Sarah Cain pushes the boundaries of what painting can be, literally extending beyond the canvas onto gallery floors and walls and adopting unexpected materials like sequined backpacks and an easy chair. Her current solo show at Broadway in Tribeca features traditional, framed 2-D artworks but also this installation, a combination of expressionist and hard-edge painting that invites the audience to step in and feel the color. (On view through Oct 16th).
Medicinal or deadly depending on its use, Antiaris toxicaria (aka the Anti-bausor tree) is the missing presence in this painting by Brooklyn-based painter Anthony Cudahy at Hales Gallery. Partly inspired by an antique woodcut featuring two men lying on the ground under the fruit-bearing tree, here it’s the artist and his husband who lie prone. But while it’s uncertain if the characters in the original woodcut are alive, Cudahy and partner appear to enjoy a peaceful sleep, occupying a subconscious realm complicated by the spider and webs in the upper register. Alluding to Kate Bush’s ‘Coral Room,’ a song featuring a web-spinning ‘spider of time,’ the references place the couple in a poetic realm of dreams and memory. (On view through Oct 30th in Chelsea. Masks required).
Since 2015, New Delhi-based artist Gauri Gill has worked with indigenous communities and craftsmen in the Indian state of Maharashtra to create arresting photographs of masked people in everyday situations. In recent work at James Cohan Gallery’s new Tribeca location, Gill continues to be inspired by the masks worn in annual, entire-community performances of religious rituals but has commissioned secular versions that deviate from the normal look and use of such masks. Collaborating with the individuals in the photos, Gill devises uncanny scenarios that momentarily bridge fictional and real worlds. (On view at 52 Walker, 2nd floor through Nov 13th. Masks required.)
Towering over visitors to Jack Shainman Gallery, four young women in clothes from JW Anderson’s autumn/winter 2019 campaign, shot by Tyler Mitchell, look otherworldly as they almost hover above the ground in commanding fashion statements. Referred to by the gallery as an ‘Edenic exploration of…a Black utopia in the everyday,’ Mitchell’s work complicates his subjects as he literally elevates them. “I’m caught between wanting to let the mind imagine what that idea meant and spelling it out,” the photographer told i-D. “I think I’ll do the former.”
‘Stay Away’ reads an enormous latex sign on the wall of Sikkema Jenkins and Co in Chelsea, not warning visitors away but welcoming them to Kay Rosen’s new show of text-based artwork. Seeing words as found material, Rosen repeats word fragments (such as the ‘ay in ‘stay’ and ‘away’) in a play on language that highlights unnoticed connections. Here, ‘Queue Up’ speaks to the experiences of lining up during the pandemic. (On view through Oct 16th. Masks required).
