Geometry rules this painting by Toronto-based painter Veronika Pausova, who alludes to domestic environments by picturing curtains, cupboards and flower vases in still life paintings that are both tranquil and tense. This standout from her current show at Simone Subal Gallery, titled ‘Neighbour,’ suggests a nosy neighbor twitching her stylish curtains or the reverse – a neighbor tantalizingly out of our view. (On the Lower East Side through July 28th).
John Williams eschews the cutting edge by repurposing old technology, using overhead projectors to create a series of bold sculptures that recall the experimental quality of Man Ray’s photograms with an extra measure of playful inventiveness. Here, car parts affixed to the gallery wall become hair and a smile, a projected straw is a nose and a slinky funnels light upward into a bright white eye. The other eye must be winking at us as we share the joke. (At Brennan and Griffin on the Lower East Side through July 21st. )
The New York Academy of Art’s annual summer exhibition brings together a variety of artwork for sale at accessible prices – a rare proposition in Chelsea’s booming mega-gallery scene. Susan Siegel’s ‘Big Hair’ is a tiny painting at eight by eight inches, but it packs a humorous punch. Substituting a cow for one of the delicate creatures normally populating Baroque painting, Siegel subverts our pleasure in consuming images of excess. (At Flowers Gallery through July 15th).
New York painter Bennett Vadnais’ ‘House’ is a standout in George Billis Gallery’s summer group exhibition of cityscapes. Several of the show’s paintings zero in details of urban life – a water tower, a segment of a bridge – but Vadnais adds a focus on the passage of time by contrasting buildings from different eras. (On view in Chelsea through July 22nd ).
German painter Marcus Webber draws inspiration from odd moments experienced in daily street life; his paintings titled after public places, like ‘N-Platz (Nolli)’ include odd characters like the robed figures with triangular heads who attract a stare from a circular-headed shopper in the foreground. (In ‘Painting in due time’ at Thomas Erben Gallery in Chelsea through July 28th.)
Eva Lake’s small collages at Lower East Side gallery Frosh & Portman elegantly remix Egyptian and 20th century fashions in a strangely congruous merger of the ancient and modern. (On view through July 16th).
Buildings and monuments in the U.S. capital inspired Rotterdam & Benin-based artist Meschac Gaba’s latest synthetic-hair sculptures. Including (right to left) the White House, the U.S. Capitol and St John Episcopal Church, the sculptures represent a merger of African craft and sites of power. (On view at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery through July 28th).
Part of ‘Dream Machines,’ an exhibition that ponders how in daily life, ‘the real and imaginary cease to be contradictory,’ Mernet Larsen’s surreal ‘Sunday Drive’ is both plausible and impossible at once. Her orange-toned factory fresh figures are perfect but creepy, giving viewers pause to reconsider the serendipity of an American tradition. (At James Cohan Gallery’s Chelsea location through July 28th).
Six hundred binders hold plastic sleeves filled with studio waste in a huge installation of books and other material created by Dieter Roth and his son and collaborator, Bjorn Roth currently at Hauser & Wirth Gallery in Chelsea. Every piece of trash less than 5mm thick found its way into a binder in the years 1975-76, resulting in a portrait of the artist told through postcards, cigarette butts, packaging and more. ‘The worse it looks, the better,’ Roth noted on one binder. (On view through July 29th).
The canvas barely manages to contain an angled view of a screened window by painter Susan Lichtman, reflecting an outdoor scene from her Massachusetts home. With one window panel opening toward viewers, the painting appears to project itself into Steven Harvey Fine Art Project’s narrow gallery space, an arresting and dynamic move that belies an apparently tranquil domestic scene. (On the Lower East Side through July 15th).
Though abstract, Joanna Pousette-Dart’s paintings are inspired by landscapes she has experienced in her travels to New Mexico. In this new piece created for Lisson Gallery’s summer survey of select abstract painting, the bright light of day fades to dark night in a progression of curving canvases. (On view in Lisson Gallery’s 10th Avenue location through August 11th).
Bold color and abundant detail prompt Heller Gallery to compare master glassmaker and artist Lino Tagliapietra’s pieces to a mini-fireworks display. This vibrant vessel demonstrates many of the techniques that Tagliapietra used as a glassmaker in Murano and which he has generously shared in his world-wide travels. (At Heller Gallery in Chelsea through August 11th).
