Young Chicago-based artist Alex Bradley Cohen channels the vibrant color and inventive perspectives of David Hockney’s 80s paintings in expressively distorted portraits of friends and family now on view at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery. Against a fiery orange carpet and cool blue background beyond the terrace, this subject comes across as both guarded and open, inviting viewers to engage further. (On the Lower East Side through Nov 10th).
Drawing on the 11th century Persian epic poem ‘The Book of Kings,’ Arghavan Khosravi abuts the fantastical and mundane in absorbing and beautiful paintings that contrast Iran’s storied past and post-Revolution political realities. Here, a pensive young woman in a glass-walled enclosure holds Simurg, a mythical creature that sustained one of the poem’s heroes by providing him sustenance in difficult times. (On view at Lyles and King on the Lower East Side through Nov 10th).
The experience of curling up with a good book in a comfy chair isn’t what you might expect in Meredith James’ ‘Library,’ a standout in her show of delightfully strange sculpture at Jack Hanley Gallery. Stocked with blandly-colored, identical volumes, the miniature library set in a chair, feels more ominous than wonderful. A gallery handout suggests that James’ new work explores ‘things in various stages of disappearance or obsolescence,’ offering an uncertain future for the written word. (On view on the Lower East Side through Nov 10th).
Can you guess who is the housekeeper in each of these photos and who is the employer? Columbian artist Ruby Rumie and French-American photographer Justine Graham teamed up to question the perceived and real differences between one hundred women in photographs and accompanying interviews at Nohra Haime Gallery. As the uniform white shirts worn by the women suggest, Rumie and Graham emphasize the women’s shared hopes, fears and more in questionnaires and videos that foreground their similarities. (On view in Chelsea through Nov 16th).
After the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro was ravaged by fire in Sept 2018, renowned Rio and NY based artist Vik Muniz reached out to offer help. The resulting series ‘Museum of Ashes,’ now on view at Sikkema Jenkins & Co in Chelsea, mourns the loss of artifacts that range from dinosaur fossils to Egyptian artifacts by recreating images of the objects created from their own ashes. (On view through Nov 16th).
It took a good part of the summer for Uruguayan artist Marco Maggi to install his immersive installation at Josee Bienvenu Gallery in Chelsea, yet it’s possible to visit the gallery and not even notice the artwork. Maggi employed his signature technique of cutting tiny geometric shapes and strips from adhesive paper and adhering them to the wall in his latest show, but he keeps the gallery lights off, forcing viewers to employ flashlights to hunt for the work. As the show’s subtitle, ‘From Obscurantism to Enlightenment’ suggests, Maggi wants viewers to enjoy the process of looking, slowing down and letting enlightenment unfold. (On view through Nov 11th).
Mexican born, Harlem-based activist and artist Aliza Nisenbaum’s new paintings at Anton Kern Gallery’s midtown gallery celebrate group activities in kaleidoscopic form and brilliant color. From teaching English to immigrants in Queens in 2012 to various residences and projects, Nisenbaum has engaged individuals who become subjects for paintings that celebrate togetherness and diversity. (On view through Nov 2nd).
Despite their tiny size, monitors on twin coin-operated chairs from 1988 by Nam June Paik in the entryway of James Cohan Gallery’s Lower East Side location blast a stream of media content at visitors who can simultaneously watch the world go by on the busy street outside. Resembling test patterns, the chairs’ upholstery invites viewers to submit themselves to media overload. (On view through Oct 20th).
Inspired by her pregnancy and experience as a mother, Loie Hollowell’s new paintings make rich connections to art history while helping to launch Pace Gallery’s stunning new eight story building on West 25th Street. Here, swelling curves (achieved in part by mounting foam on panel) reference an abundant female form in motion across the lower half of the canvas. Recalling Picasso’s doubled Girl Before a Mirror and Duchamps’ blurred Nude Descending a Staircase, the painting’s cool colors and flashes of fierce red convey powerful fecundity and tranquil poise. (On view through Oct 19th in Chelsea).
After famously taking his mobile photo studio to Times Square for his ‘Inside Out’ portrait project in 2013, French street artist JR hit New York’s streets again in Spring ’18 to make detailed photo collages championing the everyday New Yorker, now on view at Galerie Perrotin. Titled ‘Chronicles of New York City,’ the project follows ‘Chronicles’ in Paris and San Francisco and is also currently featured in Brooklyn Museum’s Great Hall. JR invited over a thousand New Yorkers to step into his truck turned studio to ‘present themselves as they’d like to be seen and remembered.’ The resulting collages bring the city’s citizens together in harmony and common purpose. (On view on the Lower East Side through Oct 26th.)
Inspired by Surrealist Meret Oppenheim’s performance ‘Cannibal’s Feast,’ Japanese photographer Michiko Kon’s food-based sculptural creations from the 90s fascinate and disturb in equal measure. This photo, currently on view at Robert Mann Gallery, showcases a boot crafted from ark clam shells and a real fish head. By evoking luxury goods popular in pre-crash 90s Japan and creating them in perishable materials, Kon updates the vanitas genre for more recent times. (On view through Oct 19th).
David Benjamin Sherry’s photos depict familiar-seeming western landscapes but in colors that force viewers to ask what they’re seeing. Man’s impact on the environment comes to mind, as does the emotional value of portraying these spaces in vibrant pink or purple or yellow tones. In his latest series, ‘American Monuments,’ Sherry shot locations newly threatened by having their protected status removed to allow resource extraction. (On view at Salon94 on the Lower East Side through Oct 26th).
