Tomma Abts at David Zwirner Gallery

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Tomma Abts’ small abstract paintings at David Zwirner Gallery defy language, their dynamic forms and rich colors existing to provide stimulation to the eye.  Recurring spiraling shapes evoke wheels with uneven spokes or a curving staircase.  Other canvases feature angular forms emanating from a central point.  All suggest centrifugal force, including the less geometric composition ‘Saske,’ pictured here.  A profusion of soft feathery forms in yellow, turquoise and pink tones recall Edgar Degas’ paintings of 19th century stage performers and provocatively contrast the hard, light-catching metallic surface of a cast-bronze segment to the left. (On view in Chelsea through June 14th).

Tomma Abts, Saske, acrylic on canvas and cast bronze in two (2) parts, 18 7/8 x 15 inches, 2024.

Josefina Concha in ‘Walking Lines’ at Praxis Gallery

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Inspired by natural forms from skin to plants and animals, Chilean artist Josefina Concha’s sculptural textiles pull away from the wall with lively dynamism.  Each thick, textured surface is created from machine-sewn lines of thread that cause the surface to buckle, resembling fungi, growth rings of trees or the patterns of geodes.  Featured in Praxis Gallery’s group exhibition ‘Walking Lines,’ this piece – titled ‘Charco’ (pool) – is a standout in an excellent show of work by Latin American artists who are expanding textile traditions. (On view in Chelsea through June 3rd).

Josefina Concha E., Charco, sewing on canvas, 66 1/8 x 54 3/8 inches, 2025.

William Kentridge ‘A Natural History of the Studio’ Hauser & Wirth

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Internationally renowned for his stop motion animations made from charcoal drawings, South African artist William Kentridge’s drawings for his new nine-part film series are the focus of his first New York solo show at Hauser & Wirth Gallery. “The studio can be understood as an expanded head,” the artist says by way of introduction to ‘Self-Portrait as a Coffee Pot,’ a show that likens the artist’s creative process to percolating coffee.  Though the films play one-by-one in the back gallery, visitors first encounter drawings and work on paper that emerged from enforced studio time during the Covid lockdown.  Here, a full wall drawing featuring peonies (‘a backdrop for conversation in the studio’ according to Kentridge), Leon Trotsky’s head and the words ‘Let Me Live Again’ appear over pages from an accounts ledger, not only nodding to a recent project considering Russian composer Dimitri Shostavovich’s relationship with authoritarian power but generally touching on themes of freedom, renewal and power. (On view in Chelsea through Aug 1st).

William Kentridge, Drawing for Self-Portrait as a Coffee-Pot (Let Me Live Again), Indian ink, charcoal and collage on found paper from cash sales book, 2021.

Olivia Jia, ‘Mirror Stage’ at Margot Samel Gallery

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Despite their subdued grisaille palette, Olivia Jia’s intimately-scaled paintings at Margot Samel Gallery entice with their crisp, realist renderings of artworks, artists and nature.  Here, a bronze ritual vessel features on one page of an open book opposite an ornamental comb, their relationship a mystery, the pictured book a product of the artist’s imagination.  Jia has explained that her upbringing in the U.S., cut off from family by distance and from the material culture of her parents’ homeland has prompted her to paint artifacts that stand in the gap.  Though we know from the painting’s title that the featured photograph of the young woman is Jia’s grandmother, the picture is partially obscured and rests on a sheet of broken glass or mirror; though the significance of each item is clear, the meaning is not, allowing us to share in Jia’s desire for deeper connection. (On view through May 31st).

Olivia Jia, Night Studio (bronze ritual vessel, horn comb with painted bird, branches, two lilies, portrait of my grandmother), oil on panel, 16 x 20 inches, 2025.

Salman Toor, ‘Wish Maker’ at Luhring Augustine Gallery

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Stony-faced men in paintings titled ‘Angry Dads’ or ‘Uncles’ contrast images of young men with distant looks or softly downcast gazes in Salman Toor’s tour de force character studies in the Tribeca venue of his solo debut at Luhring Augustine Gallery’s New York locations.  Ever present in both shows is the uncomfortable coexistence of the artist’s traditional upbringing in Lahore, Pakistan, and the life he has made for himself in New York’s queer diasporic south Asian community.  This pairing of a defiant youth with a wall of disapproving older men encapsulates the drama, frustration, and absurdity of the conflict.  (On view in Chelsea and Tribeca through June 21st).

Salman Toor, ‘Boy, Dads,’ pencil, charcoal, and gouache on paper, 10 1/8 x 10 ½ inches, 2024.

Silvia Heyden, ‘Improvisational Nature’ at Charles Moffett Gallery

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Nature and music inspired Swiss weaver Silvia Heyden, a maker who embodied movement in vibrant tapestries now on view at Tribeca’s Charles Moffett Gallery.  This panel, ‘Vortex (High Water),’ evokes the flow of rock-studded, shallow waters of the Eno River in North Carolina, where she settled for a time with her family.  Though she created fiber works for over sixty years, Heyden made music with her violin for even longer and explained that as she played, she could visualize an interpretation of the music on the loom.  (On view in Tribeca through June 7th).

Silvia Heyden, Vortex (High Water), 40×5 x 45 inches, 2012.

Malick Sidibe, ‘Regardez-moi’ at Jack Shainman Gallery

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Known for picturing the people of Mali as the country emerged from the colonial era into independence in the mid-20th century, Malick Sidibe’s black and white portraits at Jack Shainman Gallery record the leisure activities and self-styling of his photo studio customers.  In a collaboration with local Malian artists, Sidibe selected painted glass frames that enhanced his portraiture.  Here, Mali’s tricolor flag and similarly colored flowers adds a lively, decorative note to a handsome portrait. (On view in Chelsea through May 31st.)

Malick Sidibe, Untitled, signed and dated on verso, vintage silver gelatin print, glass, paint, cardboard, string, wood frame, 14 x 10 ¾ inches (image), 1984.

Lauren Portada, ‘The Story of My Teeth’ at Deanna Evans Projects

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Painter Lauren Portada explains that her early morning trail runs make her extra-aware of the natural world, but the sense of immediacy she conveys in her landscape paintings at Deanna Evans Projects is indebted to her technique.  Using dyed, torn and tarnished scraps from her own recycled paintings, Portada creates representational outdoor scenes with pleasing trompe l’oeil effects that add interest by incorporating areas of abstraction.  A snowy hillside with distinct trees has an ambiguous, patterned ground for example while a Maine sunrise shows up as a reflected orange triangle behind trees in the foreground. Here, a segment of peeling birch catches the light to reveal a multitude of colors in its white bark.  (On view in Tribeca through May 24th).

Lauren Portada, Specimen, acrylic on linen over panel with painted collage cut outs, 12 x 10 inches, 2025.

Peter Moore, ‘New York Streets and Signs’ at Paula Cooper Gallery

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Late photographer Peter Moore captured images of iconic performance art in NYC from the early ‘60s on, documenting events by Yayoi Kusama, Trisha Brown, Nam June Paik and others that are now the stuff of legend.  Not only did he record artists, musicians and dancers, Moore also turned his camera on amusing signage and scenarios that presented themselves on the city streets.  Now on view at Paula Cooper Gallery, accompanied by Claes Oldenburg’s drawings of his own performative take on street life, Moore’s photos from the ‘60s to the ‘80s demonstrate his attentiveness and an appreciation for the lighter side of life.  (On view in Chelsea through June 14th).

Peter Moore, untitled (Dash Exterminating), gelatin silver print, 10 ¼ x 7 inches, 1977.

Laura Lima, ‘Bale Literal’ at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

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Dozens of performers noiselessly cluster backstage waiting to go before the audience at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in a performance orchestrated by Brazilian artist Laura Lima.  All actors, or ‘ballerinas’ as the gallery terms some of them, are sculptures created by Lima’s studio and include beekeeping clothes modified to suggest a space suit, a hammer and a sickle, each sporting a long ‘Greek’ dress, and a black and red cross a la early 20th century artist Kazimir Malevich.  Sent out on a pulley system along one gallery wall and powered by an offstage bicycle, the inanimate figures are given life by lights, sound and careful movement of the pulley.  Strangely absorbing, the installation and its dancing figures reward visitors who are game for interpretation. (On view in Chelsea through May 30th.)

Laura Lima, installation view of ‘Bale Literal,’ at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, May 2025.

Carolyn Lazard, ‘Two-Way’ at Artists Space

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Groans of pain and the sound of encouraging voices greet visitors to Carolyn Lazard’s solo at Artists Space where two videos and an installation of linoleum flooring center on women’s medical experience.  While most visitors will overlook the show’s soft institutional flooring, the drama of a birthing scene in ‘Fiction Contract’ grabs the attention immediately.  Peering over the shoulder of a team of midwives in Elmhurst Hospital in Queens as they run into difficulty delivering a baby, our absorption little reduced by the fact that the patient and infant are mannequins.  Part of a training exercise facilitated by the Maternal Mortality Reduction Program, the simulated scenario encourages audiences to consider the complexity of birthing situations, the professionalism of staff and the importance of funding to ensure equitable health care.  (On view through May 10th in Tribeca.)

Carolyn Lazard, still from ‘Fiction Contract,’ single-channel video, color, sound, at Artist’s Space, April 2025.

Kennedy Yanko, ‘Epithets’ at James Cohan Gallery

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Spotlit and spaciously installed on elegantly understated grey walls at James Cohan Gallery, Kennedy Yanko’s abstract sculptures delight with their formally complex compositions.  Continuing her signature combination of scrap metal and sheets of dried and folded paint, Yanko’s latest sculptures are restrained in size but rich in evocative color and dynamic form. The first piece in the show incorporates a crushed metal cannister that looks as soft as a duffel bag.  Another sculpture features curlicues crafted from metal fencing surrounding a twisting sheet of paint skin in colors that complement the fragments of color on the metal.  Here, rusting metal compliments a deep red swathe of paint. (On view in Tribeca through May 10th).

Kennedy Yanko, Remembering the Future, paint skin, metal, 40 x 24 x 15 inches, 2025.

Jeppe Hein, ‘Expect a Miracle’ at 303 Gallery

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Happiness is Danish sculptor Jeppe Hein’s stock-in-trade.  Past work includes brightly colored benches he calls ‘social sculptures’ that invite strangers or intimates to stop and converse, walls of water that dare interaction and shiny balloons of metal that appear to float on the ceiling.  A new installation at Chelsea’s 303 Gallery presents a ceiling bedecked with swathes of fabric evoking waves, home to alluringly shiny lacquered plastic fish and other animals.  The text ‘expect a miracle,’ spelled out in balloon-like letters at the gallery front door is both poignant and hopeful.  (On view in Chelsea through May 31st).

Jeppe Hein, installation view of ‘Expect A Miracle,’ at 303 Gallery April 26th, 2025.

Takako Yamaguchi, ‘Innocent Bystander’ at Ortuzar Projects

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Raised in Japan and living in LA since the ‘70s, Takako Yamaguchi melds Japanese and Western art in richly decorative paintings that sample from kimono textiles as readily as Art Nouveau aesthetics.  Large works from the ‘80s, now on view in Tribeca at Ortuzar Projects, picture landscapes that include European-derived architecture and geometric structures in isometric perspective alongside a stylized representation of the natural world.  Dominating all are shapes the gallery describes as sperm-like, undulating and spreading across the surface of the artwork as if to “inseminate the past with futures then unknown.” (On view in Tribeca through May 31st).

