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).
Thomas Schutte, ‘Women’ at Gagosian Gallery
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).
Camille Henrot, ‘A Number of Things’ at Hauser & Wirth Gallery
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).
Giorgio Morandi at David Zwirner Gallery
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).
Jennifer J. Lee, ‘The Falls’ at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery
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).
Nick Cave, ‘Amalgams and Graphts’ at Jack Shainman Gallery
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).
Francesca DiMattio and Caroline Coon at Stephen Friedman Gallery
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).
Roe Ethridge, Hand with Dramm at Andrew Kreps Gallery
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).
An-My Le at Marian Goodman Gallery
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).
Per Adolfsen at Nino Meier Gallery
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).
Na Kim at Nicola Vassell Gallery
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).
Simphiwe Mbunyuza at David Kordansky Gallery
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).
Louise Nevelson, Mirror-Shadow VI at Pace
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).
Vija Celmins in ‘The Writing’s on the Wall’ at the Hill Art Foundation
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).
Svenja Deininger Paintings at Marianne Boesky
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).
Pete Turner at Bruce Silverstein Gallery
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).
Lubaina Himid at FLAG Art Foundation
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).
Jeff Wall at Gagosian Gallery
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).
Esther Mahlangu at Ross + Kramer Gallery
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).
Kenny Scharf at Sixty White
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).
Mallory Weston in ‘Objects USA’ at R & Company
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).
Faig Ahmed at Sapar Contemporary
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).
Ruth Asawa in ’18 Women: 50 Years’ at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery
’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.)
Lorna Simpson at Hauser & Wirth Gallery
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).
The Hall Sisters in ‘My Way: Gee’s Bend Today’ at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery
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).
Irwin/Bell: The ‘60s at 125 Newbury
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).
Tong Yang-Tze at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
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).
Ian Davenport, Beato at Kasmin Gallery
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).
Anne Samat at Marc Straus Gallery
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).
Irving Penn, ‘Kinship’ at Pace Gallery
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).
Jiha Moon at Derek Eller Gallery
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).
Pierre Huyghe in ‘Your Patience is Appreciated’ at Marian Goodman Gallery
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).
Jessie Henson Sewn Works at Broadway Gallery
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).
Francis Alys at David Zwirner Gallery
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).
Annie Leibovitz at Hauser and Wirth
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).
Richard Serra, Every Which Way at David Zwirner
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).
Simone Leigh at Matthew Marks Gallery
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).
Denzil Forrester at Andrew Kreps Gallery and Stephen Friedman Gallery
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).
Jade Fadojutimi at Gagosian Gallery
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).
Alexandre da Cunha at James Cohan Gallery
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).
Cecily Brown, The Five Senses at Paula Cooper Gallery
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).
Mulyana, Betty 27 at Sapar Contemporary
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).
Erin O’Keefe at Sargent’s Daughters
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).
Alteronce Gumby at Nicola Vassell Gallery
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).
Jordan Castle at the Hill Art Foundation
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).
Ai Wei Wei at Vito Schnabel Gallery
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).
Sarah Sense at Bruce Silverstein Gallery
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.)
Olafur Eliasson, Light Ensemble at Tanya Bonakdar
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).
Martha Jackson Jarvis at Susan Inglett Gallery
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).
Cameron Welch at Yossi Milo Gallery
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).
Carrie Mae Weems at Gladstone Gallery
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).
Pieter Schoolwerth Video at Petzel Gallery
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).
Margarita Cabrera at Jane Lombard Gallery
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).
Paul Anthony Smith Multi Media at Jack Shainman
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).
Magdalena Suarez Frimkess, Sculpture at Kaufmann Repetto
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).
Nengi Omuku at Kasmin Gallery
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).
Suzanne Jackson at Ortuzar Projects
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).
Josh Kline at Lisson Gallery
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.)
Karen Bennicke at HB381
Karen Bennicke’s richly colored ceramic sculptures are a puzzle, their cubist forms appearing at first to represent street art, alien bodies, signage, or toys. Once visitors to her exhibition at HB381 spot the maps of Manhattan on the gallery’s back wall, however, each tangle of lines and shapes materializes into a segment of the island’s street map. We can’t see but we can imagine that work, leisure, recreation and every aspect of city life takes place in the locations pictured, a representation of possibility more than experience. At the same time, Bennicke’s sculptures speak to histories of settlement and the myriad decisions that went into what our urban environment looks like today. (On view in Tribeca through Oct 19th).
