Nick Cave, famous for his part-armor, part-costume sound-suits, meditates on gun violence in America in a sobering, symbol-laden show at Jack Shainman Gallery. Here, Cave nestles found sculptures of African heads amongst hands paired in prayer or raised in a solitary gesture of greeting, surrender or a caress. Flowers in the background offer hope of renewal. (On view at Jack Shainman’s two Chelsea locations through Dec 22nd).
Kyle Meyer’s photodocumentary work with eSwatini’s (formerly Swaziland’s) HIV positive populations parallels a stunningly beautiful personal project shot with members of the country’s gay community and now on view at Chelsea’s Yossi Milo Gallery. After photographing men wrapped in scarves made of vibrant fabrics (chosen together at market), Meyer hand sliced the scarf fabric, weaving it into a photo that both protects the sitter’s identity while declaring his existence. (On view through Dec 8th).
LA artist Annie Lapin conjures images from accidents, pouring a charcoal water solution over a prepared surface and embellishing the results with analogue and digitally created effects that she transcribes to canvas. In ‘Defenestration,’ a few deft additions to the central shape turns a stain into an escaping figure hightailing it out of a raw linen canvas. A metaphor for emerging artistic creativity? (On view at Miles McEnery Gallery in Chelsea through Nov 10th).
Atmosphere, light conditions and seasons shift to absorbing effect in Vermont-based painter Eric Aho’s landscapes, sometimes in the same painting. In ‘Headwaters,’ white patches close to the painting’s surface appear to be effects of the waterfall, while at bottom left, water appears to both drop and rise from the side of the cascade. Perceptions alter as we look, creating a dynamic image that engages as it challenges interpretation. (On view at DCMoore Gallery through Nov 10th).
Amid glinting filigree and chains, an emaciated figure plays a horn above two skeletons in Hew Locke’s photograph embellished with mixed media. Underneath is an image of a public sculpture memorializing Peter Stuyvesant, namesake of several New York landmarks and the Dutch governor who saw slavery as an engine to drive New York’s colonial economy. In his first solo show at PPOW Gallery in Chelsea, Locke alters portraits of public figures to examine how their lives and decisions have extended beyond their sanctioned, public images. (On view through Nov 10th).
In her current solo show at Chelsea’s Marianne Boesky Gallery, Austrian artist Svenja Deininger has brought out a new body of painting, literally, in canvases that evoke the human form, her own domestic environment, and the city of Milan, where she initiated her latest series. (On view through Dec 22nd).
It’s hard to tell if the hand in this photo by Mel Frank is gathering or stroking a marijuana plant; either way, the photo captures the cannabis cultivation guru and author’s affection for the herb. From extreme closeup photos to sunny landscapes dominated by weed and its farmers, Frank’s exhibition at Benrubi Gallery, ‘When We Were Criminals,’ offers a visual appreciation of a plant whose reputation continues to evolve. (On view in Chelsea through Nov 10th).
Just how ‘optimized’ should life be? Young Brooklyn painter Grace Weaver explores the idea of living to your utmost in ‘Best Life,’ her first solo show at James Cohan Gallery’s Lower East Side. Here, ‘peak season’ pictures two young people performing the role of tourist as they snap the requisite photos and navigate unfamiliar terrain on vacation. Weaver’s vividly colored portraits of her generation explore social pressures that will be alien to many but intense to her subjects. (On view through Oct 28th).
For her first New York gallery show in nearly ten years, Petah Coyne continues to create richly evocative sculpture inspired by literature; this peacock-topped chandelier titled ‘Black Snowflake’ pays homage to Masuji Ibuse’s Black Rain, his 1965 novel about Hiroshima. Personal themes also run though the show; here, a piece in memory of Coyne’s late father includes a bird considered in Irish mythology to accompany the soul to heaven. (On view at Galerie Lelong in Chelsea through Oct 27th).
Inspired by the DeLorean in the movie ‘Back to the Future,’ Daniel Arsham imagines the car as a relic from even further back, a remnant of the past now studded with sparkling patches of quartz crystal and pyrite. Alongside a similarly eroded Ferrari and a pile of obsolete consumer electronics, Arsham points out that given time, our castoffs revert to objects of desire. (On view at Perrotin through Oct 21st).
Katherine Bradford’s new painting ‘Suits’ juxtaposes a man in an impersonal business suit with a man stripped down to a swim suit. In his anonymous, corporate garb, the man above hovers over his more vulnerable counterpart like a spirit attempting to communicate from the beyond. Faceless, slack bodied and seemingly impervious, the man below stands in passive isolation. (On view at Canada New York through Oct 21st).
Titled ‘Juba’ after a West African dance tradition, Charles White’s portrait of this contemplative woman is dynamic though she’s still. Michael Rosenfeld Gallery’s exhibition of work by White and contemporaries from his wide circle of influence and friendship showcases large-scale drawings like this one from the 60s and 70s, illustrating White’s masterful ability to confer serene wisdom on his characters. (On view through Nov 10th).
