Belgian artist Luc Tuymans is known for paintings that evoke memories. Here, cars reflected in the canals of the Dutch town of Ridderkerk are based on Polaroids taken by the artist. A solid stone bridge meets the evocative green-tinged murk of the canal, recalling moments of leisure spent pondering the water from the land. (At David Zwirner Gallery in Chelsea through June 25th).
Though William Bailey’s serene still life arrangements share subject matter with Giorgio Morandi’s paintings of bottles, jars and vases, their contours are perfectly complete and clear, achieving comparative gravity and a sense of permanence. Still, Bailey’s objects embody a sense of apartness that makes them captivating. (At Betty Cunningham Gallery on the Lower East Side through June 11th).
Jocelyn Hobbie’s imaginary female figure is one step away from dissolving into the patterns that clothe and surround her; even her hair resembles wavy ribbons more than real locks. In the midst of all this visual input, the woman is a cipher, her far-away look suggesting she is only present physically. (At Fredericks & Freiser Gallery through June 18th).
Mitchell-Innes & Nash gallery in Chelsea aims to prove that iconic Pop artist Tom Wesselman was not only a pioneer of pop culture imagery, but a technical innovator, from collaging billboard cutouts onto canvas to molding plastic paintings. Here, Smoker reminds us that Wesselman also used shaped canvases to isolate forms that here, make supposedly seductive lips look troubling. (In Chelsea through May 28th).
Can the grandeur of the Yosemite landscape be captured on a small screen? David Hockney gives it a good shot, to luminous effect in his printed iPad drawings, now on view at Pace Gallery’s 25th Street location in Chelsea. (Through June 18th).
‘Perhappiness,’ a one word poem by Brazilian poet Paulo Leminsky, borrowed as the title of painter/musician Luiz Zerbini’s first solo show in New York, perfectly embodies the artist’s upbeat experimentation. Here, rocks that look like abstract paintings, pools of water crafted from lines of color and nests that resemble creative architecture are an homage to the inspiration of nature. (At Sikkema Jenkins & Co in Chelsea through June 4th.)
If everyone could see inside your head right now, what thoughts would be laid bare? Amy Culter’s incredible cross section shows one woman’s mental map as a series of bizarre dreams, from a scary, hostage-holding snowman to the hilarious notion that our teeth are just the caps worn by a team of ladies nestled shoulder to shoulder in our jaws. (At Leslie Tonkonow Artworks and Projects in Chelsea through June 30th).
The biggest show in town – literally – starts with a fifty-foot long walk between two thirteen foot high steel plates. Then it’s into a slightly disorienting and unexpected labyrinth of open and constricted spaces that challenge viewers to take the measure of Richard Serra’s NJ-1 with our own bodies. (At Gagosian Gallery’s 522 West 21st Street location through July 29th).
Known for photographing freeze dried flowers as he explodes them and liquid pigment as it is blasted by sound from a speaker, German artist Martin Klimas has come up with another way to make merge sound and art in a new body of work at Foley Gallery. The ‘Pure Tones’ series involves a frequency generator and still water, which is disturbed in surprisingly beautiful patterns, as evidenced by this grid of surfaces. (On the Lower East Side through May 22nd).
Aaron Siskind’s 1954 photographs of high divers leaping into Lake Michigan are included in Bruce Silverstein Gallery’s engaging group show ‘Songs and the Sky’ as an example of the artists’ desire to align his images with music, ‘…in terms of rhythm and repetitions that can be expressed visually.” The gallery takes the connection a step further by actually pairing the photos with sound; in Siskind’s case with a selection by John Cage: 44 Harmonies from Apartment House – 1776 and Cheap Imitation. (In Chelsea through June 18th).
A foam couch, a broken glass table and lamps made of driftwood define young New York artist Jessi Reaves’ slacker design aesthetic in furniture art now on view at Bridget Donahue. Here, plywood, foam and driftwood create a giant letter ‘O’ which is simultaneously a seat, shelving and an opportunity to experience an ‘Oh…’ moment while discovering Reaves’ forays into unfinish. (On the Lower East Side through June 5th).
Press images of 1920s movie stars inspired Cindy Sherman’s latest body of work – photos of women who have aged out of the young starlet role but who still wear cupid lips, smoky eye shadow and wistful expressions. (At Metro Pictures in Chelsea through June 11th).
Known for clever analogue photo manipulation, John Houck’s latest body of work adds painting to the mix. Houck paints around items borrowed from friends – here a mason jar – in successive arrangements, gradually building one composite photo that disrupts traditional picture space. (At On Stellar Rays on the Lower East Side through May 22nd).
Brooklyn-based artist Elizabeth Ferry takes fuzzy dice to a new level with these tactile plaster, paint and foam cubes, now on view at Bushwick’s Honey Ramka. (On view through May 15th).
Columbian artists Diego Alvarez and Maria Paula Alvarez treat wood as if it were paper in both meticulous lattices that mimic Bogota’s fencing and this cedar oak plywood sheet that drapes over a Plexiglas shelf like a piece of fabric. (At Magnan Metz Gallery through May 21st.)
Susie MacMurray’s stately ‘Medusa,’ dignifies the maligned mythological character by refashioning her imposing figure in a beautiful surface of tiny, interlocked copper rings. (At Chelsea’s Danese Corey Gallery through May 21st.)
Light up wall decorations, picture frames and clocks are the hosts for Chadwick Rantanen’s unusual art project, which takes the form of adaptors that allow one battery to be used in place of another. With adaptors in the form of bees sticking out the back of this clock, the device is forced to keep its kitschy face to the wall. Resistance to tackiness and artistic innovation become the subject matter. (At Essex Street through May 16th).
