Spanish artist Lino Lago’s recent ‘Reality (Show)’ series jumbles art and artifacts from pop culture and art history together on the flat surface of a canvas. This shaped artwork in the form of a chair, part of the same series, allows collectors to make their own groupings. (At George Adams Gallery in Chelsea through Feb 11th.)
Plants, ponds and (for a time) cows generated New York painter Lois Dodd’s subject matter as she painted the natural world in canvases that provocatively mix figuration and abstraction. This 1963 image, painted on summer vacation in Maine, continued Dodd’s studies in pattern, merging avant-garde painting style with bucolic pleasure. (At Alexandre Gallery in the 57th Street area, through Feb 25th).
Roger White’s new oil paintings at Rachel Uffner Gallery approach the wondrous in the everyday – a mirror reflects light, an array of mushrooms grows from a bag – but the artist amps up the drama in this picture of fire on a river. Has there been a chemical spill? Is this a miracle? A sci-fi scene? This small, intriguingly moody canvas asks good questions. (On the Lower East Side through Feb 19th).
James Siena continues to produce mesmerizing patterned images with his latest show of drawings at Pace Gallery. However, instead of repeating an initial mark that establishes a rule system, Siena’s new work glories in interlocking patterns that boggle the mind with their detail and their complex consideration of space. (At Pace Gallery’s 25th Street location through Feb 11th).
Karen Heagle’s sumptuous, gold leaved paintings of scavengers, predators and fallen prey are irresistible, even at their goriest moments. On a solitary drawing, the text ‘The Unwashed Masses’ hints that Heagle’s interests stray beyond the lifecycle of animals to reflect on humanity’s ‘natural’ inclination to violence. (At On Stellar Rays on the Lower East Side through Feb 19th).
Fit for a student or a teacher, this monumental painted shoe not only holds scissors, pens and other school supplies, it’s a history lesson all on its own, from the cave paintings to a digitally rendered portrait in green lines. Titled after Magritte’s Le Modele Rouge (a painting of boots that take on the appearance of bare feet), Henry Gunderson’s update is more practical than surreal, but no less fun to ponder. (At 247365 Gallery on the Lower East Side through Feb 5th).
Despite her assertive pose, Dutch painter Hannah van Bart’s enigmatic young lady appears to literally blend into the background as a shape-shifting wall the color of her dress manifests over her chest. (At Marianne Boesky Gallery through Feb 4th.)
Sandwiched on the wall between two roughly lettered signs reading, ‘The End is Here’ and the enigmatic ‘You Are Pretty Good,’ Jim Torok’s photo-realist renderings of friends and acquaintances like ‘Jennifer’ bring the artist’s thoughts and his community together in the quiet of the gallery. (At Pierogi through Feb 12th).
Handmade blankets rendered in bronze and boldly colored paintings based on the blankets’ patterns orient Michele Grabner’s latest body of work toward the domestic, the personal and the tactile. Each blanket’s form looks ghostly, harkening back to the bodies that used it to stay warm. As 2-D images on the wall, the cozy factor is replaced by a reference to the grid, the ubiquitous underlying principle to much mid-20th century art. Grabner suggests that context is key. (At James Cohan Gallery’s Chelsea location, through Jan 28th).
The vibrant colors and domestic setting rich with decorative details in this gorgeous still life by late New York painter Nell Blaine betray her captivation by 19th/20th century European painters like Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard. (On view in midtown at Tibor de Nagy Gallery through Jan 28th).
Using the covers of old encyclopedias, law books and African American reference books, Samuel Levi Jones makes collages on canvas that question what changes as time passes. Jones employs books as symbols of obsolescence to further represent how the ideas expressed therein can also run their course. (At Chelsea’s Galerie Lelong through Jan 28th).
Peter Coolidge’s photos of coal seams in Germany’s industrial Ruhr region glint seductively, appealing to some as abstract compositions formed by nature. Yet not far from the surface is the understanding of coal’s powerful role in pollution and climate change, turning this coalface sinister. (At Peter Blum Gallery on 57th Street through Feb 4th).
Abstract painter Rebecca Morris shows canvases controlled by a grid and, by contrast, images in which forms float freely in a selection of work at Mary Boone Gallery’s 57th Street location. In pieces like this untitled oil on canvas, Morris’ organizational strategy occupies a middle ground as recurring scallop-edged shapes nestle into each other, appearing to both advance towards us and recede. A white border flecked with black recalling ermine fur and a center that brings Dalmatians to mind create associations that drive contemplation. (On view through Feb 25th).