At 41 feet long, Sam Falls’ Untitled (Conception) is a huge recreation of the natural world, dropped into 303 Gallery’s spartan white cube. Made by laying natural materials (branches, coral, plants) onto canvas, then adding powdered pigments and waiting for moisture in the air to set the colors, Falls’ working technique is akin to making a photogram with objects on light sensitive paper. The result transports viewers away from the city and into the abundance of nature. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 20th).
Using a homemade camera positioned in the back of a pickup truck, John Chiara records unique images onto paper prepared as a negative, creating otherworldly photos that challenge our sense of time and place. Occasionally, a new skyscraper will loom in the background or a streetlight will invade the scene, making it undeniably contemporary, as in this East Village view. But without storefronts or people, and under a fiery sky, Chiara’s scenes turn Manhattan into a glowing landscape of intrigue. (On view at Yossi Milo Gallery in Chelsea through Oct 27th).
Marc Straus Gallery nods to Mark Rothko’s hovering, painted rectangles of color and Josef Alber’s nests of colored squares on canvas, but the real attraction to Spain-born, New York-based artist Antonio Santin’s paintings is the fact that they’re painted at all. Resembling tapestries, Santin’s amazing abstract paintings are made with oil paint in a variety of patterns that suggest a 3D surface with something hidden beneath. (On view on the Lower East Side through Oct 16th).
Simone Leigh continues to merge bodies and architecture in provocative ways in her debut at Luhring Augustine in Chelsea. Highlights include the raffia-skirted figure on the left, a maternal character elevated by her tall, tent-like garment and commanding respect with her hands-on-hips pose. Natural materials contrast the delicate porcelain flowers clustered in a wreath around her face, suggesting a woman equally at ease with the ready-made and refined. (On view through Oct 20th).
If Ruby Sky Stiler’s latest sculptures at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery seem less curvy than usual, it’s because her latest work departs from the powerful, sometimes monumental female figures she’s known for, zeroing in on dads and kids instead. The subject of men with their children is so rare in contemporary art that it’s initially hard to grasp that the bigger figures aren’t women. Odder still is each group’s repose – wouldn’t these kids be playing soccer with dad or at least a card game? Stiler shatters stereotypical gender roles with aplomb. (On view on the Lower East Side through Oct 7th.)
Vases grimace and boxes flirt in Kathy Butterly’s sometimes anthropomorphic, always charmingly eccentric ceramic sculptures. Butterly’s new work – on view for the first time at James Cohan Gallery – is larger than ever and still defying convention with its raucous combinations of color and forms. (In Chelsea through Oct 20th).
LA-based abstract painter Mary Weatherford had an epiphany while driving through the streets of Bakersfield, CA one evening. The peachy tints of a radiant sunset and the glowing storefront lights inspired her to add neon light to her abstract expressionist canvases, making each uniquely expressive of a particular time and place. In her first solo show at Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea, Weatherford’s huge works are inspired by politics as well as specific experiences; one of the most impactful, GLORIA, operates with explosive force. (On view through Oct 15th).
Urs Fischer wants art to ‘do more than it does.’ With a team of software engineers and the input of choreographer Madeline Hollander, the New York-based Swiss artist sets out to surprise gallery visitors with a troupe of dancing office chairs, programmed to interact with each other and humans. Dubbed ‘robotic sculptures,’ the chairs come across as sinister if they come up behind you but strangely cute from the front as they hover nearby, slowly swiveling their wheels like a dog wagging its tail. Here, several engage in a group animation reminiscent of a chorus-line about to kick up its heels. (On view at Gagosian Gallery through Oct 13th).
A plano-convex lens dangling under three projectors creates a mesmerizing, constantly shifting pattern of light on the walls in Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s latest solo show at Bitforms. In advance of a major exhibition of his interactive environments at the Hirshhorn this fall, the artist’s current exhibition tantalizes with small scale pieces from the past few years that evoke wonder at the intersection of technology and the natural world. (On view on the Lower East Side through Oct 21st).
Barbara Takenaga’s abstract paintings evoke natural phenomena – here, a polished cross section of a stone or a distant view of far galaxies. In the case of ‘Overview,’ a standout in her latest solo show at Chelsea gallery DC Moore, she electrifies the heavens with vibrant color and gratifying complexity. (On view through Oct 6th).
An ominous cloud of fleshy tones and dark lines conjures hidden images (birds? an angular face?) as it hovers over an old-fashioned telephone in Charline von Heyl’s ‘Dial M for Painting.’ Like Hitchcock’s ‘Dial M for Murder,’ intrigue and tension dominate; a hastily drawn telephone leads us in to the drama while the floating mass above gives pause for thought, all against a screaming yellow background. (On view at Petzel Gallery in Chelsea through Oct 20th).
Concrete embraces nature in this painting of a ‘disprized’ location by New York artist Rackstraw Downes at Betty Cuningham Gallery. From a seemingly unremarkable spot under a u-turn ramp, Downes considers what and how the eye really sees and how a ‘forgotten’ place might yield a bit of wonder. (On view on the Lower East Side through Oct 14th).
From a couple of everyday guys to this fabulously coiffed model, Nathaniel Mary Quinn’s characters astound and intrigue as layers of personality come together to make a disjointed but coherent whole. Inspired by real characters from his life and Brooklyn neighborhood, Quinn’s paintings acknowledge human complexity while celebrating individuality. (On view at Salon94 Bowery on the Lower East Side through Oct 27th).