Sky Glabush at Stephen Friedman Gallery
Sky Glabush, a Canadian artist who lives and works in the countryside outside of London, Ontario, takes inspiration from nature and early modernist art. His arresting landscape paintings at Stephen Friedman Gallery in Tribeca alternate electric orange and yellow toned scenes with tranquil blues and purples, conveying a breadth of responses to an abundantly varied natural world. Marked by their geometricized orderliness, Glabush’s huge paintings of forest scenes emphasize a linear quality that’s echoed in the vertical forms of gallery visitors standing before them. Vibrant and driven by pattern and form, Glabush’s landscapes enticingly argue for the transformative and wondrous aspects of the natural world. (On view through Oct 17th).
Hilary Pecis Still Life at David Kordansky Gallery
Hilary Pecis’s still-life paintings at David Kordansy Gallery are anything but still. Vibrant colors vie for attention with bold patterns in scenes that are empty of people but feel bursting with activity. Here, a yellow tablecloth tilts at an impossible angle to show viewers a mid-meal scene from multiple perspectives at once. Though the food looks good, it’s our appetite for color and design that is whetted by this dynamic painting. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 12th).
Joel Shapiro at Pace Gallery
Perhaps best known for abstracted sculptures that resemble human figures in motion, Joel Shapiro has, in the past decade, memorably suspended forms in the air in explosive installations. Once again situated on the gallery floor, Shapiro’s new work at Pace Gallery is no less dynamic. ‘Splay,’ (foreground) resembles an energetically sprawling figure, another piece abstracts an ocean wave, and the show’s central sculpture ‘ARK,’ projects colorful forms outward from a mass that appears to stand on the gallery floor on tiptoes. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 26th).
Karen Knorr at Sundaram Tagore Gallery
Inspired by sources from European folk tales to fables from India’s Panchatantra, Karen Knorr’s extravagantly beautiful mini-retrospective of photographs at Sundaram Tagore Gallery taps into the complex relations between humans and animals. In her most recent body of work, Scavi, the artist pictures excavated sites in southern Italy that were covered by the 79 CE eruption of Mount Vesuvius. To these she adds images shot elsewhere of animals, creating surprising connections. Titled ‘Bacchus in Attendance, House of Neptune and Amphitrite,’ this image from a garden courtyard in Herculaneum features a leopard seated before a glass paste mosaic of Neptune and his wife, Amphitrite. Associated with the god of wine, Bacchus, the leopard becomes a stand-in for the deity in a regal portrait of three divinities. (On view through Oct 19th).
Anthony Cudahy at GRIMM Gallery and Hales Gallery
Anthony Cudahy’s simultaneous gallery shows at Hales Gallery in Chelsea and GRIMM Gallery in Tribeca are titled ‘Fool’s Gold’ and ‘Fool’s Errand,’ positing the artist as quixotic figure pursuing his own vision. True to form, Cudahy’s bold colors, unharnessed to realistic representation, highlight figures or elements of an interior background. Here, he draws our attention not to his friend, Sammy, in the chair, but rather to the glow of the bookshelf and a minimal still life with lemons. Aiming to celebrate wonder in the everyday, Cudahy tilts Sammy’s head and angles his legs to guide our eye to books that might guide the mind into a world of thought and fruits which are in conversation with art history. (On view in Chelsea at Hales Gallery and in Tribeca at GRIMM Gallery through Oct 19th).
Aki Sasamoto at Bortolami Gallery
Performance is key to New York artist Aki Sasamoto’s practice, but for her latest show at Bortolami Gallery, she outsources the action to her sculpture and to gallery visitors. Titled ‘Sounding Lines,’ after the devices used to test water depth from a vessel, the show consists of handmade sculptures resembling giant fishing lures and lengths of long springs stretched across the gallery between them. Occasionally, a motorized arm causes one of the springs to dance around and unaware visitors to react with surprise. Delightful yet disconcerting, the installation foregrounds our own response to (literally) alluring art. (On view in Tribeca through Oct 19th.)
