Rosa Barba at Luhring Augustine Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Features & Commissions, Hottest ShowPosted on Comments are Disabled

Rosa Barba’s ‘Language Infinity Sphere,’ a form created from old letterpress blocks now on view at Luhring Augustine’s Tribeca space, speaks with its circular form to the ongoing output of these blocks over the years. Other text-related work in the show includes handwritten words on a filmstrip that rotates around a lightbox cube and a 35mm film depicting images and text from the Library of Congress’ massive campus, the largest media archive in the world.  Language appears in unexpected forms in this show, even as marks on the landscape in a film showing disposal sites for radioactive material in the western U.S.  (On view through May 21st).

Rosa Barba, Language Infinity Sphere, lead letters on steel, unique, diameter 18 1/8 inches, 2018.

Xiao Wang at Deanna Evans Projects

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Features & Commissions, Hottest ShowPosted on Comments are Disabled

In an Instagram post, Brooklyn-based artist Xiao Wang wrote, “I consider adding highlights as one of the most joyful moments in painting.”  The pleasure is all ours in observing the light as it illuminates the gingko leaves and rests on his model’s cheek in this standout piece from the artist’s solo show at Deanna Evans Projects. Featuring moody, nighttime paintings populated by young people, semi-obscured by plants and bouquets, the new paintings make nature an active participant in each scene.  (On view in Tribeca through May 28th).

Xiao Wang, Streetlight, oil on canvas, 16 x 12 inches, 2021.

Veronica Ryan at Paula Cooper Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Features & Commissions, Hottest ShowPosted on Comments are Disabled

In her solo show at Paula Cooper Gallery, Monserrat-born, England-based artist Veronica Ryan engages themes of global movement and trade with humble materials including fruits, seeds and other organic matter.  Ryan has pointed out that familiar foods bring people together to share meals and memories; she has also incorporated materials like ash from the Soufrière Hills volcano, which has covered the town in which she was born.  Pleasure and trauma also meet in this pile of stoneware cocoa beans, a product that brings happiness to many, sometimes at the expense of enslaved workers. (On view in Chelsea through May 28th).

Veronica Ryan, Cocoa Passion in Tandem, ceramic stoneware, pigment, volcanic ash, jute rug, overall: height variable x 70 7/8 x 70 7/8 inches, 2021.

David Aipperspach at Chart Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Features & Commissions, Hottest ShowPosted on Comments are Disabled

The paintings in Philadelphia-based artist David Aipperspach’s current solo show at Tribeca’s Chart Gallery, ‘Prologue to a Garden Dark’ anticipate the slow end of a summer’s day by blending light and color from different times in a single scene. At the show’s entrance, a small painting tracks the path of the sun as it sinks though a grid of darkening colors, acting as a Rosetta stone for the same color shifts that appear in rectangles of stacked colors inset in the paintings.  Acting as ‘clocks,’ the rectangles break into tranquil scenes, acting as abrupt reminders of the passage of time.  (On view through April 30th in Tribeca).

David Aipperspach, 4-7pm, oil on canvas, 84 x 72 inches, 2021.

Nora Turato at 52 Walker

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Features & Commissions, Hottest ShowPosted on Comments are Disabled

‘Follow me you coward,’ reads an arresting command on the wall of Nora Turato’s current show at 52 Walker, along with the cliched, ‘a lifetime of action and adventure with no clock to punch,’ and tantalizing ‘all is forgiven.’ The show’s title, ‘Govern Me Harder,’ a puzzlingly submissive, perhaps masochistic demand was inspired by a sticker she saw in an Amsterdam dog park; other expressions were gathered from news, ads, online sources and, says the artist, her own thoughts.  In this enamel on steel panel, the last word of the sentence, ‘I sold it for million bells,’ derails expectations of a million dollar sale, leaving us in a thought-provoking lurch.  (On view in Tribeca through July 1st.)

Nora Turato, i sold it for million bells, vitreous enamel on steel in four (4) parts, overall: 94 ½ x 75 5/8 inches, 2022.