A pair of long white legs tiptoe toward a hanging curtain on the right side of Carolyn Salas’ laser-cut aluminum sculpture ‘Gone’ at The Hole as if making a quick and quiet exit. Behind, assorted disembodied heads, legs and vases suggest a crowded domestic environment from which our protagonist is slipping away to find her own space. (On view in Tribeca through Dec 31st).
Against a hazy, apocalyptic landscape, two conjoined heads rise from a spindly stalk of a neck in this painting by Glenn Brown at Chelsea’s Gagosian Gallery, their downward facing gazes suggesting the demure demeanor of women meant to be looked at. The noir-romantic landscape and the women’s postures and youthful European features are recognizable from western art history. But self-consciously constructed in individual brushstrokes of multicolored paint, they forgo the illusion of reality. Positioned half in shadow, half in light, one with a halo, one without, Brown both withholds and illuminates their identities in a way that suggests constant morphing. (On view in Chelsea through Dec 23rd).
Flowers, hair and a voluminous white dress obscure the features of the figure reclining across this densely patterned painting by Firelei Baez at James Cohan Gallery. The title refers to Olamina, the highly empathic fictional character imagined by sci-fi novelist Octavia Butler, but here, the figure seems unburdened by her gift or our gaze. Printed below the paint, on the canvas itself are numbers, a grid and a timeline that suggest the maps and documents that Baez frequently adopts and obscures as she brilliantly and flamboyantly asserts her own imagery over outmoded Euro-centric presentations of information. (On view in Tribeca through Dec 21st).
A pot of gold in this new painting by Kerry James Marshall symbolizes good fortune but rests near a skeleton’s arm, suggesting that someone’s luck has run out. Such contrast is at the heart of the artist’s new show, Exquisite Corpse, at Jack Shainman Gallery in Chelsea. Titled after the Surrealist game invented in the 1920s, each of the exhibition’s drawings and paintings are divided into three or four rectangular zones and appear to have been completed by separate individuals who had no knowledge of what was drawn or painted by the previous game participants. The conceit might seem humorous at first – Marshall winkingly signed his own name different ways and suggests that he’s playing a game in this series. But operating with no knowledge of the past can have implications if the stakes are higher than a fun time with friends. Beauty ideals, a (disappearing) house, or a pot of gold are mirage-like, unstable symbols, offering food for thought about contemporary life and perceptions. (On view through Dec 23rd).
A record number of monumental paintings are dominating Chelsea galleries this month; at just over thirty-seven feet long, Pat Steir’s ‘Blue River’ at Hauser & Wirth Gallery is one of the largest and most absorbing. Painted in 2005 and hung along more recent work, the gallery explains that the piece is intended to point viewers’ minds toward the vastness and power of the universe. Washes of blue and white running down the canvas suggest a waterfall while a red border to one side evokes a stage curtain, nodding to the fact that this extremely large rendition of a natural scene is filtered through human imagination. (On view through Dec 17th.)