Steve Wolfe, Anna Karenina at Luhring Augustine
Late San Francisco artist Steve Wolfe’s trompe l’oeil versions of books, boxes of books, book covers, sketchbooks and records at Luhring Augustine’s Tribeca space continue to testify to the personal significance of iconic works of art, literature, music and more. Here, Wolfe’s recreation of a Penguin Classics edition of Tolstoy’s ‘Anna Karina’ – made with oil paint, enamel, ink transfer, modeling paste, canvas and wood – looks used but intact. Other ‘books’ have ripped or dingy covers, indications of having been well-used, while dated cover art offers its own history of design. Wolfe’s New York Times obituary from 2016 included the newspaper’s critic Holland Cotter’s note that “…the histories trapped in the work are what warm up the optical tours de force.” Eight years after Wolfe’s passing, his work continues to fascinate not just for the pleasure of his sculptural skill but for the personal connections and memories the volumes evoke. (On view in Tribeca through Oct 19th).
Gina Beavers, Comfortcore at Marianne Boesky
Titled ‘Comfortcore,’ and inspired by a Scandinavian concept of snug interior décor, Gina Beavers’ show of sculptural paintings at Marianne Boesky Gallery pictures chunky blankets, cheerful cushions and thick towel sets which together poke fun at the rampant marketing and consumption of coziness. Having recently moved into a home of her own, Beavers explains that online searches for furnishings led to ceaseless ads for similar products. Here, in a thick, 3-D painting she cut from foam and built up with putty and paper pulp before painting, Beavers collages together so many items with similar prints that it’s hard to tell where the products start and stop. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 5th).
Leonardo Drew, Number 427 at Galerie Lelong
At the entrance to Leonardo Drew’s current solo show at Galerie Lelong is a huge, ten-foot-high grid of panels, each hosting a rich abundance of fragments, yet this towering, orderly artwork is overwhelmed by the dynamic chaos of a floor-to ceiling installation in the main gallery beyond. The materials – wood, plaster and paint – appear to be weathered fragments from a natural disaster but are in fact deliberately distressed and arranged in clusters around the gallery’s two main columns. In his urge to reinvent, Drew has reused elements from previous installations – projects for Art Basel in ’22 and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in ’23 – to respond to the specifics of Galerie Lelong’s industrial-architecture-turned-white-cube by banishing its austerity and taking over the space. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 19th).
Wangari Mathenge at Nicola Vassell Gallery
Wangari Mathenga doesn’t dream the way most people do. Able to dream while awake and be awake yet dreaming, Mathenga eventually realized that her sleep patterns were atypical and, in her recent body of painting at Nicola Vassell Gallery, pictures herself between states of consciousness. Though we see her pajama’d figure lying down, the artist’s interest is in the brain in an active sleep state and her pictures emerge from data taken from the cameras she set up in her home and the dream journals she keeps. Originally intending to paint the dreams she recorded, Mathenge instead focused on her own moving figure in canvases that offer intimate insights yet picture a state of consciousness accessible only to her. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 19th).
Mitch Epstein at Yancey Richardson Gallery
Over the past several decades, photographer Mitch Epstein’s series have memorably pictured conflict over land, energy consumption in the US, and landmarked trees in NYC; his latest body of work at Chelsea’s Yancey Richardson Gallery, ‘Old Growth’ continues to picture the land in a stunning homage to ancient trees across the country. A redwood emerges from fog, a striated bristlecone pine stands at attention and this enormous sequoia towers over a tiny human in images that aim to inspire the protection of forests in light of their beauty and essential function in the environment. (On view through Oct 19th).
Hilary Pecis at David Kordansky Gallery
The title of Hillary Pecis’ current New York solo show at David Kordansky Gallery, ‘Warm Rhythm’ perfectly describes the vibrant colors and abundant patterning of her new paintings. Set in LA and often inspired by scenes she encounters in her cross-country runs or daily life in the city, her paintings both sooth and excite with their tranquil subject matter rendered in bold color. The delectable quality of a still life with half-eaten lunch or this cozy scene with cat, reading lamp and mug carries over into delight at an orange house set against lush greens of a verdant front yard or the blooms spilling out of a vividly painted flower shop. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 12th).