Over the past four decades, Brooklyn painter and art professor Julie Heffernan has questioned traditional roles for women in fantastical works that channel art history and champion female agency. Her latest body of work lauds women who have stood up to power in portraits that hang alongside framed paintings that reverse typical art historical power relations. In the background here, Heffernan’s reworks Rubens’ ‘Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus,’ by replacing a man with a woman on horseback, making her rescuer rather than perpetrator. (On view at PPOW Gallery in Chelsea through Oct 6th).
Wealth is a provocative topic for Nigerian-American artist Toyin Ojih Odutola, who depicts two well-heeled fictional Nigerian families in her latest charcoal, pastel and pencil drawings at Chelsea’s Jack Shainman Gallery. Vibrant and moody, the portraits ask – as Ojih Odutola puts it – ‘what would wealth look like’ had colonialism not happened? (On view at both Jack Shainman Gallery locations through Oct 27th).
Southern Indian sculptor Ranjani Shettar’s concern for threatened rural Indian ecosystems informed her dramatic mezzanine installation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, ‘Seven ponds and a few raindrops.’ Crafted from organic muslin and bound to a welded and molded steel base with tamarind paste, the piece’s floating organic shapes conjure 3-D scientific models, intricate plant life or alien life. (On view on the Upper East Side through Sept 16th).
One hundred and fifty studio portraits of unidentified African Americans by unknown photographers now on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art offer a fascinating peek at self-representation in the mid-20th century. By recently acquiring two major portrait groups represented in the show, the Met announces its intention to build its collection to include images of African Americans. (On view on the Upper East Side through October 8th).
Male behaviors and rituals occupy Ohio-based printmaker and current International Print Center New York resident artist Morteza Khakshoor’s colorful, dream-like prints. This piece, ‘Men of High Culture’ is a standout in the IPCNY’s current juried exhibition of new prints. Including a homogeneously dressed cast of male wall flowers and two figures grappling with eccentric creatures and separated by a vase of flowers, Khakshoor’s setup reinterprets the uber-male cockfight. (On view through Sept 22nd).
From the serene to the lively, Bruce Silverstein Gallery’s selection of portrait photos by Lisette Model (seen here), Diane Arbus and Rosalind Fox Solomon turn everyday folks into intriguing characters. Model’s electric photo of a singer at Café Metropole contrasts a gloved man on the Promenade des Anglais, Nice and the momentary repose of a bather at Coney Island, but all suggest that moments of delicious eccentricity are just around the corner. (On view in Chelsea through Sept 8th).
‘Geomantria,’ the title of Lauren Sparks’ show last spring Kate Werble Gallery succinctly introduces the concept of geometry as magic in the Brooklyn painter’s canvases. In this grid of nine works – part of a three-person group exhibition of abstract painting at Chelsea’s Cheim & Read Gallery, curated by Jack Pierson – Sparks plots out six points with relationships that shift according to the ash, papier mache, glitter, yarn and other materials she applies to woven strips of canvas. (On view through August 30th).
Gianni Versace’s 1991-92 jacket, featuring a Madonna and child embroidered in crystals, draws on the gold tile and opulent patterning of Ravenna’s Byzantine architecture. Part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s stunning ‘Heavenly Bodies’ Costume Institute exhibition, the garment joins icons from the Met’s collection in a contemporary reinterpretation of opulence. (On view on the Upper East Side through Oct 8th).
Argentinian artist Carina Lopez Winschel turns the abundance of nature into material for abstraction in paintings that explode with form and color at Praxis Art in Chelsea. (On view through Aug 31st).
Peg board, orange plastic wrap, beard hair and other unexpected art materials create surprise and immediacy in Aaron Fowler’s meditative self-portrait at Totah Gallery on the LES. Salon94 Gallery, which also showed Fowler’s work earlier this month, explains the donkey “…as a symbol of human imperfection and signifying the potential for transformation.” (On view through Aug 26th at Totah Gallery).
A peaceful beach scene turns into a jittery fly-eye view of the seaside at the hand of Japanese artist Kensuke Koike, who alters vintage postcards and photos by slicing and rearranging the images in strips. (On view in ‘Interventions’ at Yancey Richardson Gallery in Chelsea through Aug 24th).
In South African artist Nicholas Hlobo’s cut canvas artworks, ribbons refer to the feminine while leather points to the masculine. In this detail of a larger work, the ribbons and the canvas they hold together defy gender assignment in curves and openings that evoke the body and geography. (On view in Chelsea at Lehmann Maupin Gallery through August 24th).
Cats feature in LA painter Linda Stark’s work as portals to the divine or the unknowable – one starred in a past painting as the cat-headed god Bastet, in another as a third eye on the artist’s self-portrait. Here, Stark’s cat, Ray, stares coolly out of a pink haze rimmed in blue that evokes Art Deco colors and neon light. (On view at Matthew Marks Gallery in Chelsea through August 17th).
