Is your garden too dry or your day too sunny? Olafur Eliasson offers a solution in ‘Wunderkammer,’ a selection of augmented reality artwork available for download that includes a placeable raincloud complete with the sound of pattering raindrops. A puffin, a rainbow, a ladybug and more join the cloud as part a recent project launched by the newly high profile AR Art platform Acute Art to allow participants to create their own ‘cabinet of curiosities.’
After presenting paintings of lone figures at Pace Gallery’s new 25th Street headquarters in February of this year (a highlight of which is pictured here), British painter Nigel Cooke is back at pacegallery.com with new characters made while working in isolation. Working at night has created an even more solitary environment for the artist from which he’s tried to capture how ‘perceptions are always changing when things are uncertain.’ Collectively titled ‘Midnights,’ each new work carries titles like ‘Shore,’ ‘Waiting’ or ‘Islands,’ that speak to the idea of a figure looking out to sea. (On view at pacegallery.com through June 2nd).
Sara Ludy’s artwork connects to both virtual and physical worlds manifesting as actual objects inspired by a VR dream house; here, in pieces from 2018, the artist combined glass and copper to create sculptural environments for imagined birds. Ludy’s ability to create compelling work in digital and physical media makes her an ideal artist for her gallery, Bitforms, to showcase in the inaugural Future Fair, currently operating on-line due to the pandemic. Check out her latest images, attractive abstractions which appear simultaneously organic and highly manipulated, intimate yet without reference to scale. (On view in the Future Fair through June 6th).
Installed in late April though the show will likely never be seen in person by the public, The Hole NYC’s exhibition ‘Second Smile’ asks how Surrealism continues to surface in contemporary painting. The show includes work by Emily Mae Smith, whose painting of two candles in a clandestine nighttime meeting was a memorable part of her show at Simone Subal Gallery in 2017. (On view at The Hole NYC through May 24th).
Titus Kaphar’s latest paintings, the subject of a special Artist Spotlight at Gagosian Gallery, take a dramatic turn for the colorful as they continue to explore historical representations of people of African descent. This standout from Kaphar’s 2015 show at Jack Shainman Gallery takes art historical representation as its subject by exposing two figures whose relationship would remain hidden without a revealing cut. Kaphar’s new subjects – women in charge of children who have been cut out of the canvas – exist in charged landscapes that are “…a reflection of an emotional and psychological space.”
