The Museum of Modern Art recently rehung its contemporary art galleries, making room for an entire room of work by photography trailblazer Wolfgang Tillmans. It includes this recent experimental abstraction created by chemical processes in the darkroom and thirty iconic photos of European youth culture, displayed in a typically unconventional arrangement.
It’s easy to lose track of time while visiting galleries, but not at Chelsea’s Harris Lieberman Gallery, where Berlin-based artist Alicja Kwade amplifies the sound of eight pocket watches, hung from the gallery ceiling. This spare installation entices viewers to wander through chains and wires, analog and digital components that prompt consideration of our place in time and space. (Through Jan 12th.)
Ed Ruscha’s legendary artist book ‘Twentysix Gasoline Stations’ (1963) zeroed in on banal subject matter to question its importance in American culture. In his latest solo show at Gagosian Gallery’s 24th Street location, Ruscha continues to pursue both books and paintings in works like Gilded, Marbled and Foiled, a painting that considers this book as a physical object more than a means of communication. (Through Jan 12th.)
‘Fresh, direct and very much of this moment,’ is how the New York Times described Brooklyn artist Keltie Ferris’ show of large, digital-looking handmade oil and acrylic paintings at Chelsea’s Mitchell-Innes & Nash. Blurs of sprayed paint suggest a plane’s vapor trail while carefully painted pixel-like blocks of yellow-orange color lend the painting a jumpy energy. (Through Jan 12th.)
Danish painter Tal R translates the world into more vibrant colors in paintings which give everyday places a fairground appeal, albeit a slightly foreboding one. In ‘The Minute,’ the biomorphic shapes of the clouds suggest strange happenings while a dark corner looks like the folded corner of a book page. (At Chelsea’s Cheim & Read Gallery through January 12th.)