Fred Wilson continues to consider African diasporic populations of the Mediterranean in a selection of recent work commissioned for the 15th Istanbul Biennial, currently on view at Pace Gallery in Chelsea. Uncharacteristically dark-toned Iznik tile walls include the text ‘Black is Beautiful’ and ‘Mother Africa’ in elaborate Arabic script while chandeliers combine black Murano glass from Venice with metal elements that evoke Ottoman design. Wilson’s installation merges diverse traditions with dramatic flair and elegance, suggesting complexity in the histories his art investigates. (On view through August 17th).
French street artist JR is back in town this summer with a show of photography, sculpture and installation that continues his outspoken advocacy for vulnerable populations. In this aerial overview, we see the eyes of Mayra, an undocumented immigrant who arrived in California as a child. Used as backdrop for a picnic on both sides of the US/Mexican border, the image counters division with unity. (On view at Galerie Perrotin on the Lower East side through August 17th).
A disembodied, boneless hand by Brooklyn artist Genesis Belanger is equal parts attractive and creepy, part of a table-top arrangement of stoneware sculpture that includes a languid cigarette, two partially consumed Pink Lady apples and a lamp with a severely pinched-waist. Part of Nathalie Karg Gallery’s summer group show ‘Distortions,’ Belanger’s sculpture provocatively blurs the line between human bodies, food and consumer objects in what the New Yorker proffered as ‘funny-pages Surrealism.’ (On view on the Lower East Side through August 15th).
Inspired by traditional grave-marking sculpture, Late Malagasy artist Jean-Jacques Efiaimbelo’s artistic practice continues in the vibrant work of his male descendants. Galerie Perrotin’s beautifully installed selection of symbolically rich figurative scenes, carved from the sacred wood Mendorave, includes this sculpture of a music group. Somber but lively, the musicians play Tsapiky music – popular at funerals and other ceremonies. (On view on the Lower East Side through August17th).
Robert Gober’s sculpture ‘Heart in a Box’ demonstrates more commitment than sending a valentine card or loading a text with heart-eye emojis. A standout in the Flag Art Foundation’s smart summer group show, ‘Dime Store Alchemy,’ curated by Jonathan Rider, it advances the exhibition’s meditation on art delivered in a particular setting, box or kind of framing device. Gober’s typical handcrafting is an added thrill as what appears to be a cardboard box is actually painted corrugated aluminum. (On view through August 17th).
Drake Carr’s acrylic and airbrush on canvas sculptures bring animation into three dimensions in a way that feels both fresh and disconcerting. To the right, a dancer looks set to leap off the wall. Behind, Carr nods to his mother’s window dressing business with a curtain arrangement that frames two weight lifters in a dramatic domestic setting. Two freestanding characters to the left represent residents of Flint (Carr hails from Michigan) whose odd gestures represent the unnatural quality of the city’s tainted water. (On view on the Lower East Side at The Hole NYC through August 12th).
Humor, irony and abjection abound in Greene Naftali Gallery’s summer group show ‘Painting Now and Forever, part III,’ a collaboration with Matthew Marks Gallery, but none of these qualities are found in British artist Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s fictional portrait titled ‘Jubilee.’ Instead, Yiadom-Boakye’s elevated characters – backlit in this case by a golden glow – are quietly exalted, seemingly above everyday life and happy in their own company and thoughts. (On view in Chelsea through August 17th).
Summer takes a slightly sinister turn at Pierogi Gallery’s ‘Les Fleur du Mal’ group show; here, a photo from the late Williamsburg gallery scene stalwart Meredith Allen’s ‘Melting Ice Pops’ series documents a Pokemon treat as it morphs into a dripping demon. (On view on the Lower East Side through Aug 4th).
Human-created pollution vies with a vividly colored frog to attract the eye in Alexis Rockman’s 2012 watercolor titled ‘Effluent,’ now on view at Sperone Westwater Gallery. Rockman’s artful activism appears alongside new field drawings from New Mexico of plants and animals from the region that are extinct, living or threatened. (On view on the Lower East Side through August 3rd).
Taking flowers or nature as the theme for a summer group exhibition isn’t particularly original or necessarily avant-garde. Still, nature’s beauty and uplift as symbol of regeneration is irresistible to audiences and to the curators of ‘A Rose is a Rose is a Rose’ at Jack Hanley Gallery, who apologetically admit that painting flowers is ‘embarrassing.’ This paper sculpture by Daniel Gordon, which recalls still lives throughout art history (think Cezanne and Matisse) and pushes the possibilities of photography as sculpture, suggests that the show’s organizers have nothing to worry about. (On view on the Lower East Side through August 3rd).
Chelsea Seltzer & Theo Rosenblum reduce a kid’s party to essentials – cake and pizza – then bring the refreshments to life in this wonderfully absurd sculpture at Asya Geisberg Gallery. Both delicious and disgusting, funny and disturbing, innocent and sinister, Seltzer and Rosenblum’s character pushes all kinds of buttons. (On view in ‘Alive with Pleasure’ at Asya Geisberg Gallery in Chelsea through Aug 3rd).