Silhouetted against natural light, the translucent petals of a blossoming flower from the cannonball tree contrast tightly shut pods in the foreground, but each indulges our pleasure in organic forms. Cambodian artist Sopheap Pich’s largest flowering plant sculpture to date sprawls across Tyler Rollins Gallery’s floor in Chelsea, recalling trees planted near Buddhist temples. Though they resemble the sal tree associated with Buddha’s birth, the plants arrived in Southeast Asia from the Americas via Sri Lanka, a reminder of complicated histories. (Through Feb 4th).
In one of the most visually stunning shows in New York this season, sisters Christine and Margaret Wertheim and a team of collaborating makers have created crocheted segments of coral reefs as sculptures, now on view at the Museum of Art and Design. Using geometry to crochet forms that correspond to the shapes of the reefs, the sisters combine yarn and plastic trash in glittering, colorful sculptures that gratify the senses as they warn against our ongoing destruction of the world’s coral reefs. (On view through Jan 22nd).
The human body meets cold hard metal in LA sculptor Charles Long’s eerie new sculptures that pair geometric forms covered in flesh-like platinum silicon rubber with mirror polished stainless steel forms. Here, RealSenseSapient2 includes the appearance of moles, veins and wrinkles, suggesting a quasi-human futuristic living being. (At Tanya Bonakdar Gallery through Feb 4th).
After typing ‘Destiny’ (the name of an incarcerated woman he’d met long ago) into a prison database, Titus Kaphar began painting portraits of women with this name in layered works that elide their faces and stories. (At Jack Shainman Gallery in Chelsea through Jan 28th).
Dramatic and monumental, Rodin’s 1890s sculpture of Balzac is a figure set apart. LA sculptor Liz Glynn changed the character’s remote quality during a 2-day performance/workshop at LACMA, during which she cast several of the museum’s Rodin bronzes and recombined them to striking effect. Here, a face from Rodin’s Burghers of Calais joins Balzac’s in a dual portrait that suggests strong emotion. (At Chelsea’s Paula Cooper Gallery through Feb 11th).
While a single glove evokes Michael Jackson in the glitter of stage lights, this lone accessory – a stainless steel mesh glove encased in concrete – conveys something sinister. Semo’s other minimalist sculptures co-opt possible residue of violence, including chains, broken glass and shell casings as art materials, asking how fine art and conflict connect. (At Marlborough Gallery in Chelsea through Jan 14th).
Phones, cameras and iPads outnumber art objects in Hai-Hsin Huang’s mash-up of Metropolitan Museum of Art treasures, ogled by visitors jockeying for snapshots and selfies. In this detail, a massive, 2,300 year old marble column from the Temple of Artemis at Sardis fails to attract much attention, begging the question of a museum’s purpose in today’s photo obsessed culture. (At Danese Corey Gallery in Chelsea through Feb 4th).
Motorcycle road trips all over the U.S. inspire New Yorker Edie Nadelhaft’s new paintings framed by vintage BMW mirror housings. Nadelhaft opts to travel on local roads for a more characterful portrait of the landscape. Looking back through the bike mirrors reveals what is receding in American culture, as evidenced by this classic car and a non-chain restaurant. (At Lyons Wier Gallery in Chelsea through Jan 28th).
New York painter Judith Simonian charts a course through the mist on a curiously empty, fabulously colored ferry in this standout painting in the group exhibition ‘Regrouping’ at Edward Thorp Gallery’s new Chelsea location. It’s unclear what the immediate future holds on Simonian’s vessel, but the journey looks amazing. (On view through Jan 28th).
Mid-20th century American minimalist sculptors rebelled against the relationship of parts in Anthony Caro’s abstract sculptures; later in life, Caro was the one to break out, introducing Perspex into his sculptures when he was in his mid-80s. Here, a thick sheet of clear Perspex turns two pieces of rusted steel into characters in an untold story –a customer and a bank teller, or a prisoner and her visitor? (At Mitchell-Innes & Nash Gallery in Chelsea on the Upper East Side through Feb 4th).
