LA based artist Luis Flores deliberately employs the feminized craft of crochet to create self-portraits which undermine the concepts of masculinity he learned as a boy from his male relatives. Here, he fights with himself in an installation featuring a series of wrestling moves enacted by his body doubles and observed by his passive and skeptical wife. (On view at Salon94 Bowery on the Lower East Side through April 20th).
Vermont-based painter Susan Jane Walp cites early Renaissance artist Piero della Francesca and 20th century great Giorgio Morandi as influences on her painting style. Accordingly, Walp’s carefully tilted pummelo and spoon exude alertness, suggesting the objects depicted are literally poised for a diner. A cropped wine cork, pewter jug and glass egg cup extend off the canvas to allude to a wider spread of items in this measured yet rich array. (On view at Tibor de Nagy Gallery on the Lower East Side through April 14th).
Berlin-based artist Michael Sailstorfer’s tear-themed show at Galerie Perrotin aims to convert sadness to fun. Here, a rickety farm building is destroyed by wrecking balls in the shape of teardrops (cables were removed post-production). Elsewhere, the artist prepares tear-shaped lumps of coal for burning and morphed Bavarian beer bottles into tear-shapes with the help of a glass-blower. (On view on the Lower East Side through April 13th).
Based on the life of Frederick Douglass, the most photographed American man of the 19th century, British filmmaker Isaac Julien’s new ten-screen installation ‘Lessons of the Hour’ brings Douglass’ remarkable life and oratory talents into focus at Metro Pictures Gallery. Here, actors play the role of Douglass and his wife traveling by rail, echoing and contrasting his escape via train as a young man to freedom in New York. (On view in Chelsea through April 13th).
A field of fruit appears perfect until it begins to move and collide, revealing soft surfaces that bespeak rot below a flawless exterior. Titled Impeach I, this animation by Jennifer Steinkamp began life as an LA billboard and now exists as a selection of constantly moving, morphing and reforming fruit. (On view at Lehmann Maupin Gallery’s 22nd Street Chelsea location through April 13th).
From persecuted religious figures to the first recorded female sculptor in Spain, Spanish artist Carlos Vega’s portrait paintings bring to light histories of remarkable women who refused traditional gender roles. Here, Vega switches from mortals to marvel at the divine with an image of Lakshmi, Hindu goddess of wealth, fortune, prosperity. (On view at Jack Shainman Gallery in Chelsea through March 30th).
Before late Swiss artist David Weiss joined forces with Peter Fischli to become the charmingly eccentric duo Fischli and Weiss, he traveled widely, drawing as he went. Also inspired by underground comics, Weiss produced drawings like this tongue-in-cheek take on Giacometti’s famously reduced figure, currently on view at Matthew Marks Gallery’s 24th Street location. (On view through April 6th).
External architecture comes indoors at Marianne Boesky Gallery in Chelsea, where Iranian-American artist Andisheh Avini has installed two domed forms. Born and raised in the US but inspired by his Iranian heritage, Avini provocatively arranges these two quasi-readymades (the domes are crafted and painted by hand) to suggest danger via their pointed spires, around which visitors are invited to step. (On view in Chelsea through April 6th).
A cross section of a tree turns into a bosom in Kiki Smith’s bronze sculpture, ‘Sun,’ a highlight of new work at Pace Gallery that pulls human bodies into close contact with nature. This sculpture’s golden patina recalls gilded, divine bodies while revealing its origins in a majestically-sized tree that nurtures. (On view on 24th Street in Chelsea through March 30th).
Ceramic fragments resembling cracked mud ripple like water in response to visitors’ movements at Bitforms on the Lower East Side, creating a surprising and delightful effect, despite the worrying allusion to a parched environment. Part of Rozin’s new series of mechanical mirrors – interactive artworks that respond via motion sensor to a visitor’s movements which Rozin has created since the late 90s – the new mirrors inhabit a darkened gallery, creating a theatrical feeling that heightens the senses. (On view through March 17th).
Central Park is bursting with color and life in this acrylic painting by New York artist Nicholas Buffon, currently on view on the Lower East Side at Callicoon Fine Arts. Featuring the Bethesda Fountain’s ‘Angel of the Waters’ by queer sculptor Emma Stebbins, the painting calls attention to and celebrates sites important to LGBTQ communities around the city. (On view through March 24th).
Inspired by views of distant galaxies via NASA’s Hubble Telescope, Canadian painter Erik Olson launched a series of paintings that bring his characteristic bright color and expressive forms to outer space. Including paintings made with DS black, a light absorbing coating material, Olson’s show at Bravin Lee expresses wonder at and appreciation of our world and beyond. (On view in Chelsea through March 16th).
Female legs become soft beakers in Jen Liu’s painting of a luxuriously gold-toned world populated by detached body parts, currently on view at Simone Subal Gallery on the Lower East Side. A floating head connects by thin gold wire to the legs, while giant fingers reach in from the side to manipulate events. A nearby video featuring a hot dog factory manned by cadres of female workers aims at “resolving the inequities of wealth and resource distribution through the factory-produced hot dog.” (On view through March 24th).