Egyptian artist Wael Shawky talks of crafting history as a medium, referencing existing texts, historical paintings, poems and more to conjure a new creative product. His latest show at Lisson Gallery takes inspiration from histories of the Arabian peninsula from the 17th century to the present, particularly considering the rapid development of the region’s cities. Here, a glass structure and a giant palm tree act like beacons atop two hills, situated on a larger blue/green structure alluding to traditional thick-walled Najd architecture in a striking installation alive with opaque allusions. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 19th).
Inspired by women’s lives in her parent’s native Nigeria, US born artist Wuru-Natasha Ogunji’s considers the daily task of carrying water in her video, ‘Will I still carry water when I am a dead woman?’ Featuring several masked women walking the residential streets of Lagos dragging gold-colored water containers, viewers witness the toll exacted on the bodies of the exhausted and drenched participants. (On view at Fridman Gallery through Oct 12th).
The Haas Brother’s zany show of comical, beaded sculpture at Chelsea’s Marianne Boesky Gallery announces the duo’s foray into the fine art world. Having made a hit in the design community for the past decade with otherworldly furnishings, the twins collaborated on the new work with collaborators, Monkeybiz, to present an assortment of odd creatures and eccentric plant-life in a brilliantly painted, eye-popping setting. (On view through Oct 26th).
Vija Celmins’ once described her relationship to the ocean, which she has rendered again and again in paint, graphite and prints, as akin to wrestling something huge into a tiny 2-D space. This woodcut from 2000, created with one of printmaking’s oldest techniques, captures a particular view of the water’s surface that looks as if it could have been made yesterday or hundreds of years ago. (On view in Chelsea at Matthew Marks Gallery through Oct 26th).
Though Berlin-based Danish artist Jeppe Hein has installed his trademark polished stainless steel panels in large outdoor spaces (notably at Brooklyn Bridge Park in 2015), 303 Gallery’s tiny back space seems uniquely suited to host an intense experience of reality for visitors who see themselves and Hein’s striped paintings cut together in thin strips. Hein has explained that his stripe paintings represent breathing in and out which sounds meditative, but in this installation is geared to quicken the senses. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 19th).
Commissioned for the art-filled Camino Real Hotel in Palanco, Mexico, this vibrant felt hanging by Anni Albers epitomizes the energy expressed by her repeated use of triangles in asymmetrical compositions. Recently rediscovered, it’s a standout in a collaborative exhibition with the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation and David Zwirner Gallery, a show that asserts Albers’ importance not just to 20th century weaving and textile-based work but to experimentation within the modernist idiom. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 19th).
Japanese-Italian artist Ritsue Mishima describes glass as ‘a form of light.’ In her stunning show of twenty-five glass sculptures at Luhring Augustine Gallery – her first in New York – Mishima creates dynamic and still forms that bring to mind sea life and other natural wonders. (On view through Oct 26th in Chelsea).
A mother’s body becomes a playground for her baby, whose sense of curiosity and play ignores boundaries in Madeline Donahue’s humorous paintings at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects. Shifts in scale turn a mom into a giant as baby uses her hair like climbing rope; in other pieces, Donahue creates curving or angular geometric compositions from the antics of her exploring offspring. Through it all, the paintings charm with their sense of humor, patience and stoicism. (On view on the Lower East Side through Oct 5th).
‘Emotional and empathetic’ painting has been New York painter Doron Langberg’s goal since he saw a show of Lucian Freud’s paintings as a kid. His first solo show at Yossi Milo Gallery is a tour de force of sensitively conceived, often monumentally-scaled portraits of friends and family at ease, enjoying leisure time or intimacy. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 19th).
Inspired in part by Charles C. Ebbet’s iconic staged photograph of Rockefeller Center ironworkers eating lunch on a suspended girder, Amy Sherald’s portrait of an anonymous young man pictures him at home in the air, his mind on other things. Poised as if about to speak, Sherald’s subject points to the possibility and promise of communication. (On view in Chelsea at Hauser & Wirth Gallery).
Would New York be better without the people? An empty subway entrance at West 4th Street, Rockefeller Center buried by snow and a deserted Coney Island beach – all scenes included in Brooklyn-based painter Brian Alfred’s latest show at Miles McEnery Gallery – suggest that if the city’s human inhabits would step aside, the views would improve. Here, two city bridges silhouetted by a gorgeous sunrise or sunset may or may not be busy with traffic, but they appear as tranquil as the country-side. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 5th).
‘Property Rights,’ Mitch Epstein’s latest photography series focuses on contested land in the U.S., from protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock to the conflict between immigration activists and self-organized patrols along the southern border. Though each location is defined by its tensions, Epstein’s photos are marked by their calmness and sensitivity to the experience of everyday people navigating the impact of larger forces on their lives. (On view at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. in Chelsea through Oct 5th).
“Driving through Los Angeles, you see all kinds of things out your window, and they go by so quickly,” Alex Prager told the New Yorker as she explained the bizarre scenarios and eccentric characters in her latest photos and video at Lehmann Maupin Gallery. This towering, nine-foot-tall sculpture dominates the gallery and appears in an even larger version in Prager’s short film ‘Play the Wind,’ an homage to the unexpected and strange on the streets of Prager’s hometown. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 26th).