In 1971 and 1975, Philip Guston created a powerful series of drawings as protest to then-president Richard Nixon’s policies, in particular his decision to visit China after years of anti-Communist rhetoric. Now on view at Hauser & Wirth’s new Chelsea location, this drawing shows the former president scrapping with his advisor Henry Kissinger at his Florida retreat as an empty speech bubble rises with the clouds. (At Hauser & Wirth Gallery in Chelsea through January 14th).
Young New York painter Anna Glantz enters an odd-dreamlike world in all of her new paintings at 11R, none more so than in ‘Britney’s Season,’ in which we follow a blond figure down a mysterious staircase amid tiny, floating pumpkins and golf tees. (On the Lower East Side through Jan 15th).
Don’t let the cat fool you. Despite her somber dress and downcast eyes, this actress – who was never identified in this 1926 portrait by Max Beckmann – isn’t relaxing with her pet so much as she seems poised to transform into a new role before our eyes. An intensely colored yellow wall and orange-upholstered chair in the background promise something electrifying as our bolt upright subject leans in towards us. (In ‘Max Beckmann in New York,’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through Feb 20th).
Since the 70s, conceptual and performance art pioneer Mierle Laderman Ukeles mopped museum steps, shook the hand of every sanitation worker in New York and devised plans for the public to engage with the Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island, all in an effort to revalue the labor involved in maintaining our city, offices and homes. At the entrance to her 40+ year retrospective at the Queens Museum of Art, Laderman Ukeles plants this arch – made of donated work gloves and other items from local and federal agencies – as celebration of and homage to the work of keeping things running. (Through Feb 19th).
This 1651-54 portrait by Velazquez of the presumptive heir to the Spanish throne, Maria Teresa, as a fresh-faced young teen is a standout in the Met’s current seven-painting show of work the famed Spanish court painter. Framed by an elaborate wig with butterfly ribbons, Maria Teresa’s round features glow with an innocence that would vanish with her future marriage to French King Louis XIV. (At the Metropolitan Museum of Art through March 12th).
A tiny, parched figure gasps for water, a protesting crowd descends to a pool of water and here, an overloaded boat of migrants braves choppy waters in dramatic ring box dioramas by Canadian artist Curtis Talwst Santiago. Seen in Lilliputian scale, Santiago’s characters seem to be at the mercy of the elements and other forces beyond their control as they struggle onward. (At Rachel Uffner Gallery on the Lower East Side through Jan 8th).
In her typically understated manner, Eleanor Ray treats the dramatic Icelandic landscape of Isafjordur as almost secondary to its town’s orderly buildings. Long shadows suggest a day drawing to a close or just beginning yet Ray’s painting argues for the importance of this solitary moment. (At Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects on the Lower East Side through Jan 8th).
While architect Zaha Hadid’s firm worked on the Dongdaemun Design Plaza in Seoul, Hadid created a collection of related furnishings, including this stunningly sleek desk, currently on view with a selection of Hadid’s other design projects at Chelsea’s Leila Heller Gallery. How could your career fail to take flight, seated behind this desk? (On view through January 21st).
Like finding shapes in the clouds or interpreting a Rorschach inkblot, Roy Lichtenstein’s brushstroke head sculptures from 1987 build a portrait from a few well-placed marks. Though she’s derived from Pop Art and Abstract Expressionist painting techniques, this blond muse rejects painting altogether, manifesting as a 3-D bronze sculpture. (At Castelli Gallery through Jan 28th).
A tree acts as a pedestal for a climbing figure and as a screen to stop us from seeing him or her in this painting by British artist Hurvin Anderson. To continue the theme of seeing and not seeing, the painting mimics the effect of both a photographic positive and negative, offering an ethereal image that considers the limits of perception. (At Michael Werner Gallery on the Upper East Side through Jan 14th).
David Shrigley explores a new side of the banal with his monumental stone ‘Memorial,’ a tongue-in-cheek celebration of the short-lived usefulness of the shipping list. (Presented by the Public Art Fund at the entrance to Central Park at 60th Street and Fifth Ave, through Feb 12th).
Soon after the scandal over tainted drinking water in Flint, Michigan broke in spring 2016, Matthew Brandt visited the beleaguered General Motors town, creating beautiful images using toxic water. Brandt collected river water and used it to wash over and degrade cyan, magenta and yellow sheets bearing an image of the river’s dam. Recombined in a lightbox, a damaged image represents a devastated landscape. (At Yossi Milo Gallery in Chelsea through Jan 21st.)
