Zheng Lu at Sundaram Tagore Gallery

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Beijing-based artist Zheng Lu’s signature steel sculptures feature lassoing splashes of water that allude to a person’s changing inner states; Zheng’s new work at Chelsea’s Sundaram Tagore Gallery introduces more abstracted forms inspired by the natural world, including this piece titled ‘Colosseum,’ a stainless-steel whirlpool which visitors can enter.  Viewed from the outside, ‘Colosseum’ allows viewers to observe the scale and consequence of the swirling vortex on one who may be inside. In Chinese poetry, water has long pointed to a person’s inner state; here, Zheng suggests dramatic workings of the mind.  (On view through July 12th).

Zheng Lu, Colosseum, stainless steel, 46.46 x 46.46 x 188.92 inches, 2024.
Zheng Lu, Colosseum, stainless steel, 46.46 x 46.46 x 188.92 inches, 2024.

Isca Greenfield-Sanders at Miles McEnery Gallery

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It’s always a perfect day in Isca Greenfield-Sanders’ landscape paintings, now on view at Miles McEnery Gallery in Chelsea.  The sky is blue, the road is open and the wildflowers are abundant in scenes of the natural world rendered in soft and pleasing tones.  Based on found vintage photographs, each image was originally meant to epitomize the beauty of a landscape and remind the photographer of an ideal moment.  (On view through July 3rd).

Isca Greenfield-Sanders, Wildflower Hill, mixed media oil on canvas, 34 x 34 inches, 2023.

Ronny Quevedo at Alexander Gray Associates

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Born in Ecuador and raised in New York, Ronny Quevedo incorporates concepts of movement and migration into subtle yet dynamic abstractions at Alexander Gray Associates in Tribeca.  Incorporating McCall’s clothing patterns that act like maps of the body and referring to the checkerboard-like grid of the Aymara flag in pieces like ‘broadway wiphala,’ Quevedo posits the body as register of both cultural continuity and change in diasporic life.  Titled ‘quipu (and another one)’ after the Incan tool for record keeping and recording information, the long strips in this piece echo the arrangement of a quipu’s cords while the broken colors allude to the abstract but essential information represented by its knots. (On view through June 15th.)

Ronny Quevedo, quipu (and another one), pattern paper and screenprint on muslin, 50 x 70 x 2 inches, 2023.
Ronny Quevedo, (detail) quipu (and another one), pattern paper and screenprint on muslin, 50 x 70 x 2 inches, 2023.

Goshka Macuga at Andrew Kreps Gallery

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London-based Polish artist Goshka Macuga – known for making artwork that relates to the archives and collections of art institutions – had a major New York moment in 2019 when she installed an enormous tapestry in MoMA’s education building picturing herself surrounded by books featuring work in the museum’s collections.  That tableau was in turn a restaging of a photo of Andre Malraux similarly surrounded by his own ‘museum’ of reproductions.  Now on view at Andrew Kreps Gallery in Tribeca, Macuga’s image from the MoMA tapestry manifests as a jacquard woven soft sculpture, positioned on the floor of the gallery’s double-height space.  Titled ‘Fallen Artists/Comfort,’ the work approaches fallenness from various thought-provoking viewpoints by literally looks as if the artist has fallen from the upper gallery space and including a soft book featuring a photo of Nan Goldin’s photos of herself battered and of Nazi-sympathizers and MoMA employees Philip Johnson and Alan Blackburn when they resigned from the museum.  (On view through June 15th).

Goshka Macuga, Fallen Artists / Comfort, jacquard soft sculpture, 127 ½ x 53 ½ inches, 2023.

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.