Thousands of staples obscure and decorate the surface of a photo mounted on wood by Philadelphia-based artist Wilmer Wilson IV at Susan Inglett Gallery. Hiding the besuited figures barely visible below, the staples create an antsy rhythm, reflect light and deflecting viewers’ gaze. (On view in Chelsea through March 16th).
From melted plastics to acrylic paint on paper from old Indian ledgers, Judy Pfaff’s use of traditional and non-traditional art materials continues to set her exuberantly colored new assemblages apart. Now on view at Miles McEnery Gallery, her new riotous new creations are dominated by circular and organic forms. Part of a series of pieces title ‘Quartet,’ they find harmony in difference. (On view through March 9th in Chelsea).
Like Fernando Botero’s swelling human figures, Jordan Kasey’s monumental painted bodies transport viewers out of the everyday. Kasey’s figures, however, have the ponderous heaviness of stone enlivened by a sometimes-electric color palette, a dynamic that gives her massive paintings unique energy. (On view at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery on the Lower East Side through March 17th).
Iconic 20th century German painter Georg Baselitz pays homage to artists who’ve inspired him in a new series of portrait paintings at Gagosian Gallery. Presented in Baselitz’s characteristic upside-down format, figures from Tracey Emin to Willem de Kooning (pictured here) hover against black backgrounds in an ethereal glow that suggests a ghostly background presence in the mind of the artist. (On view through March 16th).
Kathy Ruttenberg’s signature human/animal hybrids debuted on New York City streets this winter as large-scale sculptures in the Broadway malls project, a public art project located between 64th and 157th Streets on Broadway. This macquette for a sculpture on 157th Street, currently on view at Francis M. Naumann Fine Art, brings her storytelling back to an intimate scale as a human-bodied stag pursues a quixotic romance with a confined mermaid. (On view on 57th Street at Francis M. Naumann Fine Art through March 8th).
British ceramic artist Richard Slee’s ongoing installation of ceramic hammers and tools with wooden handles is a thought-provoking jumble of tongue-in-cheek contradictions, starting with the impossibility of using any of these tools for actual labor. Like Pete Seeger’s famous intention to ‘hammer out love,’ the concept is more convincing than the reality, as suggested by this abandoned pile. (On view at Hales Gallery in Chelsea through Feb 23rd).
Ellen Berkenblit’s snarling big cat dominates Eva Presenhuber Gallery’s basement, where the group show ‘Samaritans’ assembles painting, sculpture and photography that spin strange tales. Above the animal, pipes spew blue clouds while below (or in the distance?) a truck dumps a load of materials. Trapped in the middle of human endeavors, this powerful creature bares its teeth. (On view in the East Village through March 2nd).
LA painter Theodora Allen’s first New York solo show features medieval shields as frames for plants with medicinal or harmful uses. Here, the hallucinogenic Jimsonweed materializes on the support like a ghostly presence, pointing to the non-tangible world of experience. (On view at Paul Kasmin Gallery’s 515 West 27th Street location through March 9th.)
Josh Sperling describes his shaped canvases as “simple, beautiful, and fun” in a recent Perrotin Gallery video that touts the pleasures of looking. He can add ‘huge’ to describe fifteen-foot tall Hocus Pocus, a centerpiece of his current show at the gallery. Evoking flowers or ripples from raindrops in water, the assemblage of eighty-four separate paintings is pure enjoyment. (On view on the Lower East Side through Feb 16th).
A tattoo of Popeye battling a squid inspired the cartoon-themed body art on this pensive pensioner, an invented character by Rodney Graham. Standing on the balcony of his ‘Vancouver Special’ sporting a rebellious rockabilly style, the character – played by Graham – stands out amid the trappings of middle-class culture. (On view at Chelsea’s 303 Gallery through Feb 23rd).
Art magazine covers inspired Marlon Mullen’s latest body of work, a series of paintings on view at JTT Gallery that revamp the eye-catching images on the country’s best-known art publications. From his studio at the NIAD Center for Art & Disabilities, Mullen here refines a unique vision that injects vivid color, graphic boldness, and some whimsy into a reworking of a 2014 ArtNews cover featuring Yemeni photographer Boushra Almutawakel’s image of a woman wearing a U.S. flag as headscarf. (On view on the Lower East Side through Feb 17th).
Eleanor Ray’s sunny Texas, Wyoming and Utah landscapes at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery are an enticing alternative to dreary mid-winter New York City. Despite their size (c. 6.5 inches high), the tiny oil paintings communicate wide open spaces suffused with light; here in ‘Wyoming Window,’ the silhouette of a window next to a view from another window turns the sun into an almost tangible presence in the room. (On view on the Lower East Side through Feb 10th).
Flowing water, curling strands of cable and licorice come to mind when encountering Richard Deacon’s dynamic steamed wood sculpture ‘Under the Weather #2.’ Appearing to both hang down from above like a Sheila Hicks fiber installation and rise up from the floor like a rearing snake, the piece is energized by its contradictory suggestions of slackness and tense energy. (On view on 57th Street at Marian Goodman Gallery through Feb 16th).
While sketching a tree stump in an area of trees lost to climate change near his home, California sculptor Charles Long was inspired by the devastation caused by patriarchal culture to merge a cross section of the dead plant with that of a human penis. Strangely humanoid, the transection is rendered in a huge scale at the back of Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, a plaintive and comedic monument to loss. (On view in Chelsea through Feb 9th).