Ever aware of the evolving role of images as stand-ins for real objects in the digital era, Sarah Sze creates a wave in the form of photos, video and rotating projections at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery. Titled ‘Crescent (Timekeeper),’ the installation displays fragmentary glimpses of the natural world on a rickety but orderly wooden frame. Visitors who step close to explore a coyote crossing a road, a raging flame or a bird in flight experience a dynamic and evolving sculpture that offers an immersive experience in real time. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 19th).
Roy DeCarava’s velvety toned black and white photographs aimed for expression, not documentation, seeking to capture scenes of African-American life in Harlem and beyond with ‘penetrating insight and understanding’. Over one hundred silver gelatin photos now on view at David Zwirner Gallery in Chelsea celebrate the centennial of DeCarava’s birth while showcasing the artist’s ability to sensitively portray a variety of subjects, from the everyday life of families to thrilling portraits of jazz musicians like Jimmy Scott. (On view through Oct 26th).
Peter Voulkos’ influence is a constant presence in New York’s galleries if his actual rule-destroying ceramic sculptures are infrequently seen; Burning In Water’s current show of work from Voulkos’ ‘Stacks’ series manifests the artist’s deliberately imperfect forms. Patched, split and tilting to the side, ‘Big Ed’ exemplifies the energy and expression Voulkos brought to his art. Translation from the original ceramic to bronze adds durability to the dynamic. (On view in Chelsea through Sept 21st).
‘Camp: Notes on Fashion’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art ends with a bang in a two-tiered gallery showcasing outrageous garments, from a wrapper resembling the contents of a TV dinner to a tiered ball gown of ruffled pink fabric that juts out from the shoulders and continues expanding as it descends to the ground. Here, alongside earrings shaped like old-fashioned faucet handles, Karl Lagerfeld’s shower head necklace makes a clean break from tradition. (On view on the Upper East Side through Sept 8th).
Carmen Herrera’s longevity as an artist continues to amaze; the informational texts for her installation of boldly colored abstract sculptures at City Hall Park declare her age (104) in the first line before going on to comment on the artwork. In the 50s and beyond, Herrera was in the center of New York’s art world and at its margins, making artwork in conversation with the developing language of abstraction but underappreciated because of her gender and lacking funding to realize her plans for boldly colored sculpture. Installed in the park, her architectural forms are in the company of landmarks including City Hall and the Woolworth Building. Here, they speak to Herrera’s personal and political concerns, from a piece memorializing her late brother to a sculpture constructed of two interlocking forms that nod to Cuban/American relations. (On view downtown at City Hall Park via the Public Art Fund through Nov 8th).
Berlin-based Polish artist Alicja Kwade explains that the invitation to install a piece on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art was like being asked to crown the summarized history of humanity in the galleries below. In response, she created a steel framed structure that symbolizes human systems and which incorporates stones sourced from India, Finland, Italy, China and beyond. From the roof, viewing the New York’s rising skyline is unavoidable; Kwade draws in the surroundings as part of her artwork, inviting visitors to consider neighboring buildings as symbols of capitalism, a structure that can be examined as readily as the ones she erects. (On view through Oct 27th).
For over a decade, item by item, Beijing-based artist Hong Hao scanned his belongings for ‘My Things,’ a series of digitally constructed collages detailing his possessions, from the orderly spines of hundreds of books to more chaotic-seeming arrangements like this one that combine elements from different aspects of life. The abundant objects in each image of the series speak to consumption, but Hong Hao explains that the act of scanning is meaningful as well as it ‘embodies a calm observation without any pre-judgement, a plain testimony, a relevant context for aesthetic exploration.’ (On view in ‘Turn of the Century: Photography in China’ at Chambers Fine Art in Chelsea through August 31st.)
Zanele Muholi’s ‘Somnyama Ngonyama’ (Hail the Dark Lioness) photo series features the South African activist and artist modeling dramatic outfits that on closer inspection turn out to be composed of everyday household items. Muholi’s source image for this beaded panel created with fellow South African artist Morgan Mahape involved a headdress crafted from donut-shaped scouring pads, an important detail that’s less apparent here. Muholi’s softer look and averted gaze are less confrontational than the series’ other powerful images but the piece reads as a tribute to an artist who uses her own body to challenge perceptions and prompt reflection. (On view in ‘African Spirits’ at Yossi Milo Gallery through August 23rd).
Intimacy between people, whether between figures seen in quiet moments in public or this energetic engagement between a toddler and adult in a domestic setting, drives Sara Abbaspour’s probing, black and white photos. A standout in Yancey Richardson Gallery’s show of 2019 Yale MFA Photography grads, curated by James Welling, Abbaspour explains that her aim is to treat physical locations as ‘mental space.’ (On view in Chelsea through August 23rd).
Unlike her mid-20th century counterparts who also employed minimalist forms, repetition, and awareness of the immediate environment in their sculpture, Meg Webster’s interest in the natural world connects her installation of five glass spheres from 1987 at Paula Cooper Gallery to the wonder of naturally occurring phenomena. The imperfectly formed shapes are scaled up to the size of those made by huge bubble wands at a kids’ science museums yet they evoke the briefly lived magic of a floating pocket of air. (On view in Chelsea through August 16th).
Marti Cormand’s last solo show at Chelsea’s Josee Bienvenu Gallery involved meticulously painting replicas of rediscovered artworks that had been considered ‘degenerate’ in the Nazi era. His current series of oil on Polaroid paintings at the gallery involves painterly additions to photos found in his childhood house in Spain, continuing an engagement with recovered imagery from the past. A hazy view inside a refrigerator, and a parrot in an arctic landscape suggest that Cormand is focusing on the strange or magical in the everyday; his swimmer similarly transports us, triggering memories of nature at its most inviting. (On view through August 15th).