Roy Nachum at Mercer Labs
Billed as a ‘museum of art and technology,’ Mercer Labs has generated buzz since opening in Spring ’24 across the street from the Oculus Transportation Hub in lower Manhattan. The 15-room immersive experience is a partnership between Roy Nachum, an NYC-based multi-media artist whose work has ranged from cover art for Rihanna’s 2015 ‘Anti’ album to photorealist portraiture collaborations with blind individuals, and developer Michael Cayre. In its current iteration, all rooms have been programmed with Nachum’s work, offering essentially a museum-sized solo show designed to overwhelm the senses with projected images in mirrored rooms. Signage in braille, an audio installation and a display of portraits previously shown at Chelsea gallery ‘A Hug From the Art World,’ nod to Nachum’s interest in creating accessibility for people who are sight-impaired, though the overall experience is designed to impress visually. Here, in a room titled ‘The Dragon,’ 507,000 LED lights powered by Dragon02 technology developed by Ledpulse create images via vertically-hung strings of LED lights. Mirrored walls, floor and ceiling amplify the effect, which Mercer Labs describes as like ‘passing through a hologram.’ (On view at 21 Dey Street. Tickets at https://www.mercerlabs.com).
Petrit Halilaj’s Met Museum Roof Commission
Sketches of flowers, two conversing birds, an eye, a huge drawing of a house and other line drawings are realized as free-standing steel sculpture in Met Museum’s current Roof Commission by Kosovan artist Petrit Halilaj. Titled ‘Abetare,’ after a textbook the artist used in school to learn the alphabet, the installation’s monumental size is belied by its delicate and casually rendered forms, all based on drawings the artist found on school desks in Kosovo and other Balkan countries. Prompted by the planned demolition of his old school, one of the few buildings that remained from the artist’s war-torn hometown, Halilaj preserved the markings of kids from years past, creating a language of drawings that expresses the thoughts and experience of young people. (On view through Oct 27th).
Annette Messager at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
‘Don’t Forget to Call Your Mother,’ a compact show of photography from the 70s onward from the Met Museum’s collection, showcases complex portraits built from pieces of information rather than a traditional physical likeness. Snippets from Larry Sultan’s family’s home movies and an image of a solitary bathrobe by Sophie Calle point to specific memories that shaped an individual’s identity, while Darrell Ellis worked with his late father’s photo archive and Sadie Barnette creates a neon-edged photo collage memorial to San Francisco’s first Black-owned gay bar, owned by her father. Annette Messager’s collection of small, framed photos of eyes, mouths, torsos and other body parts arranged against the wall in a dense, circular cluster by twine and nails creates a collective portrait of an unknown group. Titled ‘My Vows,’ the images suggestively connect belief and the body. (On view on the Upper East Side through Sept 15th).
Cannupa Hanska Luger at City Hall Park
Near a text describing City Hall Park as the ‘refuge of the people, the cradle of liberty,’ Native American artist Cannupa Hanska Luger’s steel sculpture of a bison skeleton recalls the deliberate mass slaughter of the animal from the mid-to-late 19th century. Part of the Public Art Fund’s annual art programming in the park, the solitary sculpture is smaller than past installations but meaningfully and impactfully placed at the park’s dramatic southern entrance. Titled ‘Attrition,’ the piece speaks to sustained attack on the lives and culture of Native American peoples by the near eradication of bison, yet the bison skeleton’s mechanical, plated design and obviously durable material conveys strength and resilience. (On view through Nov 17th.)
Tavares Strachan in ‘Afterlives’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Installed under the Met Museum’s central interior staircase, the atmospheric Byzantine Crypt is host to the exhibition ‘Afterlives,’ a show of contemporary art that engages with life after death. Tavares Strachan’s ‘ENOCH,’ titled after the Biblical character who, rather than dying was ‘taken up,’ is one of the show’s standout pieces, a monument to Robert Henry Lawrence Jr., the first Black American astronaut who died in a flight crash in 1967. The small bronze sculpture resembles an Egyptian canopic urn, a vessel intended to hold partial remains of a deceased person, but is surfaced in gold, adding to the precious quality of the piece. An edition of the sculpture was launched into space as a small, 3U satellite in 2018, symbolically completing a final mission. (On view through Jan 25th, 2026).
Francisco Ratti in ‘Misshapes’ at Praxis NY
If figures appear at all in Praxis NY’s summer group show ‘Missapes,’ they pose in place or rarely dominate. Instead, still lives are a commanding presence, particularly Francisco’s Ratti’s large indistinct arrangements of objects that simultaneously look low-res digital and handmade. The Argentina-based artist’s practice involves drawing on a cell phone screen, then transferring his images to canvas. Here, ‘Naturaleza’ (Nature) is a pleasant, conventional arrangement of flowers, plants and food stuffs but includes a more realistic painting of a tree trunk inserted onto the larger painting’s surface. Gashed and supporting a haphazard sign warning that a property is being monitored, the tree imagery complicates what a painting can offer at one time. (On view in Chelsea through Aug 30th).