James Baldwin’s intellectual legacy and his powerful impact on contemporary culture is the subject of David Zwirner Gallery’s current group exhibition, or ‘collective portrait,’ of the late writer and thinker. By displaying the work of other artists alongside documents and ephemera related to Baldwin, curator Hilton Als considers how the writer may have continued to make art had his career developed differently after the seminal ‘The Fire Next Time.’ In one of the show’s highlights, Njideka Akunyili Crosby’s collaged photo draws on images from Nigerian and U.S. West Coast cultures, creating a provocative hybridity. (On view in Chelsea on 19th Street through Feb 16th).
Jeanette Mundt’s vivid red poppies look anything but innocent in this painting, testifying to the power of the plant as a drug. Painted from an on-line source, inspired by Van Gogh’s poppies and including a hidden image of a reclining woman, this rich and seductive image speaks to the possibility of multiple sources to reconfigure as a meaningful image. (On view in ‘The Rest’ at Lisson Gallery through Feb 16th).
Swiss artist Claudia Comte makes walls the focus of her latest solo show at Chelsea’s Barbara Gladstone Gallery, nodding to US politics, cave paintings and installations like Sol LeWitt’s rule-based wall drawings. Destined to be popular on Instagram as selfie-backdrops, the show reinforces Comte’s wish to make art not just for the art world elite but for everyone. (On view on 24th Street through Feb 16th).
Fans of James Siena’s rule-driven abstract paintings have new lines of enquiry to follow as the artist experiments with a canvas support (vs enamel on aluminum) and expands his normally intimate scale to sizable new works at Pace Gallery. (On view through Feb 9th in Chelsea).
Borders are front and center in U.S. politics and at James Cohan Gallery where Jorge Mendez Blake’s ‘Amerika’ bisects the main exhibition space, arresting both visitors’ thoughts and physical progress through the show. Mid-way along the base of the wall, Mendez Blake has placed a copy of Kafka’s ‘Amerika,’ the troubled tale of a European immigrant to New York, intimating that migration is a fraught undertaking from start to finish. (On view at James Cohan Gallery’s Chelsea and Lower East Side spaces through Feb 23rd).
Iranian-born artist Fatemeh Baigmoradi’s burnt photographs recall her father’s attempt to avoid arrest by burning his photos of events that tied him to an oppressed political minority after the Islamic Revolution in Iran. The artist connects the resulting images – characterized by beautiful halos of color – to a Persian painting tradition that painted a glow around the heads of featureless holy figures. Her installation, seen here in detail, is a standout in Laurence Miller Gallery’s ‘GRACE’ exhibition, a multi-faceted and fascinating exploration of gender, race and identity. (On view in Chelsea through Feb 22nd).
Charles White called painting his weapon in fighting racism and poverty in the United States. His painting of a sharecropper from 1947-48 demonstrates the difficulty of that life and the resilience of the farmers. Part of an exhibition highlighting White’s last mural – a celebration of the achievements of educator and activist Mary McLeod Bethune – the work exhibits White’s commitment to representational art (when abstraction was becoming the new norm) in service of social change. (On view at David Zwirner Gallery through Feb 16th).
Just months before color theorist, abstract art pioneer and teacher Josef Albers passed away, a book titled ‘Sonic Design’ paid homage to his mid-century abstractions that could be discussed in musical terms. In particular, his series of shapes outlined against a dark background appeared simple but, like music, shift over time in how they might be read, with planes receding at one moment and coming forward the next. The book delighted Albers and inspired David Zwirner Gallery’s current show, which brings together select pieces of glass work from Albers’ time at the Bauhaus in Germany, paintings from his iconic ‘Homage to the Square’ series and more, to consider how color, shape and sound might relate. (On view through Feb 16th).
British artist Lynette Yiadom-Boakye converses with John Singer Sargent’s 19th century portrait of a doctor in a red dressing gown standing before red drapes in this vivid painting of an imagined young man in a red jacket lounging on a red sofa. Is he mimicking the crucifixion or expressing total relaxation in the comfort of this womb-red environment? Titled ‘The Ventricular,’ matters of the heart and health come to mind. (On view at Jack Shainman Gallery’s Chelsea locations through Feb 16th).
A fish-headed creature with legs runs desperately on a treadmill in this painting by Dana Schutz, epitomizing the pervasive anxiety and grotesque shape-shifting that energize her huge new paintings at Petzel Gallery. In one of the show’s largest paintings, Schutz depicts a mountaintop crowded with oddball characters with competing interests (from a landscape artist to a yogi), none of whom look enlightened. Elsewhere, a worried man in a business suit carefully washes a monster he can’t escape. Malaise abounds in Schutz’s portrayal of a dangerous and uncertain world. (On view at Petzel Gallery through Feb 23rd).
Despite the pressures of a busy life, whether she was at home, at work or at her mother’s house, Shirley Lam always put a meal on the table for her family. Thomas Holton’s documentary photos of the Lam family’s life in their 350 sq ft apartment on Ludlow Street is one of three remarkable photo series now on view at the Museum of the City of New York that elaborate on capability and sacrifice in New York’s Chinese communities. (on view through March 24th).