Brooklyn-based artist Jenna Krypell’s abstract shapes suggest three dimensions in two, effecting momentary disruptions in our perception. Resembling mazes, stylized calligraphy, or here, sections of a sunset-colored sky cut into strips and hung out, each arrangement of form offers engaging spatial complexity. (On view in Chelsea at Davidson Gallery through August 16th.)
ektor garcia’s ‘portal (guadalajara)’ connects not only to his upbringing by female relatives who supported the family in Mexico and the U.S. with their skill at crochet but also to the earth in its warm, terracotta color. In another piece, a long slim panel of oxidized copper lined with crochet artificial sinew speaks to the building value of minerals derived from the land and its feminized embellishment while his ‘chainmale’ glazed ceramics resemble metal links but are crafted from a more fragile material. (On view in ‘garcia, Raina, Shore, Tossin’ at Luhring Augustine Gallery in Chelsea through August 16th).
The peachy tones of the rock formation in this painting by Canadian artist Joani Tremblay resemble spray-tanned flesh as much as sedimentary stone, questioning Mother Nature’s ‘natural’ qualities. Included in Asya Geisberg Gallery’s ‘Plastic Garden’ summer group show, this painting’s houseplants further signal that the view is seen through an ‘arranged’ human lens. (On view in Chelsea through August 16th).
Fifteen years of collected memorabilia from Mt Rushmore yielded the material for artist Mel Ziegler’s one thousand digitally printed portraits of the monument’s four presidents, currently filling the ground floor of Galerie Perrotin on the Lower East Side. Though repetition and systemization are key, the degradation of each image – suggesting they were lifted from cheaply made or tiny reproductions – leaves the most lasting impression. Despite the scale of the effort in the original Rushmore or Ziegler’s redo, there’s no guarantee that a burnished image will be handed down to posterity. (On view through Aug 16th).
Critic John Yau hits the nail on head when he describes Gladys Nilsson’s ability to ‘keep the viewer looking in ways that are both pleasurable and challenging.’ In her 1984 watercolor ‘Lightly There,’ Nilsson sets up a seemingly flirtatious engagement between two masculine and feminine characters against a backdrop of folks high-mindedly going about their business, noses to the air. Extra-long limbs – oddly allowing the man on the left to reach between his legs to pick up a tiny passenger – are just the beginning of the eccentric proportions and asymmetries of bodies, hair and facial features that lend Nilsson’s characters their intrigue and bait us to question what’s going on. (On view in ’36 Works on Paper’ at Garth Greenan Gallery in Chelsea through August 9th).
Late Indian artist Y. G. Srimati’s traditional Bharatanatyam dancer captivatingly demonstrates control and dynamism in this large-scale watercolor from 1963. Trained in dance and other arts, Srimati once led devotional singing for Mahatma Gandhi and participated in India’s struggle for independence. Adapting British-led art instruction to Indian painting tradition, Srimati pictured rural life and spiritual figures, developing her own uniquely Indian idiom. (On view through August 9th at Jack Shainman Gallery in Chelsea).
Late Italian photographer Ugo Mulas made his name documenting the Venice Biennials from 1954 – 1972 and establishing relationships with Italy’s major post-war artists. In the ‘60s, his purview expanded to New York where he met and photographed now iconic avant-garde artists from Barnett Newman to Marcel Duchamp. These photos and more at Matthew Marks Gallery in Chelsea offer a peek at yesteryear’s art scene, from the police closing a Warhol loft party to intimate shots of Jasper Johns at work. Here, Roy Lichtenstein inhabits one of his cartoon scenarios with good humor. (On view through August 16th).
Dona Nelson’s walk around frames turn painting into sculpture, insisting that viewers have access to (and equally value) both front and back. In ‘Bells,’ blues and greens with a horizontal section of yellow suggest a sunset seen through a window while sections of white canvas deceptively imply transparency. (On view in Lisson Gallery’s ‘Painters Reply: Experimental Painting in the 1970s and now through Aug 9th.)
Amy Bennett’s meticulously rendered oil on panel paintings catalogue disfunction in the suburbs, from a distant couple in ‘Anniversary’ sitting on two different sides of a wrap-around porch to the deeply sad images of kids in ‘Drills’ who practice hiding in school. Privy to moments that are both tense and personal for each painting’s isolated characters, our remove from them (sometimes aided by a bird’s eye perspective) adds alienation and intrigue. Here, ‘Floating Lessons’ parallels and seem to prefigure another of the show’s best and most alarming images in which a body (alive?) floats in an above-ground pool. Bennett’s disturbing but fascinating vision stops viewers from conflating comfortable surroundings with happiness or family life with security. (On view through August 16th at Miles McEnery Gallery in Chelsea.)
Photographer Dana Hoey describes former world champion boxer Alicia Ashley’s shadowboxing as ‘sublimely beautiful.’ Here, in a 44-foot-long wall mural at Chelsea’s Petzel Gallery, Ashley engages with Hoey’s humanoid, diamond-patterned assemblages in a series of movements that showcases the boxer’s art and her agency. (On view in Chelsea through August 2nd).