Vietnam-based artists The Propeller Group make a surprising connection between brass bands in New Orleans and Vietnam in a mesmerizing video created for the New Orleans biennial, Prospect 3. Here, a funeral band wades into the Mekong Delta, making an elaborate journey as they accompany the dead toward the afterlife. (At James Cohan Gallery on the Lower East Side through May 15th).
Titled ‘post-paintings,’ as if they’re pioneering a new art form after painting, Strauss Bourque-LaFrance’s wall sculptures are in fact made from 2 x 2” posts and cropped pictures from the New York Post newspaper. Colored like a quilt and featuring snippets of Post sports coverage, this piece evokes all-American pastimes. (At Rachel Uffner Gallery on the Lower East Side through May 16th).
Working between London and Botswana, American artist Chloe Sells shoots the natural beauty of the Okavango Swamps, then uses screens, overlays and hand painting in the darkroom to create unique prints with what the artist calls a ‘dreamy effect.’ (At Julie Saul Gallery in Chelsea through June 11th).
Haim Steinbach’s appropriated Lion King illustration takes over the office wall at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, pitting a powerful creature against box office power against the power of immersion in the color yellow. (In Chelsea through May 27th).
Lucas Blalock’s overt manipulation of this odd but banal scene begs the question of why anyone would want to represent chopped sausage at all, never mind as both a photo and a digital rendering. The effect is to put our minds between places –simultaneously in the digital realm and in a stranger’s kitchen. (At Ramiken Crucible on the Lower East Side through May 22nd).
Water bottles, wiffle balls and even a laundry basket are the among the discarded items artist Marie Lorenz has fished out of New York’s waterways during her boat-journeys-as-art. Here, she has turned them into a ceramic mobile. (At Jack Hanley Gallery on the Lower East Side through May 22nd).
German photographer Elisabeth Hase’s 1931 rooftop photo turns workers and pedestrians into doll-like figures while paralleling the unusual perspectives adopted by Russian avant-garde photographers. (At Robert Mann Gallery through May 7th).
Shot around the world from Peru to Greece, Yorgo Alexopoulos’ videos of the natural world are a low-key sublime, prompting appreciation of beautiful landscapes unblemished by mankind. (At Chelsea’s Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery through June 11th.)
Thousands of books with fake titles create a false and fun library at Pierogi Gallery, where a not-quite-homey feel is completed by Carol K. Brown’s editioned porcelain plate featuring a down-on-his-luck wanderer. (At Pierogi Gallery on the Lower East Side through May 8th).
John Chiara’s New York photos – shot with homemade cameras large enough to accommodate big sheets of negative photo paper – bring apocalyptic drama to the city streets. Here, a glowing Hearst Tower hovers menacingly behind a vulnerable-looking walkup as Chiara lends familiar buildings a new character. (At Yossi Milo Gallery in Chelsea through May 21st).
Stay near the wall and the room is silent; approach the table and light sensors detect your presence, setting off a cascade of sound from an array of 72 bare speakers. The effect of Canadian sound artists Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s ‘Experiment in F# Minor’ is magical – a musical experience created for us to create. (In Chelsea at Luhring Augustine Gallery through June 11th).
It’s not the vibrant colors and energetic forms of Shazad Dawood’s ‘Anselm Chapel, Tokyo,’ (seen here in detail) but the strong diagonal lines that connect the London-based artist’s abstract painting on vintage textile with its namesake – Czech/American architect Antonin Raymond’s stark, concrete house of worship. Reconciling opposite appearances seems beside the point with such a joyous composition. (At Jane Lombard Gallery through May 14th).
Gunships approach, bombers fly overhead and the Gemini spacecraft blasts off in old press photos and artist renderings gathered by German photographer Thomas Ruff, now on view in Chelsea at David Zwirner Gallery. Ruff scanned both sides of each photo – all of which relate to the U.S. aeronautics and space program in the 20th century – then merged them to merge private notes and public image. (Through April 30th).
Brazilian artist Adriana Varejao explores the complicated relationship between western and indigenous cultures with a series of self-portraits that blend Native South American and mid-20th century minimalist aesthetics. Here, wavy feathered plumes contrast a stark geometric stripe running the length of her face and clouds of dots over her eyes. (At Lehmann Maupin Gallery on the Lower East Side through June 16th).
They’re not looking at each other, but this dancing couple makes a connection through the eyes. As if they share a common vision, or are alert to each other’s thoughts, each bears an eye of the other as they engage in an elaborate courtship ritual. (At Lower East Side Gallery Thierry Goldberg, through May 1st).
With oppressive systems as his theme, British artist Adam McEwan presents sculptures of supercomputers that move data, a rendition of airport security trays and this walk-in sculpture of the letter ‘K.’ The letter stands in for Kafka and a character in ‘The Trial’ as well as a hieroglyph for an open hand. The most convincing way to understand the mood of the piece, however, is to climb the terrifyingly steep stairs. (At Petzel Gallery through April 30th).
Set against wallpaper developed for an installation at Mass MoCA, Barbara Takenaga’s ‘Life’ looks like an implosion inside of a molecular structure. The effect is eye-popping in person. (At DC Moore Gallery in Chelsea through April 30th).
New York artist Amy Lincoln carefully studies particular plants, then incorporates them in paintings of the natural world so crisp and vibrantly colored, they’re almost hallucinogenic. (At Morgan Lehman Gallery in Chelsea through May 7th).
Arranged in vitrines or along this long shelf, Katy Fischer’s ceramic objects look like archaeological finds. They’re a humorous take on the notion that ceramics must have use-value and yet provocative in prompting consideration of what those uses might be. (At Lower East Side gallery Louis B. James through May 1st).