From huge charcoal drawings to weighty bronzes, Robert Longo has returned to images of the U.S. flag throughout his career in an on-going exploration of power and politics. Here, the mirrored surface of this flag makes viewers part of an object and a symbol. (At Metro Pictures Gallery in Chelsea through August 4th).
The bottom is about to fall out of 303 Gallery, or so it seems to judge by Ceal Floyer’s ‘Saw,’ a blade projecting from the gallery floor by a painted black circular line. With the menace of a shark’s protruding dorsal fin and a comedic quality of a Wile E Coyote blunder, the sculpture begs the question of what will surface. (On view in Chelsea through July 14th).
Famed art dealer Betty Parsons never gave up on her own artistic practice; this piece from her later years references Native American art, referring in its title to the Oglala Lakota. Created from driftwood she scavenged from the beach near her Long Island home, this colorful organic abstraction demonstrates her interest in mysticism that takes us beyond the every day realm. (At Alexander Gray Associates in Chelsea through July 14th).
These three dynamically twisting wooden seat sculptures by Wendell Castle come from a series titled Free Form, a musical reference that speaks to the artist’s & musician’s life-long interest. Though their solid forms are weighty, they appear to twist like a quick-growing vine. (On view at Friedman Benda through August 11th).
Jenny Snider’s small shaped painting of a car is a standout in Edward Thorp Gallery’s summer group show, its rounded corners and many planes suggesting a cartoonish vehicle with zany passengers taking an unconventional ride. (In Chelsea through July 29th).
How much can a human face tell us? Young Columbian artist Cristina Camacho’s sliced canvases first look like geometric abstraction, then resolve into portraits that hint at humanity or the digital visage of an intriguing but radically strange creature. (At Praxis International Art in Chelsea through July 8th).
Seven hallucinogenic mushroom replica spin like a model of the solar system in Carsten Holler’s ‘Flying Mushrooms’ sculpture at Gagosian Gallery, pointing to out-of-body experience, experienced in person in the gallery. Holler’s first show since 2011 (when he installed a slide and sensory deprivation chambers at the New Museum), this interactive exhibition is sure to be another crowd pleaser. (On view on 24th Street in Chelsea through August 8th).
Vintage color slides are the basis for Isca Greenfield-Sanders’ light infused beach scenes. Impossibly bright, they document a day by the water and suggest sunny memories. (At Ameringer McEnery Yohe in Chelsea through July 1st).
Swedish artist Joakim Ojanen’s odd ceramic heads resemble gourds and various animals, in this case, a bird. The creatures formerly manifest themselves in two dimensions as drawings. Now in the round, they allow Ojanen’s strange vision to inhabit space with us. (On view at The Hole on the Lower East Side through July 7th).
Richard Artschwager’s two-foot tall wooden exclamation point – which shapes artistic language out of the forms of language itself – adds a note of excitement to Jane Lombard Gallery’s summer group show. (On view in Chelsea through July 28th).
Nahum Tevet’s wall mounted sculptures are small-scale but full of action, a workout for the eye. Frames, furniture and machines come to mind amid patterning that recalls mid-century abstraction, cut outs that recall typography, colors that shout and mirroring that makes every element repeat. (At James Cohan Gallery’s Lower East Side location through July 28th).
After serving in the Naval Aviation Photographic Unit during WWII, Fons Iannelli returned to the States to establish a successful career photographing for McCall’s, Life, Fortune and other magazines. Alongside striking images of naval life, and later photos of efficient housewives shot for commercial purposes, Iannelli’s scenes from his 1946 Kentucky Coal Miner series, now on view at Chelsea’s Steven Kasher Gallery reveal the difficult circumstances of family life in the mining community. (On view through August 11th).
How do you make representational painting in the digital age, when bodies no longer have to be near each other to interact? Pieter Schoolwerth ponders this in a multi-step process that involves photographing figures and shadows, drawing them, altering them in the computer, creating them in foam core or wood and printing and painting on canvas. The resulting images are convincingly attractive but unsatisfying – in this enigmatic relief sculpture depicting a student center, various figures are together but don’t connect. (At Miguel Abreu Gallery on the Lower East Side through June 28th).
New paintings made in New York and North Carolina feature spring blossoms and mobile homes in Verne Dawson’s current show at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise. In the foreground of this bucolic but blighted landscape, Dawson portrays a pastoral scene of women bathing and gathering water, not from a sylvan spring but from a ditch. (At Gavin Brown’s Enterprise on the Lower East Side through June 24th).
