An ominous cloud of fleshy tones and dark lines conjures hidden images (birds? an angular face?) as it hovers over an old-fashioned telephone in Charline von Heyl’s ‘Dial M for Painting.’ Like Hitchcock’s ‘Dial M for Murder,’ intrigue and tension dominate; a hastily drawn telephone leads us in to the drama while the floating mass above gives pause for thought, all against a screaming yellow background. (On view at Petzel Gallery in Chelsea through Oct 20th).
Concrete embraces nature in this painting of a ‘disprized’ location by New York artist Rackstraw Downes at Betty Cuningham Gallery. From a seemingly unremarkable spot under a u-turn ramp, Downes considers what and how the eye really sees and how a ‘forgotten’ place might yield a bit of wonder. (On view on the Lower East Side through Oct 14th).
From a couple of everyday guys to this fabulously coiffed model, Nathaniel Mary Quinn’s characters astound and intrigue as layers of personality come together to make a disjointed but coherent whole. Inspired by real characters from his life and Brooklyn neighborhood, Quinn’s paintings acknowledge human complexity while celebrating individuality. (On view at Salon94 Bowery on the Lower East Side through Oct 27th).
Over the past four decades, Brooklyn painter and art professor Julie Heffernan has questioned traditional roles for women in fantastical works that channel art history and champion female agency. Her latest body of work lauds women who have stood up to power in portraits that hang alongside framed paintings that reverse typical art historical power relations. In the background here, Heffernan’s reworks Rubens’ ‘Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus,’ by replacing a man with a woman on horseback, making her rescuer rather than perpetrator. (On view at PPOW Gallery in Chelsea through Oct 6th).
Wealth is a provocative topic for Nigerian-American artist Toyin Ojih Odutola, who depicts two well-heeled fictional Nigerian families in her latest charcoal, pastel and pencil drawings at Chelsea’s Jack Shainman Gallery. Vibrant and moody, the portraits ask – as Ojih Odutola puts it – ‘what would wealth look like’ had colonialism not happened? (On view at both Jack Shainman Gallery locations through Oct 27th).
