Barb Choit at Rachel Uffner Gallery

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Barb Choit, Untitled Faded Beauty (NYPD #2), digital c-print, 2012.
Barb Choit, Untitled Faded Beauty (NYPD #2), digital c-print, 2012.

Faded posters of ‘fade’ hairdos headline Barb Choit’s latest solo show, ‘Fade Diary.’ Featuring non-professional models, they recall yearbook photos, anthropological studies and mug shots while documenting faded fashions.  In another photo, a model sporting a red glove echoes past styles while reflecting the present day NYC street in an image that has resonance with Lee Friedlander’s store-front photos currently uptown at Pace Gallery.  (At Rachel Uffner Gallery, Lower East Side through Dec 23rd.)

Barb Choit, Barbershop Fade #2, digital c-print, 2012.
Barb Choit, Barbershop Fade #2, digital c-print, 2012.

Pieter Schoolwerth at Miguel Abreu Gallery

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Pieter Schoolwerth, After Troy 6, oil acrylic, giclee print and oil pastel on canvas, 2012.
Pieter Schoolwerth, After Troy 6, oil acrylic, giclee print and oil pastel on canvas, 2012.

Painter Pieter Schoolwerth rewrites art history with a new series of paintings that remake 17th century French painter Simon Vouet’s 1635 ‘Aeneas and His Family Fleeing Troy.’  Here, Aeneas, his invalid father and his small son crowd into one dynamic figure (created from digital printout, drawn lines and thick areas of painting) in an urgent escape.  (At Miguel Abreu Gallery, Lower East Side, through Dec 22nd).

Chuck Close at Pace Prints, 57th Street

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Chuck Close, 'Mark/Felt Hand Stamp,' oil paint on paper, 2012.
Chuck Close, ‘Mark/Felt Hand Stamp,’ oil paint on paper, 2012.

Technique rather than subject matter (he’s painted portraits for over thirty years) drives interest in Chuck Close’s recent artwork.  For this remake of his iconic ‘Mark’ (’78-’79), Close layered gesso on the paper and screenprinted a grid.  Using a dowel with felt on the end, each square is hand stamped three times with different colors. Factor in a week’s drying time for each layer and it’s no wonder that edition of 40 is still being printed.  (At Pace Prints, 57th Street through Nov 21st.)

John Baldessari at Marian Goodman Gallery

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John Baldessari, Double Play: Never Swat a Fly, 2012.
John Baldessari, Double Play: Never Swat a Fly, 2012.

Conceptual artist John Baldessari pairs song lyrics with images abstracted from canonical paintings in his latest series of paintings.  The odd angle of this deer’s head gives its source away as an 1867 hunting scene by Gustave Courbet.  The hunt looks more comical than gruesome in Baldessari’s version, though on reflection maybe both deer and fly should be spared. (At Marian Goodman Gallery, 57th Street, through Nov 21).

Lee Friedlander, ‘Nudes’ at Pace Gallery

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Lee Friedlander, Nude, gelatin silver print, 1980.
Lee Friedlander, Nude, gelatin silver print, 1980.

John Szarkowski, MoMA’s photography director for nearly 30 years, called Lee Friedlander’s nude photos, “… the most unblinkingly, unreservedly candid descriptions of other people’s bodies that serious photography has produced.”  Pace Gallery proves his point with a show of photos from the late 70s to the early 90s that practically interrogate female bodies in their intensity.  (On 57th Street through Dec 22nd).