Commissioned by Harper’s Bazaar in 1961, Richard Avedon photographed over thirty weddings at New York City’s Town Hall, recording hopeful beginnings. These images became the opening photos in his 1964 collaboration with James Baldwin, ‘Nothing Personal,’ a photographic portrait of the USA in which joy gives way to darker social realities. Now on view at Pace Gallery, the series is stunningly relevant to contemporary life. (On view at Pace Gallery’s 24th Street location through Jan 13th).
Rainy days aren’t what they seem in Brazilian artist Cleverson Oliveira’s world. Look closely at this detail of a vine-filled, wetland landscape and the raindrops on the surface of the image transform into black and white oblong shapes resembling tiny heads with towering hairdos. (On view at Miyako Yoshinaga in Chelsea through Jan 6th).
Bosco Sodi’s hand-formed ceramic cubes at Paul Kasmin Gallery are new but appear weathered, evoking mankind’s ancient and ongoing relationship with clay. Behind, a mixed media painting continues Sodi’s signature practice of mixing pigment, sawdust, glue and other materials into an explosive, vividly colored abstraction. (On view at Paul Kasmin Gallery through Jan 6th).
Like models strutting down a catwalk, a row of abstracted ceramic figures by nonagenarian LA artist John Mason exude confidence and style. Recalling Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, Brancusi’s sculpture and Lygia Clark’s bichos they combine Cubist form, Futurist dynamism with a suggestion of moveability often alien to ceramics. (On view at Albertz Benda Gallery in Chelsea through Jan 13th).
This 1989-90 pair of shoes by Elizabeth Murray features chimney-like shapes and keyholes, bringing to mind two houses (representing a couple?) bound by a tangled set of orange laces. On loan from MoMA, ‘Dis Pair’ is a highlight of Pace Gallery’s exhibition of Murray’s raucous, street-inspired painting from the 80s. (On view in Chelsea through Jan 13th).