Though the pool is enticing, this isn’t a tranquil summer scene. Eric Fischl’s ‘Daddy’s Gone, Girl’ suggests that the woman in the voluminous black dress is in mourning for an absent father and maybe a little unmoored. As an update on Fischl’s well-known 1984 painting Daddy’s Girl, it’s a meditation on loss and isolation. (At Skarstedt’s Chelsea location through June 24th).
Roxy Paine’s three new dioramas at Paul Kasmin Gallery continue the artist’s interest in systems of control. Here, a view into a view into a hotel room alludes to the CIA’s experiments in administering LSD to unsuspecting civilians in the 1950s. The meticulously crafted scene illustrates a shocking invasion of privacy and personal well-being. (On view in Chelsea through July 1st).
Subway advertising boards, scraped free of ads before being recovered by new posters, continue to inspire Wyatt Gallery’s ongoing photo series, ‘Subtext.’ In the latest work, he considers his images as portals to more tranquil, meditative environments than the train platform. (On view at Foley Gallery on the Lower East Side through June 25th).
Nicola Lopez mixes interior and exterior walls, façade and skeleton in her bold installation at Jacob Lewis Gallery in Chelsea. Titled ‘Big Windows: Skin: Portals’ Lopez questions the impenetrable quality of anonymous modern glass wall architecture, mounting woodcuts on normally hidden metal studs that support interior walls. (On view through June 30th).
Four hands repeat a gesture with multiple interpretations in the roughly woven lattice of Athansios Argianas’ bright, electroformed copper wall sculpture at On Stellar Rays. Interpretable as OK, perfection (if kissed by the lips), zero or something ruder, the sign is enhanced by a long title that suggests that seeing is as changeable as the sea. (On view on the Lower East Side through June 25th).
Anne Neukamp’s post-analogue paintings picture office tools in large-scale, graphically simple images that look as if they’ve been composed in digital space, yet are manifest before us in oil, tempera and linen. Titled ‘Morsel,’ this tantalizing icon offers a puzzle piece and a mystery envelope, dangling meaning in front of viewers. (At Chelsea’s Marlborough Contemporary through June 24th).
From the front, Ryan Johnson’s ‘Driver’ looks like a single, solid disk. From the side, the form becomes a steering wheel and a driver materializes, instantly morphing the sculpture from a mysterious biomorphic abstraction into an everyday scenario. Johnson’s sense of humor also comes across in his stylized ‘mother’ at rear, a stylized caryatid whose belly makes her all the more dramatic. (At Nicelle Beauchene Gallery through June 25th).
Organic shapes snake around and into a wooden box in this work by Brazilian artist Maria Nepomuceno, suggesting that whatever is inside cannot be contained. A trumpet-like ceramic form introduces the idea of broadcasting sound, offering the possibility that an unheard song might further animate this alluring organism. (At Sikkema Jenkins & Co through June 30th).
Round the corner into Metro Pictures smaller back gallery and suddenly you’re in the valley of an enormous wave, dwarfed by a ominous black swell that prompts terror even on dry land. The scene is the highlight of Robert Longo’s show of huge, charcoal drawings, a body of work that pictures refugees, CIA prisoners and Ferguson protesting football players in a tour de force of contemporary conflict. (On view in Chelsea through June 17th).
Charles Harlan’s artwork happens at the meeting place of man-made and natural objects, so it comes as no surprise to see him engage repeatedly with boats. For his current show at JTT Gallery on the Lower East Side, Harlan disassembled a boat belonging to a late family member of JTT Gallery owner Jasmine Tsou, turning it into two objects that evidence the effects of time and nature on a once-cherished object. (On view through June 17th).
A cherry pie, a smashed chocolate bunny and this giant piece of cake by Peter Anton are highlights of an asylum for sweet-lovers created by the artist in Chelsea’s Unix Gallery. A response to the idea that the American addiction to sugar borders on the insane, Anton’s super-sized sculptures push the idea to extremes, prompting visceral reactions so much sweetness. (On view through June 17th).
David Kennedy Cutler pushes the idea of self-display by putting a scanned and printed effigy of himself in a vitrine in his latest solo show at Derek Eller Gallery. Wearing one of his signature plaid shirts, further enhanced by a kale and bread pattern, Kennedy Cutler refers to his role as consumer as the audience consumes his artwork. (On view on the Lower East Side through June 25th).
