Italian artist Alighiero Boetti proved that conceptual art didn’t have to be visually dull with his Arazzi works – embroidered panels made by Afghan craftswomen in the 80s and 90s featuring Italian and Farsi text from poetry or sayings culled from around the world or authored by the artist. (At Chelsea’s Barbara Gladstone Gallery through March 23rd).
Alighiero Boetti, installation view of ‘La Forza del Centro,’ at Barbara Gladstone Gallery, Feb 2013.
To look at it, you’d never guess that Berlin-based Alicja Kwade’s miraculously curving wooden door was fashioned from a number of old doors cut up and seamlessly pieced together. The sculpture’s title, ‘Eadem Mutata Resurgo,’ or ‘I rise again, changed but the same,’ puts a weighty spin on Kwade’s clever reclamation of found materials but the piece nevertheless appears to be an almost magical portal into another world. (At Lisa Cooley through March 17th).
Alicja Kwade, Eadem Mutata Resurgo, wood, 2013.
Originally displayed in an outdoor exhibition by the avant-garde Gutai Art Association in 1956, a recreation of Mononaga Sadamasa’s ‘Work (Water)’ in polyethylene tubes filled with ink-colored water stretches across the Guggenheim Museum’s atrium to create elegant, hammock-like cradles for a valuable natural resource.
Motonaga Sadamasa, ‘Work (Water)’ installation view at the Guggenheim, ’56 (original), 2011.
Lisbon-based artist Jorge Queiroz barely allows a human figure to materialize in this psychologically intense painting, but his indistinct human presence turns the abstract shapes in the background into suggestions of places and objects of significance. (At Chelsea’s Sikkema Jenkins & Co through March 2nd).
Jorge Queiroz, Waiting on the Room, oil stick and vinyl ink on canvas, 2012.
Known for her meticulous drawings of cult-like, all-female communities engaged in mysterious tasks, Amy Cutler explores the individual identities of select characters in ‘Brood,’ her latest solo show at Leslie Tonkonow in Chelsea. Her subjects range from beatific to stern, with this Nordic blond character falling somewhere in between. (Through March 9th).
Amy Cutler, Magda, gouache on paper, 2011.