Paula Wilson at 55 Walker
Art and life meld in Paula Wilson’s engaging, pattern rich paintings and print work at 55 Walker as she depicts domestic environments and desert landscapes like those around her home in the small town of Carizozo, New Mexico. Images of rugs on canvas, attached to wooden slats and mounted on the wall, depict plants, abstractions or entangled lovers while paintings of stained-glass windows are simultaneously images of an interior, glass art and a landscape beyond. Wilson, who prints and sews her own clothing, gives this towering figure a dress created from a cinched rug painting, further connecting various creative endeavors in one fertile practice. (On view in Tribeca through Aug 30th).
Sam Branden in ‘Facture Fracture’ at Chart Gallery
Glued, punctured, protruding and sewn artworks in Chart Gallery’s summer group show ‘Facture Fracture’ focus on the active hand of the artist. Sam Branden’s contributions – combinations of hand-sewn canvas, textiles and mesh spandex – immediately grab the attention for their bold, fiery colors and improvisational feeling. Recalling materials close to the body, a la Anthony Olubunmi Akinbola’s durag fiber works, and recent pieces by Erin Mack that allow inspection of the support frames beneath fabric ‘paintings,’ Branden’s constructions balance substance with weightlessness, the grid with an unmoored and changeable surface. (On view through Aug 24th).
Brittney Leeanne Williams in ‘Monomythology’ at The Hole NYC
17th century Dutch painter Gerard Seghers’ painting ‘The Dream of Saint Joseph’ pictures Christ’s father asleep, whereas Brittney Leeanne Williams’s remake of the historic painting now on view at The Hole NYC, features herself in Joseph’s role, wide awake and deep in contemplation as she experiences divine visitation. Though Williams’ painting swaps out an angel with wings for a more enigmatic figure, the narrative of artistic inspiration is clear thanks to the blazing lightbulb at her side that shines light on her sketchbook and related paintings. Surreal and appearing to take place in the dark of night, Williams’ contemporary moment of illumination adds to the long trajectory of art history and blazes a new path into the future. (On view in ‘Monomythology’ at The Hole NYC through Aug 24th).
Hellen van Meene in ‘Immersion’ at Yancey Richardson Gallery
A father and child floating in a lake, a swimming snake in still water and surfers in the waves are pictured from above, while a baby, a shark and swimmers in a pool are pictured from below in six different, strikingly intimiate photographs in Yancey Richardson Gallery’s arrestingly beautiful summer group show ‘Immersion.’ Here, Dutch photographer Hellen van Meene recreates John Everett Millais’ 1851 painting ‘Ophelia’ from Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet.’ Looking slightly more composed and decidedly more alive than the 19th century version, this retelling of the story seems to offer hope that Ophelia will soon rise up magically or of her own will. (On view through Aug 16th).
Tara Donovan, Stratagems at Pace Gallery
Millions of 3×5 index cards stacked into shapes like termite-mounds and Styrofoam cups clustered on the ceiling to form a giant cloud are among Tara Donovan’s most memorable past installations, serving to make her the master of the accumulated-object-turned-artwork. For her current show on the 7th floor of Pace Gallery’s Chelsea headquarters, Donovan turns mountains of CD-ROM disks into elegant towers that echo the skyscrapers of Hudson Yards out the window. Attractive and – as always – begging the question of how the artist and her team had the patience to construct such labor-intensive structures, the new work’s recycled sensibility turns trash into treasure. (On view through Aug 16th).
Pacita Abad at Tina Kim Gallery
Exiled from the Philippines during the Marcos dictatorship for her political activism and later known for artwork inspired by her status as an immigrant and world traveler, Pacita Abad’s textile paintings of coral reefs are geared towards pure visual pleasure. ‘Underwater Wilderness,’ a show of brilliantly colored fabric works created in the mid to late 80s and now on view at Tina Kim Gallery in Chelsea, features scenes from the 80 dives she took around the Philippines after overcoming a fear of the water. Using a style of quilting involving paint and collage on canvas, Abad introduced materials including glitter, sequins and buttons to create vibrant, 3-D visions of the world below the surface. (In view through Aug 16th).