Painter and sculptor Volker Hueller is known for mining art history, remixing styles and associations from yesteryear into a contemporary visual vocabulary. In this recent painting, on view at Lower East Side gallery 11R, he turns one of his signature, geometric characters into art object, suggestively equating face and vase. (Through April 24th).
Above a barely noticeable landscape of frothing waves and neon-colored bridges, a strange assortment of alien characters array themselves like a contemporary, psychedelic thangka in Keiichi Tanaami’s ‘Vision in the Womb.’ The Japanese icon blends eroticism and the lingering terror of Tokyo’s firebombing in a hallucinatory scene that stuns in its creative profusion. (At Chelsea’s Sikkema Jenkins & Co through April 23rd).
Conceptual art pioneer Robert Barry uses language to transport viewers; in this handsome installation, cast resin letters painted a vibrant red form words like ‘intimate,’ ‘apparent’ that evoke strong associations. (At Chelsea’s Mary Boone Gallery through April 23rd).
Using her home and the surrounding landscape in Amagansett as subject matter, Jennifer Bartlett offers two versions of the same view. Both have been constructed with a graining brush, a tool that allows her to paint in parallel lines, taking her longstanding relationship with the grid to new directions. (At Paula Cooper Gallery through April 23rd).
A visit to the Alhambra in Spain inspired Oxford, England-based Sudanese artist Ibrahim El-Salahi to begin his ‘Flamenco’ series, in which he celebrates the music and dance of Andalusia in his signature, modernist style. (At Salon94 on the Lower East Side through April 18th).
Though they’re both solitary women illuminated by glowing backgrounds, the subject of Barkley L. Hendrick’s 2015 painting, Anthem, couldn’t be further in character from the measured cool of his iconic 1969 ‘Lawdy Mama.’ This singer is holding nothing back as she takes the stage with a double mike and unrestrained self-confidence. (At Jack Shainman Gallery through April 23rd.)
You won’t find wholesome fantasies of life in the American heartland in Iowan artist Timothy Wehrle’s surreal pencil drawings at Chelsea’s P.P.O.W. Gallery. Under rain clouds, a severed head acts as momento mori, while an upside down shoe studded with nails suggests a painful journey. (Through April 16th).
Young Johannesburg artist Serge Alain Nitegeka pushes abstraction off the wall at Marianne Boesky Gallery in Chelsea, altering the gallery with paintings that project into the room while simultaneously acting as portals into 2D illusionary spaces. (Through April 23rd).
Evocative sculpture by New York artist Sarah Braman creates a nexus between mass produced furniture and the unique art object, coldly minimal forms and a potentially cozy bedroom, a mined metal and unexploited nature in the form of a gorgeous sunset. (At Chelsea’s Mitchell-Innes & Nash through April 16th).
This shot by Rosalind Fox Solomon comes across as simple enough at first…until you register that the caregiver is a crybaby, caring for a bunny and wearing a beard, defying expectations at every turn. The unexpected and odd dominate Fox Solomon’s selection of images from her archive, shot over three decades and around the world, now on view at Bruce Silverstein Gallery in Chelsea. (Through April 16th).
Fruity filling oozes from cracked dough like blood seeping from a wound in this painting of two stacked donuts by Emily Eveleth. The painting’s title ‘Façade,’ suggests we’re only getting half of the story and backs up the impression that these donuts can be read as stand-ins for much more. (At Danese Corey Gallery in Chelsea through April 16th).
A series of charming vintage color photos from the 70s and 80s by the late Italian photographer Luigi Ghirri, currently on view in Chelsea at Matthew Marks Gallery, use framing and balance to tell stories. This photo – cropped or layered to hide how a fancifully colored turquoise grate came to stand between us and a huge factory floor – both keeps us out and the workers in. (Through April 30th).
Mary Weatherford’s Casa Reef is a standout in Skarstedt Gallery’s excellent painting show in Chelsea, bringing to mind Yves Klein’s body prints, but in geometric blocks that suggest an underwater structure emerging from swirling white foam pushed by a (literal, neon) current. (In Chelsea through April 16th).
Since lifting it from the bulletin board of a Thai ceramic factory 30 years ago, Swiss artists Fischli and Weiss have reproduced this motivational list in different locations and formats over the years, most recently installing it on Houston Street in Manhattan. From the simple instruction to ‘do one thing at a time’ to the more profound challenge to ‘distinguish sense from nonsense,’ the advice encapsulates the artists’ credo to ask questions and embrace the absurd. (On Houston St at Mott Street through May 1st. For more info, see Public Art Fund or visit the artists’ retrospective at the Guggenheim.)
Iconic photographer Malick Sidibe – who will be 80 this year – pulls out more joie de vivre from his famous archives of Malian night-life with images shot at parties over the decades. Here, three young men dressed as secret agents let us in on the fun of their masquerade. (At Chelsea’s Jack Shainman Gallery through April 23rd).
Haegue Yang continues her ‘Trustworthy’ series – made from the patterned interiors of security envelopes – with this installation of abstract diagrams set against deeply soothing Yves Klein blue walls at Greene Naftali Gallery. Just as Klein offered a portal into the sublime, Yang points to the mystical with her eye-like shapes and totemic figure covered in bells. (In Chelsea through April 16th).
A moody beach scene by Norwegian expressionist icon Edvard Munch inspires this painting by William Wegman at Sperone Westwater Gallery, which incorporates and builds on a postcard at center. Wegman both adds psychological intensity and humor to Munch’s angsty scene by making the main character a creative type alone in his Spartan room. Come see this painting and more on Saturday’s Lower East Side Gallery Tour, 1 – 3pm. (Click here for tickets. On view through April 23rd).