Soap suds, sand and spaghetti are the mundane subjects of Helene Appel’s extraordinary new paintings at James Cohan Gallery. A muted palette and minute detail make it necessary to draw close to finely detailed renderings of beach sand and glistening soap bubbles. From a few feet away, this painting (seen in detail) delights as a trompe l’oeil rendering of a delicately colored fishing net while doubling as an energetically free, grid-busting abstraction. (On view on the Lower East Side through July 27th).
Jamal Nxedlana’s portrait of South African stylist Bee Diamondhead leaps off the wall in Aperture Gallery’s ‘Summer Open,’ offering a tantalizing glimpse of South Africa’s fashion elite. (On view in Chelsea through August 16th).
Hein Koh’s ‘Big Mother of Pearl’ sculpture injects a note of humor in Paul Kasmin Gallery’s summer group show, ‘Seed,’ curated by Yvonne Force. Force identifies a spiritual generative force in the act of creating art; Koh’s curvy, colorful and rhinestone-glittery shell has just produced a pearl that resembles an eye and a portal into other galaxies. (On view in Chelsea through August 10th).
True to its name, British octogenarian Phillip King’s dynamic ‘Swirl’ suggests a sudden levitation of two perforated sheets of polyurethane foam from two anchoring black triangular shapes. It’s vivid color that gives this lively new work its lift though, including the bold tones on Luhring Augustine’s gallery walls. (On view in Chelsea through August 10th).
Whether they’re teeth or a quadrupled epiglottis, the line of metal balls in each of these three mouth sculptures by Julie Bena suggests ways in which language might follow Newton’s laws. If each of these joyous, dismayed or just loud mouths spoke, would their words have a momentum that wouldn’t diminish? How would the energy of each person’s thoughts change form as it manifested in each individual? (At Chapter NY as part of the multi-gallery group exhibition Condo New York. Chapter is hosting Adams and Ollman).
A huge, flawless bar of soap in Carrara marble acts as an icon of purity in Rachel Lee Hovnanian’s current solo show at Leila Heller Gallery. The third in a series of consecutive exhibitions by the artist at this Chelsea gallery, the show encourages introspection and the chance to ‘clean up’ some mental baggage. Assistant by gallery staff, a visitor can write down something (s)he’d like to eliminate from her/his life on one of the cast plaster soaps stacked against the gallery wall, then smash the soap with a mallet. (On view in Chelsea through July 20th).
Seated figures and seats themselves comprise the surprisingly engaging theme of Marc Straus Gallery’s summer group show, which includes Red Grooms’ 1974-5 ‘The Minister of Transportation.’ Long arms languidly crossed and propped up on a skinny knee, the art-deco styled ‘minister’ offers a small case of cigarettes as he puffs away himself atop a parade float featuring images of vehicles on the ground, in the sky and on the water. (On view on the Lower East Side through July 28th).
Art & design merge in British artist Jonathan Trayte’s otherworldly habitat at Friedman Benda, where a chaise longue doubles as a lamp and a pink bedframe made out of pipes questions the use-value of sculpture. Here, an irresistible painted bronze, steel, foam and neon sculpture titled Kandi defies explanation while enticing with its organic forms and pink glow. (On view in Chelsea through July 27th).
The world fractures into patterns and planes in Chie Fueki’s energetic rendition of a redhead (painter Ellen Altfest) on her bike, a standout in DC Moore Gallery’s excellent summer exhibition. In other works by Fueki in the show, women take the wheel in futuristic vehicles that traverse otherworldly landscapes. (On view in Chelsea through August 10th.)
Without putting pencil or brush to paper, Beijing-based artist Fu Xiaotong created this enigmatic cityscape, seen as if in a fog or snowstorm. Created entirely by piercing a thick piece of paper with a needle, the scene’s suggestion of nature (even in the built environment) is appropriate, given Fu’s signature subject matter of mountains, water and other organic elements. (On view at Chambers Fine Art in Chelsea through August 17th).
Congresswoman Barbara Lee literally opens her hands to the issues that matter to her constituents in this quilted artwork by Bay Area artist Alice Beasley. Beasley’s tribute is a standout in Robert Mann Gallery’s summer group show ‘In Her Hands’ (curated by Orly Cogan and Julie Peppito), an exhibition that celebrates female political leaders. (On view in Chelsea through August 17th).
“Stand-up comedy and painting are both performative acts,” explains Brooklyn painter Peter Schenck, who has first-hand-experience of both. Titling his latest show at Freight and Volume ‘Comedy Cellar,’ after the West Village club, Schenck creates colorful but tense scenarios in which various characters must make good under the spotlight. Here, a wide-eyed, robed painter grins wildly next to a giant scull and floating paint brushes. (On view on the Lower East Side through July 8th).
Self-taught Czech artist Jana Paleckova’s endlessly inventive paintings on original vintage photos reimagine the past in humorous and surreal ways. The apparent awkwardness of these boys and their wary-looking adult takes on new meaning, given the gormless looking cyclops in their ranks. (On view through August 3rd at Edward Thorp Gallery in Chelsea).
A campfire made of LED matrix panels, a slightly misshapen monolith in cool blue light and this glowing quilt with changing patterns are standouts in computer programmer/ artist Luke Murphy’s latest show at Canada NY. Here, both subject matter and execution exude homey charm. (On view on the Lower East Side through July 15th).
