Swiss video artist Pipilotti Rist shouts for help in several languages, adding, ‘I am a worm and you are a flower!’ as she reaches up from a burning pit of lava in this 1994 video at the New Museum. Part of Rist’s retrospective exhibition, it’s a tiny but powerful appeal to our empathic natures. (On the Lower East Side through Jan 15th).
For over 40 years, Neal Slavin’s photos of groups – from Hari Krishnas in the Union Square subway to burlesque performers in Philadelphia – explore the dynamics of individuals drawn together for a purpose. Here, a group of Santas who worked at Bingo and Buddies in Silver Spring, MD offer a meditation on sameness and difference. (At Laurence Miller Gallery on 57th Street through Dec 23rd).
From plant life to outer space, New York painter Terry Winter derives his dynamic abstract paintings from patterns and forms in the natural world. Here, ‘Skin’ suggests both an exotic lizard species and an abstracted architecture. (At Matthew Marks Gallery in Chelsea through Dec 23rd).
Mike Kelly makes a tongue-in-cheek jab at determining value in art by bringing two forms into a kind of balance in this pairing at Hauser & Wirth’s Upper East Side space. Part of Kelly’s Memory Ware series, for which he replicated a popular folk art form by covering objects and flat surfaces with beads, shells and other small keepsake items, this sculpture suggests that the force of personality on the right balances the abundance of work on the left. (Through Dec 23rd).
An Ellis Island clerk from 1892 to 1925, Augustus Sherman was uniquely positioned to document immigration in all its diversity. Among his photographic portraits of Scottish boys in kilts and Romanian shepherds, this shot of a Russian German family is a standout as each family member stoically waits first for the camera and later, for a new life in North Dakota. (At Steven Kasher Gallery in Chelsea through Dec 23rd).