Fractal patterns on the walls of meticulously constructed dioramas by French artist Laetitia Soulier at Claire Oliver Gallery transform each space into a fantastical realm. The dominant cube pattern in this construction leaps off the walls and into the ever-decreasing form of this Lilliputian set of nesting rooms. (In Chelsea through April 9th).
Her own nature photography and images downloaded from the Internet are the basis for several new photos by Eileen Quinlan at Miguel Abreu Gallery, including this interrupted shot of an otter. A strip from the center of the image looks like both a rip and a pool of water, while streams of photo chemicals toward the bottom of the image contrast liquids used in photo processing with the otter’s natural habitat. (On the Lower East Side through April 17th).
Celebrated Cuban artist Roberto Diago presents wall-mounted works in corrugated sheet metal that look like weather-beaten modernist abstractions with a distinctly Cuban twist revealed in the title, ‘Variaciones de Oggun,’ a nod to the Latin American deity Oggun, who is associated with metal work. (At Magnan Metz in Chelsea through April 9th).
Inspired by Artemisia Gentileschi’s famous early 17th century painting of the Biblical heroine Judith slaying the Assyrian army general Holofernes, Anna Ostoya’s quasi-cubist rendition of the scene pits Judith against herself. Now that beheadings have become current events, Ostoya asks to what extent this is self-definition and self-harm. (At Bortolami Gallery in Chelsea through April 23rd.)
Tim Hawkinson offers visitors to Pace Gallery the chance to snoop through his medicine cabinet, in the process giving us the time around the globe with what’s actually a world clock in disguise. The unassuming bathroom fixture includes a bandage representing the time in Los Angeles and a soap pump acting as a clock for Tokyo. The biggest delight is New York’s timepiece – a lotion bottle with a cap that rotates as an hour hand and a drip of lotion (plastic) that acts as the minute hand. (At Chelsea’s Pace Gallery through April 23rd).
Strong shadows and angular forms in photos of barns and rural architecture shot between the 50s and early 80s by Ellsworth Kelly bear a striking resemblance to the abstract shapes of the artist’s paintings, offering what feels like a peek at the artist’s real-world inspirations. (At Matthew Marks Gallery in Chelsea through April 30th).
Doug Fogelson’s ‘Ceaseless’ series comprises beautiful but damaged nature photos, for which the Chicago-based artist shot traditional landscape photos, which he printed and partially destroyed by applying common industrial chemicals to the surface. Ironically, the results are gorgeous. Here, a verdant forest hovers like an apparition surrounded by peeling layers of emulsion. (At Sasha Wolf Gallery on the Lower East Side through April 16th).
Iconic appropriation artist Sherrie Levine pairs monochrome paintings replicating colors found in Renoir’s nudes with colorful SMEG refrigerators in groupings that might serve to remind or warn snacking art collectors of Renoir’s voluptuous figures. (At David Zwirner Gallery in Chelsea through April 2nd).
Glenn Ligon turns his well-worn copy of James Baldwin’s 1953 essay, ‘Stranger in the Village,’ into a suite of prints, each more or less obscured by paint and fingerprints left behind by years of reference use in Ligon’s studio. Ligon’s marks testify to the personal importance of Baldwin’s text, while the parts that remain visible leap out as a kind of charged concrete poetry. (At Luhring Augustine through April 2nd).
It would trouble some, but the smell of burning paper is the norm in Chris McCaw’s photographic practice. Using powerful lenses, McCaw magnifies the intensity of the sun to the extent that it burns holes in the light sensitive paper he places in his homemade cameras. The effect is ethereal, as the sun literally carves a path through the sky over shadowy landscapes. (At Yossi Milo Gallery in Chelsea through April 9th).
Mark Dion’s latest show is for the birds, which is to say that the centerpiece, a huge cage housing a selection of books related to birds and their predators along with several zebra finch and canaries, is intended as a gift to our feathered friends. The birds seem to be more concerned about nest building and communicating with each other than in reading, leaving the literature to humans and reinforcing Dion’s point that it’s always about us. (At Tanya Bonakdar Gallery through April 16th).
“It’s not about being a commodity, it’s about the pleasurable experience of looking,” explained Carrie Moyer to an interviewer recently, elaborating on how her once overtly political art practice has morphed into a subtle advocacy for enjoyment. (At DC Moore Gallery through March 26th).
In Walid Raad’s tongue in cheek narratives about the emergence of a booming new Arab art world, he’s hunted for refugee color and fonts that have gone into hiding and reflections that are missing; here at Paula Cooper Gallery, a wall text explains that the shadows normally cast by the artwork have run away, no longer interested in being part of the art infrastructure. The artist hopefully builds a series of walls with fake shadows to entice the real ones to return, all the while ostensibly failing to notice that the art itself is missing. (In Chelsea through March 26th).
David Zwirner Gallery’s normally pristine white walls look as though they’ve been damaged by scraping; a closer look reveals that black markings are text fragments, printed onto posters that cover the walls of Michael Riedel’s latest solo show. Known for recycling text and image from his previous shows, Riedel takes the metaphor a step further by picturing animated dinosaur skeletons, creatures whose lives have been extended, in a sense, by being exhumed and put into the public realm again. (In Chelsea through March 25th).
Inventive use of materials is everything in Karla Black’s huge installation, ‘Includes Use’ at David Zwirner Gallery. Mixing powder paint and plaster, Black covers the gallery floor with a beach of cocoa-like powder separated into curving organic shapes by frilly tucks of toilet paper. The artist resists the term ‘feminine’ to describe her work, but with glitter as the finishing touch, the effect is decidedly pretty. (In Chelsea through March 26th).