Takako Yamaguchi, Le Temps Mele, oil and bronze leaf on paper, 48 x 83 inches, 1984.

Willem de Kooning, ‘Endless Painting’ at Gagosian Gallery

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Though painting dominated Abstract Expressionist Willem de Kooning’s career, his bronze sculpture ‘Standing Figure’ takes over a room of paintings in a standout show of the iconic artist’s work at Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea.  Showcasing pieces from the ‘40s to the ‘80s, including major loans from MoMA and the Guggenheim and organized with the support of the Willem de Kooning Foundation, this expansive exhibition offers the opportunity to consider work from different periods of de Kooning’s career in light of his continual reference to the human body.  Placed in proximity to nearly figurative work from early career to the pared down, elegant abstractions of his final painting years, this monumental bronze recalls de Kooning’s observation that “even abstract shapes must have a likeness.” (On view in Chelsea through June 14th).

Willem De Kooning, Standing Figure, bronze, 148 x 252 x 80 inches, 1969-84.

 

Ksawery Komputery in ‘LFG’ at The Hole NYC

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Polish art/tech studio Ksawery Komputery’s interactive light installation in the form of an Atolla jellyfish is a highlight of The Hole’s lively video-game inspired show ‘LFG’ in Tribeca.  Pointing out both that the cultural influence of contemporary art is tiny in comparison with that of digital games and that such games don’t appear often in art world settings, this group show argues for more digital artwork in galleries.  Though not all pieces make use of digital technology, the standouts do and include a pickax-wielding dragon projected on a 3-D printed sculpture by Kevin Bray, Luke Murphy’s light installation on a slumping, fragmented screen and Ksawery Komputery’s dazzling, sound-responsive deep-sea creature.  (On view in Tribeca through May 24th).

Ksawery Komputery, Bios, oil paint on wood panels in 3 pieces, interactive light installation / led, 3d print, custom hardware and software, 28 x 12 inches (main structure) + 196 inches (long LED strips), 2025.

Richard Learoyd, ‘A Loathing of Clocks and Mirrors’ at Pace Gallery

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Strikingly intimate in their clarity, British photographer Richard Learoyd’s new portrait and still life photographs at Pace Gallery arrest with their beauty and rich color.  Here, however, Learoyd eliminates saturated tones to allow the focus to rest on the texture and minute details of two subjects.  Viewers standing in the gallery corner before these two photos are brought into an unexpected relationship with the thoughtfulness, possibly inflected by melancholy or ire, of the sitters.  Created with his signature room-sized camera obscura, Learoyd himself is not immediately in front of the subjects as he takes the photo, adding to the sense of interiority in the images.  (On view in Chelsea through April 26th).

Richard Learoyd, (left) Untitled Head, multi-layered pigment print and hand-applied gesso on canvas, 59 ½ x 59 ½ inches, 2024; (right) Head 2, multi-layered pigment print and hand-applied gesso on canvas, 59 7/8 x 59 7/8 inches, 2024.

vanessa german, GUMBALL at Kasmin Gallery

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Two angels visited vanessa german last fall, one sharing a word – Olmec – and the other urging the artist to continue to practice the spiritual in her art.  The resulting series of monumental head sculptures in “GUMBALL – there is absolutely no space between body and soul” at Chelsea’s Kasmin Gallery are extravagantly rich in their ornamentation, masterful in their collage technique and abundant in references to the sacred.  Also a writer, german is as generous with her words as her materials and recounts (@vanessalgerman) not only the visitation that inspired the heads but explains that she has developed her work to include energy-bearing stones, stars, words, numbers and animal forms.  Here, a head with elaborate decoration and a quilted backing bears a long, poetic list of not just of materials but of concepts on the gallery’s checklist, ending in ‘have faith.’  (On view in Chelsea through May 10th).

vanessa german, bring light in through the top of your head, wood, plaster, foam, plaster gauze, sweet kisses, love, gold chain purse, rose quartz butterflies, the sound of horns honking out of the hotel window, cut glass, lucky feet in rose quartz from the window of the eye, have faith. 79 x 51 x 43 inches, 2025.
vanessa german, bring light in through the top of your head, wood, plaster, foam, plaster gauze, sweet kisses, love, gold chain purse, rose quartz butterflies, the sound of horns honking out of the hotel window, cut glass, lucky feet in rose quartz from the window of the eye, have faith. 79 x 51 x 43 inches, 2025.
vanessa german, bring light in through the top of your head, wood, plaster, foam, plaster gauze, sweet kisses, love, gold chain purse, rose quartz butterflies, the sound of horns honking out of the hotel window, cut glass, lucky feet in rose quartz from the window of the eye, have faith. 79 x 51 x 43 inches, 2025.

Claudia Alarcon & Silat at James Cohan Gallery

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Indigenous Argentinian weavers Claudia Alarcon and members of the Silat Collective carry on tradition, recall their ancestors and convey messages from dreams and the subconscious with textiles featuring abstracted designs from the natural world. Now on view at James Cohan Gallery in Tribeca, their woven panels made by harvesting, breaking down, pounding, spinning and dying the native chaguar plant connect visually to modernist weaving by the likes of Annie Albers, who in the mid-20th century visited and collected textiles from the Salta region, home to Alarcon and the Silat Collective. Here, a textile titled ‘The Three Marias’ resembles abstracted human figures joined by one fabric. (On view in Tribeca through May 10th).

Claudia Alarcon & Silat, The Three Marias, hand-spun chaguar fiber, woven in yica stitch, 48 ¾ x 46 ¼ inches, 2025
Claudia Alarcon & Silat, (detail) The Three Marias, hand-spun chaguar fiber, woven in yica stitch, 48 ¾ x 46 ¼ inches, 2025.

Tavares Strachan, ‘Starless Midnight’ at Marian Goodman Gallery

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Tavares Strachan’s book, the ‘Encyclopedia of Invisibility,’ positioned at the entrance to the artist’s solo show at Marian Goodman Gallery, announces his continued efforts to bring remarkable, underappreciated biographies to light via highly engaging sculpture and installation.  In addition to works honoring mathematician and aerospace engineer Mary Jackson and singer/songwriter Rosetta Tharpe, the ground floor has been transformed to house a ceramic sculpture of the Bahamian musician and artist Exuma, whose work evidenced his engagement with Obeah spiritual practice.  The sculpture stands in an installation of grass, shaped to form a Ghanaian Adrinka symbol indicating bravery, which evokes a rice field intended to supply sustenance across time and space.  High on the walls, a text by James Baldwin exhorts readers to choose behavior that benefits the common good while a piano plays a composition inspired by British-Sierra Leonean composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.  (On view through April 19th in Tribeca).

Tavares Strachan, installation view of ‘Starless Midnight’ at Marian Goodman Gallery featuring The Birth of Exuma (Eagle Talon), ceramic, rice field installation, ceramic 72 7/8 x 26 ¾ x 15 inches, April 2025.

Olivia Erlanger, ‘Spinoff’ at Luhring Augustine Gallery

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Three large dioramas dominate Olivia Erlanger’s solo show at Luhring Augustine Gallery’s Tribeca space, miniature recreations of oddly empty environments.  Visitors first encounter a vista dotted with sandy colored hoodoos topped by an incongruous and illegible pink road sign.  Further into the gallery, a sharply receding view of a formal garden recalls Versailles’s controlled natural environment.  Finally, an apparently post-apocalyptic scene of towers and large buildings surrounded by snow-covered ash changes the mood from strange to worrisome.  In keeping with Erlanger’s interest in human made or alien environments, and joined by graphite drawings of unpeopled places, this stark, intriguing exhibition invites us to ponder post-human landscapes.  (On view through April 19th).

Olivia Erlanger, Green Sky, balsa wood, resin, snow #15, plaster, foam, acrylic, aluminum, graphite, shoe polish, LED, plexiglass, driver, 50 x 32 x 36 inches, 2024.

David Kennedy Cutler, ‘Second Nature’ at Derek Eller Gallery

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David Kennedy Cutler’s bed, his shorts, his plants and more personal items line the walls of Derek Eller Gallery in the form of paintings that foreground the artist himself as subject.  At a time when artists often conceive of and manage artwork that is actually produced by others, Kennedy Cutler’s hands-on, labor-intensive process underscores his role as maker, albeit one who uses digital tools.  Starting by photographing objects in his studio, digitally altering the images, printing on canvas and cutting the surface to create a pop-up effect, then adding paint to the result, the artworks blur the line between media while also multiplying the original represented object.  Alluding to the increased representation of self via social media, Kennedy Cutler represents what he identifies as, ‘a scattering or stuttering of our consciousness,’ a potentially freeing state.  (On view in Tribeca through April 12th).

David Kennedy Cutler, Wild, inkjet transfer, acrylic and clear coat on canvas, armature wire, 49.5 x 35.5 x 3.5 inches, 2024.

Sharon Core, ‘Facsimile’ at Yancey Richardson Gallery

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Irving Penn’s flower photographs, featured in Vogue’s annual Christmas issues from 1967 – 1973 and published in a volume titled ‘Flowers’ in 1980, are the launching point and raison d’etre of Sharon Core’s new body of work at Yancey Richardson Gallery, ‘Facsimile.’  Meticulously shot and printed, the crisp clarity and stunning color of Penn’s images give way to freer renderings in Core’s renditions of Penn’s photos, which she painted using cyan, yellow and magenta Epson UltraChrome inks on Canson Photo Rag paper and then printed as an editioned book.  In her past work, Core has grown flowers that she’s then shot for still-life photos.  Other projects involved photographing her own recreations of food that has been depicted in famous artworks.  Here, she also considers the life of a subject prior to being captured in an image, but now the precursor is the medium of painting itself.  Since the invention of photography, its function in relation to painting has been debated; here, Core reveals in the complexities, ultimately forcing viewers to confront our own expectations.  (On view in Chelsea through April 12th).

Sharon Core, installation view of ‘Facsimile’ at Yancey Richardson Gallery, March 2025.

Ozioma Onuzulike, ‘Who Knows Tomorrow’ at Marc Straus Gallery

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Regulated by a grid format, yet pleasingly undulating, Nigerian ceramic artist and professor Ozioma Onuzulike’s wall-mounted textiles at Marc Straus Gallery are immediately eye catching.  Resembling the babariga, a traditional West African men’s garment, closer inspection reveals their construction from palm kernel shells with ‘embroidery’ patterns created of ceramic pieces.   Conjuring both the global trade in palm oil and its precedents in the slave trade, Onuzulike’s materials reflect complex histories by also evoking a regal fabric. (On view in Tribeca through April 26th).

Ozioma Onuzulike, Starched Babariga with Top-to-Bottom Embroidery, natural palm kernel shells, earthenware and stoneware clays, glazes, recycled glasses and copper wire, (37kg; 5,396 natural and ceramic palm kernel shell beads), 72 7/8 x 57 1/8 x 4 inches, 2024.
Ozioma Onuzulike, (detail) Starched Babariga with Top-to-Bottom Embroidery, natural palm kernel shells, earthenware and stoneware clays, glazes, recycled glasses and copper wire, (37kg; 5,396 natural and ceramic palm kernel shell beads), 72 7/8 x 57 1/8 x 4 inches, 2024.