Paris-based Belgian photographer Tomas Van Houtryve captured this eerie scene – dominated by long human shadows and strange white grids – by flying a drone over a school in California as kids played below. Bold geometries and stark tonal contrasts make each picture look strange, playing to Van Houtryve’s point that drones are increasingly prevalent, yet we see little of them and what they see. (At Anastasia Photo on the Lower East Side through Dec 31st).
Swiss video artist Pipilotti Rist shouts for help in several languages, adding, ‘I am a worm and you are a flower!’ as she reaches up from a burning pit of lava in this 1994 video at the New Museum. Part of Rist’s retrospective exhibition, it’s a tiny but powerful appeal to our empathic natures. (On the Lower East Side through Jan 15th).
For over 40 years, Neal Slavin’s photos of groups – from Hari Krishnas in the Union Square subway to burlesque performers in Philadelphia – explore the dynamics of individuals drawn together for a purpose. Here, a group of Santas who worked at Bingo and Buddies in Silver Spring, MD offer a meditation on sameness and difference. (At Laurence Miller Gallery on 57th Street through Dec 23rd).
From plant life to outer space, New York painter Terry Winter derives his dynamic abstract paintings from patterns and forms in the natural world. Here, ‘Skin’ suggests both an exotic lizard species and an abstracted architecture. (At Matthew Marks Gallery in Chelsea through Dec 23rd).
Mike Kelly makes a tongue-in-cheek jab at determining value in art by bringing two forms into a kind of balance in this pairing at Hauser & Wirth’s Upper East Side space. Part of Kelly’s Memory Ware series, for which he replicated a popular folk art form by covering objects and flat surfaces with beads, shells and other small keepsake items, this sculpture suggests that the force of personality on the right balances the abundance of work on the left. (Through Dec 23rd).
An Ellis Island clerk from 1892 to 1925, Augustus Sherman was uniquely positioned to document immigration in all its diversity. Among his photographic portraits of Scottish boys in kilts and Romanian shepherds, this shot of a Russian German family is a standout as each family member stoically waits first for the camera and later, for a new life in North Dakota. (At Steven Kasher Gallery in Chelsea through Dec 23rd).
British artist Richard Hughes makes his own t-shirts…out of paper pulp in the case of this low-key garment. Deliberate misspellings on the shirts, and here, a disregard for even including a message, take a whatever attitude to a new level. (At Anton Kern Gallery in Chelsea through Dec 22nd).
Energized by the inauguration of President Obama in 2008, New York artist-provocateur Rob Pruitt started painting a picture of the president daily, sourcing his images from the news. All paintings completed up to the start of the show are included at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, where this unusual monument to the nation’s leader and to Pruitt’s endurance will be on view through the end of the week. (On the Lower East Side through Dec 18th).
Several years ago, Polish photographer Kacper Kowalski turned his back on his career in architecture and began a new pursuit taking photographs from a paraglider or a gyrocopter at around 500 feet above the central European landscape. This beautiful observation of nature’s seasonal transformations is part of a series documenting the onset and experience of winter from above. (At The Curator in Chelsea, through Dec 17th).
Wave patterns appear to literally rise up from the surface of Ara Peterson’s acrylic-on-wood surfaces. Here, a shifting spectrum of hot and cool colors ripples like the surface of water. (At Derek Eller Gallery through Dec 23rd).
Young Toronto-based painter Vanessa Maltese has a different take on the shoe as object d’art. In a show titled, ‘Company,’ it appears that she has invited guests who have removed their shoes in an empty gallery, then disappeared. In fact, each piece of footware is cast aluminum, painted in oil. Too clean to compare to Van Gogh’s famous paintings of heavily used shoes, these sneakers have some travels yet to complete. (At Nicelle Beauchene Gallery on the Lower East Side through Dec 22nd).
German painter Katharina Wulff depicts the dusty byways of her adopted city of Marrakech in paintings that harness the strong sun to illuminate bodies and the landscape. Inside the peeling façade of this gym, bodybuilders strive for perfection while feral dogs rove outside. (At Greene Naftali Gallery in Chelsea through Dec 23rd).
