Marlon Mullen at JTT Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Features & Commissions, Hottest ShowPosted on Comments are Disabled

Art magazine covers inspired Marlon Mullen’s latest body of work, a series of paintings on view at JTT Gallery that revamp the eye-catching images on the country’s best-known art publications.  From his studio at the NIAD Center for Art & Disabilities, Mullen here refines a unique vision that injects vivid color, graphic boldness, and some whimsy into a reworking of a 2014 ArtNews cover featuring Yemeni photographer Boushra Almutawakel’s image of a woman wearing a U.S. flag as headscarf. (On view on the Lower East Side through Feb 17th).

Marlon Mullen, untitled, acrylic on canvas, 36 x 36 inches, 2017.

Eleanor Ray at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Features & Commissions, Hottest ShowPosted on Comments are Disabled

Eleanor Ray’s sunny Texas, Wyoming and Utah landscapes at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery are an enticing alternative to dreary mid-winter New York City.  Despite their size (c. 6.5 inches high), the tiny oil paintings communicate wide open spaces suffused with light;  here in ‘Wyoming Window,’ the silhouette of a window next to a view from another window turns the sun into an almost tangible presence in the room.  (On view on the Lower East Side through Feb 10th).

Eleanor Ray, Wyoming Window, June, 2018, oil on panel, 6 ½ x 8 inches.

Richard Deacon at Marian Goodman Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Features & Commissions, Hottest ShowPosted on Comments are Disabled

Flowing water, curling strands of cable and licorice come to mind when encountering Richard Deacon’s dynamic steamed wood sculpture ‘Under the Weather #2.’  Appearing to both hang down from above like a Sheila Hicks fiber installation and rise up from the floor like a rearing snake, the piece is energized by its contradictory suggestions of slackness and tense energy.  (On view on 57th Street at Marian Goodman Gallery through Feb 16th).

Richard Deacon, Under the Weather #2, steamed wood, 136 ¼ x 45 x 35 3/8 inches, 2016.

Charles Long at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Features & Commissions, Hottest ShowPosted on Comments are Disabled

While sketching a tree stump in an area of trees lost to climate change near his home, California sculptor Charles Long was inspired by the devastation caused by patriarchal culture to merge a cross section of the dead plant with that of a human penis.  Strangely humanoid, the transection is rendered in a huge scale at the back of Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, a plaintive and comedic monument to loss.  (On view in Chelsea through Feb 9th).

Charles Long, installation view of ‘Paradigm Lost’ at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, January 2019.

Njideka Akunyili Crosby in ‘God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin’ at David Zwirner Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Features & Commissions, Hottest ShowPosted on Comments are Disabled

James Baldwin’s intellectual legacy and his powerful impact on contemporary culture is the subject of David Zwirner Gallery’s current group exhibition, or ‘collective portrait,’ of the late writer and thinker.  By displaying the work of other artists alongside documents and ephemera related to Baldwin, curator Hilton Als considers how the writer may have continued to make art had his career developed differently after the seminal ‘The Fire Next Time.’  In one of the show’s highlights, Njideka Akunyili Crosby’s collaged photo draws on images from Nigerian and U.S. West Coast cultures, creating a provocative hybridity. (On view in Chelsea on 19th Street through Feb 16th).

Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Nyado: The Thing Around Her Neck, acrylic, photographic transfers, color pencil, charcoal and collage on paper, 81 ½ x 81 ¾ inches, 2011.