Linda Gottesfeld, ‘Road Trip’ at George Adams Gallery

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Landscapes viewed from a car crop up regularly in 20th century art, but Linda Gottesfeld’s landscapes viewed ON a car at George Adams Gallery offer a different take on the road trip.  Painted directly on the metal panels of cars, Gottesfeld’s views of highways, gas stations and verdant roadside greenery are made uncanny by the shapes of their supports.  Here, an image on a wheelarch suggests that something has been cut away while three open sections at center not only disrupt the illusion of the painted sky but hint at motion with their angular shapes.  (On view in Tribeca through April 5th).

Linda Gottesfeld, 17 North, oil on metal 31 x 44 inches, 2000.

Tyler Mitchell, ‘Ghost Images’ at Gagosian Gallery

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Tyler Mitchell’s striking new photos in his show ‘Ghost Images’ at Gagosian Gallery aim to picture ‘unseen presences that are deeply felt.’  A young man seems to fade into a wooden wall in a nod to a self-portrait by mid-century photographer Frederick Sommer, while a young woman in ‘Gwendolyn’s Apparition’ appears multiple times in the same image striding or standing on a dusty road.  Here, Mitchell prints his image on fabric, hanging it loosely from a frame in contrast to the tautness of the kite, both hiding and revealing the young man holding it. (On view in Chelsea on 24th Street through April 5th).

Tyler Mitchell, The sky is cold but the wing blood hot, dye-sublimation print on fabric, walnut artist’s frame, 62 x 44 ¼ x 4 inches, 2024.

Rebecca Shore at Derek Eller Gallery

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Chicago artist Rebecca Shore’s paintings at Derek Eller Gallery picture rigidly controlled environments dominated by angles and sharp edges – a bedroom with perfectly unrumpled beds, a wall with geometric wallpaper and a grid of rectangular frames – yet each image subtly disrupts order.  Those beds have strangely curvy headboards, and from the window of the geometrically wallpapered room are trees with barren trunks and branches that fan and curve irregularly outward. Here, a bungalow’s rectangular shape takes up most of the picture’s space, but the calligraphic designs of the fence, the random patterning of flagstones, and a curving path to a natural scene beyond suggest decorative caprice or the allure of the unknown natural world. In the window, lace curtains featuring robotic dancers under a whimsical mobile complete the rebellion against stiff geometry. (On view in Tribeca through April 12th).

Rebecca Shore, Untitled (23-12), acrylic on linen, 2023.

Jane Rosen, ‘Variegated Stones’ at Bienvenu, Steinberg & C

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Jane Rosen’s elegantly streamlined glass and stone bird sculptures at Bienvenu, Steinberg and C inspire admiration for the natural world without dramatizing it.  Similarly restrained but more roughly stylized canids conjure relief carving traditions from around the world, while ink and gouache paintings on weathered-looking paper both reveal the artist’s thought process and present her subjects as if drawn from an ancient text. (On view in Tribeca through April 5th).

Jane Rosen, Roussillon Bird, hand blown glass, French pigment and limestone, overall dimensions: 53 x 10 x13 in, figure: 14 x 6 x 8 in, 2023.

Walton Ford, ‘Tutto’ at Gagosian Gallery

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Known for large watercolor, gouache and ink paintings that picture the animal world through the lens of human (mis)understanding, both historic and contemporary, Walton Ford’s new work at Gagosian Gallery focuses on animals in the menagerie of the wealthy early 20th century Italian heiress Luisa Casati.  Here, one of her pet cheetahs gazes from the prow of a gondola on a foggy night in Venice, where Casati lived in a palazzo later owned by Peggy Guggenheim.   Explaining his motivation for the show, Ford says he wanted, “…to paint pictures about the world’s fastest animals living a fast life with a wild woman in Venice.” (On view in Chelsea on 21st Street through April 19th).

Walton Ford, Forse che si forse che no, watercolor, gouache, and ink on paper, 84 x 60 inches, 2024.

Clare Woods, ‘A Kinder Time’ at Stephen Friedman Gallery

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Clare Woods’ lush, oil on aluminum painting of arranged flowers and potted plants at Stephen Friedman Gallery in Tribeca convey a wildness at odds with their domesticated subject matter.  Mixing paints directly with her brush and employing just a handful of colors, Woods’ streamlined process involves applying the medium to the metal surface itself, the smooth sheet offering little resistance.  Starting early, donning noise-canceling headphones and working alone in the studio, she doesn’t stop until she’s finished a painting.  The resulting immediacy and energy of the process enlivens her traditional subjects, resulting in surprising freshness and visual pleasure. (On view in Tribeca through April 12th).

Clare Woods, The Victory Garden, oil on aluminum, 2025.

Robert Indiana, ‘The Source, 1959 – 1969’ at Kasmin Gallery

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Robert Indiana is known for his iconic LOVE design, first coming to the public eye as MoMA’s 1964 Christmas card and then appearing in the form of painting, sculpture and an extremely popular US Postal Service stamp.  Plagiarized in countless forms from t-shirts to posters (it was unfortunately not copyrighted by Indiana) the graphic tends to overshadow a lifetime of work.  Kasmin Gallery’s current show (in advance of an upcoming exhibition at Pace Gallery) builds appreciation for Indiana’s broader contribution to mid-century art by situating his best-known piece in the context of a decade of his production from 1959 – 1969.  This period (and the show) begins with paintings featuring dramatically pared down forms, including a spherical orb recalling an orange shared on a Manhattan pier by Indiana and Ellsworth Kelly when both lived on Coenties Slip.  Here, Indiana records the shadow of an easel that Kelly gifted him in a painting that is both artwork and conversation between two art practices.  (On view in Chelsea through March 29th).

Robert Indiana, The Gift (Easel), oil on canvas, 40 x 36 inches, 1960.

Joan Jonas, ‘Empty Rooms’ at Gladstone Gallery

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Though twelve paper sculptures hang from the gallery ceiling, a grid of drawings covers one wall and a video projection takes over another in Gladstone Gallery’s cavernous 21st Street space, Joan Jonas’ new installation ‘Empty Rooms’ feels more subtly presented than many of her past multimedia works.  Overhead, boxy forms dominate the gallery, floating like geometric clouds or 3-D kites and lit from within like lanterns.  Made of wrinkled paper (along with lights and steel frames), the sculptures connect with a towering grid of similarly textured paper bearing drawings of leafless trees.  Featuring the silhouette of a turbine and a young woman, a monochrome video adds a human actor to this enigmatic but intriguing view of the natural world. (On view in Chelsea through April 12th).

Joan Jonas, Empty Rooms (installation view) at Gladstone Gallery, March 2025.

En Iwamura, ‘Mask’ at Ross and Kramer Gallery

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Titled ‘Neo Jomon,’ Japanese ceramic artist En Iwamura’s sculpture at Ross and Kramer Gallery updates ancient Japanese pottery with a new consideration of the age-old ‘cord’ pattern.  Pulling a tool over clay that has started to harden, Iwamura achieves a textured effect that can look deceptively like fabric, even at close range.  Inspired by the mask collections in Osaka’s National Museum of Ethnology, which he visited while growing up, Iwamura infuses his forms with both mystery and humor.  (On view in Chelsea through March 22nd).

En Iwamura, Neo Jomon: Black Mask (Crack), glazed ceramic, gold, 31 x 31 x 9 inches, 2024.

Silvia Sleigh in ‘Every Leaf is Precious’ at Ortuzar Projects

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Four paintings in Ortuzar Projects’ exhibition of work by iconic feminist artist Sylvia Sleigh feature Paul Rosano, the subject of this boundary-breaking portrait from 1975.  Clothed, nude and scantily-dressed, the musician and life model appears in poses usually filled by female figures in western art histories.  More brazenly posed than the Renaissance Venuses or holy figures to whom Sleigh alludes, yet in pleasing contrapposto and surrounded by feminizing flowers, Sleigh’s male figures still have the power to surprise. (On view in Tribeca through April 5th).

Sylvia Sleigh, Annunciation: Paul Rosano, oil on canvas, 90 1/8 x 52 ¼ inches, 1975.

Tatsuo Miyajima, ‘Many Lives’ at Lisson Gallery

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Everything changes, everything interacts and everything goes on forever.  Japanese conceptual artist and sculptor Tatsuo Miyajima embeds these concepts in his new work at Chelsea’s Lisson Gallery, presenting sculpture in which countdowns of LED numbers speak to Buddhist concepts of transformation.  Here, however, a circular panel is part of a series inspired by ancient Babylonian star maps that recorded observations of the cosmos on clay tablets.  Intended to point to constantly changing life beyond earthly boundaries, the series takes the mind both back in human time and far beyond human experience and understanding.  (On view through April 19th).

Tatsuo Miyajima, MUL.APIN – no 3, LED, IC, electric wire, painted wood panel, switching power supply, 35 3/8 x 35 3/8 x 3 inch, 2024.

Deborah Druick, ‘Past Present Tense’ at Nino Mier Gallery

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Who are the stylized female figures in Deborah Druick’s paintings at Nino Mier Gallery?  With their faces hidden behind a fan, a bird, hair or even painted out, Druick not only gives nothing away but drives home the women’s anonymity.  At the same time, their abundant, characterful, wig-like swooshes of hair hint at a liveliness below the surface.  Similarly, Druick’s abundant patterning of the women’s dress and their backgrounds flattens the figures, making them less life-like while also suggesting agency via bold fashion statements.  The contradictions entice.  (On view in Tribeca through March 22nd).

Deborah Druick, Plumage, flashe paint and acrylic on linen, 24 x 18 inches, 2023.

Bo Bartlett, ‘The Skippers’ at Miles McEnery Gallery

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Beach-goers and surfers look out to sea and a small group of people gather as if for a memorial while an artist at work on his beach chair records it all in an intriguingly mysterious 22’ painting by Bo Bartlett at Miles McEnery Gallery.  The same tone permeates this painting of a young person pausing in the innocent pastime of stone skipping, perhaps to notice two girls walk by or, more ominously, to gaze out at a smoking blaze on the horizon.  Warm sand and blue skies belie the watchfulness and foreboding of Bartlett’s new work, suggesting the impending end of an idyll.  (On view through March 15th).

Bo Bartlett, The Skippers, oil on linen, 46 x 66 inches, 2024.

Laura Owens at Matthew Marks Gallery

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Known since the ‘90s for paintings that question what a painting is, LA artist Laura Owens pushes the boundaries again with must-see immersive artworks at Matthew Marks Gallery.  An old metal desk once installed at the gallery entrance was shipped to Owens’ LA studio, fitted with interactive elements (a moving roll of tape, a drawer that slides open on its own) and now welcomes visitors into a show of surprises.  In the first room, Owens flips walls and canvas, painting trompe l’oeil wires, candy and more on the walls, while the show’s five canvases hint at patterns derived from wallpaper designs. In the back space (pictured here), patterns, floating clouds and flowers take over walls set with small panels that open and close to reveal hidden pictures.  In another gallery, visitors are invited to gently handle books handmade by the artist, a reversal of the usual prohibition against touching and a trigger for our pleasure in discovery.  (On view through April 19th).