Norberto Nicola in ‘Crossings’ at Kasmin Gallery
Late Sao Paola tapestry artist Norberto Nicola’s untitled hanging abstraction in Kasmin Gallery’s summer group show ‘Crossings’ is a standout among the varied and lively woven and textile-based works on view. Influenced by Magdalena Abakanowicz’s huge woven sculptural forms, Nicola developed his own hanging fiber artworks that rise up from the flat surface in various dynamic arrangements. (On view through Aug 9th).
Adam Pendleton at Pace Gallery
Like his installation ‘Who is Queen?’ in MoMA’s towering atrium in 2021, Adam Pendleton’s current solo exhibition at Pace Gallery, titled ‘An Abstraction,’ immerses visitors in a structured installation of dynamic forms. Describing this show’s arrangement itself as an artistic decision, Pendleton designed a series of elegant, black triangular walls to support his abstractions, causing viewers to find their own paths – and interpretive experiences – through the gallery. Drawing on his ongoing elaboration on his concept of ‘Black Dada,’ for which he has assembled a reader, Pendleton’s work engages the early 20th century Dada art movement’s attempted avoidance of rational thought while considering the relationship of Blackness to European avant-garde practice. ‘An Abstraction’ foregrounds the physical experience of the viewer, offering vantage points from which to consider his language of abstraction and how we process meaning in the moment. (On view in Chelsea through Aug 16th).
Sally J. Han in ‘The Selves’ at Nicola Vassell Gallery
Parallel to the panels of the folding screen to the right, the objects and people in Sally J. Han’s painting ‘Grandma’s Color Television’ (a standout in the summer group show ‘The Selves,’ at Nicola Vassell Gallery) lead the eye back into private, domestic space that suggests insights into the artist’s life. A glass dish in the foreground brings viewers to a young woman in a traditional Korean robe (Han was born in China and raised in Korea before moving to the US at age 17) and beyond to her grandmother, dozing in front of the TV. On the room’s back wall is a painting of a celestial body that recurs in Han’s work, in one earlier work hovering over the protagonist as she lies in bed. Children’s drawings on the wall nearby speak to creative production over time. Spare and tranquil, the environment suggests reflection; gorgeously colored clothing, a brightly lit space and ripe fruit on the screen and in the young woman’s hand speaks to the pleasure of the senses. (On view in Chelsea through Aug 9th).
Lisha Bai in ‘Cover Band’ at Asya Geisberg Gallery
Asya Geisberg Gallery’s summer group show ‘Cover Band,’ curated by gallery artist Gabriela Vainsencher, features artwork by fourteen artists whose work playfully engages with their artist forebears. Rebecca Morgan recasts Artemisia Gentileschi’s Penitent Magdalene as a self-portrait of the artist, bug-eyed and suffering from ailments including the effects of the ADHD medicine shortage. Elisa Soliven remakes and updates an intriguing square-bodied torso made by an unknown neolithic artist while here, 20th century German-Brazilian artist Eleanore Koch’s ‘Study for a Dreaming Palm Tree’ appears through a window of Lisha Bai’s hanging fabric work, as Bai retains but complicates Koch’s pared down style. (On view in Tribeca through Aug 16th).
Cynthia Talmadge in ‘The Swimmer’ at FLAG Art Foundation
Inspired by a 1964 short story by John Cheever in which the main character decides to swim home via a series of privately owned pools, FLAG Art Foundation’s summer group show, curated by Jonathan Rider, includes work by well over two dozen artists who picture mostly unpeopled pools and bodies of water. Here, Cynthia Talmadge’s ‘Pool,’ recalls winter days when the water is less inviting. Nearby, the sense of absence continues with Elmgreen & Dragset’s piece composed of two pairs of Calvin Klein men’s underwear nestled in two pairs of discarded 501 jeans and Zoe Crosher’s photos of sites where real or fictional people have gone missing. Martin Boyce’s faux leaves, scattered on the floor and titled ‘Evaporated Pools’, reinforce the out-of-season feel to a summer group show that goes against the grain of summer fun, instead conveying a contemplative quiet that offers its own pleasures. (On view in Chelsea through Aug 9th).