Though inspired by the local history and landscape of the countryside near her studio in Kent, England, Sophie von Hellerman’s latest paintings are anything but tranquil. Scenes of ecstatic dancing and energetically soaring birds join paintings like this one – depicting a WWII soldier’s plane crash in the woods – to offer unexpected rural drama. (On view at Greene Naftali Gallery in Chelsea through Feb 2nd).
In response to recent shootings of African Americans, Betye Saar has revived her iconic Aunt Jemima imagery to create new work that continues to undermine racist stereotypes from U.S. culture. Mounted on a washboard signifying a history of labor performed by African American women, this Aunt Jemima character totes a broom and a gun under the slogan ‘Extreme Times Call for Extreme Heroines.’ (On view in ‘Betye Saar: Keepin’ it Clean’ at the New York Historical Society through May 27th).
Inspired by a 2018 lie-in by high school students in Washington D.C. to protest gun violence, and ghostly profile portraits by Benjamin Tappan in the New York Historical Society’s collection, London-based artist Bettina von Zwehl created portraits of 17 New York high school students intended to recall death masks. The result is a sobering and beautiful memorial to those killed by guns and a powerful plea to stop the violence. (On view at the New York Historical Society on the Upper West Side through April 28th).
Brooklyn painter Paul Gagner takes personal care to a new and hilarious extreme with this image of an intricate landscape created via shaved hair. Gagner’s self-conscious art practice sends up the quest for originality and artistic greatness in paintings of self-help books for struggling artists and pictures like one featuring a giant meteorite that has crashed through a studio window and crushed an easel. ‘Hairscaping’ continues the self-questioning with its tongue-in-cheek pondering of what a truly dedicated artist will do for an art-led life. (On view at Freight and Volume on the Lower East Side through Jan 13th).
Hung in the spot long occupied by an iconic Jackson Pollock drip painting, and inspired by Clyfford Still’s monumental abstractions, Mark Bradford’s mixed media on canvas artwork declares that non-representational art is still cutting-edge in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s ‘Epic Abstraction’ rehang. The bleach and water degraded layered paper surfaces of ‘Duck Walk’ reference Chuck Berry’s famous dance move, also adopted by ballroom voguers, maintaining Pollock’s scale and dynamic movement while prompting alternative considerations of race, gender and history. (Ongoing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art).
From the decaying elegance of Cuban houses to austere new apartments in Abu Dhabi, Andrew Moore’s photographs signal the passing of time and cycles of decay and renewal. His latest body of work – on view at Yancey Richardson Gallery in Chelsea – took him to Alabama and Mississippi, where he photographed vestiges of the past like this carefully arranged and artfully neglected collection of bottles in Demopolis, AL. (On view through Feb 9th).
Jennifer Packer’s portraits of friends and family don’t fully materialize before us; a fading foot or face that hasn’t quite come into focus keep each sitter’s identity unfixed. Here, in a captivating portrait titled ‘The Body Has Memory,’ Packer suggests that past experiences manifest physically in the body. (On view in Chelsea at Sikkema Jenkins & Co through Jan 19th).
Torn and damaged-looking, Bianca Beck’s past paintings have drawn comparison to anguished post-WWII art movements. Eleven seven-foot-high sculptures dominating Rachel Uffner Gallery‘s back space couldn’t be more different, however. Towering over visitors with raucous poses and vibrant color, they were inspired by Plato’s Symposium, which imagined humans so spirited they had to be disciplined by Zeus. (On view on the Lower East Side through Dec 23rd).
Construction sites, abandoned objects on the street and even a rubbish-filled alley have inspired Phyllida Barlow’s gritty sculpture, now on view at Hauser & Wirth Gallery in Chelsea. Barlow once described her work as ‘hideous,’ and in her current show, ‘tilt,’ her sculpture stands in apparent defiance of gravity, incorporating jarring angles and textured surfaces that offer more for the eye to puzzle over than to delight in. This towering accumulation of jagged forms entices with its pink color but is ultimately menacing, suggesting immanent catastrophe. (On view through Dec 22nd).
In small doses, bark from the Ordeal tree (Erythrophleum guineense) is medicinal; in larger amounts, it’s fatal. This exercise in balance is at the heart of Sopheap Pich’s 17 foot long sculpture, ‘Ordeal,’ now on view at Tyler Rollins Fine Art in Chelsea. At exaggerated scale, the seed pod magnifies the ordeal of drinking water poisoned by the bark as a test of innocence, as defendants were once forced to do, and presents an object that can be used for good or ill. (On view through Dec 21st).
Mark Grotjahn’s latest show at Gagosian Gallery, ‘New Capri, Capri, Free Capri’ links in name to a private exhibition the artist organized at the Casa Malaparte on the island of Capri. In practice, the show is important for the artist in marking a departure from his signature face paintings, in which elongated eyes emerge from a center point surrounded by strong lines like a parting in fur. Still dominated by linear patterns, the new work is entirely abstract, foregrounding shape and color. (On view through Dec 22nd at Gagosian’s 24th Street location).
Helix, wave and vortex forms have inspired Tauba Auerbach to create an array of painting, glass sculpture, woven work, video and more informed by natural forms and logical systems. The ‘Ligature Drawings’ in her latest solo show at Chelsea’s Paula Cooper Gallery consider joined and curving forms, exploring language as a system of structured meaning. (On view through Dec 15th).