Laura Owens, Untitled, oil, acrylic, silkscreened Flashe, sand and flocking on clay-coated paper mounted to aluminum panels, egg tempera on panel, video, and sound (runtime 80 minutes), 184 1/8 x 258 5/8 x 532 7/8 inches, 2025.
Laura Owens, Untitled, oil, acrylic, silkscreened Flashe, sand and flocking on clay-coated paper mounted to aluminum panels, egg tempera on panel, video, and sound (runtime 80 minutes), 184 1/8 x 258 5/8 x 532 7/8 inches, 2025.
Laura Owens, Untitled, oil, acrylic, silkscreened Flashe, sand and flocking on clay-coated paper mounted to aluminum panels, egg tempera on panel, video, and sound (runtime 80 minutes), 184 1/8 x 258 5/8 x 532 7/8 inches, 2025.

Todd Gray, ‘While Angels Gaze’ at Lehmann Maupin Gallery

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As a winner of the ’22-’23 Rome Prize, photographer Todd Gray spent six months in Rome absorbing the city’s contrasting ancient and contemporary architecture and translating those time shifts into complex images.  Already known for sculptural, photo-based artwork juxtaposing African landscapes with European architecture built with wealth extracted from its colonies, Gray’s new work at Lehmann Maupin Gallery showcases the extravagant beauty of Rome’s built environment, troubled by symbols of exploitative practice.  Here, a ceiling from an early 19th century Neoclassical villa decorated with cavorting nude figures is punctuated by the mast of a slave ship model in the Maison des Esclaves (House of Slaves) museum on Goree Island in Senegal.  An image from the Hubble Scape Telescope acts as portal between the two places, allowing a kind of passage between locations and back in time. (On view through March 22nd).

Todd Gray, Blues Ship (makes me wanna holla), 3 pigment ink prints on Dibond in artist’s frames, 41 x 61 1/8 x 2 ¾ inches, 2024.

Julian Opie at Lisson Gallery

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How present can you be while on your phone?  British artist Julian Opie offers his take on the question with a presentation of four nearly 10-foot-tall striding figures at Lisson Gallery in Chelsea, two of whom gaze down at digital devices.  Blatantly present due to their size, but mentally removed, the figures are emblematic of our distracted times while also monumentalizing digital connectedness.  Initially created for an exhibition in Busan, Korea, the figures could come from anywhere yet retain distinct characteristics in a mix-up of specificity and universality.  (On view in Chelsea through April 19th.)

Julian Opie, Red phone, Auto paint on aluminium, 119 1/8 x 54 3/8 x 19 1/4 in, 2023.

Saya Woolfalk, ‘The Woods Woman Method’ at Susan Inglett Gallery

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For the past 20 hears, Saya Woolfalk has centered her multi-media art practice around her invented, utopian world in which cultural and even physical hybridity leads to empathy towards other beings.  In advance of the artist’s mid-career retrospective at the Museum of Art and Design in April, Susan Inglett Gallery in collaboration with Leslie Tonkonow Gallery present a compact but enjoyably diverse selection of Woolfalk’s work from the last c. 9 years in a range of media, from prints on paper and silk to glass fused with plant material.  In this print, Woolfalk pictures a composite figure of apparent spiritual importance holding two planet-like orbs in her hands, framed by natural growth and prominently anointed with a multi-colored disc.  (On view at Susan Inglett Gallery in Chelsea through March 15th).

Saya Woolfalk, Encyclopedia of Cloud Divination (Plate 3), archival inkjet print, silkscreen, silver leaf, chine colle on Hahnemule Photo Rag Ultra Smooth, 40 x 30 (image), ed of 14, 2018.

Nathalia Edenmont, ‘Out of Body’ at Nancy Hoffman Gallery

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Told many years ago that her eggs would never allow her to bear a child, Nathalia Edenmont pursued the theme of reproduction with a plan to transform discarded goose eggs into art. After performing the difficult task of cleaning the eggs, however, Edenmont found the associations too painful and shelved the project. Meticulously staged photographs of models wearing dresses composed of flowers or fruit followed, along with collages composed of butterfly wings, each alluding to fertility and beauty. More recently, however, Edenmont returned to the goose eggs, cracking them gently with her hands in patterns and here, setting a smaller hen’s egg in a larger goose egg. Not stopping at photography, for which she is known, the artist’s current show at Nancy Hoffman Gallery includes her recent sculpture, which substitutes strong materials for fragile. (On view in Chelsea through March 22nd).

Nathalia Edenmont, [sculpture, foreground] Out of a Fertile Summer Sun (Vincenzo), pure white Statuario marble (Carrara) on labradorite base (Madagascar), 23 ¾ x 27 ½ x 17 ¾ inches, 2024. [background] Out of Golden Rays of a Fertile Summer Sun, Photograph on Canson Platine Fibre Rag, 55 x 46 inches, 2024.

Thomas Schutte, ‘Women’ at Gagosian Gallery

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On the heels of Thomas Schutte’s career survey show at the Museum of Modern Art, the German artist’s provocative ‘Women’ sculpture series from the late ‘90s to 2006 at Gagosian Gallery invites viewers to take a closer look at one of Schutte’s most engaging and uncomfortable bodies of work. Arranged on cold, steel tables in reclining poses like odaliques, familiar from countless paintings and sculptures throughout European art history, the figures signal failure (one figure is pressed flat as if by a giant hand) and trauma (a rigidly tense gingerbread man-like cutout flings an arm into the air). A deflated sculpture with mask-like face and melting limbs recalls the distortions of Picasso’s nudes while others recall Henri Matisse’s or Aristide Maillol’s posed women. Reacting in the past to the constraints inherited by a post-war German artist, Schutte has presented models or proposals as artwork. Similarly, the Frauen exist on uncertain ground, both challenging and reinforcing objectification of the female form at a scale and a degree of polish that defies audiences not to engage. (On view through Feb 22nd).

Thomas Schutte, Bronzefrau Nr. 13 (Bronze Woman No. 13), bronze on steel table, 70 ¾ x 98 3/8 x 49 1/8 inches, 2003.

Camille Henrot, ‘A Number of Things’ at Hauser & Wirth Gallery

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Green rubber playground flooring transports visitors into an unexpected perceptual experience in Camille Henrot’s first New York solo show of playfully odd sculpture at Hauser and Wirth Gallery. Marked with a matrix-like grid that’s calming yet at the same time reminiscent of a guillotine paper cutter, the pattern reinforces the artist’s ongoing interest in the structures that organize society. Paintings inspired by etiquette books, sculpture that looks like abacuses (both the kind used as tools and children’s toys) and this group of dogs on leashes offer varied takes on relationships and power relations. (On view in Chelsea through April 12th).

Camille Henrot, installation view of ‘A Number of Things’ at Hauser & Wirth Gallery, Feb ’25.

Giorgio Morandi at David Zwirner Gallery

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Sixty years after his death, Italian artist Giorgio Morandi’s enigmatic still life paintings continue to exert remarkable influence. Coming on the heels of a much-talked-about show of the artist’s work on the Upper East Side by Rome-based Galleria Mattia De Luca last fall, David Zwirner Gallery’s current Morandi survey features work from the Magnani-Rocca Foundation (located near Parma, Italy) collected by musicologist and friend of Morandi, Luigi Magnani. The gallery’s first two rooms show how Morandi rejected organic still life, portraiture and metaphysical interests (akin to Giorgio deChirco and Carlo Carra) to arrive at the still life paintings of everyday objects that would occupy him for over forty years. Here, a cluster of vessels placed precariously close to the edge of a table testify to the artist’s constant experimentations with spatial arrangements and shifting tones. (On view through Feb 22nd).

Giorgio Morandi, Natura morta (Still Life), oil on canvas, 17 3/8 x 18 7/8 inches, 1948.

Jennifer J. Lee, ‘The Falls’ at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery

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Four paintings of models in jeans – visible only from thigh to waist – line the wall of Jennifer J Lee’s current show of paintings at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery like products in an online store.  Lee’s characteristic small-scale renditions of clothing, food, and people recall and derive from the kind of photographic images we encounter in daily digital life and even the scale of her work – the show’s largest painting is just 22 x 15 inches – operates more in keeping with the size of a screen than an expansive picture plane.  Nevertheless, painted on thick jute, its weave rough enough to suggest pixelation, Lee’s painting are resolutely material, smartly engaging the phenomenon of image-saturated life one oil painting at a time.  (On view in Tribeca through Feb 22nd).

Jennifer J. Lee, Lee jeans, oil on jute, 15 x 13 inches, 2024.

Nick Cave, ‘Amalgams and Graphts’ at Jack Shainman Gallery

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Nick Cave’s stunning sculpture ‘Amalgam (Origin)’ at Jack Shainman Gallery’s newly renovated Tribeca location radically scales up the artist’s iconic Soundsuits, wearable sculptures that make sound as they are moved.  Designed as a protective gesture in response to the 1992 beating of Rodney King’s by LA police, Cave’s first Soundsuit was made of twigs; this 26’ tall bronze adds full branches in a melding of human and natural forms that reaches nearly to the gallery’s 29’ tall ceiling.  (On view through March 29th).

Nick Cave, installation view of ‘Amalgam (Origin)’ at Jack Shainman Gallery, Tribeca, bronze, 309 5/8 x 201 x 227 inches, 2024.

Francesca DiMattio and Caroline Coon at Stephen Friedman Gallery

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Contemporary renditions of Attica vases rudely merged with modern footwear (high heel pumps and a cowboy boot) by American ceramic artist Francesca DiMattio at the entrance to Stephen Friedman Gallery offer a rethink of traditional genres, as do paintings by British artist Caroline Coon in the artists’ lively, two-person show.  While Coon’s stylized figures (see Adam and Eve in the background of this photo) challenge notions of idealized bodies, DiMattio continues her imperfect interpretations of the pretty fancies of 18th century Meissen porcelain.  Here, the excessively textured surface of this vessel enhances the saccharine effect of a flower-decorated heart, both foils to the built-in cleaning spray bottle that hints at the labor required for comfortable domesticity or art-production. (On view in Tribeca through Feb 26th).

Francesca DiMattio, Meissen Tide, glaze and gold luster on porcelain, glaze and enamel on stoneware pedestal, 31 x 13 x 15 inches, 2025. Background: Caroline Coon, Adam and Eve in Ladbroke Grove, oil on canvas, 59 ½ x 47 5/8 inches, 2007.

Roe Ethridge, Hand with Dramm at Andrew Kreps Gallery

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Photographer Roe Ethridge takes us to the beach in his latest solo show at Andrew Kreps Gallery, a destination not quite in synch with a New York winter but nevertheless refreshing with its vivid colors and enjoyable in its inclusion of deliberately imperfect subject matter.  ‘Rainbow over Shore Front Parkway’ captures a rainbow in a stunning, multi-hued sky over beachfront dunes that have recently been constructed as a massive barricade in an ongoing coastal resiliency project.  Nearby, model Irina Shayk in a captain’s hat grins with extra exuberance in an outtake from one of the photographer’s commercial fashion shoots.  The aquatic theme continues with this intense image of a candy-colored spray nozzle, caught as it releases a jet of water into a distinctly unnatural, green environment.  (On view in Tribeca through March 1st).