New York Studio School dean Graham Nickson’s beach paintings have been described as “extreme, impenetrable, and haunting” for their isolated figures inhabiting landscapes pared down to horizontal bands of color. Here, a lone figure’s ambiguous activity (Is she shielding her face from the sun? Reading a giant book?) lends mystery and import to a leisure activity that might otherwise be overlooked. (On view in ‘Summer!’ at Betty Cuningham Gallery on the Lower East Side through August 2nd).
Gina Beavers’ acrylic and foam constructions feel delightfully excessive, their high relief suggesting an eagerness to be noticed. Inspired by glossy social media images of food, makeup and more, the work both revels in and critiques consumption, a point Beavers emphasizes by packing five paintings onto one cube, currently on view at Marianne Boesky Gallery in Chelsea. Here, thick brushes and lush lips conflate on-line makeup tutorials with the painter’s art, humorously questioning art’s role in selling product. (On view in ‘Painting/Sculpture’ through August 9th).
Dramatically colored abstract forms rise off the canvases in Tony Cox’s engaging new show of textured panels at Marlborough Gallery in Chelsea. Inspired by psychotherapy and Jungian psychology, Cox emerged from a recent health crisis to create labor intensive works that reward contemplative viewing. (On view through August 2nd).
Robin Kang morphs circuit board imagery into patterns resembling peacock feathers in a textile created with a digitally operated Jacquard hand loom. An abundance of gold from metallic yarns suggests a link to the divine, the receding space a throne-like seat or corridor leading to the beyond. (On view in ‘Pool Party’ organized by Field Projects at C24 Gallery in Chelsea through Sept 21st).
Mary Heilmann’s red and black ceramic sculpture ‘Curl’ seems to defy its title with its angular panels, yet each segment dynamically spins around a central core like a step on a spiral staircase seen from above. Each tile evokes a riser with three treads or a chunky version of the Egyptian deity Isis’ throne in Constructivist colors that make a bold statement. (On view at Gladstone Gallery’s 24th Street Chelsea location through July 26th).
Music, 20th century design and the dingy tiles of New York’s Holland Tunnel have inspired New York-based painter Kevin Umana’s abstract canvases. Here, the artist nods to the award-winning film ‘If Beale Street Could Talk’ in the color scheme of this small, energetic, and fractured painting. (On view in Chelsea at DC Moore Gallery through August 8th).
In Fredericks & Freiser Gallery’s group show homage to painter John Wesley’s erotically charged Pop aesthetic, Math Bass presents a painting from her ‘Newz!’ series in which pared down, ambiguous signs connect her paintings to Wesley’s. When a similar painting was installed as a mural in the lobby of the Hammer Museum last fall, the black shape could be read as a one-sleeved shirt. Here, a dog emerges to play with the pink ball and extended foot. (On view in Chelsea through July 26th).
Why paint? In 1975, Artforum magazine posited the question to artists at a moment when enthusiasm for more contemporary approaches – from conceptual art to video – seemed to have pushed painting out of the vanguard. Lisson Gallery’s summer group show visits responses then and now as painters pushed the boundaries of what could be considered painting. Here, Polly Apfelbaum’s synthetic velvet and dye piece ‘Blue Joni’ takes painting off the stretcher and even off of the wall. (On view in Chelsea through August 9th).
Tajh Rust’s portrait of a mom and her daughter embracing on the kitchen floor has a counterpart in a second family picture in which the mother meets our gaze while cradling her child’s head. The comparison reveals how easy it is to make eye contact with the child vs her assured mother as they occupy private space in a tender moment. Nevertheless, the girl’s eye becomes the focal point of the painting, highlighting the power of her keen observation. (On view in ‘Vernacular Interior’ at Hales Gallery in Chelsea through July 20th).
Young Peruvian artist Claudia Martinez Garay’s paintings on plaster in the form of squash associate identity with the products of the land, personality with nourishment. Though gourds go through quick cycles of growth and decay relative to humans, this shape appears ancient, taking the mind back through distant human histories tied closely to the land. (On view at Timothy Taylor Gallery in Chelsea through July 26th).
From a pastry case featuring a banana split crafted from burlap, plaster and paint to a monumental canvas hamburger, Claes Oldenburg’s sculpted foodstuffs are familiar favorite foods made alarming through their size and materials. Photographer Sharon Core explores the attraction and repulsion of Oldenburg’s ‘60s classics (including the burger and ice cream) to great effect in her show at Chelsea’s Yancey Richardson Gallery by hand-crafting and photographing a selection of Oldenburg dishes using real food. In contrast to perfectly-presented delectables commonly featured on social media, Core’s edible recreations of Oldenburg’s artworks initially attract, then repulse, questioning just what we want from food these days. (On view through July 3rd).
The pre-fireworks have already begun in anticipation of July 4th’s big celebrations, not just in NYC neighborhoods but in Chelsea at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, where Dana Powell’s ‘TBT’ recalls the thrills of unsanctioned pyrotechnics. (On view in Chelsea through July 26th).
‘Holiday,’ Josh Smith’s painting of the Grim Reaper, may represent a vacation in Edvard Munch’s world, but otherwise has more to do with livening up a typically drab comic convention. A super-abundance of cute bats, Death’s multi-colored robe and a huge moon that’s more pretty-in-pink than bloody liven up a scene that should be darker than it is. While this representation might not exactly make death look good, the makeover is worth thinking about. (On view at David Zwirner Gallery in Chelsea through July 19th).