Guy Goodwin’s large paintings on cardboard forms are among the most unusual and enticing in New York galleries now. Projecting over a foot from the gallery wall, they’re cross between painting and sculpture that the artist likens to a ‘plush booth’ where a visitor might rest and contemplate. (At Brennan and Griffin on the Lower East Side through June 18th).
Marinaro Gallery’s huge 2nd floor windows invite glimpses from the street of the artwork inside; upstairs on the gallery wall, Ridley Howard occupies a similar vantage point in ‘Over the Star’ as he portrays two women with guarded postures laughing together. Awkward or intimate, their joke is irresistible, inviting us to keep watching. (At Marinaro Gallery on the Lower East Side through June 18th).
Leo Villareal’s light sculptures have transformed the San Francisco Bay Bridge, the walkway between buildings at DC’s National Gallery and many other high profile sites. On a smaller scale but with no less mesmerizing impact, Villareal has transformed Pace Gallery’s 24th Street location with hanging stainless steel bars displaying an ever-changing combination of LED lights. (On view through June 17th).
This comically alarmed puffer fish is apparently startled by the empathy of an unnamed individual; in a thought bubble, the fish remarks that ‘his great melancholy eyes swim in a mist of commiseration.’ As comment on warming seas and endangered wildlife, the painting pits emotion vs action. (At David Zwirner Gallery’s 519 West 19th Street location).
The heart of Anselm Kiefer’s latest exhibition at Gagosian Gallery is a series of large-scale handmade books crafted from cardboard covered in plaster and painted with watercolor. Titled ‘Walpurgia,’ after an 8th century English nun, this lush, flesh-colored rendering of flowers echoes the erotic nature of the new paintings. Though the subject matter seems like a departure for Kiefer, it continues work begun in the 70s for which he merged the landscape and female bodies. (At Gagosian Gallery’s 21st Street location through July 14th).
From amid sweeping and energetic forms in Ali Banisadr’s painting ‘Myth’ emerge odd faces that suggest a camel (upper left) a clown with a tall, spotted cap (middle left) and a cast of slightly sinister characters. The Iranian born, NY-based artist explained that the paintings in his current show at Sperone Westwater Gallery were inspired by politics in the US; he suggests both mass migration and a barbed wire fence in the sky and a mass of menacing figures in the foreground. (On the Lower East Side through June 24th.)
Displayed on a lightbox, Canadian artist Rodney Graham’s staged photographs are enticing, glowing portals into the past. In this unlikely scenario, a jazz drummer from yesteryear uses his kit as a table for a traditional meal of Salisbury Steak. (At 303 Gallery in Chelsea through June 2nd).
From wood to polycarbonate and from the Whitney’s outdoor sculpture terrace to the museum’s gift shop, Frank Stella is bent on examining star shapes in endless materials and sizes. At Marianne Boesky Gallery in Chelsea, this ‘Corian Star’ is in the medium size range for Stella (at just under four feet tall), but its color scheme and unlikely material makes it an immediate draw. (On view through June 17th).
A swirling, starry sky crafted from braided electrical wire hovers over a curving organic landscape made from keyboard keys in this detail from Ethiopian artist Elias Sime’s collaged wall panel at James Cohan Gallery. Abstract yet suggestive of a landscape, this piece is testament to the resourcefulness of turning manmade objects – discarded electronics – into objects recalling natural beauty. (On view at James Cohan Gallery’s Chelsea location through June 17th).
New media artist Jim Campbell is known for deliberately low-res projections of crowds and individuals in movement. The focus of his current solo show at Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery – images and video from January’s Women’s March in DC – is serendipitous subject matter for the artist. In this layering of still images on a lightbox, many people (and metaphorically, points of view) come together to suggest a mass action. (At Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery in Chelsea through June 17th).
Chelsea’s skyline – dotted with construction cranes – is a constant reminder of how much the neighborhood and city is transforming; for an even more eye-popping view of how much the city has changed, visit legendary street photographer Martha Cooper’s photos at Steven Kasher Gallery from the 80s. Here, Cooper captures a two-car painting by Duster Lizzie that demonstrates how transgressive ambition changed the landscape of New York. (At Steven Kasher Gallery in Chelsea through June 3rd).