Melissa Cody in ‘Patterns’ at Luhring Augustine Gallery
Melissa Cody’s ‘Dopamine Dream,’ a standout in Luhring Augustine Gallery’s summer group show ‘Patterns,’ offers the pleasure alluded to in its title via vibrant color and complex patterning. Though Cody is a fourth-generation Navajo weaver who works on a traditional loom, she also codes jacquard weavings, allowing her to experiment with additional colors and forms. Traditional Navajo iconography, like the multiple crosses seen here referring to Spider Woman, mixes with a sense of space made more complex by the influence of video games and the digital realm. (On view in Chelsea through Aug 2nd).
Samara Golden in ’Material World’ at Marianne Boesky Gallery
LA artist Samara Golden turns conventional space on its head in immersive installations like her memorable show at CANADA Gallery in 2015, for which she employed mirrors, an elevated walkway and tables and chairs affixed to the wall to suggest an event space from a parallel dimension. A fragment related to that body of work is a standout in Marianne Boesky Gallery’s summer group show ‘Material World,’ curated by Gina Beavers, another artist whose paintings and installations spring off the wall with their bold, often humorous imagery. The show includes an aluminum textile-like wall work by El Anatsui, a geometric sculpture made of quilts by Sanford Biggers and a painted ceramic ice cream dessert by Claes Oldenburg, all of which have been inspirations for Beaver’s work and which act as an enticing prelude to her upcoming show in September. (On view through July 26th).
Hiroshi Sugimoto at Lisson Gallery
Art and science converge in Hiroshi Sugimoto’s new body of work at Chelsea’s Lisson Gallery, where the renowned photographer has photographed light, refracted through a prism into separate colors. Helpfully demonstrating Sugimoto’s working process in making images of pure color or zones between colors, a huge prism positioned under a gallery skylight fractures light into a rainbow on the floor. (On view through Aug 2nd).
Mary Heilmann at Hauser & Wirth Gallery
A shocking pink wall, lime green front desk and aqua-colored chair greet visitors to Mary Heilmann’s show at Hauser & Wirth Gallery, creating a bold statement not quite in keeping with the subtlety of the exhibition’s content – small-scale work on paper from the 70s to the early ‘00s. Nevertheless, one of the show’s smallest pieces, a black and blue watercolor and pencil drawing that brings to mind a game board, an overview of a pool or architectural forms, inspired Heilmann’s new, hugely enjoyable wall-filling new site-specific drawing, ‘A Long Lost Soul.’ (On view through July 26th in Chelsea).
The Campus, Claverack, New York
If you’ve ever enjoyed exploring MoMA’s PS1, an art space housed in a former Queens public school, you’ll love rambling around the atmospheric new 78,000 sq ft art space The Campus, housed in a former high school just outside Hudson, NY. Work by nearly 100 artists, mostly represented by NYC galleries Bortolami, James Cohan, kaufmann repetto, Anton Kern, Andrew Kreps and kurimanzutto fills the gym, hallways, classrooms and grounds around the large, low-slung, 1951 building. Organized by Timo Kappeller, the handsomely installed inaugural show includes a metal butterfly sculpture by Kosovar artist Petrit Halilaj (whose sculpture inspired by graffiti on school desks is currently on the roof of the Met Museum), text pieces by Jenny Holzer (currently showing at the Guggenheim) installed in a boys shower room, Madeline Hollander’s perpetual rolling metal knots (recently part of her solo show at Bortolami) and much, much more. (Admission is free. Hours: Saturday and Sunday, 12pm – 5pm. On view through Oct 27th.)
Mika Tajima at Hill Art Foundation
Mika Tajima’s winter ’24 solo show at Chelsea’s Pace Gallery featured Jacquard loomed tapestries so large that the gallery referred to them as ‘architectural;’ the artist’s current solo show at the Hill Art Foundation takes the concept a step further in its handsome integration of artwork and the gallery space. Here, a new work from Tajima’s ‘Negative Entropy’ series – referring to an application of energy to move away from disorder – dominates a floating wall, enhancing the dynamic effect of the wave pattern depicted in purple and yellow. Past pieces from the series indirectly picture sound waves from computer activity or brain stimulation; here, the subtitle ‘Sound Bath…’ suggests a visualization of a healing activity, purposeful if abstracted. (On view through July 26th).