Scott Olson’s new biomorphic abstractions at James Cohan Gallery’s Lower East Side location continue to tap into the language of early 20th century non-objective art, engaging the imagination with a pleasing play of color and form. A rectangle of dark space at the bottom of the composition sets off what’s above – an array of shapes that tempt interpretation, guiding the eye along diagonally sloping paths toward imagery that resembles the stalks of plants or, above, a segmented area that suggests an arachnid or segmented fruit. (On view through July 26th).
Using unconventional painting materials like the jewelry chains crisscrossing this canvas, LA-based artist Sarah Cain aims to prompt memories and evoke emotions in her viewers. Actually titled ‘Emotions,’ this painting simultaneously suggests a spill of paint, hanging fabric and fairground flags, blurring abstraction and representation and taking the mind several places at once. (On view in Lehmann Maupin Gallery’s summer group show ‘cart, horse, cart’ in Chelsea through August 16th).
Three children forge ahead into the unknown on a boat made of braiding hair packaging in this oil-based relief collage on canvas by Yale MFA candidate Kathia St Hilaire. A standout in Derek Eller Gallery’s current group show, St Hilaire’s image features kids venturing forth under a blazing sun to navigate their own identities and paths in life. (On view on the Lower East Side through July 3rd).
Washington-based glass artist Dylan Martinez fools the eye with solid glass sculptures that appear to be plastic bags filled with water. “Our desires often override our true perception of reality,” the artist explains, anticipating the strong urge to believe that there’s water inside each ‘bag’ when, in fact, it’s the reflections on the exterior that create an illusion of movement. A standout in Lyons Wier Gallery’s ‘Fire & Water’ group exhibition, Martinez also amazes with glass sculptures resembling cross sections of a vase, undulating in space. (On view in Chelsea through July 6th).
It’s risky to take too long a look at Sikkema Jenkins & Co’s gallery wall – British abstract artist Terry Haggerty’s mural can literally upend your balance as his painted lines appear to twist and bend in space. The optical surprises continue in painted wooden panels that invite us to try to make out the multiple viewpoints depicted in each piece. Whether you walk away with a headache or invigorated by the effort of wrestling with your perceptions, the show is worth engaging. (On view in Chelsea through June 30th).
As Pop art burst onto the US art scene in the early 60s, Austrian artist Kiki Kogelnik moved to New York and forged her own related path, imagining humans as robots, bombs as sculpture and later, models as aliens. In this painting from 1979, Kogelnik morphed the fashion-forward woman of the day into a creature with glowing eyes and stylish garments, hair and skin in reptilian green tones. Set against floating triangles, the women are as abstract as their backgrounds and ready to defy convention. (On view at Mitchell-Innes & Nash in Chelsea through June 29th).
Newly represented by Galerie Lelong, Leonardo Drew’s inaugural show at the gallery arrives with a bang with an installation that resembles a hovering mass of exploded material. Like the artist’s recently opened outdoor work at Madison Square Park, the piece offers an unexpected blast of color unfamiliar to fans of Drew’s black, white and wood-colored wall sculptures while continuing to ponder themes of destruction and regeneration. (On view in Chelsea through August 2nd).
‘Seething’ is the perfect word to describe the undulating mass of red and purple folds that writhe and twist in South African artist Frances Goodman’s ‘Seething Mass,’ a standout in Richard Taittinger Gallery’s current group show. Composed of acrylic nails in colors that range from blood red to vivid magentas and purples, this abstract wall sculpture hangs near shields that resemble sharpened, painted fingernails. In both cases, Goodman gives adornment dangerous potential. (On view on the Lower East Side through June 30th).
Human connection is the subject of ‘In the Bedroom,’ South African artist Claudette Schreuders’ latest show of wood sculpture at Chelsea’s Jack Shainman Gallery. Here, in ‘Guilty Bystander,’ Schreuders offers an intimate look at a pensive, uncomfortable character who is somehow implicated in an event that we don’t see, begging the question of whether one must be physically close to an activity to be involved. (On view through June 22nd).
Shara Hughes’ new paintings of lush, psychedelic flowers dominate landscapes so teeming with life it’s almost alarming. Here, several colorful plants sprout blossoms supported by curvaceous stems resembling cursive script, as if new language was needed to describe this beautifully alien world. (On view at Rachel Uffner Gallery on the Lower East Side through June 23rd).
It comes as no surprise when pondering ‘Tau,’ currently installed at Pace Gallery’s 25th Street location, that sculptor Tony Smith began his career as an architect, building spaces designed to be experienced by bodies in motion. Towering over visitors to the gallery’s 25th Street space, the sculpture’s sleek sophistication invites admiration from all angles. (On view in Chelsea through June 22nd).
Finely sifted red soil imported from Oklahoma becomes a patterned carpet in Rena Detrixhe’s first New York solo show at Spencer Brownstone Gallery. Using a trowel to smooth down the dirt, then imprinting it with modified shoe soles, the Kansas-based artist considers the symbolic value attached to land in the mid-west while alluding to mankind’s impact on it. (On view on the Lower East Side through June 16th).
Inspired by his home country’s rich tradition of textile working, Malian artist Abdoulaye Konate employs colorful patterns, cut-out shapes and embroidery to depict a sea abundant with life. As with many of his representational works, Konate alludes to social issues including the desertification of the country and the lack of access to clean water while he celebrates the beauty of its traditional fabrics and indigo dyes. (On view at Blain Southern in Chelsea through June 15th).
