Hugh Hayden at Lisson Gallery

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Hugh Hayden’s last show in 2021 at Lisson Gallery featured church pews installed like a chapel in the gallery; his current exhibition again transforms the space, this time into a restroom with artworks in multiple stalls, including a functioning urinal.  Visitors open doors to find pieces that refer generally to human experience: education (a distorted school desk), diasporic culinary arts and music (cooking pans merged with West African masks) and sexuality (several male torsos make a connection between guns and phalluses.)  Sequestered in their own stalls, each sculpture can be viewed alone or – though it feels strange, given the public restroom environment – with others.  Engaging with the show is irresistible; curious visitors are rewarded with beautifully crafted, surreal sculptures that prompt us to explore specific cultural commonalities.  (On view in Chelsea through June 15th).

Hugh Hayden, installation view of ‘Hughmans’ at Lisson Gallery, June 2024.

Marianne Nielsen at HB381

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Realistic yet alluding to dancing figures, a creeping crustacean, a crown and more, Danish artist Marianne Nielsen’s stoneware leaf sculptures at HB381 delight in nature and its rearrangement.  In a recent essay, design expert Glenn Adamson points out the subtlety of Nielson’s ceramics in a field crowded with bold statements, noting that the sculpture nevertheless grabs attention with its craft and imagination.  Matching our delight at nature’s wonders with pleasure at her clever and skillful iterations of plant life, Nielsen’s artworks take on a life of their own. (On view in Tribeca through June 15th).

Marianne Nielsen, Large Leaves, glazed stoneware, 10.25” h x 10.75” l, 2023.

Lucas Arruda at David Zwirner Gallery

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Though the skies directly ahead are dark in this small painting by Brazilian painter Lucas Arruda at David Zwirner Gallery, light shines out from behind the clouds, ready to transform the scene.  Light conditions and colors vary greatly in Arruda’s signature seascapes and jungle-scenes in response to time of day and atmospheric conditions yet each painting draws viewers in to appreciate the particular, fleeting circumstances presented.  Titled ‘Assum Preto’ after a Brazilian bird whose song alters in response to light, this show’s sensitivity to time and place is so subtle and calming as to be therapeutic.  (On view through June 15th in Chelsea).

Lucas Arruda, Untitled (from the Deserto-Modelo series), oil on canvas, 9 5/8 x 11 ¾ inches, 2022.

Sahara Longe at Timothy Taylor Gallery

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Disaffected nudes, a lurking skeletal figure and an embracing couple titled after Symbolist painter Ferdinand Hodler’s macabre painting ‘The Night’ channel the expressive qualities of late 19th century painting in Sahara Longe’s show of new paintings at Timothy Taylor Gallery in Tribeca.  Here, ‘Liar,’ features a painted frame of cloudy red, white and green colored areas that recall the wispiness of Edvard Munch’s skies in ‘The Scream.’ A white-clad individual on his knees with hands in a prayerful position in the foreground contrasts with a shadowy figure behind…possibly a second self or the ‘liar’ referred to in the title?  (On view through June 15th).

Sahara Longe, Liar, oil on linen, 74 ¾ x88 5/8 inches, 2024.

The Haas Brothers at Marianne Boesky Gallery

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Inspired by tree fungus, coral and other structures in the natural world that build up over time, The Haas Brothers’ bronzes at Chelsea’s Marianne Boesky Gallery are typically quirky in form and attractive in their shiny and patinaed bronze surfaces.  Inspired by psychedelic aspects of Stevie Wonder’s 1973 album ‘Innervisions,’ after which the artists titled the show, the works trend towards the hallucinatory. In this piece, tentacle-like forms seem to reach out towards visitors like living extensions of the seed-like form below.  On the wall, patterned paintings formed by squeezing bottles of acrylic paint echo the accretion process used to make the bronzes while adding lush color to the exhibition.  (On view through June 15th).

The Haas Bros, Holden Ball-field, patinated cast bronze, marble base, bronze: 34 x 28 x 13 inches, 2024.