Chelsea Seltzer & Theo Rosenblum reduce a kid’s party to essentials – cake and pizza – then bring the refreshments to life in this wonderfully absurd sculpture at Asya Geisberg Gallery. Both delicious and disgusting, funny and disturbing, innocent and sinister, Seltzer and Rosenblum’s character pushes all kinds of buttons. (On view in ‘Alive with Pleasure’ at Asya Geisberg Gallery in Chelsea through Aug 3rd).
Soap suds, sand and spaghetti are the mundane subjects of Helene Appel’s extraordinary new paintings at James Cohan Gallery. A muted palette and minute detail make it necessary to draw close to finely detailed renderings of beach sand and glistening soap bubbles. From a few feet away, this painting (seen in detail) delights as a trompe l’oeil rendering of a delicately colored fishing net while doubling as an energetically free, grid-busting abstraction. (On view on the Lower East Side through July 27th).
Jamal Nxedlana’s portrait of South African stylist Bee Diamondhead leaps off the wall in Aperture Gallery’s ‘Summer Open,’ offering a tantalizing glimpse of South Africa’s fashion elite. (On view in Chelsea through August 16th).
Hein Koh’s ‘Big Mother of Pearl’ sculpture injects a note of humor in Paul Kasmin Gallery’s summer group show, ‘Seed,’ curated by Yvonne Force. Force identifies a spiritual generative force in the act of creating art; Koh’s curvy, colorful and rhinestone-glittery shell has just produced a pearl that resembles an eye and a portal into other galaxies. (On view in Chelsea through August 10th).
True to its name, British octogenarian Phillip King’s dynamic ‘Swirl’ suggests a sudden levitation of two perforated sheets of polyurethane foam from two anchoring black triangular shapes. It’s vivid color that gives this lively new work its lift though, including the bold tones on Luhring Augustine’s gallery walls. (On view in Chelsea through August 10th).
