Robert Indiana’s mid-1960s monument to love continues to work its magic on audiences around the world as the artist nears his 90th birthday. Now at Paul Kasmin Gallery, this towering steel sculpture multiplies and magnifies the term in all its myriad understandings. (On view at Paul Kasmin Gallery’s 27th Street location through March 3rd).
In a sequence of six photos by South African artist Robin Rhode, an acrobatic mathematician contorts his body to project a ‘Lute of Pythagoras,’ a series of pentagrams locked together in pleasing mathematical proportion. At the gallery entrance, Rhode quotes Swiss architect and urban planner Le Corbusier’s assertion that humanity attempts to save itself from chaos through geometry. Rhode’s efforts to better humanity by joining art and geometry feel poignantly quixotic. (On view at Lehmann Maupin Gallery in Chelsea through Feb 24th).
A practical mentality dominates Eddie Martinez’s current two gallery solo show at Mitchell-Innes and Nash. Not finding a studio last summer, he painted in his yard. Finding inspiration in his daily drawings on family stationery, he scaled them up as eight-foot tall paintings. Titled ‘Love Letter,’ the second body of work would seem to refer to his wife’s name at the top of each painting though given the significance of drawing to his evocative abstract forms, he may have another muse in mind. (On view in Chelsea through Feb 24th).
Italy-based Korean sculptor Jukhee Kwon gets a lot out of books, specifically paper sculptures created by slicing into volumes in geometric patterns that cause pages to descend to the ground or explode outwards. Here, a New Testament morphs into ‘Campana’ (bell), a gravity-defying cascade of a delicate form. (On view at Ierimonte Gallery on the Lower East Side through March 16th).
Inspired by a woodblock print from Hiroshige’s ‘100 Famous Views of Edo,’ Tabaimo extends the life of the 19th century artwork in an animation that gives life to a mysterious female figure behind the balcony screen. Despite a spilled vessel and briefly flailing octopus tentacles, the scene retains its sense of tranquility and intrigue. (On view at James Cohan Gallery’s Lower East Side location through Feb 25th).