Roe Ethridge, Hand with Dramm, UV cured pigment print, 34 x 44 inches, 2023.

An-My Le at Marian Goodman Gallery

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Recalling a circular full-room installation in her MoMA retrospective last year, An-My Le’s ‘Grey Wolf’ series in her current show at Marian Goodman Gallery continues to explore immersive environments.  While the earlier presentation juxtaposed diverse landscapes and histories, the current exhibition features color views of the stark Montana countryside where large-scale agricultural production and nuclear missile launch sites mark the land.  Hung tightly in a small, curved enclosure, the photos situate viewers in a landscape seen from above, a cockpit-like, Gods-eye perspective that points to human impact on the landscape. (On view in Tribeca through Feb 22nd).

An My Le, installation view of Grey Wolf, installation comprised of 7 vinyl prints (each 48 x 64 ½ inches), 2024 at Marian Goodman Gallery.
An My Le, installation view of Grey Wolf, installation comprised of 7 vinyl prints (each 48 x 64 ½ inches), 2024 at Marian Goodman Gallery.

Per Adolfsen at Nino Meier Gallery

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Visitors to Per Adolfsen’s solo show of colored pencil drawings at Nino Meier’s Tribeca space can shrug off the cold temperatures outside and bask in the warmth of the Danish artist’s vividly colored landscapes.  Having decided to take his practice out of the studio and into the natural world, Adolfsen explains that he depicts scenes that are based on real places but which offer an exploration of emotion through color and his choice of environment.  Inspired by Edvard Munch, Paul Cezanne and Caspar David Friedrich, Adolfsen aims to elicit feeling in his audience while prompting respect for the environment. (On view through Feb 8th).

Per Adolfsen, Blanket in a Forest, colored pencil on Hahnemuhle paper, 35 1/8 x 25 5/8 inches, 2024.

Na Kim at Nicola Vassell Gallery

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Mood and atmosphere are the subjects of Na Kim’s serial paintings of an imagined young woman, now on view at Nicola Vassell Gallery in Chelsea.  Gazing impassively from a dark interior, standing against an abstracted landscape so that her hair joins with the horizon line, or immersed to the shoulders in a dark pool, a solitary figure conveys subtly different emotions heavily dependent on the color and lighting of her surroundings.  Idealized, planar faces sometimes recall Paula Modersohn-Becker’s self-portraits while yellow, green and red tones bring Fauve portraiture to mind, but the focus of Kim’s work is reflected light and surrounding shadow that suggest various psychological states.  (On view in Chelsea through Feb 22nd).

Na Kim, Untitled: 8, oil on linen, 30 x 24 inches, 2024.

Simphiwe Mbunyuza at David Kordansky Gallery

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At over five feet tall, Simphiwe Mbunyuza’s monumental ceramics at Chelsea’s David Kordansky Gallery entice with their strong presence, striking color and unusual protrusions.  Bumps inspired by traditional Xhosa ritual vessels, house shapes that recall cylindrical South African dwellings and horns pointing to the importance of cattle in Xhosa life signal Mbunyuza’s engagement with aspects of his culture and upbringing including his spiritual identity.  The latter manifests in the sizes of the works, the larger pieces connecting to ancestors while smaller pieces are associated with the artist and his living relatives. Arranged specifically in the gallery and characterized by colors representing South African landscapes, Mbunyuza’s ceramics offer access to material and immaterial worlds.  (On view through Feb 22nd).

Simphiwe Mbunyuza, MTHIMKHULU, ceramic, 63 x 53 x 51 inches, 2024.

Louise Nevelson, Mirror-Shadow VI at Pace

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At the entrance to Pace Gallery’s exhibition of late work by iconic modern artist Louise Nevelson, the contrast between one all-white sculpture and many black-painted assemblages creates a dynamism that is revisited in the diagonals and curving forms of the artist’s sculpture from the 70s and 80s.  Nevelson’s oft quoted intent to “join the shattered world, creating a new harmony” is joined by an attempt to picture the sublime, manifest in works with titles referring to moonlight, reflections, night frost and here, mirrors and shadow.  (On view in Chelsea through March 1st).

Louise Nevelson, Mirror-Shadow VI, wood painted black, 1985, 9’ 9” x 11’ 7” x 1’ 9”, 1985.

Vija Celmins in ‘The Writing’s on the Wall’ at the Hill Art Foundation

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Small-scale and monochrome, the works opening the Hill Art Foundation’s group exhibition ‘The Writing’s on the Wall: Language and Silence in the Visual Arts,’ feel calculated to go unnoticed.  This is all the more reason to mentally detach from attention-grabbing work in nearby galleries and ponder a few lines from Adrienne Rich’s 1978 poem ‘Cartographies of Silence,’ printed on a nearby wall label: “Silence can be a plan rigorously executed…Do not confuse it with any kind of absence.” Nearby, the solitary word ‘dance’ typed repeatedly across the top of a paper by Christopher Knowles, a washy gray watercolor overlaid with a rigid grid by Agnes Martin and a stonily silent bronze bust of James Baldwin by Larry Wolhandler are alive with feeling unreliant on speech, a key intention of the show’s curator, Hilton Als.  Here, Vija Celmin’s giant eraser, crafted from balsa wood and paint, strongly suggests that expression is a process of laying down and removing.  (On view in Chelsea through March 29th).

Vija Celmins, Pink Pearl Eraser, acrylic on balsa wood, 6 ¾ x 19 ½ x 3 ¼ inches, 1966-67.

Svenja Deininger Paintings at Marianne Boesky

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Though given ample space on Marianne Boesky Gallery’s wall, this painting by Austrian artist Svenja Deininger converses with the paintings around it like individual words work together to make up a sentence. Before the holidays, Deininger’s paintings appeared next door at the gallery’s other location; newly installed in the gallery’s single large space, they can be considered singly, in sequence or all at once.  An adjoining mustard yellow monochrome canvas and another small painting featuring fan-like shapes call further attention to color and form in this untitled painting, a standout piece that evokes a large head amid architectural or design elements.  Though individual pieces offer enjoyable juxtapositions, the show’s greatest pleasure in in tracking evocative and subtle connections across multiple canvases. (On view through Jan 24th).

Svenja Deininger, Untitled, oil on linen, 74 ¾ x 57 1/8 inches, 2024.

Pete Turner at Bruce Silverstein Gallery

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A giraffe silhouetted against a red sky, white adobe buildings suffused with deep blue light and the brilliant orange of canned peaches stand out amongst the grid of album covers on Bruce Silverstein Gallery’s foyer wall, a testament to late photographer Pete Turner’s renowned and striking use of color.  In an exhibition that focuses on jazz album covers selected from over seventy covers Turner created over fifty years, the gallery positions the photographer at the forefront of the mid-20th century move toward artistic covers that express the identity of the music vs the brand of the record label.  Here, Turner’s interpretation of Joe Ferrell’s 1975 jazz album ‘Canned Funk’ suggests (literally) eye-popping surprise amid sweet, curving forms.  (On view through Jan 18th).

Pete Turner, Eye to Eye, archival pigment print, printed c. 2000s, 13 x 19 inches, 1968.

Lubaina Himid at FLAG Art Foundation

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Winner of the 2024 Suzanne Deal Booth / FLAG Art Foundation Prize, Lubaina Himid presents two bodies of related but visually distinct work at Chelsea’s FLAG Art Foundation that both offer and challenge the appearance of order and simplicity.   Himid’s ‘Strategy Paintings’ picture individuals seated at tables as they negotiate weighty problems hinted at in titles like ‘Pointless Heroism’ or ‘Bitter Battles.’  The figures’ wary eyes and each painting’s palpable tension suggest that solutions might not be found so easily.  In a separate exhibition space, Himid lines the walls with sixty-four plank paintings titled ‘Aunties.’  Nearly as tall as the room itself and abundantly decorated with used materials taken from furniture, floorboards, and travel crates, the planks evoke an assembly of benevolent guardians.  (On view in Chelsea through Feb 8th).

Lubaina Himid, installation view of Aunties, sixty-four painted wood planks, dimensions variable, 2023.
Lubaina Himid, detail view of Aunties, sixty-four painted wood planks, dimensions variable, 2023.

Jeff Wall at Gagosian Gallery

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Cinematic and uncanny, Jeff Wall’s photos at Gagosian Gallery may present banal or fantastical scenarios (or a combination of both) but each arrests our attention with their careful staging and suggestion of hidden messages.  Often referred to as ‘near documentary’ and inspired by specific works from art history or events Wall has experienced, his photographs encourage viewers to consider how details cue meaning.  The artist has explained that he witnessed the scene in ‘Event,’ pictured here, but he changed the setting and people while still conveying his feelings about what he observed, considering age, class, masculinity, and situational behavior manifest in a single power negotiation. (On view at Gagosian Gallery on 24th Street in Chelsea through Jan 25th).

Jeff Wall, Event, inkjet print, 87 7/8 x 66 5/16 x 2 11/16 inches, 2021.

Esther Mahlangu at Ross + Kramer Gallery

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South African artist Esther Mahlangu’s designs energize Chelsea gallery Ross + Kramer with their vibrant patterns, sacred geometries for which the 89-year-old is internationally renowned.  Inspired by the house painting traditions of the Ndebele people and learned from her mother and grandmother, Mahlangu’s abstractions take the form of murals, ceramics, canvases and even this hand painted car, the star of a show featuring 30 paintings made over ten years.  (On view through Jan 25th).

Esther Mahlangu, installation view of ‘Esther Mahlangu: Time in Color’ at Ross + Kramer, Chelsea, Dec ’24.

Kenny Scharf at Sixty White

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Renowned for his involvement in the downtown 80s New York art scene, Kenny Scharf coined the term ‘Pop Surrealism’ to describe his energetic blend of cartoon and pop imagery.  Now on view at huge scale, the artist’s 1995 site-specific mural ‘The Heads,’ created in 1995 for the Center of Fine Arts in Miami fills Tribeca’s 60 White in all its dream-like glory.  Stretching throughout the vast space, the paintings are accompanied by a quote from Scharf recalling dreams of space travel.  (On view through January.  Check with the gallery for the exact closing date.  Note that gallery hours change during the holiday period).

Installation view of ‘Kenny Scharf: Space Travel,’ Dec 2024 at 60 White. Foreground: Kenny Scharf, Poval, oil and acrylic on canvas, 108.3 x 132 inches, 1995.

Mallory Weston in ‘Objects USA’ at R & Company

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Looking to turn over a new leaf in 2025? Do it literally with jewelry designer Mallory Weston’s Shattered Begonia Brooch #3, a wearable artwork that pushes boundaries by combining jewelry and textile working techniques.  Part of her NODES series, which also features a dangerously spiky-looking prickly pear and enormous monstera leaf necklace, the piece grabs the attention by combining natural subject matter with a digital-aesthetic achieved with a tiled titanium construction.  It is on view in R & Company’s sprawling Objects USA, a showcase of 100 objects by 55 makers.  (In Tribeca through Jan 10th.  Note that gallery hours change during the holiday period).