Sanya Kantarovsky’s hauntingly dark new paintings at Luhring Augustine Gallery in Chelsea channel Edvard Munch, James Ensor and Henry Matisse to fascinating but disturbing effect. The green skinned woman at the center of ‘Needles’ may be in hooked up to an IV but the demon-like figure propping her up suggests suffering more than recovery. (On view through June 15th).
Addis Ababa-based artist Elias Sime continues to turn discarded electronics into compositions that can suggest aerial maps or abstracted landscapes in his latest show at Chelsea’s James Cohan Gallery. Computers made in China, sold in the US and discarded in Ethiopia make their way into artworks that implicitly question resource distribution and rampant consumption. (On view through June 29th.)
What happens to humanity if global warming leads to drastic sea level rise? Josh Kline envisions the end of life as we know it in a provocative sculpture series featuring submerged cities and preserved specimens of everyday 21st century life at 47 Canal on the Lower East Side. Inside lab hoods, preserved doll-house sized domestic and office environments suggest that what’s normal now may soon be a thing of the past. (On view through June 9th).
Coretta Scott King speaks in a photo held by a silent man who himself is superimposed over an elaborate ornamental structure in this photo collage by Todd Gray. Liberation and the legacy of oppression, particularly of European colonization in Africa and the architectural expressions of wealth it allowed in Europe, come head-to-head in new photo collage by Todd Gray at David Lewis Gallery on the Lower East Side. (On view through June 16th).
Whether she’s boldly charging into the Pacific Ocean or gingerly stepping into a placid pond to expose a cyanotype, Meghan Riepenhoff continues to generate fascinating and beautiful cameraless images of water. For this multi-panel work, the artist dipped her prepared photo paper into Utah’s Great Salt Lake, sprinkled on salt from the ground and allowed the work to dry, propped in the sun. (On view in Chelsea at Yossi Milo Gallery through June 22nd).
California Light and Space artist Helen Pashgian’s striking acrylic columns are both warm and austere, drawing visitors to Chelsea’s Lehmann Maupin Gallery in closer to see the mysterious, barely visible shapes within. Calling them ‘presences,’ Pashgian acknowledges that each distinct body has a character that can be perceived by alert viewers. (On view through May 24th).
Curvy harlequins and female clowns populate French artist Elsa Sahal’s latest solo show of ceramic sculpture at Natalie Karg Gallery on the Lower East Side. Inspired by Picasso’s actors in diamond-patterned clothing, these two truncated figures enact a choreography that could be read as erotic or menacing. (On view through June 15th).
In the Arctic, ‘so much believed to be white is actually – strikingly – blue,’ writes award-winning American poet Robin Coste Lewis in a text applied to the wall at the entrance to Lorna Simpson’s solo show at Hauser & Wirth. Titled ‘Darkening’ and featuring monumentally scaled paintings combining text and images from Ebony magazine, the AP and National Archives, the new work pictures bodies and icy landscapes commenting on, as Simpson has explained, ‘inhospitable conditions and how to survive those conditions.’ (On view in Chelsea through July 27th).
Frank Stella’s latest abstract sculptures are as colorfully exuberant as ever, presenting viewers at Marianne Boesky Gallery with plenty to peruse. Derived from digital processes, the twists and turns of shiny aluminum components take sculpture beyond the handmade. (On view in Chelsea through June 22nd).
Resembling a disco ball and wrecking ball, Robert Longo’s dramatic 1.5 ton sculpture ‘Death Star’ draws viewers into Metro Pictures in Chelsea to discover a sphere covered with 40,000 inert assault rifle bullets. Referring to the number of deaths by gun violence in the US in 2017, the number has more than doubled from those included in a similar piece by Longo from 1993. (On view through May 25th).
The word for Italian born, Alaska-based artist Paola Pivi’s installation of multi-colored, feathered baby bears at Perrotin Gallery on the Lower East Side is ‘cute.’ Explaining that the installation was inspired by her adopted son’s “energy, life and positivity,” Pivi developed a series of bears playfully fighting, doing acrobatics and generally looking to inspire ‘awwwws.’ (On view through June 8th).
Having painted every block on Broadway and drawn every object she owns, New York artist Elise Engler is no stranger to the long-term project. Her most recent obsession – creating a daily visual record of radio news headlines since November 2015 – has resulted in a dense installation of images on the walls of Frosch and Portman Gallery on the Lower East Side. A somber recording of natural disasters, political intrigue and more, the assembled works testify to troubled times. (On view through May 19th).
17th century Dutch still life painters delighted in the effect of light hitting rich fabric or shiny glass; contemporary Brooklyn artist Matthew Hansel is into optical delights of a different sort as he mimics digital distortion in oil and flashe paint. Included in The Hole’s continuing investigation of how digital techniques have impacted non-digitally created art, this shaped painting throws a little fun-house mirror effect into a traditional momento mori. (On view on the Lower East Side through May 19th).
Did Warhol just like Campbell’s soup? Was Roy Lichtenstein simply enamored of blonds? American pop art thrives on its ambiguous criticality towards consumption and mass media marketing, but iconic British pop art icon Peter Blake’s enjoyment of contemporary culture feels less ambiguous. In a noteworthy show at Garth Greenan Gallery, for which a portion of Blake’s London studio has been packed up and reinstalled in Chelsea, the artist’s portraits of wrestlers, clowns, musicians and Marilyn-like woman are a tribute to the more and less famous. (On view through May 18th).
