo show at SoHo’s Team Gallery.  In this untitled piece, a daybed with a circular, saw-blade-like ornament may have felled the caped jester on the floor…the mystery is provocative. (Through March 30th).  

Untitled (GUT/2053), colored woodcut on canvas, 2012