Colorful lumps of squeezed clay, or the pattern on a checked shirt are inspiration to Houston-based artist Jeremy Deprez; here, he presents visitors to Feuer/Mesler Gallery with a five foot high bar of hotel soap. Unlike pop predecessors who supersized everything from hamburgers (Oldenberg) to soup cans (Warhol), Deprez pays painterly attention to his flecked monochrome. (On the Lower East Side through March 27th).
Toothbrushes hang in neat rows, labeled with the names of patients at a now-closed psychiatric hospital in Poughkeepsie in this arresting photograph by Christopher Payne. Payne traveled to hospitals around the country over several years, creating a moving document of life in a bygone era. (At Chelsea’s Benrubi Gallery through March 26th).
A flood of frogs (vinyl silhouttes adhered to walls and floor) escape down a fake drain in Brazilian artist Regina Silveira’s space-bending installation at Alexander Gray Associates. Referencing Biblical plagues and unexpected, underground activity, the frogs suggest that above-ground life is only half of the story. (In Chelsea through March 26th.)
A painting is set into a painting, set into a painted frame in Nora Griffin’s ‘Painting Culture,’ a nestled presentation of homey organic shapes, cheery color and unselfconsciously handmade marks that conjures 80s design and a kind of youthful freedom exemplified by a zany silver zigzag. (At Louis B. James on the Lower East Side through March 20th).
A trip to the Arctic inspired Saul Becker’s uncanny landscapes, in which mirrored hills present a Rorschach for those wishing to ponder lesser known regions and toxic colors bear witness the changing climate. (At Zieher Smith and Horton in Chelsea through March 19th).
The bar below his apartment, the 99 Cent Pizza place, the Laundromat and apartment furnishings inspired New York artist Nicholas Buffon’s latest paper sculptures, what the New Yorker called, ‘elegies to a vanishing downtown.’ Here, even his stove and cheerily decorated fridge bespeak the well worn and well loved. (At Callicoon Fine Arts on the Lower East Side through March 20th).
Paula Scher, principle at renowned design firm Pentagram, invites us to understand the country through its airline routes, geography, climate and here, its weather. Her painted maps of the USA emphasize how we see places through frameworks of information. (At Chelsea’s Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery through March 26th).
A 300 lb piece of talc was the basis of this large sculpture by Larry Bamburg, who bridged the natural and manmade by adding a similarly colored soap, then bathroom tiles to the stone, creating a conversation between materials whose properties converge yet remain distinct. (At Simone Subal on the Lower East Side through March 20th).
Inspired by late Renaissance and Baroque landscape painting, tapestry and stage scenery, Karen Kilimnik’s latest body of work showcases interiors with canopied beds and manicured landscapes, stage-like in their perfection. The exception is this expressionist tropical landscape with its sumptuous, glittery tent, as lush as the greenery. (At 303 Gallery in Chelsea through March 26th).
David Kennedy Cutler continues to turn photographed or scanned images into provocative sculpture with a cluster of heads representing Bacchus – the god of wine and related merrymaking – grouped together like giant grapes. Paired with slices of bread, however, does the reference turns toward the Eucharist? (At Lyles and King on the Lower East Side through March 13th).
Innocuous floral arrangements in archival photos of historically important business and political meetings inspired New York artist Tayrn Simon’s latest project, ‘Paperwork and the Will of Capital.’ With a botanist’s help, she recreated bouquets present at shady dealings – when Mozambique agreed with South African not to support the ANC in the 80s, or when business owners purchased citizenship in St Kitts in return for supporting economic development there. She then entombed photos, texts and specimens in a concrete press, which acts here as a pedestal. (At Gagosian Gallery, through March 26th).
Casey Ruble’s meticulous cut paper images of former safe houses on the Underground Railway and locations of Civil Rights era riots confer a potent stillness on historical scenes that are fading from memory, largely unmarked by signage or physical markers. Here, she focuses on the epicenter of the 1967 Newark riot, where police mistreatment of an African American cab driver sparked a devastating protest. (At Foley Gallery on the Lower East Side through March 20th).
Under a darkening sky, a classic car speeds along an elevated city highway under a dollar sign and two maps of the US in this painting by Matt Blackwell. In the car, a bearded man with gritted teeth (succinctly crafted from a scrap of plaid fabric) grips the steering wheel, seemingly on a lone mission of intense urgency. (At Edward Thorp Gallery in Chelsea through March 19th).
Matt Blackwell, Going Out West, oil on canvas with collage, 44 x 64.5 inches, 2015.
Using techniques from ‘how to’ TV shows on painting, British artist Neil Raitt makes odd juxtapositions of cabins and mountains, cacti and palm trees in repeating patterns that are like digital wallpaper but carefully hand-rendered. (At Nicelle Beauchene Gallery on the Lower East Side through March 13th).
Titled ‘Trips I’ve Never Been On,’ Shara Hughes’ solo show at Marlborough Gallery includes slightly surreal scenarios like this one, a juxtaposition of landscapes that seems both dream-like and real. (In Chelsea through March 12th).
From sounds recorded at a textile factory in Bally, PA and computer data sites, Mika Tajima and a textile designer worked to translate sound waves into visual patterns. Old technology – the mill uses jacquard looms (a punch-card system invented in the early 1800s) – meets new in a beautiful abstract textile that looks like a screen interrupted by interference. (At 11R Gallery on the Lower East Side through March 13th).
Since 1993, Richard Dupont has made silkscreens from photos of TV screens with scrambled signals. The results look like paintings of lassos of paint, actual paint skeins, abstract expressionism or a capture of paranormal activity. (At Tracy Williams, Ltd. through March 6th).