What do you do as a tune-loving artist with no talent for making music? German artist Gregor Hildebrandt’s answer has been to make art with music-related objects, creating walls with records pressed into clam-shell shapes and ‘paintings’ with cassette tape replacing brush strokes or lines. In the background of this installation view, VHS tape stretched against the wall creates a fluttering surface, as ephemeral as a musical note. (On view on the Lower East Side at Galerie Perrotin through Dec 22nd).
Rona Pondick’s seductively shiny stainless-steel sculptures, featuring her own head on human/animal hybrid creatures, have been shown worldwide; now, she’s debuting the next step in her career with glowing resin and acrylic sculptures at Marc Straus Gallery on the Lower East Side. After health problems forced Pondick to give up foundry work, she began encasing her visage in blocks of resin, creating the suggestion that some magic has temporarily paused the complicated processes within each head. (On view through Dec 16th).
This summer, Spencer Finch reread Emily Dickinson’s nearly 1,800 poems, inspiring new work that continues his fascination with the way that the poet deftly put into words her keen observations of the world around her. Amid photos of Dickinson’s view from her desk and a collage of 19th century wallpaper patterns (including the one on her walls), Finch painted a leaf from life and repeated the rendering, folding his paper to replicate its trajectory as if falling to the ground. (On view at James Cohan Gallery on the Lower East Side through Dec 21st).
Lyle Ashton Harris’ new photographic self-portraits continue to posit ambiguous identities while forcing the question of what might be ‘natural’ as he dons masks collected by his uncle in East Africa while posing nude in various outdoor locations in New York and New England. Here, a tenuously held, chipped colored sheet obscures Harris’ face and upper torso, masking his identity as he stands in front of an anonymous shingled façade. Africa, art, ritual, the male nude, New England architecture and other references conjoin and collide in one provocative image. (On view at Salon94 through Dec 21st).
From behind a floating mass of car logos, a stoic figure represents the services of Mhofu Motor Spares in Zimbabwean artist Gareth Nyandoro’s work at Van Doren Waxter Gallery. Known for his cut paper technique – for which he scores, paints and peels layers from the material – Harare-based Nyandoro captures both the energy and the quieter moments of the city’s marketplaces and exchanges. (On view on the Lower East Side through Dec 21st).
‘Knight to Rook,’ the title of Jane Rosen’s latest solo show at Sears-Peyton Gallery, highlights the strategic placement of her totemic sculptures; here, a glass raptor perches before a stone fox, both suggesting the birds of prey and jackal of Egyptian mythology. Though the artist cites Giorgio Morandi’s vessel-based still lives as inspiration (particularly in a sculptural installation), Brancusi’s stylized, curving sculptures atop rough-hewn plinths come to mind, linking the finished product back to its origins in nature. (On view in Chelsea through Dec 15th).
Caravaggio’s 1602 oil painting ‘The Taking of Christ’ includes betrayal, surrender and alarm in one action-packed scene;’ New York artist Elise Ansel distills the drama in her oil painting, ‘Kiss,’ an abstraction that sketches the main characters as hovering areas of light. By exploring gesture, light and pattern, Ansel focuses attention on the feeling of the scene rather than the specifics, offering new ways to connect to the Old Masters. (On view at Danese Corey in Chelsea through Jan 5th).
In the shadow of Chelsea’s ultra-luxurious new residential buildings, Valerie Hegarty’s new sculptures and wall installations at Burning in Water are a poignant, contemporary vanitas, reminding us that what is fresh will soon be old. Here, the Brooklyn-based artist’s own subway stop is the inspiration for a paint and paper installation that nestles right into a pristine wall. (On view in Chelsea through Jan 5th).
Late sculptor Ken Price evoked bodies and nature in a humorous, accessible and endlessly colorful way for decades until his death in 2012. In a show of work from the ‘90s to 2010 at Matthew Marks Gallery, Price’s evocative forms continue to elicit puzzlement and delight in equal measure. (On view on 24th Street in Chelsea through Dec 22nd).
Known for large-scale majestic scenes of nature rendered in pastel on paper, Zaria Forman’s stunning new work takes her drawings to a new level. Invited by NASA to join their regular data-collecting flights over Greenland and the Antarctic, Forman had access to the landscapes that she recreates in huge pastel drawings that demonstrate the beauty and fragility of our planet’s northern climates. Here, a supraglacial lake is enchantingly beautiful but also a warmer spot that will contribute to this glacier’s faster melt. (On view in Chelsea at Winston Wachter Fine Art through Dec 21st).
“I was trying to imitate or channel what my kids were doing, because, you know, I can draw,” explains iconic appropriation artist Richard Prince of his new body of work ‘High Times.’ Titled after the counterculture magazine, which requested work from Prince for a 2016 cover, the new work is inspired by drawings from the late 90s that aim for immediacy and feeling that studied drawing couldn’t achieve for Prince. Here, in a piece over 18 x 20 feet, Prince inkjet prints, paints and collages his way into a body of work that overwhelms with manic energy. (On view at Gagosian Gallery’s 21st Street location through Dec 15th).