Mallory Weston, Shattered Begonia Brooch #3, anodized titanium, nickel, leather and cotton, 2022.

Faig Ahmed at Sapar Contemporary

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Azerbaijani artist Faig Ahmed’s new textile works at Sapar Contemporary transform regionally specific carpet styles from his home country into contemporary artwork by radically altering traditional patterns and foregrounding the conceptual aspects of each work.  ‘The Knot,’ the title piece for the show, foregrounds and monumentalizes the most basic technique of carpet-making.  The gallery explains that this luxuriously dark, central knot, represents the invisible work, stories and histories that go into the making of each piece.  (On view in Tribeca through Jan 6th.  Note that gallery hours change during the holiday period).

Faig Ahmed, The Knot, handmade wool and silk carpet, variable dimensions, 36 5/8 x 235 inches (open), 2024.
Faig Ahmed, The Knot, handmade wool and silk carpet, variable dimensions, 36 5/8 x 235 inches (open), 2024.
Faig Ahmed, The Knot, handmade wool and silk carpet, variable dimensions, 36 5/8 x 235 inches (open), 2024.

Ruth Asawa in ’18 Women: 50 Years’ at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery

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’18 Women: 50 Years’ at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is a tour de force of painting and sculpture, ceramic, textile and work in a variety of media created between 1918 to 1968 by some of the most influential artists of the mid-20th century.  Among the many standout pieces is Ruth Asawa’s S.391/50, a crocheted brass wire sculpture from c. 1958, which the gallery describes as taking the form of ‘six double-sided, trumpet-like shapes that expand outward from the central void’ in a dynamic composition of repeated looping line. (On view in Chelsea through Jan 25th.  Note that gallery hours change during the holiday period.)

Ruth Asawa, S.391/50, brass wire, 15 x 13 ½ x 12 ¾ inches, c. 1958.

Lorna Simpson at Hauser & Wirth Gallery

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With almost no warning save for a humming sound and a sudden gust of air, Mississippi tenant farmer Ed Bush witnessed a meteorite plough into the earth one day in 1922, a terrifying and sudden event which Lorna Simpson recounts in 3-D lettering on the wall of her solo show at Hauser & Wirth Gallery.  Nearby, painted and silkscreened fiberglass panels picture a surface pockmarked with bullet holes, another allusion to violence that can descend unexpectedly and without reason.  In the main gallery, a series of 12-foot-tall canvases feature huge, meteor-like rocks that appear to hover in space, perhaps arrested in their descent but still exuding destructive potential that has, at least momentarily, been averted.  (On view in Chelsea through Jan 11th. Note that gallery hours change during the holiday period).

Lorna Simpson, Time Lapse, acrylic and screenprint on gessoed fiberglass, 144 x 102 x 1 ¾ inches, 2024.

The Hall Sisters in ‘My Way: Gee’s Bend Today’ at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery

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Lively, colorful, and modern in their geometry, the quilts in Nicelle Beauchene Gallery’s group show of textiles from Gee’s Bend quilters are a standout in the Tribeca galleries.  ‘My Way: Gee’s Bend Today’ is the third in a three-part series at the gallery featuring work by the legendary makers of Gee’s Bend, a Black community in Boykin, Alabama.  The present exhibition showcases work by 14 artists creating ‘My Way’ quilts, pieces that favor free expression over strict adherence to a pattern.  (On view through Jan 4th.  Note that gallery hours change during the holiday period).

The Hall Sisters, Star Bright (Quilted by Mary Hall, Doris Mooney, and Elaine Spencer), assorted fabrics, 74h x 59w in, 2023.
The Hall Sisters, Star Bright (Quilted by Mary Hall, Doris Mooney, and Elaine Spencer), assorted fabrics, 74h x 59w in, 2023.

Irwin/Bell: The ‘60s at 125 Newbury

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Though based in Los Angeles, the mid-century Light and Space movement is well represented in New York galleries, a happy circumstance aided by Pace Gallery’s long-term relationships with key artists.  ‘Irwin/Bell: The ‘60s’ at Pace’s Tribeca offshoot, ‘125 Newbury,’ presents work by Larry Bell and Robert Irwin that revisits their early shows in New York, including the premier of Irwin’s aluminum disc paintings in 1968.  Installed in a back gallery with a bench inviting visitors to sit and contemplate, this untitled piece from 1967 presents a circular aluminum form that exists materially but appears to be composed entirely of light and shadow.  (On view in Tribeca through Jan 11th).

Robert Irwin, Untitled, sprayed lacquer on aluminum disc, 62” diameter, 1967.
Robert Irwin, Untitled, sprayed lacquer on aluminum disc, 62” diameter, 1967.

Tong Yang-Tze at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Amid the holiday throngs in the Met Museum’s Great Hall, renowned Taipei-based artist Tong Yang-Tze’s monumental calligraphic installation stands out for its stark clarity and gracefully energetic form.  Two canvases present phrases that encourage self-reflection and engagement with the new.  Here, the saying ‘Stones from other mountains can refine our jade’ derives from a 3,000-year-old classical Chinese text originally intended to encourage an embrace of talent from another country.  (On view through April 8th, 2025).

Tong Yang-Tze, installation view of ‘Stones from other mountains can refine our jade,’ ’24 in ‘Dialogue’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Nov 2024.

Ian Davenport, Beato at Kasmin Gallery

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It’s always a pleasure to encounter British abstract painter Ian Davenport’s colorful cascades of paint, artworks that result from pouring vividly colored acrylic paint down an aluminum surface.  In new work at Chelsea’s Kasmin Gallery, vertical lines give way to a looser order toward the bottom of each painting, or here, on a panel placed on the floor below.  Intending to evoke natural forces including air currents and tides while pointing to the colors of Renaissance paintings by artists including Fra Angelico and Caravaggio, the paintings offer both formal and optical enjoyment. (On view in Chelsea through Dec 20th).

Ian Davenport, Beato, acrylic on aluminum mounted onto aluminum panel, 118 1/8 x 78 ¾ x 93 ¼ inches, 2024.
Ian Davenport, Beato (detail), acrylic on aluminum mounted onto aluminum panel, 118 1/8 x 78 ¾ x 93 ¼ inches, 2024.

Anne Samat at Marc Straus Gallery

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Malaysian artist Anne Samat’s monumental family portrait at Marc Straus Gallery is a memorial to her late mother, brother and sister.  At center, an abstracted figure bearing a ‘no smoking’ sign alludes to Samat’s brother’s fatal illness, yet his form towers protectively over a small standing figure before a small pond.  Constructed in everyday materials ranging from rakes to plastic swords and woven with a mix of yarn and rattan sticks, Samat updates Malaysian and SE Asian artistic practices in a powerful installation acknowledging the importance of family and, as the title ‘Never Walk in Anyone’s Shadow’ suggests, self-reliance. (On view in Tribeca through Dec 21st).

Anne Samat, Never Walk in Anyone’s Shadow 2, rattan sticks, kitchen and garden utensils, beads, ceramic, metal and plastic ornaments, handwoven tapestry, 151 ½ x 285 x 77 inches, 2024.
Anne Samat, (detail) Never Walk in Anyone’s Shadow 2, rattan sticks, kitchen and garden utensils, beads, ceramic, metal and plastic ornaments, handwoven tapestry, 151 ½ x 285 x 77 inches, 2024.

Irving Penn, ‘Kinship’ at Pace Gallery

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Pace Gallery’s current exhibition of Irving Penn’s photographs from the ‘40s to 2000, curated by supremely image-savvy artist Hank Willis Thomas, is compact but impactful, featuring juxtapositions of photos with often radically different subject matter that nevertheless have some affinity. A 1947 studio portrait of New Yorker cartoonists poised on a scaffold hangs near a photo of a careful arrangement of blocks, immediately conveying careful arrangement and balance rather than humor or play.  Around the corner, two models in Issey Miyake echo the form of a neighboring image of two weathered cigarette butts, a parallel that crashes together the fashionable and the discarded.  Hung on gallery walls constructed to recall the temporary structures Penn used as sets, photos are positioned near each other but on different walls, similar yet different.  Here, tangled members of a wrestling family appear opposite an arrangement of seafood, both shot in 1948, demonstrating the ‘visual muscle memory’ that Willis Thomas argues ties together Penn’s 70-year career.  (On view in Chelsea through Dec 21st).

(left) Irving Penn, Dusek Brothers (1 of 3), vintage gelatin silver print, 7 11/16 x 9 5/8, image, ed of 41, New York, 1948. (right) Irving Penn, Bouillabaisse, chromogenic print, 24 x 20 inches, images, ed of 7, Barcelona, 1948.
Installation view. Irving Penn, ‘Kinship’ at Pace Gallery, Dec ’24.

Jiha Moon at Derek Eller Gallery

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Complex and colorful, Jiha Moon’s ceramic vessels at Derek Eller Gallery entice with their cheeky updates to historic forms and their contemporary subject matter.  Dumplings and succulent fruits allude to pleasure while forming the two eyes on this pot dominated by a fake grin.  Moon explains that this work is autobiographical, the dark clouds representing the impact on her life of the weather (specifically hurricanes) in Tallahassee, where she lives. The pagoda, boat and two birds refer to Blue Willow Pattern, an English take on blue and white Chinese porcelain with an accompanying love story that alternates between tragedy and happy ending.  (On view in Tribeca through Dec 21st).

Jiha Moon, Banana Thunderhead, porcelain, underglaze, glaze, 16.5 x 11 x 9 inches, 2024.

Pierre Huyghe in ‘Your Patience is Appreciated’ at Marian Goodman Gallery

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There’s less than a week left to see Marian Goodman Gallery’s huge group exhibition in its new Tribeca location, a beautifully renovated 35,000 square foot industrial building from 1875.  Just inside the first room, an iteration of Pierre Huyghe’s ongoing ‘Timekeeper Drill Core’ series involved removing a circular portion of the gallery wall from the old 57th Street location and sanding down a circle at center to reveal the many times the space had been painted in its over forty years uptown.  Smartly installed, the show encourages conversations among circular forms in its initial room – Gabriel Orozco’s bike-wheel sculpture and Nairy Baghramian’s cylindrical abstraction are placed near Huyghe’s piece – suggesting that the gallery’s current manifestation is the beginning of a new cycle.  (On view through Dec 14th).

Pierre Huyghe, Timekeeper Drill Core (MGG 57th St), paint, plasterboard, 2 ½ x 23 3/8 inches, 2024.
Pierre Huyghe, Timekeeper Drill Core (MGG 57th St), paint, plasterboard, 2 ½ x 23 3/8 inches, 2024.

Jessie Henson Sewn Works at Broadway Gallery

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Jessie Henson’s sewn works at Tribeca’s Broadway Gallery resemble elements of the natural world – water, wind smoke, arial overviews of landscape, or segments of the atmosphere – yet remain fully and enticingly abstract. The suggestion of movement created by curving masses of stitches is made complicated by rips in the paper support, torn in the process of repeated handling on Henson’s industrial sewing machine.  Further evidence of the process of making appears in holes pierced by a needle but not filled with thread, a device which adds shadow and patterning.  Contingent yet complex, Henson’s compositions arrest the eye with their dynamism.  (On view through Dec 14th).