Flesh-color, cabbage-like leaves nestle in a container that recalls an incubator in Hannah Levy’s alluringly odd sculpture at 247365 Gallery. Waxy fingers that hold the tub and leaves made of something resembling skin recall Keith Edmier’s resin renderings of his mother or Matthew Barney’s plastics and petroleum jelly, making for fascinating but unnerving sculpture.
Sally Saul’s arresting ceramic self-portrait portrays her as if in mid-sentence, her eyes looking into the distance as if trying to phrase something just so. Surrounded by tiny attentive birds, what she says has caused nature to stop and listen. (At LaunchF18 on the Lower East Side through March 6th).
This small painting by New York artist Clare Grill is a standout in a group show at Lower East Side gallery Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects for its lively color and suggestion of a sympathetic face framed by lighter color, curving bands. (Through March 13th).
Like Freud, Mickalene Thomas’ couch has made her famous. Normally appearing as a colorful, patchworked backdrop in Thomas’ photos and paintings of lounging African-American beauties (seen on the back wall), it’s a character of its own in this retro living room, transplanted to Chelsea’s Aperture Foundation. (Through March 17th).
At over ten feet tall, this polyethylene sculpture by Jeff Koons magnifies kitsch to its limits. Whether it’s a contemporary crucifixion, as Koons has said, a phallic symbol, as others have pointed out, or something else entirely, there’s more than meets the eye. (At Chelsea’s Flag Foundation through May 14th).
The color and lighting of Gregory Crewdson’s new photos can be traced to his interest in how painters of the 19th century and prior drew viewers into their paintings with detail and tones that could be appreciated from both near and far. The photos’ suspenseful and melancholy mood might be attributable to major life changes, which have included a new gallery, a divorce and a move out of New York. (At Gagosian Gallery’s 21st Street location through March 5th).
In person, the subjects of LA painter Vanessa Prager’s heavily painted portraits only faintly emerge from their textured backgrounds; in photos, they materialize more readily. The implications of being more visible on a screen aren’t lost on Prager, who has installed peep-holes through out the gallery to carry on a conversation about the absence and presence of images today. (At The Hole NYC on the Lower East Side through Feb 29th).
Photographer Chris Killip’s iconic images of the North of England, shot between 1973 and 1985, give meaning to the stereotype, ‘It’s grim up north.’ How will these two young girls survive their grey surroundings? (At Yossi Milo Gallery in Chelsea, through Feb 27th).
“I don’t care about beauty at all,” New York painter Amy Sillman has declared about the imperfect figures and heavily worked canvas of her paintings. Recent works at Sikkema Jenkins & Co are titled after the German word for metabolism, a nod to the process of changing paint into images that land provocatively between abstraction and figuration, suggesting both bodies and furniture in a color palette that simultaneously soothes and excites. (In Chelsea through March 12th).
From the 1940s onward, the fashion world embraced the elegance of iconic photographer Irving Penn’s highly visible commercial work, but it sometimes took longer for his personal projects to gain traction. In the iPhone era, his investigation of the wonderful in the banal seems prescient, especially in this particularly charming shot of an eerily face-like wad of chewing gum found on the city street. (At Chelsea’s Pace Gallery through March 5th).
Eddie Martinez continues to mine art history in increasingly abstract paintings now on view in Chelsea at Mitchell-Innes and Nash. Tapping into diverse sources of inspiration – from Basquiat’s jittery line to de Kooning’s boldly outlined bodily forms – Martinez creates strangely familiar paintings to ponder. (Through March 5th).
Francesca Woodman changes from girl to woman within seconds in the first two pictures displayed in her retrospective exhibition at the Guggenheim: first we meet a fresh-faced kid wearing a billowy flower-patterned tunic and her signature Mary Janes, making a motion as if she’s holding a clapper board and about to shout ‘action.’ Next, we see her nude lower body coming from a cupboard, the tilting camera catching her as if in a fugitive act. Taken in her freshman year at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1975-6, the precocious Woodman already explores the signature themes of her short career – non-narrative scenarios in which her young, perfect body interacts with the crumbling architecture of a Providence house or an old warehouse-like space in Rome (during her Junior year abroad).
Whether she’s lying curled up on old floorboards under a heavy wooden door propped precariously against the wall or straddling an old fireplace mantle leaning against the wall, Woodman attempts impossible hiding acts that ironically expose her to both prying eyes and the danger of falling props (in later pictures, we see a snake slithering across her outstretched arm and threat arrives again in the form of a wasp on her neck).
Her interaction with the space of the dilapidated room she’s in (in one, a view out the window shows a presentable house next door) resonates with Gordon Matta Clark’s radical interventions in abandoned or otherwise neglected spaces. But Woodman’s nude or partly clothed body (looking very unlikely to have ripped a door from its hinges or detached a mantel) forces unlikely connections with domestic space rather than destroying it. In one image, she covers herself modestly at breast and pubic area with two jagged sections of ripped wallpaper that cover her face and create a flattening of space that merges her body with the wall.
Using her body and physical surroundings as materials, Woodman aligns with late 70s conceptual art and body art contexts in the show’s most surprising images, such as one alarmingly masochistic image showing her at close range with clothespins attached to her nipples and abdomen. Whether this is a larger comment on womens’ bodies or sexual behavior, references to sexuality are rare, despite her frequent nudity. So much so, in fact, that when a’79-‘80 image cropped to exclude her head shows her clutching three sizeable zucchini, the allusion is so out of place that it’s more funny than it might be in another context. Later, she poses in a jeweled belt or dons multiple garter belts like an overdecorated Bellocq model, but the photos feature her curves more as formal compositions than critiques or self-exploration.