This stunning aerial view of irrigation systems in Cadiz, Spain is part of Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky’s Water series, which examines human use of the planet’s most valuable resource, specifically as it is harnessed for aquaculture. (At Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery in Chelsea through Dec 23rd).
Veteran painter Susan Rothenberg’s huge red bird is an arresting standout in a solo show stocked with tense paintings of animals in intense, fraught colors. (At Sperone Westwater Gallery through Dec 20th).
98 year old mathematician, physicist and NASA scientist Katherine Johnson strikes a regal pose in a photograph by Annie Leibovitz, who has relaunched her ‘Women’ series, highlighting the achievements of remarkable women. Images from Leibovitz’s the series are currently on view in the gym at Chelsea’s former women’s prison, offering an uplifting vision of women’s many roles in society. (Sponsored by UBS, hosted by the NoVo Foundation and Lela Goren Group on view through Dec 11th).
New Yorker painter Yvonne Jacquette fell in love with the aerial view while on commercial flights, eventually chartering her own aircraft to make art from the sky. After a trip to Hong Kong in the early 90s, she incorporated various views of Hong Kong harbor into this piece, including a floating restaurant, speeding cars and reflections of neon on the water. (At DC Moore Gallery through Dec 17th).
Iranian American artist Siah Armajani pays homage to New York School poet Frank O’Hara in this sculptural concept for a tomb. The table is a resting spot for a coffin and a gathering place for a collection of free-spirited chairs that merge with the table and resist sitting still. (At Alexander Gray Gallery through Dec 17th).
History and abstraction come together in Tomashi Jackson’s hanging panel at Jack Tilton Gallery as the young artist subtly explores ‘color perception’ in terms of abstract painting and race. Amongst mid-20th century geometric designs, Jackson inserts prints of documentary photos relating to landmark court cases disallowing racial segregation. (On the Upper East Side through Dec 23rd).
Rome-based artist Giacinto Occhionero creates his atmospheric abstractions by applying orbs of spray paint to the back of Plexi, then adding layers of color. Here, he evokes both a moonlit night and a fiery sunset as seen from a terrace. (At Kristen Lorello Gallery through Dec 22nd).
Race cars and trucks were the late photorealist painter Ron Kleemann’s vehicle for exploring light and color in the world around him. Here, a surveyor’s tripod, a first responder’ pickup and a helicopter seem to merge together by virtue of their common color. (At Bernarducci Meisel Gallery on 57th Street through Dec 17th).
A wallpaper of surveillance cameras and the Twitter logo by artist/activist Ai Weiwei at Mary Boone Gallery’s Chelsea space refer to the consequences of his on-line criticism of the Chinese government. On a similar theme, a tree cobbled together from several once-majestic plants suggests disaster and endurance. (On view through Dec 23rd).
Shrunken and placed in a jar by the evil genius Braniac, the capital city of Superman’s home planet exists but just out of reach. Mike Kelly takes up the theme of past trauma as ever-present influence on the present in an installation of mixed media installations and lightboxes based on drawings of Kandor culled from comics. (At Venus Over Manhattan through January 28th).
Scrap metal, vividly colored steel tubing and shiny, black cylindrical disks compete for attention in Carol Bove’s ‘Polka Dots,’ now on view at Chelsea’s David Zwirner Gallery. Here, the show’s titular sculpture brings to mind the powerful forces required to bend steel while reveling in a burst of yellow and the smooth perfection of black ‘polka dots.’ (On view through Dec 17th).
Inspired by art history and contemporary fashion, LA-based oil painter Jesse Mockrin offers glimpses of androgynous creatures with long necks, doll-like features and strangely bone-less fingers. (At Nathalie Karg Gallery on the Lower East Side through Dec 6th).
Polish painter Paulina Olowska’s series of female figures suggest strong personalities; this shadowy character is based on gardener Valerie Finnis, who confessed to having once put plants before people. (At Metro Pictures in Chelsea through Dec 22nd).
Monks levitate in an intense ball game imagined by German artist Werner Buttner. Elsewhere, sausages fall from the sky and a dinosaur skeleton in a red hat bounds through a barren landscape in a series of paintings that combine the banal and the unusual to striking effect. (At Chelsea’s Marlborough Gallery through Dec 3rd).
