New York painter Jennifer Coates conflates consumption of art and food in new paintings featuring donuts, bagels, TV dinners and more. At center, this towering stack of pasta, cheese and sauce melts into an abstract painting evoking bubbling lava or a swirling face, playfully signaling the fetishistic power of food. (At Freight and Volume Gallery through April 16th).
Italian artist Quayola revisits the subject of Laocoon, the ill-fated Trojan priest in ancient Greek mythology, in an arresting sculpture that combines a digital, geometric rendering of the priest’s head with a realistic representation. Coated in oxidized iron powder, the sculpture appears both aged and new. (At Bitforms Gallery on the Lower East Side through April 9th).
The debris under the platform occupying center stage at Greene Naftali Gallery includes images of flags and reproductions of art historical images. Above, figures created from nylon gesticulate wildly atop blowing fans like ghosts dancing on the grave of a failed ideology or social movement. (In Chelsea through April 15th).
Robert Frank’s iconic photo series ‘The Americans’ presented a complicated and unheroic picture of the country in 1955. At Danziger Gallery on the Lower East Side, 81 contact sheets (from among thousands) allow viewers to see the shots before and after those selected for publication. Here, a baby in ‘Café-Beaufort, South Carolina’ is not as alone as she appears. (On view through April 8th).
Amid monochromatic structures that recall real world shacks built with available resources, Beverly Buchanan also created a boldly colored house built as a studio and a home. This spirited building perfectly embodies Buchanan’s aim to make buildings that are survivors but communicate, in her words, ‘Here I am; I’m still here!’ (At Andrew Edlin Gallery on the Lower East Side through April 15th).