In three pictures, Woodmans lets a man into her mostly solitary, female world. All titled, ‘Charlie the Model’ they feature a heavyset man clothed, crouching nude while peering in a mirror, and smiling through a circular glass while a nude Woodman moves in a blur behind him. Perhaps because of his size or his smiles, he dominates, which put viewers in mind of his personality rather than Woodman’s retiring character and emphasizes how her more characteristic images don’t really aim to explore identity. The closest to narrative or role-play she comes is in an early photo series (exhibited in an easy-to-overlook passageway between galleries) titled, ‘Portrait of a Reputation,’ a five-image artist book from 1976 in which Woodman poses with hand over her heart, with or without clothing and with the outline of her hand eventually degenerating into two handprints suggesting an assault.
It’s a Woodman moment in New York now, with a show of the artist’s late work at Marian Goodman Gallery and the monumental ‘Blueprint for a Temple’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s contemporary photo galleries. Woodman appeared to be in a transitional stage when she took her own life in 1981 at the age of 22, making larger images and experimenting with blueprinting processes and collaged images. In ‘Zig Zag’ from 1980, she creates a zigging and zagging line by linking photos of bent arms, v-shaped dress backs, scissoring legs, and more expanding her subject matter to include other people while still exploring the body and pursing formal relationships in her art. Cruelly, seeing so much of her work whets the appetite for more, but true to the Guggenheim’s purpose, offers opportunity to reconsider the context for photography in late 70s America.
Contrary to its title, there’s nothing particularly subversive about ‘Spies in the House of Art,’ the Metropolitan Museum’s enticingly titled exhibition of its contemporary photography collection, which opened yesterday. Photos, films and videos take museum display and visitor responses as subject matter, but the mood of the best pieces is more fond criticism than biting institutional critique. Still, by bringing the myriad ways we navigate the museum experience to our conscious mind, the show counteracts purely passive viewing pleasure.
A standout is Francesca Woodman’s 1980 ‘Blueprint for a Temple.’ Completed a year before her untimely death and marking a major shift from her small scale photos, this 15 foot high photo collage of a Greek temple supported by her friends dressed as caryatids and printed on blue architectural blueprint paper playfully remakes ancient culture while forces a connection between past and present that resonates with the Met’s newly crafted Moroccan court.
The show’s second major highlight, Rosalind Nashashibi’s and Lucy Skaer’s 16mm film ‘Flash in the Metropolitan Museum’ from 2006 was shot at night with a flash strobe as the artists moved through the museum, momentarily illuminating Greek ceramics one minute, African or Medieval European sculpture the next. Unclear images, seen for a moment in varying scales and unflattering angles turn usual museum display on its head while creating an alluringly mysterious anthropological study that is equal parts ‘Blair Witch Project’ and ‘Mixed Up File of Mrs Basil E. Frankweiler.’
Less familiar work comes across as amusing and fresh, like Laura Larson’s photograph of a display in the Telfair Museum in Savannah, Georgia which delights in pointing out the tasteless clash of style in a Regency settee, a wallpapered landscape and patterned marble floor. Sophie Calle’s text and image of a gender-ambiguous blind person describing the ‘terrific ass’ of a sculpture in Paris’ Rodin museum invites reflection on our own ideas about beauty.
By comparison, a photo of a shelf of stored artworks by Louise Lawler, an image of a painting by Tim Davis with his flash blotting out the subject’s face and a video by Lutz Bacher following a young adolescent through the Picasso Museum in Paris look at art stored, reproduced or visited in unexpected if not particularly compelling ways. In a sense, the Met itself undermines the less nuanced work in the show – the stunning artwork and displays encountered on the way to the 2nd floor photo galleries are a tough act to follow.
For Gallery 210 of the University of Missouri, St Louis
Shopping the Cheryl Yun Collection starts out fun but has a big catch. Apart from the fact that its stylish handbags, lingerie and swimwear look as though they belong in a high-end boutique but are meticulously crafted in delicate-looking paper, the subject matter is shocking. When curious ‘shoppers’ inspect the enticing goods more carefully, the kaleidoscopic patterning on each item turns out to be an abstracted image of war, natural disaster or another horrific event, setting up a bait and switch game that delivers not shopping pleasure but a jarring reminder of the coexistence of enjoyment and suffering. By implicating her audience’s desires as consumers and forcing a personal response to international events beyond the control of any individual, Yun’s faux fashion line shatters the status quo of daily life.
From the materials she uses to the themes she explores, constant contradictions force provocative connections where none were first apparent. Purses, underwear and the whole shopping experience itself is a decidedly female domain, but the images that adorn these objects refer to the traditionally male territory of war and politics. Sexy underthings may in themselves symbolize the dynamics of attraction between men and women, but these take the discussion about power relations to a new level. The gap between images of terror and female accessories would seem even harder to bridge, but Yun, who lived in New York at the time of the 9/11 terrorist attack, readily recalls former Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s highly publicized suggestion that the best way to recover (and save the local economy from further damage) was to “go shopping.”
At the time, it may have been an exercise in civic duty to hit the stores, but with consumer spending making up the largest part of our GDP, Americans hardly need any extra incentives to shop. Yun’s project, whether replicating high-end clothing or the cheapest plastic shopping sacks, provokes questions about our appetite not just for things but for entertainment. “We consume imagery like we consume objects,” Yun explains. “Sitting down with the newspaper and a cup of coffee is a pleasure that many people, including me, enjoy, but actually involves reading about horrible things happening around the world.” Yun’s garments are not only intimate but force their imaginary owners to literally wear images of far away events next their skin suggesting false familiarity; like Yinka Shonibare’s Victorian costumes fashioned from traditional African fabrics, they reveal the ignorance at the core of cultural imperialism.