Man meets nature in this bronze sculpture by Deborah Butterfield, who has cast wood and marine debris collected from the Gulf of Alaska into one of her signature, horse sculptures. Butterfield’s sensitive renderings of horses bring us closer to the natural world; here, they poignantly speak to nature’s endurance in the face of environmental degradation. (At Danese Corey Gallery in Chelsea through June 23rd).
How much can a line graph really tell you about the world? Canadian artist duo Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens offer a tongue-in-cheek response to this question and the quest to present data in graphical form with sculptures like this one, that aims to illustrate ‘one man’s progress learning paths of least waste.’ (At Jane Lombard Gallery through May 26th).
Body-building and fashion magazines provide the material for Dominique Paul’s riotous collages of hybrid humans and altered insects. Using 17th and 18th century illustrations of plants and insects by artist Maria Merian as a framework, Paul mixes old and new in a bizarre but intriguing microcosm. (At Miyako Yoshinaga Gallery through May 27th).
Long strands of clear and white plastic beads by late artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres are an austere version of the usually colorful plastic beading hung in homes. Here in the huge, Spartan spaces of David Zwirner Gallery (which marks joint representation of the artist with Andrea Rosen Gallery with this show), the curtain has the sobering effect intended, heightening our awareness of passing from one state to another. (On 20th Street in Chelsea through June 24th).
A devotional sculpture of Mary melds with the body of an anonymous girl in this provocative sculpture by northern Italian artist Gehard Demetz. Though each figure looks fragmented, the merger seems neither violent nor ecstatic (along the lines of Bernini’s Saint Teresa.) Instead, the girl is absorbed by the inner life shared with the saint. (At Jack Shainman Gallery through June 3rd).
Roni Horn once said that glass can convey ‘the most ideal expression of color.’ In two same-but-different cast-glass sculptures at Chelsea’s Hauser & Wirth Gallery, a tranquil, blue form immediately invites visitors to draw near and marvel at the reflections of light on the water-like surface of a substance that is neither fully liquid nor solid. (On view through July 29th).
After his recent travels to Central and South America, Berlin-based artist Julius von Bismarck returned with study specimens in the form of dried plants and a snake that have been heated in a huge, custom-built oven and flattened in a 50-ton hydraulic press. Backed on shaped stainless steel, the tongue-in-cheek souvenirs present botanical investigation as art. (On view in Chelsea at Marlborough Contemporary through May 20th).
Working from his own detailed photographs, Chinese artist Xiaoze Xie, transforms images of books on dusty library shelves into atmospherically lit bridges to the past. Oil paintings from his latest solo show at Chambers Fine Art in Chelsea include this New Testament translation from Oxford University, wrapped volumes from Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu and tomes from the Morgan Library in New York. (On view through June 17th).
Walead Beshty’s exhibition at Petzel Gallery opens like a revenge drama on uncooperative office equipment, with this sculpture composed of a monitor, skewered by a steel pole and spewing out its interior components. Rather than commenting on frustration or alienation with technology, however, Beshty’s piece expresses his ongoing interest in exposing behind-the-scenes aspects of conceiving of, creating and displaying art. (On view through June 17th).
Iconic Brazilian Neo-Concretist Lygia Clark explored the experience of space in both two and three dimensions, in paintings and her famous bicho (critter) sculptures that could be handled and manipulated. At Luhring Augustine Gallery in Chelsea, 2-D pieces, like this study for a modulated surface, suggests the organic world with tones that allude to earth and sky. (On view through June 17th).
Rachel Harrison’s latest solo show at Greene Naftali Gallery seems to step away from the overt politics of her most recent shows, instead questioning the value and role of art (as presented in an imagined conversation between several famous artworks featured in a gallery handout). In this piece, what appears to be a bald eagle in a bandana is held at gunpoint, a symbol of power reduced to a captive state as the color of money dominates. (In Chelsea through Jun 17th).
Brooklyn performer, writer and sculptor Lee Relvas offers tantalizing fragments of figures in her first solo show at Callicoon Fine Arts, enticing her audience into trying to grasp who and what is being portrayed. In the front, a sculpture titled ‘Deciding’ wears a friar’s belted robe, a twisting figure at rear is ‘Thinking,’ and a reticent woman is ‘Withholding.’ (On the Lower East Side through May 21st.)
