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).