Osgemeos, Cultivating Dreams at Lehmann Maupin Gallery
Known for imagining idiosyncratic characters from dreamed up worlds, Brazilian street-artist twins, Osemegos are back at Lehmann Maupin Gallery with paintings and two installations that fill the gallery with vivid color and sound from a built-in DJ booth. Pictured here, the gallery’s west wall houses a mystical architectural construction presided over by a nude man whose body has split in two to reveal a glowing inner self. To either side, a celestial goddess holds a planet in her hand while a man whose head in encircled by flower petals smiles serenely. In the sky, two heads circled by colorful lights – one of which is emerging from a UFO – light up the already bright skies over an installation that delights and entertains. (On view in Chelsea through Aug 16th).
Diamond Stingily at 52 Walker
Diamond Stingily’s ‘Entryway’ sculptures, two of which are on view in her current solo show at 52 Walker, feature a well-worn front door, held upright in the gallery space and supporting a baseball bat. Inspired by her grandmother’s practice of keeping a bat against the door for protection, Stingily rejects narratives of victimization in favor of female agency. In other work, the artist sets closets into the gallery wall, their familiar louvered doors signaling the intimate space of the bedroom. Open to reveal a collection of bats, a stack of bricks or a row of identical white shirts, the objects inside and accompanying articles from the newspaper-lined closet walls touch on a variety of topics, several to do with the exploitation or protection of female bodies. (On view through Sept 14th in Tribeca).
Yu-Wen Wu in ‘Mother Lode: Material and Memory’ at James Cohan Gallery
Nature supplies materials and inspiration to the artists in James Cohan Gallery’s 2-venue summer group show ‘Mother Lode: Material and Memory,’ an engaging and diverse exhibition that elicits sensitive regard for the environment. Yu-Wen Wu’s ‘Acculturation III,’ composed of 143 gilded tea leaves arranged in a grid on the wall, is a standout in the show, and ruminates on the artist’s experience after she arrived from Taiwan to the US as a child. Using tea – a material related to her family life in both locations – in arrangements that individually recall letters or collectively resemble an instructional diagram, Wu’s piece speaks to both similarity and uniqueness of each segment of tea branch, all encased in a precious material that testifies to the value of individual and group. (On view through June 26th).
Virginia Overton at Bortolami Gallery
Known for repurposing industrial and scrap materials into bold sculptural installations, Virginia Overton’s powerful show at Bortolami Gallery features new work generated from large-scale, deconstructed outdoor signage. Overton’s evocative material aestheticizes objects that were once functional while alluding to continuous urban change and the desire to remember the past. Upstairs, as part of a group show, three of Overton’s Skylight Gem (NYC) sculptures dangle from the ceiling and rest on the floor. Similar to the pieces Overton installed at the Delta Terminal at LaGuardia airport, the sculptures are at once iconic New York emblems, both present in today’s landscape and nostalgic as they point to past lives lived under the skylights. (On view through Aug 30th).
Will Ryman in ‘Dog Days of Summer’ at Timothy Taylor Gallery
Dogs take the stage in Timothy Taylor’s summer group show ‘Dog Days of Summer,’ an exhibition featuring canine-themed artworks by over 50 artists. A few animals play supporting roles to humans, but the majority star in their own performance as they wisely look at to sea (Sean Landers), raise a stream-lined muzzle to pluck fruit from a table (Justin Liam O’Brien) or pose with a haloed head while barking (Peter Saul). Here, Will Ryman’s stainless-steel dog shines like a precious object as it raises its elegant head in an expressive howl. (On view through Aug 23rd).
Leslie Wayne, Summer Slope at Jack Shainman Gallery
Known for fashioning sheets of oil paint into sculptural forms or collaging oil skins into 2-D works, Leslie Wayne turns her medium in a new direction with curiously-shaped canvases at Jack Shainman Gallery. Tall, narrow panels 7 feet high and less than 2 feet wide with names like ‘Rush,’ ‘Summer Slope’ and ‘Low Tide,’ at times suggest core samples of the earth and are accompanied by another series of realist paintings featuring aerial views of the landscape set in special frames that mimic airplane windows. Titled ‘This Land’ after Woody Guthrie’s classic folk song, the show was inspired by Wayne’s 2021 flight across the Western US and offers views of the landscape, distant or abstracted, that step away from divisions and conflict represented by place. (On view in Chelsea through August 2nd).