In this boldly textured, late-career work by the Spanish artist Josep Grau-Garriga, soothing blue color and thick nautical-like rope recall the sea. Part of a handsome exhibition that presents work from the last forty years of the artist’s life, including early work evoking political violence, this piece evokes summons both the tranquility of the beach and excitement of the sea. (At Salon94 Bowery on the Lower East Side through June 3rd).
After WWII, Todd Webb moved to New York City and took to the streets, enthusiastically documenting the eccentricities of the everyday – from quirky storefronts to colorful characters. (On view in Chelsea at The Curator Gallery through May 20th).
Two teardrop shapes stand side-by-side on the gallery wall in Trish Tillman’s exhibition of evocative sculpture at Asya Geisberg Gallery. ‘Dressed’ identically in red, teal, and blue stripes and ruched black leather, the anthropomorphized fashionistas shelter a slim yellow protuberance as alarming as a pharoah’s ureaeus.
Life revolves around interior décor in Margeaux Walter’s photos at Winston Wachter Gallery in Chelsea. Matching hair colors, clothing and food to the floor tiles, Walter asks if lifestyle dictates design or vice-versa. (On view through May 13th).
In an homage to the way that reading has shaped her view of the world, Diane Samuels’ ‘First Lines’ inscribes the first line of text from each of the over 1,700 titles in her personal library on the pieces of handmade paper that make up this stunningly detailed wall hanging. (At Pavel Zoubok Gallery in Chelsea through May 20th).
A horizon line made of charcoal surrounds visitors to Teresita Fernandez’s haunting installation of burnt and burning landscape at Lehmann Maupin Gallery on the Lower East Side. Though Fernandez has explained that she wants to question the reality of the ‘virgin’ landscape described by early European settlers in North America by pointing to existing slash and burn farming methods, this handsome installation tantalizingly offers many interpretations. (On view through May 20th).
A landscape is never just a beautiful view in Ori Gersht’s photographs. A past series pictured tranquil scenes not far from a former concentration camp; the more recent ‘Floating World’ images – shot in Kyoto’s formal gardens – play up the multi-layered meanings of meticulously planned spaces like this one by combining reflected and inverted images. (At CRG Gallery on the Lower East Side through May 21st).
Colorful patterns of birds, swirling handprints resembling flowers, floating bodies and looping text fill this small, intense painting by Mexico-based artist Domenico Zindato. Though isolated in triangular fields bounded by lettering, the small, anonymous characters shoot rays from their fingertips, making them pulse with energy. (At Andrew Edlin Gallery on the Lower East Side through June 4th).
A figure with a body made of rebar hunches over an iPad in Siebren Versteeg’s solo show at Bitforms Gallery, scrolling through social media, distributing ‘likes’ willy nilly. Just as a real body is not necessary to consume content, existing media is sufficient for making more art – on the walls, paintings made with software that mines Internet images mimic the form of Jay DeFeo’s famously massive ‘Rose’ painting, built up from years of accumulated paint. (At Bitforms Gallery on the Lower East Side through May 28th).
A stack of imposing, black steel frames by abstract painter Sean Scully fills the atrium-like space of Cheim & Read’s small side gallery – the first piece encountered when entering the show. By contrast, ‘Colored Stacked Frames,’ (seen here) in the furthest gallery radically alters the somber mood of the show, injecting vibrant color into Scully’s normally restrained palette. (In Chelsea through May 20th).
Dominated by dominoes and colorful concentric circles with a cent sign at the middle, this painting by Mission School artist Chris Johanson suggests that life is a game, with cents and/or sense at the center. Scenes from everyday life – a bedroom, a suburban storefront – look like they could easily disintegrate into the surrounding abstraction at any moment. (At Mitchell-Innes and Nash in Chelsea through May 13th).
CGI and hand painting merge in Matthew Stone’s uncanny portrait. Part of The Hole Gallery’s ‘Post-Analog Painting II’ show, this image questions to what extent painting is influenced by the digital. (On view on the Lower East Side through May 14th).
Dawn Clements isn’t bothered about artful arrangement of the still life objects she paints, yet each object’s deliberately placement gives them all equal weight, from a smiley face made of fruits and a banana, to lip balm, rubber bands and a small belt buckle. (At Pierogi Gallery on the Lower East Side through May 7th).
Known for his meticulously hand-rendered small sculptures that allude to objects without resolving into specific things, Matt Hoyt again reveals a body of work at Bureau, Inc. that resembles unexplained archaeological finds. This untitled stand-alone piece suggests Rorschach tests, a pelvic-bone or vertebra, without closely resembling any of these. (At Bureau, Inc. on the Lower East Side through April 30th).
