A lone palm stands peaceful and unmolested above the collision of man-made material and nature photography that is Letha Wilson’s ‘Steel Face Concrete Bend (Kauai Palm)’ at GRIMM on the Lower East Side. Inside a steel frame, concrete printed with a landscape photo abuts an actual photographic print as man and nature messily come into contact. (On view through April 22nd ).
The human figure emerges gracefully from marble, bronze and wood in Pace Gallery’s major exhibition of Barbara Hepworth’s sculpture from the 30s to the 70s. In the foreground, ‘One, Two, Three (Vertical)’ from 1974 frames this view of towering sculpture from Hepworth’s totemic Family of Man series – an ‘Ancestor’ on the left and ‘Bridegroom’ in the back. (On view in Chelsea through April 21st).
Teresita Fernandez’s show last spring at Lehmann Maupin featured an American landscape constructed of charcoal, maps burned into paper and a ceramic wall panel featuring raging flames. Currently on view on Chelsea, ‘Fire (United States of America),’ forcefully continues Fernandez’s consideration of the US landscape as contentious and combustible. (On view in Chelsea through May 5th).
The title of Sam Moyer’s ‘Spencertown’ (seen here in detail) refers to the New York town where iconic painter Ellsworth Kelly lived and worked before his death in 2015. Bold geometric shapes – constructed of marble and painted canvas – also hint at a fascination with Kelly’s practice of reducing real-world objects and scenes to an abstract language. Here, Moyer pushes the idea a step further by incorporating actual fragments of the 3-D world in her artwork. (At FLAG Art Foundation in Chelsea through May 19th).
Ancient and 20th century, Chinese and European cultural heritage come into direct contact in XU ZHEN’s sculpture of a Tang Dynasty warrior holding Brancusi’s ‘Sleeping Muse.’ Currently part of an exhibition at James Cohan Gallery that has transformed the exhibition space into a garden with walking paths that replicate protest marches, the piece aims to provoke conversation on many levels. (On view on the Lower East Side through April 22nd).