Realist painter Jocelyn Hobbie continues to ponder female subjects in a profusion of patterns in her latest show at Fredericks & Freiser Gallery in Chelsea. The title of this piece, ‘Hollyhock and Anemones,’ ignores the figure at center, suggesting that she’s competing for attention with other decorative elements of the painting. Hobbie’s glowing skinned women radiate an unreal perfection; while painted in oil, they appear to have been created in the digital realm. Positioning them in a no-man’s land of ambiguous space and purpose, Hobbie generates a seductive uncertain image. (On view through Dec 22nd).
Nick Cave, famous for his part-armor, part-costume sound-suits, meditates on gun violence in America in a sobering, symbol-laden show at Jack Shainman Gallery. Here, Cave nestles found sculptures of African heads amongst hands paired in prayer or raised in a solitary gesture of greeting, surrender or a caress. Flowers in the background offer hope of renewal. (On view at Jack Shainman’s two Chelsea locations through Dec 22nd).
Kyle Meyer’s photodocumentary work with eSwatini’s (formerly Swaziland’s) HIV positive populations parallels a stunningly beautiful personal project shot with members of the country’s gay community and now on view at Chelsea’s Yossi Milo Gallery. After photographing men wrapped in scarves made of vibrant fabrics (chosen together at market), Meyer hand sliced the scarf fabric, weaving it into a photo that both protects the sitter’s identity while declaring his existence. (On view through Dec 8th).
LA artist Annie Lapin conjures images from accidents, pouring a charcoal water solution over a prepared surface and embellishing the results with analogue and digitally created effects that she transcribes to canvas. In ‘Defenestration,’ a few deft additions to the central shape turns a stain into an escaping figure hightailing it out of a raw linen canvas. A metaphor for emerging artistic creativity? (On view at Miles McEnery Gallery in Chelsea through Nov 10th).
Atmosphere, light conditions and seasons shift to absorbing effect in Vermont-based painter Eric Aho’s landscapes, sometimes in the same painting. In ‘Headwaters,’ white patches close to the painting’s surface appear to be effects of the waterfall, while at bottom left, water appears to both drop and rise from the side of the cascade. Perceptions alter as we look, creating a dynamic image that engages as it challenges interpretation. (On view at DCMoore Gallery through Nov 10th).
Amid glinting filigree and chains, an emaciated figure plays a horn above two skeletons in Hew Locke’s photograph embellished with mixed media. Underneath is an image of a public sculpture memorializing Peter Stuyvesant, namesake of several New York landmarks and the Dutch governor who saw slavery as an engine to drive New York’s colonial economy. In his first solo show at PPOW Gallery in Chelsea, Locke alters portraits of public figures to examine how their lives and decisions have extended beyond their sanctioned, public images. (On view through Nov 10th).
In her current solo show at Chelsea’s Marianne Boesky Gallery, Austrian artist Svenja Deininger has brought out a new body of painting, literally, in canvases that evoke the human form, her own domestic environment, and the city of Milan, where she initiated her latest series. (On view through Dec 22nd).
It’s hard to tell if the hand in this photo by Mel Frank is gathering or stroking a marijuana plant; either way, the photo captures the cannabis cultivation guru and author’s affection for the herb. From extreme closeup photos to sunny landscapes dominated by weed and its farmers, Frank’s exhibition at Benrubi Gallery, ‘When We Were Criminals,’ offers a visual appreciation of a plant whose reputation continues to evolve. (On view in Chelsea through Nov 10th).
Just how ‘optimized’ should life be? Young Brooklyn painter Grace Weaver explores the idea of living to your utmost in ‘Best Life,’ her first solo show at James Cohan Gallery’s Lower East Side. Here, ‘peak season’ pictures two young people performing the role of tourist as they snap the requisite photos and navigate unfamiliar terrain on vacation. Weaver’s vividly colored portraits of her generation explore social pressures that will be alien to many but intense to her subjects. (On view through Oct 28th).
For her first New York gallery show in nearly ten years, Petah Coyne continues to create richly evocative sculpture inspired by literature; this peacock-topped chandelier titled ‘Black Snowflake’ pays homage to Masuji Ibuse’s Black Rain, his 1965 novel about Hiroshima. Personal themes also run though the show; here, a piece in memory of Coyne’s late father includes a bird considered in Irish mythology to accompany the soul to heaven. (On view at Galerie Lelong in Chelsea through Oct 27th).
Inspired by the DeLorean in the movie ‘Back to the Future,’ Daniel Arsham imagines the car as a relic from even further back, a remnant of the past now studded with sparkling patches of quartz crystal and pyrite. Alongside a similarly eroded Ferrari and a pile of obsolete consumer electronics, Arsham points out that given time, our castoffs revert to objects of desire. (On view at Perrotin through Oct 21st).
Katherine Bradford’s new painting ‘Suits’ juxtaposes a man in an impersonal business suit with a man stripped down to a swim suit. In his anonymous, corporate garb, the man above hovers over his more vulnerable counterpart like a spirit attempting to communicate from the beyond. Faceless, slack bodied and seemingly impervious, the man below stands in passive isolation. (On view at Canada New York through Oct 21st).
Titled ‘Juba’ after a West African dance tradition, Charles White’s portrait of this contemplative woman is dynamic though she’s still. Michael Rosenfeld Gallery’s exhibition of work by White and contemporaries from his wide circle of influence and friendship showcases large-scale drawings like this one from the 60s and 70s, illustrating White’s masterful ability to confer serene wisdom on his characters. (On view through Nov 10th).