Known for large-scale installations of hanging, twisting and looping fibers, Sheila Hicks favors rich, 2-D color-fields in her latest solo show at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. As seen in this detail, Hicks combined several panels wrapped in individual strands of linen floss to create harmonies that speak to a lifetime of absorbing and rethinking textiles from around the world. (On view through July 6th).
British Columbia based artist Tim Gardner revisits his college-day haunts in vibrant, precise watercolors of a surprisingly tranquil New York, now on view at 303 Gallery. A Statue of Liberty with stars brightly shining above (light pollution magically banished), a quiet (!) High Line park and a subway station with a train arriving are magical moments. This bike messenger (actually waiting at a light?) helps interpret the scale of the pleasingly symmetrical terracotta-colored building framing the scene. (On view in Chelsea through July 13th).
Brooklyn-based artist Joseph Zito’s forays into beekeeping inspired his recent series of hives, created in tandem with artist friends and currently on display at Lennon Weinberg Gallery in Chelsea. Here, painter Gary Mayer’s energetically painted box issues a warning, portraying a cluster of frenetic bees in a paradise of flowers on one side and dead bees experiencing colony collapse on the other. (On view through August 17th).
Lines of moving silhouettes endlessly crisscross rugged terrain in ‘Blue Hills,’ an arresting video at the entrance to Michal Rovner’s latest solo show at Pace Gallery. Suggesting constant migration across inhospitable land, the piece’s calm colors belie more overt alarm in several of the show’s other works, in which bodies with flashing red lights for heads or constantly waving arms sound a warning. Reflecting on the role of technology in our daily lives, Rovner muses that we are becoming ‘bar codes with DNA.’ (On view at Pace Gallery’s 25th Street location through June 29th).
If you thought Damien Hirst could possibly be done with painting dots, think again. Gagosian Gallery’s cavernous space is filled with new dot paintings, freed from their usual grid format and now swirling across the canvas. (On view in Chelsea through June 30th).
British artist Matthew Stone’s stunning merger of virtual and real (as played out on canvas) was a standout in The Hole NYC’s past ‘Post Analogue Painting’ shows, in which artists demonstrated how digital tools have altered the way they conceive of painting’s possibilities. In his latest work, Stone introduces a maelstrom of bodies, half-formed by a vocabulary of brushstrokes that he first paints on glass, photographs, then digitally models into not-quite-classic nudes. (On view on the Lower East Side through June 24th).
Nick Cave’s mixed media sculptures at Jack Shainman Gallery look like soft, dyed fur, but the reality is more somber. Patterns painted on short, sharp wires portray what the gallery reveals is a “…layered mapping of cataclysmic weather patterns superimposed onto brain scans of black youth suffering from PTSD as a result of gun violence.” (On view on 20th Street in Chelsea through June 23rd).
The most provocative – and political – of British painter Jenny Saville’s recent canvases remake traditional Christian pieta imagery in a way that both modernizes it and suggests timelessness. In this striking piece titled ‘Byzantium,’ Mary is replaced by a figure recalling an ancient Greek striding youth – a kouros – while her dead son’s reclining body is transparent, as if real flesh gave way to a Gray’s anatomy diagram. Elsewhere in the show, a male parent cradles a lifeless child with a modern war-ravaged city in the background. As the heads in both images overlap heads and feet reappear many times, Saville seems to suggest that history repeats itself with dire consequences. (On view at Gagosian Gallery’s 21st Street Chelsea location through July 20th).
In a gallery titled ‘the repair annex,’ two new sculptures by Charles Ray depict mechanics absorbed in their work. A man squats in a pose reminiscent of Ray’s own kneeling self-portrait from a few years back but also suggesting supplication or rapt attention to a task. Ray’s meticulous renderings, here in painted steel, can take years to realize and the attention to detail and smooth finish give the piece an elegance and preciousness that connect this subject less to an autobody shop and more to an art history of heroic bodies. (On view at Matthew Marks Gallery‘s 526 West 22nd Street location in Chelsea through June 16th).
Nodding to the title of Picasso’s carefully posed 1907 bevy of red-light district workers, ‘Demoiselle D’Avignon,’ Delia Brown’s exhibition ‘Demoiselle d’Instagram’ is a hilarious, tongue-in-cheek take on today’s social media self-styling. Departing radically from her signature realist style, Brown surrounds her subjects in shimmering halos of energy, perhaps emitted from the phones that absorb the attention of each woman. Meanwhile, baby seals float through the air – their plight ignored by self-absorbed humans. (On view at Tibor de Nagy on the Lower East Side through June 17th).
Marianne Vitale gives new meaning to life on the rails with her repurposed railway tracks as minimalist sculpture, steel junctions as totemic figures and now, a train engine housing resembling a gas-masked ghoul. Part of an exhibition that includes stacks of metal flangeway blocks that recall indecipherable letter shapes, Vitale’s art is anthropology – a search through remnants of a recently bygone era for clues to life in the not-so-distant past. (On view at Invisible Exports on the Lower East Side through June 24th).
