Brilliant yellow flowers dematerialize in the hazy afternoon light in Jane Freilicher’s vibrant still life from 1967, now on view at Kasmin Gallery in Chelsea. Fifteen paintings from the ‘50s to the ‘00s, demonstrate an “…air of just coming into being, of tentativeness that is the lifeblood of art,” as John Ashberry, Freilicher’s long-time friend, put it. (On view through March 13th).
Made over months if not years, Peter Sacks’ multilayered works at Sperone Westwater are composed of layers of typewritten text, cardboard, paint, textiles from around the world and more. Describing the mind as sedimentary in a 2019 New Yorker profile, Sacks layers meaning below the surface of each artwork, burying layers of imagery to convey the concept that more lies below, unseen. Here, a piece from his ‘Above Our Cities’ series turns the skies into a colorful riot over the relatively small skyline below. Is this a celebration? An apocalypse? Both? (On view on the Lower East Side through March 20th).
Color pools and flows in Oslo-based artist Ragna Bley’s acrylic on sailcloth paintings at Downs and Ross, offering a lushly colored alternative to drab, late-winter New York. Inspired by marine biology and the endlessly fascinating shallows and depths of the sea, each painting complicates the reference to water with its dynamism and color. (On view on the Lower East Side through March 6th).
Areas of darker and lighter blue in jazz pianist and composer Jason Moran’s bold new abstractions at Luhring Augustine suggest intervals of energy and calm, control and freedom. Moran made the works by placing pigment on Gampi paper, laid atop a keyboard, then enacting private performances – ‘surrogates to the concerts I was unable to perform in 2020,’ he explains. Paired with tracks from his new album, the works suggest both transcendence and engagement with the challenges of life over the past year. (On view at Luhring Augustine’s Tribeca space through Feb 27th).
Born in Mumbai, raised in Singapore and living in Brooklyn, Sahana Ramakrishnan draws on a multitude of sources, including Hindu, Buddhist and Greek mythology to create intriguingly enigmatic stories. Referring to ‘the innate mystery of the other,’ the group exhibition ‘A Stranger’s Soul is a Deep Well’ at Fridman Gallery showcases complex and unexplained imagery, including Ramakrishnan’s characterful animals, gathering around a vessel to ask for retribution. (On view on the Lower East Side through Feb 20th).