Geometric steel beams and panels dangle a pair of organic shapes in Mark di Suvero’s 2015 sculpture ‘The Cave’ at Paula Cooper Gallery, suggesting a manmade structure designed to offer up a natural form for our consideration. (In Chelsea through Dec 10th).
An LED lighting strip turns Miguel Abreu Gallery an eerie green color, illuminating a puddle of synthetic liquid based on a pigment found in rainforest worms. Accompanied by a soundtrack of Amazon jungle noise played backwards, this installation by young Swiss artist Pamela Rosenkranz creates a surprisingly atmospheric faux-natural environment on the Lower East Side. (Through Dec 22nd).
Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto opens a new chapter in his colorful immersive installations with this homage to the birth of humanity. Hand-crocheted hanging sculptures in the shape of a womb invite visitors to enter and walk back to a communal space with drum and guitar. Allusions to Adam and Eve in both western and indigenous Amazonian culture find common ground in the pursuit of knowledge. (At Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in Chelsea through Dec 17th).
Young painter Loie Hollowell depicts the nude body as landscape in a way that evokes Judy Chicago’s core imagery and Georgia O’Keeffe’s eroticized flower paintings and western landscapes. Here, Deep Canyon offers a road into the unknown. (At Feuer Mesler Gallery on the Lower East Side through Dec 18th).
Before being torn down to make way for a new development, 284 Grand Street has been transformed by Korean artists Jong Oh and Jinsu Han into a series of powerfully ephemeral site-specific installations. The least monumental of these is Jinsu Han’s tiny ‘Socket Branch,’ which foretells both the coming winter and the end of a season for this property. (At Marc Straus Gallery’s 284 Pop Up location through Dec 4th).
In the past, front-page news has been source material for Dashiell Manley’s canvases; his recent series explores his emotional and psychological reactions to the news of the day. (At Marianne Boesky Gallery in Chelsea through Dec 17th.)
It’s easy to recognize this scene by legendary photographer William Eggleston, without even knowing where it was shot. Typically Eggleston, its bright, saturated colors and subject matter featuring an everyday American landscape and vernacular architecture are deeply familiar. (At David Zwirner Gallery in Chelsea through Dec 17th).
Though Michele Abeles’ photos look like appropriated commercial images, they are the artist’s own, transferred to a tablet prepared with various liquids and rephotographed. The resulting multi-layered effect blends oddness, familiarity and accident. (At 47 Canal through Dec 18th).
Pittsburgh-based artist Vanessa German assembles a stunningly arrayed army of folk characters for her current show at Chelsea’s Pavel Zoubok Gallery. The figure in the foreground holds a lantern aloft as if to metaphorically light the way forward; a mother with an astounding headdress of ceramic devotional sculpture holds her limp child to the right; a figure at back speaks for social justice by holding up a stop sign. (Through Nov 30th).
Thirty foot long sheets of paper, covered in Zipora Fried’s handmade marks in colored pencil and graphite hang like banners from the ceiling of On Stellar Rays, announcing the amount of time and effort Fried put into her project. Installed in folds, viewers don’t see the full extent of Fried’s mark-making but can still absorb the deeply calming cobalt and delft blue colors. (On the Lower East Side through Dec 4th).
Berlin-based artist Matthias Bitzer’s paintings, mixed media works and sculptures at Marianne Boesky Gallery are uniquely difficult to categorize. Constructed from concrete, wood, glass and more (and those are just the 2-D, wall mounted works), elegantly minimalist artworks take the eye on an adventure of materials. (In Chelsea through Dec 17th).
Brooklyn artist Andrew Lenaghan rewilds the High Line in this tiny painting of massive buildings, as seen from the elevated park. Dereliction and new development are Lenaghan’s themes; how they seem to merge is his intriguing angle. (At George Adams Gallery through November 30th).
Color gels and the wisteria vine from Bryan Graf’s studio/greenhouse combine to make a ghostly image with alluring depth at Yancey Richardson Gallery. (In Chelsea through Dec 3rd).
Brooklyn-based Lithuanian sculptor Aidas Bareikis continues to mine the world’s junk for his intense sculptural accumulations. Here, ‘Too Much Seaweed’ suggests a global warming meltdown or a calving of the planet. (At Canada New York on the Lower East Side through Dec 4th).