Amid lush landscapes, bundles of household goods and furniture await removal in Yun-Fei Ji’s watercolor paintings of rural China. As the government relocates huge numbers of country-dwellers to urban areas, the artist zeros in on individuals and their belongings in the process of being uprooted. (On view at James Cohan Gallery’s Lower East Side location through June 16th).
Fatoumata shows off a new braided hairstyle in this portrait by Burkina Faso photographer Sanle Sory, whose photo studio attracted the young and fashionable of Bobo-Dioulasso for decades after opening in 1960. In dozens of images taken from the 60s to the 80s, now on view at Yossi Milo Gallery in Chelsea, Sory captures the lively self-styling of the country’s youth post-independence, calling photography ‘a witness to everything, a kind of proof of life.’ (On view through June 23rd).
Cayce Zavaglia pushes realism into new territory in her stunningly deft embroidered portraits of friends and family. Long stitches become smooth lengths of hair while tiny dense ones create the interplay of light and color on skin. Here, Hudson’s youthful face and textured plaid shirt stand out against an electric, lime-colored background. (On view in Chelsea at Lyons Wier Gallery through June 2nd).
Perspective is unmoored in Mernet Larsen’s discombobulating scene of a high-level government meeting. The sense of disorientation suits an array of stiff, featureless leaders who with their flat physiques look as if they might go in whichever direction the wind blows. (On view at James Cohan Gallery’s Chelsea location through June 16th).
What Huang Yong Ping’s ‘Bank of Sand, Sand of Bank’ lacks in subtlety it makes up for in presence, filling Barbara Gladstone Gallery’s 21st Street Chelsea location with 20 tons of sand and concrete molded to resemble the former HSBC Bank in Shanghai. Once a symbol of opulence, here an omen of potential economic collapse, the hulking neoclassical building was used as a government building after the Chinese revolution and has since been adopted as home by the Pudong Development Bank. (On view through June 9th).
Sarah Peters takes her stylized bronze head sculptures to a newly disquieting level in her current exhibition at Van Doren Waxter on the Lower East Side. Riffing on Greek dramatic masks, ancient Assyrian or Akkadian heads, and sex dolls, figures heads like this one embody ziggurat-like architectural form, as if place and priestess had merged into one haunting figure. (On view on the Lower East Side through June 2nd).
Sculptor Ursula von Rydingsvard describes this wall mounted cedar relief sculpture as beginning ‘gently then growing belligerent’ as its rows of cavities expand and lose their form closer to the floor. On the flip side of aggressive, the carved wood forms are characterized by a softness that suggests disintegration. Rising, falling and sliding along the wall, this sculpture’s shapes appear to be in constant motion. (On view at Galerie Lelong in Chelsea through June 23rd).
It can be easy to focus on the bright, pop side of Takashi Murakami’s production, even as his cute, anime-inspired characters sprout fangs. His current solo show on all three floors of Perrotin’s Lower East Side gallery continues to probe darker sides of life (a strain in his work that’s grown since Japan’s 2011 tsunami and earthquake) by engaging with select paintings by Francis Bacon. Here, Bacon’s famous painting of rival and friend Lucian Freud is springboard for Murakami’s own alternative characters – multi-eyed alien creatures that suggest humor and menace in equal measure. (On view through June 17th).
Using patterns scanned and printed from her collection of vintage kimonos, Chicago-based artist Mayumi Lake creates floral abstractions – adding a fringe of beads and other elements – that mix tradition and contemporary life. Designed to resemble huge flowers that might decorate a sacred place, the blooms grow in size and color in proportion to life’s difficulties. (On view at Miyako Yoshinaga Gallery in Chelsea through May 25th).
Angolan artist Keyezua’s ‘Fortia’ series (translated as ‘Strength’) features female figures in handmade masks and dramatic red gowns posing in an eroded landscape outside Luanda. Citing her father’s disability and early death, the artist aims to explore how her own identity developed as a young woman experiencing loss. (In ‘Refraction: New Photography of Africa and its Diaspora’ at Steven Kasher Gallery in Chelsea through June 2nd).
A Christmas cactus tangos with a dramatically dark black tulip in the foreground of Inka Essenhigh’s ‘Party of the Flames and Flowers,’ a standout painting in the artist’s solo show at Miles McEnery Gallery in Chelsea. Personified flowers compete to show off their beauty in an intriguing venue that mysteriously appears to be undersea. (On view through May 25th).
This 1980 painting on hand-woven linen by video art pioneer Beryl Korot (seen in detail) demonstrates the language she devised, based on the grid of woven cloth. The text is based on the account of the Tower of Babel in Genesis, an account in which language fragments. For Korot, Babel offers a chance to consider the ways that language and technology relate to human behavior. (On view at Bitforms through May 20th).
Mylar, balloon-shaped sculptures are the centerpiece of Tomas Saraceno’s stunning ‘Solar Rhythms’ exhibition at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in Chelsea – a show that envisions fossil fuel free flight via balloon. Reflected light decorates the gallery in ethereal patterns that connect our earthly realm to the wonderous possibilities of life in the air. (On view through June 9th).