At 41 feet long, Sam Falls’ Untitled (Conception) is a huge recreation of the natural world, dropped into 303 Gallery’s spartan white cube. Made by laying natural materials (branches, coral, plants) onto canvas, then adding powdered pigments and waiting for moisture in the air to set the colors, Falls’ working technique is akin to making a photogram with objects on light sensitive paper. The result transports viewers away from the city and into the abundance of nature. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 20th).
Using a homemade camera positioned in the back of a pickup truck, John Chiara records unique images onto paper prepared as a negative, creating otherworldly photos that challenge our sense of time and place. Occasionally, a new skyscraper will loom in the background or a streetlight will invade the scene, making it undeniably contemporary, as in this East Village view. But without storefronts or people, and under a fiery sky, Chiara’s scenes turn Manhattan into a glowing landscape of intrigue. (On view at Yossi Milo Gallery in Chelsea through Oct 27th).
Marc Straus Gallery nods to Mark Rothko’s hovering, painted rectangles of color and Josef Alber’s nests of colored squares on canvas, but the real attraction to Spain-born, New York-based artist Antonio Santin’s paintings is the fact that they’re painted at all. Resembling tapestries, Santin’s amazing abstract paintings are made with oil paint in a variety of patterns that suggest a 3D surface with something hidden beneath. (On view on the Lower East Side through Oct 16th).
Simone Leigh continues to merge bodies and architecture in provocative ways in her debut at Luhring Augustine in Chelsea. Highlights include the raffia-skirted figure on the left, a maternal character elevated by her tall, tent-like garment and commanding respect with her hands-on-hips pose. Natural materials contrast the delicate porcelain flowers clustered in a wreath around her face, suggesting a woman equally at ease with the ready-made and refined. (On view through Oct 20th).
If Ruby Sky Stiler’s latest sculptures at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery seem less curvy than usual, it’s because her latest work departs from the powerful, sometimes monumental female figures she’s known for, zeroing in on dads and kids instead. The subject of men with their children is so rare in contemporary art that it’s initially hard to grasp that the bigger figures aren’t women. Odder still is each group’s repose – wouldn’t these kids be playing soccer with dad or at least a card game? Stiler shatters stereotypical gender roles with aplomb. (On view on the Lower East Side through Oct 7th.)
Vases grimace and boxes flirt in Kathy Butterly’s sometimes anthropomorphic, always charmingly eccentric ceramic sculptures. Butterly’s new work – on view for the first time at James Cohan Gallery – is larger than ever and still defying convention with its raucous combinations of color and forms. (In Chelsea through Oct 20th).
LA-based abstract painter Mary Weatherford had an epiphany while driving through the streets of Bakersfield, CA one evening. The peachy tints of a radiant sunset and the glowing storefront lights inspired her to add neon light to her abstract expressionist canvases, making each uniquely expressive of a particular time and place. In her first solo show at Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea, Weatherford’s huge works are inspired by politics as well as specific experiences; one of the most impactful, GLORIA, operates with explosive force. (On view through Oct 15th).
Urs Fischer wants art to ‘do more than it does.’ With a team of software engineers and the input of choreographer Madeline Hollander, the New York-based Swiss artist sets out to surprise gallery visitors with a troupe of dancing office chairs, programmed to interact with each other and humans. Dubbed ‘robotic sculptures,’ the chairs come across as sinister if they come up behind you but strangely cute from the front as they hover nearby, slowly swiveling their wheels like a dog wagging its tail. Here, several engage in a group animation reminiscent of a chorus-line about to kick up its heels. (On view at Gagosian Gallery through Oct 13th).
A plano-convex lens dangling under three projectors creates a mesmerizing, constantly shifting pattern of light on the walls in Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s latest solo show at Bitforms. In advance of a major exhibition of his interactive environments at the Hirshhorn this fall, the artist’s current exhibition tantalizes with small scale pieces from the past few years that evoke wonder at the intersection of technology and the natural world. (On view on the Lower East Side through Oct 21st).
Barbara Takenaga’s abstract paintings evoke natural phenomena – here, a polished cross section of a stone or a distant view of far galaxies. In the case of ‘Overview,’ a standout in her latest solo show at Chelsea gallery DC Moore, she electrifies the heavens with vibrant color and gratifying complexity. (On view through Oct 6th).
An ominous cloud of fleshy tones and dark lines conjures hidden images (birds? an angular face?) as it hovers over an old-fashioned telephone in Charline von Heyl’s ‘Dial M for Painting.’ Like Hitchcock’s ‘Dial M for Murder,’ intrigue and tension dominate; a hastily drawn telephone leads us in to the drama while the floating mass above gives pause for thought, all against a screaming yellow background. (On view at Petzel Gallery in Chelsea through Oct 20th).
Concrete embraces nature in this painting of a ‘disprized’ location by New York artist Rackstraw Downes at Betty Cuningham Gallery. From a seemingly unremarkable spot under a u-turn ramp, Downes considers what and how the eye really sees and how a ‘forgotten’ place might yield a bit of wonder. (On view on the Lower East Side through Oct 14th).
