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).