British painter David Hepher explains that like landscape painters before him (Constable, Turner, Cezanne), he paints spaces with which he’s familiar, returning again and again to explore nuances of the well-known. For Hepher, that means South London tower blocks, hulking brutalist buildings whose concrete walls have seen better days. Merging distant views and closeups of spray painted walls and graffiti, this painting both closely examines tower life and keeps it at a distance. (At Flowers Gallery in Chelsea through Dec 10th).
Tiny ghoulish characters – a blue faced man with huge teeth, a sinister frog in a t-shirt – populate young Swiss artist Vittorio Brodmann’s paintings of brick walls. Two sided and hung in the window to show bricks both inside and out, the paintings suggest neighborhood decline but also offer the wall as (literal) canvas. (At Gavin Brown’s Enterprise through Nov 13th).
Every word in Brooklyn artist John O’Connor’s text stories packs a punch. Drawing in colored pencil using myriad fonts, he employs brand logos, emojis and pictograms to tell the tale of a young consumer whose life has taken a turn for the bizarre. (At Pierogi through Nov 13th).
Whether they hover over desolate wastelands piled with junk or barren city streets, Masakatsu Sashie’s floating spheres add another ominous note to already bleak, futuristic landscapes. Composed of old machines or cobbled together from an assortment of panels and featuring text that appears to be ads, the orbs grimly foretell a post-human world. (At Jonathan LeVine Gallery through Nov 12th).
Wood makes a surprise appearance in sculptor and ceramic artist Arlene Shechet’s latest sculptures at Sikkema Jenkins & Co., challenging ceramic for primacy in pieces like ‘I Saw the 18th Century.’ Shechet is also currently showing new work at the Frick Collection inspired by 18th century porcelain, but the pieces in Chelsea bear little resemblance to the delicate results of her uptown project, instead suggesting the sturdiness of a corseted matron from a past century. (In Chelsea through Nov 12th).
Using voter machines from the 40s, 50s and 60s, Luke DuBois presents gallery-goers with some more esoteric choices than the U.S. public faces in today’s election (us vs them, water vs fire, nature vs machine). Once visitors have locked in their votes, a unique video response interprets the data. (At Bitforms Gallery through Dec 23rd).
An epic battle between divine beings – scrawny-armed ‘Undom Engle’ on the left and the pink, wolf-like creature ‘Repaint’ to the right – vividly kicks off Trenton Doyle Hancock’s intense new show at James Cohan Gallery. Though it helps to know the language of Hancock’s invented mythology and his recurring characters, each new work is its own richly imagined tale. (At James Cohan Gallery’s Lower East Side location through Nov 27th).
An unseen opponent batters James Kirkland with blows that literally make the flesh on his face shake in Paul Pfeiffer’s powerful video at Paula Cooper Gallery. By collaging together short clips that feature direct hits to the head and body and digitally removing Kirkland’s adversary, Pfeiffer focuses attention on the violence of boxing and turns fighter into victim. (In Chelsea through Nov 12th).
Cage-based artworks from the ‘60s to the early ‘80s by late, Paris-based Japanese artist Tetsumi Kudo at Andrea Rosen Gallery demonstrate human estrangement from nature. Despite the bright colors, a heart shape, plastic flowers and the label reading ‘Bonheur,’ happiness seems far from this abject couple’s experience. (In Chelsea through Nov 16th).
Created in mirror-polished stainless steel, this sculpture of a lifeguard by Scandinavian art duo Elmgreen and Dragset shimmers like an apparition on the Flag Art Foundation’s 9th floor terrace. Peering intently toward the Hudson River (or the buildings on the block in between), the guard is perpetually alert to a situation we can’t see. (In Chelsea through Dec 17th).
Hong Kong artist Chow Chun Fai paints stills from Hong Kong films, including this distillation of loneliness from Wong Kar-wai’s 1994 classic Chung King Express. Filmed just three years before Hong Kong’s return to China, the movie is about failed relationships and new beginnings, a position that interests Chow Chun Fai as Hong Kong heads towards socialist governance by 2047. (At Klein Sun Gallery in Chelsea through Nov 12th).
Spencer Finch literally changes the atmosphere inside James Cohan Gallery by creating an installation of hanging glass panels that create fog-like conditions inside the space. The shifting panels obscure the view across the gallery only from certain spots, meaning that visitors have to keep peering intently ahead to make out what’s there – an experience akin to moving through fog. (At Chelsea’s James Cohan Gallery through Nov 26th).