Jessie Henson, Where are you now?, polyester and rayon thread on paper, 82 x 54 x 2.75 inches, 2024.
Jessie Henson, Where are you now? (detail), polyester and rayon thread on paper, 82 x 54 x 2.75 inches, 2024.

Francis Alys at David Zwirner Gallery

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Driven by the poetic idea of bridging the 7,7 nautical mile wide Straight of Gibraltar, Francis Alys’ solo show at David Zwirner Gallery pictures fanciful connections between Moroccan and Spanish territory in the form of installation, video, painting and more.  One painting anthropomorphizes sea cliffs into human forms, while elsewhere a giant child stands in the Straight with two people-packed boats under her arms.  In the back gallery, beyond a lightbox displaying news articles about migration across the Mediterranean, a video features a row of kids from Morrocco and a similar line of Spanish youth at the beach, heading into the water carrying toy boats made from shoes (seen here in sculptural form elsewhere in the show).  Resembling both personal items lost in migration and suggesting resourceful toymaking, the boats are somber and lighthearted at the same time, expressing continued hope despite harsh realities.  (On view through Dec 18th).

Francis Alys, installation view of ‘Francis Alys: The Gibraltar Projects,’ Nov 2024.

Annie Leibovitz at Hauser and Wirth

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A photograph of the top hat and gloves that Abraham Lincoln wore when he was assassinated and a shot of Elvis Presley’s TV pierced by a bullet hole are two images with intriguing backstories in iconic photographer Annie Leibovitz’s mini-survey at Hauser and Wirth Gallery in Chelsea.  Less dramatic but more insightful are the many portraits of artists that include Simone Leigh’s hands shaping a piece of clay near a landscape that inspired Georgia O’Keefe, or an Icelandic glacier that vaguely resembles a neighboring shot of Cindy Sherman’s head.  Here, Leibovitz’s image of David Hockney, from a period in which he’d returned to the north of England, allows us an enjoyably intimate view of the artist at work. (On view through Jan 11th).

Annie Leibovitz, David Hockney, Bridlington, East Yorkshire, England, archival pigment print, 2024.

Richard Serra, Every Which Way at David Zwirner

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Installed at a diagonal in David Zwirner Gallery’s huge ground floor 20th Street space, late artist Richard Serra’s 2015 sculpture ‘Every Which Way’ forces a decision from entering visitors who must opt to turn right, left or wind their way between the 16 steel panels.  Regardless of how it is approached, the piece invites interaction and a physical comparison between a visitor’s body and the giant, weighty slabs of metal seven, nine or eleven feet tall that Serra likened to architecture.  Unlike Serra’s rolled steel sculptures with their curving walls and warm, brown patina, this piece’s abrupt flatness and grey steel surfaces convey austerity.  Their arrangement in shorter segments, however, gives visitors agency to explore this minimal but engaging arrangement of form.  (On view through Dec 14th).

Richard Serra, Every Which Way, steel, 2015.

Simone Leigh at Matthew Marks Gallery

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Simone Leigh’s handsome show of new work at Matthew Marks Gallery in Chelsea features several sculptures of female figures in skirts that, with their substantial size, convey power and solidity.  Larger than life, the torso and head of this generalized individual is nevertheless small in comparison to her skirt.  Composed of giant ceramic cowry shells, the material nods to past forms of currency and to esoteric spiritual knowledge.  Resembling the domed shapes of traditional Musgum architecture, West African spiritual objects, and face jugs from the American South, and alluding to many other aspects of African and diasporic culture, Leigh’s beautiful figures manifest complex cultural heritage and histories.  (On view in Chelsea through Dec 14th).

Simone Leigh, Untitled, earthenware, stoneware, and steel armature, 90 x 73 x 75 inches, 2023-24.

Denzil Forrester at Andrew Kreps Gallery and Stephen Friedman Gallery

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Grenada-born British artist Denzil Forrester’s current gallery exhibitions at Andrew Kreps Gallery and Stephen Friedman Gallery in Tribeca showcase vibrantly colored moments from London’s dub reggae scene in past decades.  A regular club visitor from the 1980s, Forrester sketched by night and painted by day, documenting legendary DJs like Jah Shaka, who he honors here in ‘Tribute to Shaka.’  Figures in the periphery of the painting seem to dissolve, as if the reverb was literally breaking apart form and altering the material realm.  (On view through Dec 18th).

Denzil Forrester, Tribute to Shaka, oil on canvas, 79 7/8 x 107 7/8 inches, 2024.

Jade Fadojutimi at Gagosian Gallery

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Titled ‘The Generosity of Trauma,’ this painting by British artist Jade Fadojutimi is one of only two works (along with ‘Sulking is a virtue’) in her show at Gagosian Gallery with a title. Typically colorful and energetic with areas that appear to either be plants or zones of pure abstraction, the artist’s new work explores identity through color.  She has said, “When I feel emotion, I see a color and that’s how my paintings come to life.’  In tune with global challenges like climate change and displacement and the artist’s personal experience with depression, Fadojutimi’s two works with oxymoronic titles suggest that pushing her practice forward through difficulty gives it its vibrant character. (On view in Chelsea through Dec 21st).

The Generosity of Trauma, acrylic, oil, oil pastel and oil bar on canvas, 98 7/16 x 68 7/8 inches, 2024.

Alexandre da Cunha at James Cohan Gallery

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James Cohan Gallery’s austere, white cube front room hosts two equally minimal sculptural forms by Brazilian artist Alexandre da Cunha that allude poetically to labor and the human body.  Two precast concrete manholes nestle together, aligning their openings to provide a passage through both forms and pointing to their function as portals for workers.  On the wall nearby, a circular form made of shovel handles and backed with colorful fabrics from t-shirts, a cleaning cloth, a bed sheet, a tea towel, a hand towel, a sarong and more again points to the bodies and domestic routines of the individuals wielding shovels in their work life.  Industrial or personal in scale, heavy or light, each set of found materials finds beauty in the built environment and its making. (On view through Dec 21st).

Alexandre da Cunha, (right) Public Sculpture (Touch I), precast concrete, 86 x 86 x 30 in, 2024 and (left) Vitral (Rosetta), shovel handles, t-shirts, cleaning cloth, bed sheet, tea towel, hand towel, sarong, fabric cut outs, 80 ¾ x 80 ¾ x 2 3/8 inches, 2024.

 

Cecily Brown, The Five Senses at Paula Cooper Gallery

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Long inspired by Old Master painters, Cecily Brown’s latest solo show at Paula Cooper Gallery engages with the fruitful collaboration between 17th century painters Jan Brueghel the Elder’s and Peter Paul Rubens.  Brown’s work on paper – etchings, drawings with watercolor and monotypes – reworks aspects of the duo’s collaborative series of paintings ‘The Five Senses’ from 1617-18, abstracting and condensing the space of interior scenes.  This lush and engaging painting in the gallery’s main space takes that impulse further, proffering a recognizable plate of oysters with lobster at the center of the canvas while turning the room’s other forms into a fluid, fluctuating space from which faces and forms emerge.  (On view through Dec 7th).

Cecily Brown, The Five Senses, 89 x 83 inches, oil on linen, 2023.

Mulyana, Betty 27 at Sapar Contemporary

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Indonesian artist Mulyana’s signature colorful crocheted coral reef sculptures give way in his latest solo show at Sapar Contemporary to clusters of white forms resembling bleached coral.  Fashioned in plastic instead of yarn, the new work is every bit as intricately crafted and pleasingly detailed as his previous work, but the attraction is uncomfortable.  Made from a material harmful to sea life and speaking to damage done by climate change, the work has an elegiac quality as sad as it is beautiful. (On view through Nov 20th. Curated by John Silvis).

Mulyana, Betty 27, plastic yarn, plastic net, cable wire, 63 x 80 ¾ x 11 ¾ inches, 2024.
Mulyana, Betty 27 (detail), plastic yarn, plastic net, cable wire, 63 x 80 ¾ x 11 ¾ inches, 2024.

Erin O’Keefe at Sargent’s Daughters

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Being tricked is fun when it’s New York-based artist and architect Erin O’Keefe doing the fooling.  O’Keefe’s new photographs at Sargent’s Daughters in Tribeca look like paintings made with thick strokes of a brush, but what appears to be textured paint marks are actually the edges of wooden blocks that the artist paints and arranges to read like an abstract composition.  Some pieces come partly into focus as photos of 3-D arrangements but continue to be ambiguous; others only make sense after some puzzling.  With their bright colors and clever composition, the photographs offer an optical workout that is pure pleasure.  (On view in Tribeca through Dec 21st).

Erin O’Keefe, Snake Eyes, unique archival pigment print on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag paper mounted to Dibond aluminum, 42 x 30 inches, 2024.

Alteronce Gumby at Nicola Vassell Gallery

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If we were on a planet in another solar system, would we see color differently?  In his ongoing engagement with intense color, Alteronce Gumby’s scintillating new paintings at Nicola Vassell Gallery refuse to take our experience of the visible spectrum for granted.  Inspired by NASA’s James Webb telescope, art historical forebears and travel that has allowed him to witness the vibrant Holi festival in Indian, the Northern Lights and much more, Gumby’s new ‘Moonwalker paintings’ lure viewers in with their rich color and reflective surfaces.  Each piece resembles nebula and strata of the earth, taking us both into the heavens and down through geological history.  Shaped in a way to suggest speed and defiance of gravity and incorporating semi-precious stones and gems, each piece is infused with the pleasure of transport.  (On view in Chelsea through Dec 14th).

Alteronce Gumby, Waves of Possibilities, lapis lazuli, glass and acrylic on panel, 72 x 90 inches, 2024.
Alteronce Gumby, (detail) Waves of Possibilities, lapis lazuli, glass and acrylic on panel, 72 x 90 inches, 2024.

Jordan Castle at the Hill Art Foundation

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Known for painted portraits of family, friends, her students, fellow subway riders, and people she meets on the street in New York, Jordan Casteel pictures her subjects as they choose to be presented.  In this tender portrait from a private collection in Casteel’s solo show at the Hill Art Foundation, the family pictured wanted to be in their garden, so they waited half a year to take the photo that would lead to this painting.  Planted after the parents, Deon and Kym, lost their daughter Naima due to miscarriage, they planned the garden as a gift to her and a way of honoring life. (On view in Chelsea through Nov 23rd).

Jordan Casteel, Naima’s Gift (Deon, Kym and Noah), oil on canvas, 94 x 80 inches, 2023.

Ai Wei Wei at Vito Schnabel Gallery

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Since creating portraits of political prisoners for a 2014 exhibition at the former Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary in San Francisco, iconic Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei has used LEGO or Woma bricks to make pixelated reproductions of politically charged images. Now on view at Vito Schnabel Gallery in Chelsea, a selection of toy-brick built artworks picture famous paintings and news photographs with telling alterations.  Ai’s version of Andrew Wyeth’s ‘Christina’s World’ substitutes farmhouses in the work’s background with the artist’s newly built studio in Portugal, a replica of one destroyed by the Chinese authorities. Elsewhere, he adds President Biden to a reproduction of a news photo of the US Navy collecting debris from the Chinese surveillance balloon shot down near South Carolina in 2023.  Here, he adds a dark area in the left of a version of Monet’s Water Lilies, representing the dugout where his exiled family was forced to live during the Cultural Revolution.  (On view through Feb 22nd).