Yun is the first to admit her own role as consumer. Afterall, each bag or garment begins with a news photo from the New York Times or an Internet news source that caught her eye for its drama, compositional qualities or captivating story. To create a ‘fabric,’ she scans, manipulates and prints the image, carefully piecing multiple copies together into a seamless pattern. Early bags unambiguously reproduced disturbing news photos; the more recent series are less confrontational, dabbling in the potential beauty of particular forms, multiplied and mirrored with an abstract effect. But disguising the source image and adorning each item with delicate details, like smocking or tiny bows, makes it all the more chilling when a diving figure on a swimsuit materializes as a toppling statue of Saddam Hussein or it becomes clear that a lace pattern originated in an image of an explosion.
The title of each piece (always derived from the source newspaper’s image caption) helps give the game away by leading viewers to try to make out the original image and ensuring that provocation, though it may have grown less obvious, stays at the heart of Yun’s project. At its conception, CY Collection took as its vehicle what Yun calls “…the extreme commodity. If you’re going to buy just one thing, it’s going to be a handbag.” Fittingly, when her conceptual enterprise diversified to carry lingerie and swimwear, these items represented two other extremes: of femininity and of ideological martyrdom. Fascinated by stories of female suicide bombers, Yun researched the practicalities of concealing a weapon for attack. The resulting lingerie and swimwear morphs a purely utilitarian device for strapping on explosives with hidden support garments, resulting in a ramped up garment for traditional seduction and destructive power.
Since it was agreed in the 60s that the personal is political, conversation about sexuality and power have been closely linked. A garment like ‘Flyaway Babydoll with Suicide Hipsters I,’ (2005) decorated with pictures of flag bearing U.S. troops recalls the age-old appeal of a man in uniform to the girls back home (or in every port). But its source image – a photo from President Bush’s highly staged 2005 landing on an aircraft carrier –recalls how a celebration of bravado has become an impotent gesture in light of political instability in Iraq. One of Yun’s most striking pieces is also one of her most daring designs: ‘Halter Teddy with Suicide Belt’ (2004/05) features a text in Arabic behind a gunman and his kidnapped victim reproduced to make a beautiful, calligraphic pattern on the garment’s breast and hip area. Literally embodying opposite excesses of Western immodesty and of Islamic fundamentalism, the garment is itself embodies conflicting extremes.
Though contrast is central to Yun’s work, it is never crass. While artists like Thomas Hirschorn have notoriously appropriated unpublished images of the U.S. war in Iraq from the Internet, these displays are calculated purely to shock by their graphic depictions of brutality. Using images from major publications forces Yun to operate within their calculated standards of decorum, a decision that allows her imagery to be more than just alarming. Her work echoes the punch of Barbara Kruger’s cynical assertion, ‘I Shop, Therefore I Am’ or Jenny Holzer’s self-conscious plea to ‘Protect me from what I want.’ But Yun eschews an anonymous production style, instead offering abundant evidence of her own hand, whether it’s in CY Collection’s obviously hand drawn logo or an awkward length of cording on an individual garment. The approach keeps her project personal, giving credence to her claim that she’s exploring conflicts that she herself faces. That keeps us on her side as she brings a critique of consumer culture into the present day climate of anxiety – one in which images of far away disaster could suddenly loom much closer.
For ‘Flash Art’ Magazine
“I think Jesus would be horrified at what’s going on,” Huma Bhabha quipped in front of J.C., her rendition of a shell-shocked son of God fashioned from scavenged wood and Styrofoam with clay accents. Standing in Salon 94’s guestroom last fall, where the harrowing bust starkly contrasted subtle furnishings, Bhabha contextualized it as a response to the Iraq War. Not only does the gritty piece embody the artist’s ability to push religious and political hot buttons, it showcases her skill in crafting grotesque portrait sculptures of larger-than-life characters.
Though Bhabha’s appropriation of Christ’s identity for her own ends cleverly critiques the proclivities of U.S. politicians, the distressed-looking figure’s real impact is its Janus faced identity. From one side, a blackened face made from ripped Styrofoam suggests an injured victim while on the reverse, a second visage appears wearing a rusty metal grill recalling a soldier’s makeshift armor.
Ambiguity defines the hunched form of another sculpture – an untitled, black clad figure apparently bent in prayer from which a tail of rubble extends. To Bhabha’s chagrin, the press interpreted the piece as a comment on Muslim women when it appeared in the blockbuster young art show ‘U.S.A. Today’ at London’s Royal Academy last fall. The artist sees the piece as sexless; clad in a body bag, not burkha, it’s intended as a disintegrating “monument to the hundreds of thousands of dead” in the Middle East.
Though Bhabha sees her artistic role as partly political (to “bear witness if nothing else,”) she is equally committed to forging a provocative formal vocabulary. To this end, she mines familiar figures from art history in fantastical portraits like Man of No Importance (a Cyclops whose head is his body), and Waiting for a Friend, (a female fertility figure bleeding from the waist), recasting her characters with newly uncertain identities.
Sleeper, a standing male figure with a stiff posture reminiscent of a Greek kouros and an economic construction suggesting an African artifact, looks at once like a battered but noble antique sculpture and a creepy contemporary character with oddly delicate features. His pronounced derriere is a comic detail observed only from the back and side, above which is a vividly blue framework – like shelving or an empty shadowbox – that turns the man vaguely mechnical.
Photographs often fail to do justice to Bhabha’s multifaceted sculptures, which yield different impressions when viewed from the front, back or side and reward close inspection of their intricate details. Early last year, the formal refinement of the sculptures in Bhabha’s second New York solo show at ATM Gallery moved veteran New York Times critic Roberta Smith to declare them, “close to perfect.” With their ambitious subject matter, from Christ to kouros, and endless suggestiveness, they continue to move even closer.