Under a recreation of the night sky as it appeared at the start of the Haitian Revolution, Firelei Baez presents a dramatic installation at James Cohan Gallery’s Lower East Side space featuring empowered female figures who assert their presence in the gallery and in history. Wearing a tignon that refers to the 18th century legal requirement for African-diasporic women to cover their hair, this casually posed yet regal figure lacks a mouth yet speaks with her eyes. (On view through June 16th).
Amid a mass of vibrant color, a solitary eye peeks out from beneath a pattern that recalls decorative fencing in this photo by Paul Anthony Smith at Jack Shainman Gallery. The barrier, created by meticulously making tiny tears in the surface of a photo, deflects our gaze, shielding the subject protectively. (On view in Chelsea through May 11th).
Raqib Shaw’s richly imagined scenes at Pace Gallery are dominated by the verdant Kashmiri landscape and a tribe of cavorting and lounging peacock-headed characters, who echo the poses of picnicking Parisians lounging in a park in Manet’s 1862 painting Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe. Intricately painted in vibrant enamel colors, Shaw’s new paintings are a feast for the eyes. (On view in Chelsea through May 18th).
Titled after the Japanese dolls that return to an upright state if knocked over, Spanish artist Jorge Palacios’ sculpture ‘Okiagari-Koboshi’ is so strikingly shaped, it’s viewers eyes that will keep returning. Resembling a muscle-bound arm extending a slender fist or an oversized 3-D piece of punctuation, the tension between slim and full organic forms offers many interpretations. (On view at Danese Corey Gallery in Chelsea through May 4th).
Starting with a 3D scan of a boulder, Berlin-based artist Alicja Kwade gradually transforms the large rock into a sphere and a square, morphing through different materials along the way and separating each phase by a mirror. At rear, a steel framework supports three more stones, identical in mass and weight but shaped and positioned to look otherwise. Kwade’s intention – to challenge viewers to question what they perceive – results in a puzzling and provocative exhibition. (On view at 303 Gallery in Chelsea through May 18th).
From her studio on a former coffee plantation in rural Guatemala, Argentine-Brazilian artist Vivian Suter created the large-scale paintings currently hanging from the ceiling, covering walls and extending to the floor at Gladstone Gallery’s 21st Street location. Inspired by nature and literally created outdoors, sometimes in conjunction with the elements, Suter aims to subordinate art to the power of nature. (On view in Chelsea through June 8th).
Tankers arrayed like a minimalist piece of land art in this photograph by Victoria Sambunaris turn an otherwise drab landscape near Salt Lake City into study in form and function. Ringed by a barely visible mountains and spread out under voluminous clouds, the trains in their tight formation dominate the natural world in this image. (On view at Yancey Richardson Gallery through May 11th).
Part installation, part performance, Cameroonian-French artist Barthelemy Toguo’s ‘Urban Requiem’ begins with a room of charcoal drawings of African Americans killed by police and culminates in a gallery of heavy, wooden, torso-shaped stamps marked with messages. Against the back wall of the show, prints made using the stamps advocate for peace and respect for human life. The stamp in the foreground incites hope for ‘All the world’s futures.’ (On view at Galerie Lelong in Chelsea through May 11th).
A male authority figure crumbles as he leads three young women toward a shattered monolith in Arghavan Khosravi’s lushly painted ‘Mesmerized, Listen to the Big Brother’ at Yossi Milo Gallery in Chelsea. Though eerily uniform and restrained by shackles connected to earbuds around their necks, the women are real and may free themselves as the illusion ahead of them breaks apart. (On view through April 27th).
North Carolina potter Jim McDowell channels the ceramic styles of enslaved craftsmen from the mid-19th century in face jugs with a message. ‘War Ends Nothing’ says the text written into the side of ‘War ‘n’ Peace’ on the left, while ‘Trayvon’ at center carries words that expresses anger at and healing after the death of Trayvon Martin. (On view at Cavin Morris Gallery in Chelsea through April 20th).
Nikki Maloof puts her audience right in the cage with these canaries while free pigeons cavort outside. Newspaper headlines on the pages papering the cage alternate between self-help and anxious messages while a dynamic twisting branch and electric colors of the yellow birds against a pink wall suggest pleasure and danger. (On view at Jack Hanley Gallery on the Lower East Side through April 21st).
The back glow behind the woman in Amanda Baldwin’s ‘Blushing Orchid’ and the neon-like outline of flowers against the wall suggest that the artist has a paintbrush in hand and her mind in the digital realm. The surreal, collage-like effect of pairing a realistic eye with Photoshop features or delicate blooms with blanched fern fronds deliberately juxtaposes the pleasure of looking in the digital and analogue realms. (On view at Thierry Goldberg Gallery through April 28th.)
This nearly ten-foot high bamboo and rattan sculpture by Sopheap Pich is a standout in the second iteration of the Cambodian artist’s two-part solo show at Tyler Rollins Fine Art in Chelsea. Inspired by a Louis MacNeice poem about reconciling opposites, Pich suggests seed pods and lungs with a piece that is 2-D, 3-D and larger than life. (On view through April 19th).
Worlds collide in Beijing-based artist Jia Aili’s huge, apocalyptic paintings at Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea. An ominous, oval-shaped portal appears to generate flashes of lightning and cause a disruption in space and time while to the left, a puffy, cloud-like figure shoots up toward a mysterious black orb. Whether this is an alien-invasion or some kind of terrestrial catastrophe, the drama is deeply absorbing. (On view at Gagosian Gallery’s 21st Street location in Chelsea through April 13th).
