Arranged on a long, low mound of gravel, Masaomi Yasunaga’s stone-infused ceramics at Lisson Gallery look as if they’ve been excavated from an ancient site. Allowing glaze, granite, slip and unrefined porcelain to fuse together in unexpected ways in his kiln, the Japanese sculptor invents a surface for his unconventional pieces that suggests natural forms built up over time. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 15th).
Amusingly excessive, Lindsay Lou Howard’s new ceramics at Launch F18 speak to overconsumption with a sense of humor and a lot of imagination. Here, ‘Plant Based’ offers nutrition to the worms still wriggling in the dirt (?) or fake meat (?) of this giant, 2-foot-tall sandwich. Other pieces in the show, including a lamp made of thick spaghetti in red sauce (interspersed with chocolate, veggies and a can of Sprite) and a sandwich holding a giant ‘Faberge’ egg between pieces of white bread, ask if we really ‘want it all.’ (On view in Tribeca through Oct 15th).
In the middle of Chelsea’s bustling Pace Gallery, it comes as a surprise to hear your own heartbeat filling the cavernous room housing Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s interactive installation ‘Pulse Topology.’ Placing your hand under one of three small monitor suspended from the ceiling not only broadcasts the sound of your heartbeat but translates it into flashing lights in one of thousands of lightbulbs suspended in an undulating pattern from the ceiling. Though essential to life, we often take our beating hearts for granted; making them the focus of an artwork not only flips interior functions to the exterior, it speaks to something visitors have in common. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 22nd).
Lima and Amsterdam-based artist Claudia Martinez Garay constructs a complex image of Peruvian culture and history by combining images sourced through different means. In a piece now on view in her solo show at Grimm Gallery in Tribeca, a winged hybrid creature and stepped geometries inside a flat-topped pyramidal form bring to mind Peruvian mythologies and architectures. In the foreground, academic drawings of native flora are mounted on aluminum, expanding representations of Peru into the gallery and into the realm of new understandings. (On view through Oct 15th).
Not many gallery exhibitions are outright funny, but Will Ryman’s latest sculpture at Chart Gallery is bound to have visitors chuckling. Chock-full of eccentric New York characters crafted roughly in what looks like clay (actually resin), the show includes a platform-shoe wearing senior citizen perched on an NYPD barrier and a couple of noodle-slurping Goths on a subway seat. Here, in a piece initially conceived of at the time of the sub-prime mortgage crisis in 2008, an exterminator scatters a crowd of mini businessmen. (On view in Tribeca through Oct 22nd).