At the end of Romare Bearden’s ‘Bayou Fever,’ a 1979 ballet storyboarded by the artist but never performed, all problems are resolved and ‘The Emperor of the Golden Trumpet’ plays for the characters as they travel to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. One of twenty-one panels, this artwork demonstrates Bearden’s wonderful storytelling capacity and facility with collage. (At DC Moore Gallery through April 29th).
Though Yoshitomo Nara’s new work at Pace Gallery is based on traditional Japanese vessel forms, the new ceramic works continue Nara’s practice of tapping into contemporary youth cultures. Whether disaffected or conformist, Nara’s young characters are less the free spirits they normally are; as portly jugs, they come across as more contained. (At Pace Gallery’s 25th Street location through April 29th).
This painting is from the MoMA series, but it’s never been in the Museum of Modern Art. Instead, this piece of rogue modernism is a remake of Van Gogh’s famous Starry Night, painted by Chinese artist and provocateur Shen Shaomin to look as if it’s covered in bubble wrap. Even the packing tape is painted, not just trying to impress as trompe l’oeil, but suggesting that famous paintings are just another commodity. (At Klein Sun Gallery in Chelsea through April 29th).
A tent of wet cement appears to either disgorge or swallow a lush spill of mosses in Brazilian artist Thiago Rocha Pitta’s ‘The First Green,’ an installation at Marianne Boesky Gallery in Chelsea. Though the scene appears to be a static standoff between the survival of man or nature, Rocha Pitta avoids thinking in binaries. On the wall, frescos resemble ancient microorganisms performing photosynthesis, producing oxygen, and continuing a process that has gone on for billions of years. (On view through April 29th).
Jackie Saccoccio tilts and shifts her canvas while pouring paint to create a grid of drips; in her latest work, the grid both dominates the paintings and disintegrates in vibrant, explosive colors. (At 11R on the Lower East Side through April 30th).
Why do we collect objects? Whether it’s art, fossils or shoes, Allan McCollum suggests that we’re looking to fulfill greater needs. In this piece from 1991, currently on view at Mary Boone Gallery’s 24th Street location, McCollum presents cast copies of original bones from the Carnegie Museum, begging the question of what their collection and display means for human history. (On view through April 29th).
Leidy Churchman’s carefully arranged giraffes in the group exhibition ‘Sputterances’ at Metro Pictures categorize nature into manageable options, here, small, medium and large. Titled ‘Free Delivery,’ the painting equates the animals with product consumption, coincidently offering a provocative comment on the huge on-line audience that watched April the giraffe give birth to a calf in an upstate animal park in recent weeks. (In Chelsea through April 22nd).
The skin, shirt and vest of the man in this portrait by Toyin Odutola are alive with pattern, a foil to the quiet interior in which he stands and a suggestion of busy thoughts. Looking out into the light coming from outdoors, he’s privy to a vision from outside that we can’t yet see. (In ‘Vanishing Points’ at James Cohan Gallery through April 22nd).
‘Dazzle painting’ is an apt and humorous term used by New York artist Jane Hammond to describe her glittery paintings on mica sheets, which are arranged over reflective materials to catch the light. Featuring images from yesteryear, Hammond’s work literally burnishes memories. (At Chelsea’s Galerie Lelong through April 22nd).
Though the central figure of Sedrick Huckaby’s genre-bending painting/sculpture ‘Frederick’s Family’ is surrounded by relatives, their crossed arms and stony looks suggest deep discord. With downcast eyes and drab-colored clothing, Frederick begs the question of what went wrong and how things are to continue. (At Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects on the Lower East Side through April 23rd).
Color appears to move and shift, sometimes without the constraints of form in Scott Olson’s new oil paintings at James Cohan Gallery on the Lower East Side. Recalling Umberto Boccioni without the urgency or Robert Delaunay with less defined geometry, Olson channels early 20th century experiments in abstraction with subtle nods to the organic world and a palette that alternatively soothes and excites. (On view through April 23rd).
Olafur Eliasson introduces his latest exhibition at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery as political commentary with ‘The listening dimension,’ an installation of mirrored surfaces that invite personal reflection on the complexities of life. By creating an environment that gives viewers pause to consider an unusual space, Eliasson hopes to combat ‘oversimplification’ in the political realm and beyond. (In Chelsea through April 22nd).