From a couple of everyday guys to this fabulously coiffed model, Nathaniel Mary Quinn’s characters astound and intrigue as layers of personality come together to make a disjointed but coherent whole. Inspired by real characters from his life and Brooklyn neighborhood, Quinn’s paintings acknowledge human complexity while celebrating individuality. (On view at Salon94 Bowery on the Lower East Side through Oct 27th).
Over the past four decades, Brooklyn painter and art professor Julie Heffernan has questioned traditional roles for women in fantastical works that channel art history and champion female agency. Her latest body of work lauds women who have stood up to power in portraits that hang alongside framed paintings that reverse typical art historical power relations. In the background here, Heffernan’s reworks Rubens’ ‘Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus,’ by replacing a man with a woman on horseback, making her rescuer rather than perpetrator. (On view at PPOW Gallery in Chelsea through Oct 6th).
Wealth is a provocative topic for Nigerian-American artist Toyin Ojih Odutola, who depicts two well-heeled fictional Nigerian families in her latest charcoal, pastel and pencil drawings at Chelsea’s Jack Shainman Gallery. Vibrant and moody, the portraits ask – as Ojih Odutola puts it – ‘what would wealth look like’ had colonialism not happened? (On view at both Jack Shainman Gallery locations through Oct 27th).
Southern Indian sculptor Ranjani Shettar’s concern for threatened rural Indian ecosystems informed her dramatic mezzanine installation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, ‘Seven ponds and a few raindrops.’ Crafted from organic muslin and bound to a welded and molded steel base with tamarind paste, the piece’s floating organic shapes conjure 3-D scientific models, intricate plant life or alien life. (On view on the Upper East Side through Sept 16th).
One hundred and fifty studio portraits of unidentified African Americans by unknown photographers now on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art offer a fascinating peek at self-representation in the mid-20th century. By recently acquiring two major portrait groups represented in the show, the Met announces its intention to build its collection to include images of African Americans. (On view on the Upper East Side through October 8th).
Male behaviors and rituals occupy Ohio-based printmaker and current International Print Center New York resident artist Morteza Khakshoor’s colorful, dream-like prints. This piece, ‘Men of High Culture’ is a standout in the IPCNY’s current juried exhibition of new prints. Including a homogeneously dressed cast of male wall flowers and two figures grappling with eccentric creatures and separated by a vase of flowers, Khakshoor’s setup reinterprets the uber-male cockfight. (On view through Sept 22nd).
From the serene to the lively, Bruce Silverstein Gallery’s selection of portrait photos by Lisette Model (seen here), Diane Arbus and Rosalind Fox Solomon turn everyday folks into intriguing characters. Model’s electric photo of a singer at Café Metropole contrasts a gloved man on the Promenade des Anglais, Nice and the momentary repose of a bather at Coney Island, but all suggest that moments of delicious eccentricity are just around the corner. (On view in Chelsea through Sept 8th).
‘Geomantria,’ the title of Lauren Sparks’ show last spring Kate Werble Gallery succinctly introduces the concept of geometry as magic in the Brooklyn painter’s canvases. In this grid of nine works – part of a three-person group exhibition of abstract painting at Chelsea’s Cheim & Read Gallery, curated by Jack Pierson – Sparks plots out six points with relationships that shift according to the ash, papier mache, glitter, yarn and other materials she applies to woven strips of canvas. (On view through August 30th).
Gianni Versace’s 1991-92 jacket, featuring a Madonna and child embroidered in crystals, draws on the gold tile and opulent patterning of Ravenna’s Byzantine architecture. Part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s stunning ‘Heavenly Bodies’ Costume Institute exhibition, the garment joins icons from the Met’s collection in a contemporary reinterpretation of opulence. (On view on the Upper East Side through Oct 8th).
Argentinian artist Carina Lopez Winschel turns the abundance of nature into material for abstraction in paintings that explode with form and color at Praxis Art in Chelsea. (On view through Aug 31st).
Peg board, orange plastic wrap, beard hair and other unexpected art materials create surprise and immediacy in Aaron Fowler’s meditative self-portrait at Totah Gallery on the LES. Salon94 Gallery, which also showed Fowler’s work earlier this month, explains the donkey “…as a symbol of human imperfection and signifying the potential for transformation.” (On view through Aug 26th at Totah Gallery).
A peaceful beach scene turns into a jittery fly-eye view of the seaside at the hand of Japanese artist Kensuke Koike, who alters vintage postcards and photos by slicing and rearranging the images in strips. (On view in ‘Interventions’ at Yancey Richardson Gallery in Chelsea through Aug 24th).
In South African artist Nicholas Hlobo’s cut canvas artworks, ribbons refer to the feminine while leather points to the masculine. In this detail of a larger work, the ribbons and the canvas they hold together defy gender assignment in curves and openings that evoke the body and geography. (On view in Chelsea at Lehmann Maupin Gallery through August 24th).
Cats feature in LA painter Linda Stark’s work as portals to the divine or the unknowable – one starred in a past painting as the cat-headed god Bastet, in another as a third eye on the artist’s self-portrait. Here, Stark’s cat, Ray, stares coolly out of a pink haze rimmed in blue that evokes Art Deco colors and neon light. (On view at Matthew Marks Gallery in Chelsea through August 17th).