Inspired by sublime landscapes she’s encountered on road trips, Claire Sherman pictures the majestic outdoors as studies in light and form. (At DC Moore Gallery through Nov 5th).
Against the backdrop of rapid urban development in the Persian Gulf countries, the artist collective GCC examines the parallel trends toward the pursuit of happiness and health. Here, a woman practices a new age, healing therapy on her son. They stand in sand, a symbol of the landscape, inside a racing track reminiscent of the region’s many new urban walkways. (At Chelsea’s Mitchell-Innes and Nash through Nov 23rd).
Glasgow painter Merlin James suggests a sweeping landscape with an extreme economy of means in this painting on nylon at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. A tree overlooking a placid shoreline dominates the foreground while lighter tones at center and a few intersecting diagonal lines to the left suggest distant, mountainous terrain. (In Chelsea through Nov 12th).
Incomplete female bodies are Brooklyn painter Caitlin Keogh’s signature subject matter, so it’s fitting that human hands are alluded to in this painting titled, ‘The Gentle Art of Making Friends.’ Intertwined with flowers reminiscent of medieval tapestries, this decorative pattern of weaponry has been (temporarily at least) converted into a trellis evoking a well-groomed garden more than an arsenal. (At Bortolami Gallery through Oct 29th).
Jessica Segall’s light sculptures are off the grid in a uniquely local way at Cuchifritos Gallery, nestled in a corner of the Essex Street Market. Lemons and plantains speak of far-away climes but have been sourced from a nearby market stall and wired to produce power to (dimly) light this chandelier. (On the Lower East Side through Oct 30th).
Working on the theory that you can make something so bad it’s good, Misaki Kawai presents faux naïve painting and sculpture at The Hole that entices with its wild color and cartoonish figures. (On the Lower East Side through Oct 30th).
Jackie Gendel’s almost abstract chorus line of colorful figures appears chicly modern and homespun at the same time, recalling Gino Severini’s 1912 Futurist nightclub dancers but looking as if sewn together from fabric, an attractive and disarming effect achieved by painting in oil on vinyl. (At Thomas Erben Gallery through Oct 29th).
Two nudes descending a staircase by Georg Baselitz channels Marcel Duchamp’s famous 1912 Cubist figure but without the nervous energy. Upside down and painted in white, they are joined in the room’s other monumental paintings by ghostly characters who could be disappearing slowly downward into a dark pool of water, like Bill Viola’s transcending subjects. (At Gagosian Gallery’s 21st Street location in Chelsea through Oct 29th).
Does your furniture say something about your personality? Japanese design group Nendo goes a step further, suggesting that chairs themselves have personality, as demonstrated by fifty stainless steel seats. All were inspired by manga and intended to convey mood or attitude. Enhanced by swirling projections on the gallery walls, the chair in the foreground looks like it’s just arrived from another dimension, eager to please. (At Chelsea’s Friedman Benda through Oct 29th).
Walks and bus rides through Cleveland’s post-industrial landscape inspires Amy Casey’s amazingly intricate acrylic paintings. Here, the built environment mobilizes into twisted chains that evoke jewelry or a train set. (At Foley Gallery on the Lower East Side through Oct 30th).
‘Not everything needs to be exalted and monetized,’ says Matthew Chambers, who allows gallery visitors to flip through his huge, painted books. On the gallery walls at Feuer Mesler, Chambers explores color via appealing flower paintings (left wall), tulip canvases are all about pattern, and torn canvas strips [right wall) morph into textured monochromes. (At Feuer Mesler Gallery on the Lower East Side through Oct 23rd).
Jeff Elrod’s digitally inspired paintings may evoke a preschooler’s scrawl, but there’s something about ‘Rubber Miro’ that intrigues. Maybe it’s the necklace-like pattern or the pretty colors hovering somewhere in the background that make it hard to dismiss, maybe he’s succeeded in tapping into a subconscious, universal realm that Miro pioneered. (At Luhring Augustine Gallery through Oct 22nd).
Born in the Northern Brazilian city of Belem, home to an annual religious festival that draws millions of participants, artist Tonico Lemmos Auad creates a series of attractively simple, handmade, crocheted forms inspired by votive vessels. (At CRG Gallery on the Lower East Side through Oct 23rd).
