Tel Aviv-based artist Guy Yanai’s subject matter – houses, domestic interiors and portraits of plants – is sedate but his blocky, early video game aesthetic gives the paintings a jittery edge. This plant appears to hover in space while reaching for the top edge of the canvas with an energy foreign to most potted plants. (In Chelsea at Ameringer McEnery Yohe through August 18th).
Robert Mann Gallery’s ice-cream themed summer group show runs the gamut from glossy commercial images of fake ice cream to this gritty 1950s shot by Harold Feinstein of New York urchins enjoying a treat while Christ appears to ‘let the little children come to him’ in the background. (In ‘I Scream, You Scream’ at Robert Mann Gallery through August 18th).
After years of traveling to the U.S./Mexico border, photographer Richard Misrach and experimental composer Guillermo Galindo joined forces to create sobering images and sculpture inspired by struggles of migrants determined to overcome the border’s many obstacles. This installation view of their exhibition at Pace Gallery in Chelsea features an instrument made by Galindo of items recovered from the region and Misrach’s photos of tires drug behind border patrol vehicles to make a path in which footprints can be detected. (On view through August 18th.)
A figure reclines in front of a baguette, friends walk in the woods and here, a young woman chats on the phone while resting on a huge container of an oversized art supply in ceramic sculpture and plates by Berlin-based artist Isabelle Fein. These diminutively sized snippets of life are an essay on the charms of the everyday. (At Jack Hanley Gallery on the Lower East Side through August 18th).
Patrick Jacobs – known for meticulously crafted dioramas set into the wall – offers another marvelously detailed scene in Pierogi Gallery’s summer group show ‘Double Down,’ which features artwork that involves doubling. Here, a toilet and its reflection suggest plumbing abundance in otherwise cramped quarters. (On the Lower East Side through August 12th).