When it comes to perspective in his paintings, David Hockney famously takes the road less traveled by adopting multiple viewpoints in one image. In this vibrantly colored painting of Garrowby Hill in Yorkshire, on view at Pace Gallery through the weekend, Hockney eliminates the corners of his canvas, introducing a technique that guides viewers on an enticingly colorful and quirky journey into an expanding landscape. (On view at Pace Gallery’s 25th Street Chelsea location through May 12th).
Inspired by Louis Lozowick’s 1935 ‘Strike Scene’ lithograph, Hank Willis Thomas’s stainless steel ‘Strike’ is a powerful symbol of resistance. A highlight of the artist’s latest two-gallery solo show at Jack Shainman Gallery, the sculpture presents a fragment of a scenario that speaks to a broader history of struggle. (On view in Chelsea through May 12th).
A paper floats into the frame of a Krazy Kat cartoon, and Krazy questions the ‘kwee mokks’ all over it. This scenario captivates one of Marcus Weber’s oddball characters, who are themselves unexpected and unexplained. Though their unibrows suggest an adult seriousness, they avidly read the funnies, positioning their identity somewhere between adult and kid and tantalizingly out of reach. (At Thomas Erben Gallery in Chelsea through May 19th).
Ceramics get comic and weird in The Hole NYC’s sprawling exhibition of art made from clay. Theo A. Rosenblum’s ‘King Carrot’ grins enthusiastically in the main gallery, setting the tone for a show that includes Alice Mackler’s amorphous female figures, a delinquent Bart Simpson portrait by FriendsWithYou and much, much more. (On view on the Lower East Side through May 6th).
Using acrylic, oil and bleach on linen, LA painter Pamela Jorden combines the colors of day and night in a dramatic tondo that draws us into summery pink, yellow and blue zones while actively repelling our approach in angular dark areas. Drawing her painterly vocabulary from the history of abstraction, Jorden aims to rethink landscape, referencing varied sources, from J.M.W. Turner to tide pools. (On view at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery on the Lower East Side through May 6th).
Will Cotton’s paintings of models and confectionery merge erotic desire and the temptation of sweets; here, sugar wins out as a tower of cake takes center stage at the International Print Center in Chelsea. If this looks like a sculpture that won’t age well, don’t be fooled; this indulgent stack of goodies is made of handmade paper – a standout in the Print Center’s show of American hand paper-making since the 60s.
A lone palm stands peaceful and unmolested above the collision of man-made material and nature photography that is Letha Wilson’s ‘Steel Face Concrete Bend (Kauai Palm)’ at GRIMM on the Lower East Side. Inside a steel frame, concrete printed with a landscape photo abuts an actual photographic print as man and nature messily come into contact. (On view through April 22nd ).
The human figure emerges gracefully from marble, bronze and wood in Pace Gallery’s major exhibition of Barbara Hepworth’s sculpture from the 30s to the 70s. In the foreground, ‘One, Two, Three (Vertical)’ from 1974 frames this view of towering sculpture from Hepworth’s totemic Family of Man series – an ‘Ancestor’ on the left and ‘Bridegroom’ in the back. (On view in Chelsea through April 21st).
Teresita Fernandez’s show last spring at Lehmann Maupin featured an American landscape constructed of charcoal, maps burned into paper and a ceramic wall panel featuring raging flames. Currently on view on Chelsea, ‘Fire (United States of America),’ forcefully continues Fernandez’s consideration of the US landscape as contentious and combustible. (On view in Chelsea through May 5th).
The title of Sam Moyer’s ‘Spencertown’ (seen here in detail) refers to the New York town where iconic painter Ellsworth Kelly lived and worked before his death in 2015. Bold geometric shapes – constructed of marble and painted canvas – also hint at a fascination with Kelly’s practice of reducing real-world objects and scenes to an abstract language. Here, Moyer pushes the idea a step further by incorporating actual fragments of the 3-D world in her artwork. (At FLAG Art Foundation in Chelsea through May 19th).
Ancient and 20th century, Chinese and European cultural heritage come into direct contact in XU ZHEN’s sculpture of a Tang Dynasty warrior holding Brancusi’s ‘Sleeping Muse.’ Currently part of an exhibition at James Cohan Gallery that has transformed the exhibition space into a garden with walking paths that replicate protest marches, the piece aims to provoke conversation on many levels. (On view on the Lower East Side through April 22nd).
In his latest show at Marianne Boesky Gallery, Barnaby Furnas morphs Grant Woods’ iconic American Gothic (now on view at the Whitney) into an eerie portrait of pitchfork-clutching quadruplet sisters defined by their flatness and conformity. Other paintings feature charging bison and Mt Rushmore, summoning iconic ‘American’ imagery to question what that means now. Even Furnas’ new experiments in painting technique – he has worked with the research group ARTMATR to digitally replicate his labor-intensive paint application techniques – align with the sense that these robotic characters lack a human element. (On view in Chelsea through April 14th).
How would a rag rug inspire a ceramic sculpture? Francesca DiMattio’s huge porcelain and stoneware sculptures mimic the shaggy surface of a Moroccan boucherouite rug, a technique aided by her use of a garlic press to extrude clay. Mixing references to art history and decorative arts, DiMattio’s new work is a riotous assertion of history’s continued presence in today’s art and design. (On view on the Lower East Side at Salon94 Bowery through April 21st).
