Inspired to reconsider Malcolm X’s ideology while participating in an Algerian arts festival in 1969, Barbara Chase-Rimboud began a series of bronze sculptures, titled after the activist, fourteen of which are now on view at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery. Created with a knotted silk base and bronze forms made by casting worked sheets of wax, the mix of materials signals strength and finery. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 28th).
In 1977, Arte Povera artist Giuseppe Penone grew potatoes inside casts of his ear, mouth and nose. The resulting face-shaped potatoes were cast in bronze and are set among real potatoes in Hauser and Wirth Gallery’s huge showcase of the Italian art movement that embraced ‘poor’ materials and rethought what art could be. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 28th).
Tom Sachs creates an updated cabinet of curiosities in his latest show at Sperone Westwater with his display of fake moon rocks. (On view on the Lower East Side through Oct 28th).
No other gallery security staff are as subtle as Tom Friedman’s ‘Guardian,’ a light projection above Luhring Augustine’s exit. Friedman’s entire show does away with his usual labor-intensive sculpture techniques, substituting instead alluring objects and figures that might disappear at the press of a power button. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 28th).
Young Columbian artist Maria Berrio envisions harmony between humans and nature in richly patterned Japanese paper collages that delight the senses. In this detail, a lush landscape is setting to a thoughtful folkloric character perfectly at home as human and monkey habitat merge. (On view at Praxis International Art in Chelsea through Oct 28th).
