California Light and Space artist Helen Pashgian’s striking acrylic columns are both warm and austere, drawing visitors to Chelsea’s Lehmann Maupin Gallery in closer to see the mysterious, barely visible shapes within. Calling them ‘presences,’ Pashgian acknowledges that each distinct body has a character that can be perceived by alert viewers. (On view through May 24th).
Curvy harlequins and female clowns populate French artist Elsa Sahal’s latest solo show of ceramic sculpture at Natalie Karg Gallery on the Lower East Side. Inspired by Picasso’s actors in diamond-patterned clothing, these two truncated figures enact a choreography that could be read as erotic or menacing. (On view through June 15th).
In the Arctic, ‘so much believed to be white is actually – strikingly – blue,’ writes award-winning American poet Robin Coste Lewis in a text applied to the wall at the entrance to Lorna Simpson’s solo show at Hauser & Wirth. Titled ‘Darkening’ and featuring monumentally scaled paintings combining text and images from Ebony magazine, the AP and National Archives, the new work pictures bodies and icy landscapes commenting on, as Simpson has explained, ‘inhospitable conditions and how to survive those conditions.’ (On view in Chelsea through July 27th).
Frank Stella’s latest abstract sculptures are as colorfully exuberant as ever, presenting viewers at Marianne Boesky Gallery with plenty to peruse. Derived from digital processes, the twists and turns of shiny aluminum components take sculpture beyond the handmade. (On view in Chelsea through June 22nd).
Resembling a disco ball and wrecking ball, Robert Longo’s dramatic 1.5 ton sculpture ‘Death Star’ draws viewers into Metro Pictures in Chelsea to discover a sphere covered with 40,000 inert assault rifle bullets. Referring to the number of deaths by gun violence in the US in 2017, the number has more than doubled from those included in a similar piece by Longo from 1993. (On view through May 25th).