Ai Wei Wei, Water Lilies #4, toy bricks mounted on aluminum, 94 ½ x 472 ½ inches, 2022.

Sarah Sense at Bruce Silverstein Gallery

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Descended from Chitimacha and Choctaw artisans, Sarah Sense employs family basket-making knowledge to dynamically woven photo collages on view at Silverstein Gallery in Chelsea.  Colonial documents, maps and her own contemporary landscape photographs are the material from which Sense weaves patterns inspired by specific baskets created by Chitimacha makers that were once part of the dispersed McIlhenny family’s collection, now housed in the Montclair Art Museum, Brooklyn Museum of Art and Worcester Art Museum.  The trauma represented by these baskets – produced for collectors as Chitimacha land was continually encroached upon and the community threatened – is not their end message, however.  Rather Sense explains that she intends her work as a healing gesture pointing to time’s cyclical nature. (On view through Nov 23rd.)

Sarah Sense, Montclair Rabbit Study, woven archival pigment prints on Hahnemuhle bamboo paper and Hahnemuhle rice paper, tape, 23 ¾ x 23 ¾ inches, 2024.

Olafur Eliasson, Light Ensemble at Tanya Bonakdar

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From his legendary 2003 installation of a sun in the Tate Modern (made with a semi-circle of lights and a mirror) to more intimate light environments and sculptures of colored glass, Olafur Eliasson creates transformative artworks using deceptively simple means. The centerpiece of the artist’s latest solo exhibition at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in Chelsea, ‘Your psychoacoustic light ensemble,’ challenges viewers to rethink how we perceive color, light and other natural phenomena while this time including sound.  In the gallery’s darkened central room, low frequency vibrations can be heard, felt and seen as projected lights respond to the sound waves.  Inviting us to sit and be immersed in the various stimuli, Eliasson describes our experience as ‘seeing ourselves hearing.’ (On view through Dec 19th).

Olafur Eliasson, Your psychoacoustic light ensemble, spotlight, glass lens, mirror foil, tripod, transducer, embedded computer system, dimensions variable, 2024.

Martha Jackson Jarvis at Susan Inglett Gallery

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With their lively, textured surfaces and bold striped patterns, Martha Jackson Jarvis’ large abstract paintings have a strong presence at Chelsea’s Inglett Gallery, but it’s their relationship to the artist’s family history that is most remarkable.  Inspired by research into her great-great-great-great grandfather’s service in the Revolutionary War as a free Black militiaman, Jackson Jarvis juxtaposes lines with abstraction to contrast straight paths of travel with the difficulties of navigating the landscape.  Circular forms point to abundant life, waving pieces of material suggest topography and lush colors juxtaposed with darker tones speak to the rich variety of the natural world.  (On view through Nov 30th).

Martha Jackson Jarvis, South of the North Star, black walnut ink, oil, acrylic, watercolor, arches cold press 300lb paper, and canvas, 99 x 44 x 3 inches, 2020.
Martha Jackson Jarvis, (detail) South of the North Star, black walnut ink, oil, acrylic, watercolor, arches cold press 300lb paper, and canvas, 99 x 44 x 3 inches, 2020.

Cameron Welch at Yossi Milo Gallery

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Cameron Welch’s mosaics at Yossi Milo Gallery pack a punch with their energetic collage-like mix of contemporary and historic imagery.  Here, Orpheus, the hero of Greek mythology who unsuccessfully descended into the underworld to bring back his wife Eurydice, holds the musical instrument with which he could charm both living and dead.  Crafted in ceramic, glass, marble and stone and enhanced with oil and acrylic paint, the artwork not only rethinks a mythological figure but melds ancient and contemporary material tradition. (On view in Chelsea through Nov 9th).

Cameron Welch, Orpheus in the Garden, marble, glass, ceramic, stone, spray enamel, oil and acrylic on panel, 96 ¾ x 80 5/8 inches, 2024.

Carrie Mae Weems at Gladstone Gallery

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In an interview accompanying her recent show at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, iconic photographer and artist Carrie Mae Weems said, “I know that I will be living with injustice for the rest of my life,” before going on to express her determination to advocate for change as it is currently needed.  Her 7-part video ‘Cyclorama: The Shape of Things,’ now on view at Gladstone Gallery after several museum appearances, combines vintage film of circus acts, footage from Amy Cooper’s notorious 2020 Central Park phone call, and scenes from the January 6th insurrection with shots of methodically moving contemporary dancers and more in a collage of imagery that ranges from beautiful to horrifying.  Projected on a circular screen like a 19th century narrative painting accompanied by changing lights and sound, Weems immerses us in the present moment, amplifying and clarifying the conversations and conflicts of the day.  (On view at Gladstone Gallery through Nov 9th).

Carrie Mae Weems, installation view of Cyclorama: The Shape of Things, A Video in 7 Parts, 2021, 7 parts, duration: 40 min, Barbara Gladstone Gallery, September 2024.

Pieter Schoolwerth Video at Petzel Gallery

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To appreciate Pieter Schoolwerth’s paintings in his current solo exhibition at Petzel Gallery, it’s advisable to first check out ‘Supporting Actor,’ the CG animation he made with artist Phil Vanderhyden.  While the priority given to computer-generated content might be a surprising move for most painters, that’s not the case for Schoolwerth, who has long been interested in how the digital world has impacted the space and time of painting.  Starring a digital avatar of musician Aaron Dilloway, who created the piece’s soundtrack, the animation starts with Dilloway’s transportation from art gallery (pictured here) to a bathroom to a bizarre nightclub of gyrating alien-figures.  In the gallery’s main space, paintings inspired by the animation combine inkjet-printed paintings with real paint in an ever more complicated consideration of where the ‘real’ lies and which medium plays the role of ‘supporting actor’. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 26th).

Pieter Schoolwerth, still from Supporting Actor, 4K video with sound by Aaron Dilloway, 2024, installed at Petzel Gallery, Sept 2024.

Margarita Cabrera at Jane Lombard Gallery

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Expanding concentric circles of flamenco dresses surround a soft sculpture of a Spanish ship in an eye-catching installation in Margarita Cabrera’s current solo show at Jane Lombard Gallery.  The abundant dynamic ruffles of the dress material suggest that though small, the ship is making its presence felt from Spanish arrival in the Americas to the present day.  Crafted from material used for US/Mexico border patrol uniforms, the ship and the show’s other engaging sculptures invite discussion of migration past and present.  (On view through Oct 26th).

Margarita Cabrera, installation view of El Vaiven del Mar, Flamenco dresses, uniform fabric, 120 x 168 x 36 inches, 2024.

Paul Anthony Smith Multi Media at Jack Shainman

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It’s carnival season in Jamaica-born, Brooklyn based multi-media artist Paul Anthony Smith’s latest body of work now on view at Jack Shainman Gallery in Chelsea.  Starting with photos he took during celebrations in Trinidad and Tobago, Smith manipulates the images, prints them, adds paint and employs his signature picotage technique by which he creates patterns of tiny tears in the surface of the painted photographs.  Here, as in many pieces, the tear patterns take the form of fences or walls constructed of patterned concrete blocks.  Placed between viewers and the celebrants, the barriers allow looking but give viewers pause to question what kind of access we have to the places and cultures pictured.  (On view through Oct 26th).

Paul Anthony Smith, To be titled, unique picotage and spray paint on inkjet, print mounted on Dibond, acrylic paint, 51 ¼ x 81 x 2 ¼ inches, 2024.

Magdalena Suarez Frimkess, Sculpture at Kaufmann Repetto

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Magdalena Suarez Frimkess’s lively and charming ceramic sculptures, now on view at Kaufmann Repetto in Tribeca, feature popular cartoon characters rendered in an expressive style.  Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, and the Chilean character Condorito, the artist says, “…are the masters of everything for me…they know all the answers for everything. They make fun of everything.  Nothing is so serious.”  Additional tiles, plates, vessels and sculpture feature Aztec motifs and other indigenous American imagery speak to Suarez Frimkess’ diverse interests and influences over her 95 years of creativity.  (On view through Oct 19th).

Magdalena Suarez Frimkess, Untitled, glazed ceramic, 2 x 6.1 x 6.4 inches, 2022.

Nengi Omuku at Kasmin Gallery

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Pretty, peachy-pink tones pervade Nigerian artist Nengi Omuku’s paintings on Yoruban sanyan fabric to otherworldly and calming effect in her first New York solo show at Kasmin Gallery.  But while several works feature scenes of respite in a garden or enjoyment of community, others hint at troubled political times in Nigeria.  Here in ‘Orange Bougainvillea,’ Omuku surrounds faintly visible individuals with flowers as if to engulf them in the beauty of the landscape.  (On view in Chelsea through Oct 19th).

Nengi Omuku, Orange Bougainvillea, oil on sanyan, 86 5/8 x 87 3/8 inches, 2024.

Suzanne Jackson at Ortuzar Projects

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After standing out in the 2024 Whitney Biennial and in the Shah Garg Collection’s Chelsea exhibition last winter, Suzanne Jackson’s hanging environmental installations and works on paper at Ortuzar Projects offer a more in-depth look at the artist’s remarkable assemblage.  Jackson has likened her studio to a compost heap where materials are broken down and recomposed; here in ‘9, Billie, Mingus, Monk’s,’ she repurposes many different kinds of paper and cloth along with her signature acrylic gel medium in a dense yet floating record of marks and decision-making.  Praised for its music-like fragility and manifestation of joy by Hilton Als in the New Yorker recently, the piece’s earth-toned colors and solid presence are a standout in the show.  (On view through Oct 19th in Tribeca).

Suzanne Jackson, 9, Billie, Mingus, Monk’s, acrylic, acrylic gel medium, flax paper, Bogus paper, Stonehenge paper, tissue, linen, nursery burlap, produce bag netting, canvas and wood, double-sided, 64 x 65 x 5 ½ inches, 2003.

Josh Kline at Lisson Gallery

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Among New York artist Josh Kline’s most memorable sculptures are his huge FedEx boxes filled with packing peanuts and disassembled, 3D printed Fed Ex employees.  Like that chilling indictment of exploitable or disposable labor, Kline’s scathing new work at Lisson Gallery considers the precarious position of artists and other creatives.  In the age of AI replacing humans, expensive MFAs and prohibitively expensive costs of living, what is the roll of artists?  Taking his own body as model, Kline’s scattered 3D printed heads, arms and legs suggest a complete merger between worker and product.  Printed with Kline’s own Chase credit card and titled ‘New York Artist,’ Kline suggests that he is both consumer and consumable in the ‘art industry.’ (On view in Chelsea through Oct 19th.)

Josh Kline, New York Artist, 3D-printed sculpture in acrylic-based photopolymer resin; Ikea chair, denim, UV protective coating, and museum wax, 2024.
Josh Kline, New York Artist, 3D-printed sculpture in acrylic-based photopolymer resin; Ikea chair, denim, UV protective coating, and museum wax, 2024.