This oil on canvas rabbit from 1968 by Pop painter Don Nice shares wall space with a muffin and a chocolate glazed donut at Allan Stone Projects, but at almost four feet high, dare not be considered as dinner. Instead, like a nearby duck or a careful watercolor rendering of an onion, its isolation on the canvas is a bold statement of the here and now. (In Chelsea through April 22nd).
Battery-studded forms resembling swaying kelp make for an enchantingly weird sculpture by Evan Holloway at Paula Cooper Gallery in Chelsea. Behind, a modernist-looking looping sculpture is a huge support for a tiny burning stick of incense. Unusual and unexpected, Holloway’s new sculpture engages the eye and the mind. (On view through April 22nd).
Alice Neel’s striking 1950 portrait of African-American playwright and actress Alice Childress portrays the writer as alert witness gazing from an uptown apartment window on life below. A red hat, blue dress and yellow flowers pack a visual punch, turning this otherwise sedate interior scene into a testimony to Childress’ lively powers of observation. (At David Zwirner Gallery’s 19th Street location through April 22nd).
The oldest and tallest tree in New York inspired Rachel Owens’ installation ‘Mother,’ for which she visited a Queens park to take casts of a c. 400 year old plant that may pre-date European settlement. Recreated in broken glass cast in resin, Owens marshals the vibrant colors of man-made materials to celebrate a remarkable survivor. (On view at Zieher Smith in Chelsea through April 15th).
This huge clown by Italian designer Gaetano Pesce dominates Salon94’s lively new venture, Salon94 Design, promising good things to come. (On the Lower East Side through April 15th).
A rosebush and clusters of rebar suggest beauty and a nascent building project in Cuban-born artist Enrique Martinez Celaya’s ‘The Brave.’ The text at top reads, ‘…a dream that can keep us asleep all night,’ compounding the surreal quality of this simultaneously barren and lush scenario. (At Jack Shainman Gallery in Chelsea through April 22nd.)
Who she is or what she’s fighting for is unclear in young Munich-based artist Leonard Hurzlmeier’s ‘Rebellion,’ but it’s obvious that the subject is moving forward apace. Hurzlmeier’s bold paintings find fun in full-bodied female figures who engage the world head-on. (At Rachel Uffner Gallery on the Lower East Side through April 23rd).
Marble moves in surprising directions in UK artist Kevin Francis Gray’s new sculpture, first executed in clay in London and then hand-carved with a team of master sculptors in Italy. Now at Pace Gallery in Chelsea, Gray’s seated nude bears abundant evidence of the artist’s hand and his desire to arrest a state of unfinish, perhaps destruction. (On view at Pace Gallery’s 24th Street address through April 22nd).
New York painter Jennifer Coates conflates consumption of art and food in new paintings featuring donuts, bagels, TV dinners and more. At center, this towering stack of pasta, cheese and sauce melts into an abstract painting evoking bubbling lava or a swirling face, playfully signaling the fetishistic power of food. (At Freight and Volume Gallery through April 16th).
Italian artist Quayola revisits the subject of Laocoon, the ill-fated Trojan priest in ancient Greek mythology, in an arresting sculpture that combines a digital, geometric rendering of the priest’s head with a realistic representation. Coated in oxidized iron powder, the sculpture appears both aged and new. (At Bitforms Gallery on the Lower East Side through April 9th).
The debris under the platform occupying center stage at Greene Naftali Gallery includes images of flags and reproductions of art historical images. Above, figures created from nylon gesticulate wildly atop blowing fans like ghosts dancing on the grave of a failed ideology or social movement. (In Chelsea through April 15th).
Robert Frank’s iconic photo series ‘The Americans’ presented a complicated and unheroic picture of the country in 1955. At Danziger Gallery on the Lower East Side, 81 contact sheets (from among thousands) allow viewers to see the shots before and after those selected for publication. Here, a baby in ‘Café-Beaufort, South Carolina’ is not as alone as she appears. (On view through April 8th).
Amid monochromatic structures that recall real world shacks built with available resources, Beverly Buchanan also created a boldly colored house built as a studio and a home. This spirited building perfectly embodies Buchanan’s aim to make buildings that are survivors but communicate, in her words, ‘Here I am; I’m still here!’ (At Andrew Edlin Gallery on the Lower East Side through April 15th).
