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).
