In response to recent shootings of African Americans, Betye Saar has revived her iconic Aunt Jemima imagery to create new work that continues to undermine racist stereotypes from U.S. culture. Mounted on a washboard signifying a history of labor performed by African American women, this Aunt Jemima character totes a broom and a gun under the slogan ‘Extreme Times Call for Extreme Heroines.’ (On view in ‘Betye Saar: Keepin’ it Clean’ at the New York Historical Society through May 27th).
Inspired by a 2018 lie-in by high school students in Washington D.C. to protest gun violence, and ghostly profile portraits by Benjamin Tappan in the New York Historical Society’s collection, London-based artist Bettina von Zwehl created portraits of 17 New York high school students intended to recall death masks. The result is a sobering and beautiful memorial to those killed by guns and a powerful plea to stop the violence. (On view at the New York Historical Society on the Upper West Side through April 28th).
Brooklyn painter Paul Gagner takes personal care to a new and hilarious extreme with this image of an intricate landscape created via shaved hair. Gagner’s self-conscious art practice sends up the quest for originality and artistic greatness in paintings of self-help books for struggling artists and pictures like one featuring a giant meteorite that has crashed through a studio window and crushed an easel. ‘Hairscaping’ continues the self-questioning with its tongue-in-cheek pondering of what a truly dedicated artist will do for an art-led life. (On view at Freight and Volume on the Lower East Side through Jan 13th).
Hung in the spot long occupied by an iconic Jackson Pollock drip painting, and inspired by Clyfford Still’s monumental abstractions, Mark Bradford’s mixed media on canvas artwork declares that non-representational art is still cutting-edge in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s ‘Epic Abstraction’ rehang. The bleach and water degraded layered paper surfaces of ‘Duck Walk’ reference Chuck Berry’s famous dance move, also adopted by ballroom voguers, maintaining Pollock’s scale and dynamic movement while prompting alternative considerations of race, gender and history. (Ongoing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art).
From the decaying elegance of Cuban houses to austere new apartments in Abu Dhabi, Andrew Moore’s photographs signal the passing of time and cycles of decay and renewal. His latest body of work – on view at Yancey Richardson Gallery in Chelsea – took him to Alabama and Mississippi, where he photographed vestiges of the past like this carefully arranged and artfully neglected collection of bottles in Demopolis, AL. (On view through Feb 9th).
