Melissa Joseph at Margot Samel

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Raised in rural Pennsylvania with little access to museums but within easy reach of her mom’s crafting supplies, New York artist Melissa Joseph developed a textile-based practice resulting in painterly portraits of family now on view at Margot Samel in Tribeca.  Three small pieces in needle felted wool on industrial felt, mounted on found silver plates, are the size of embroidery but use material more akin to impasto painting.  Here, Joseph’s extended family piles on to a living room seat, creating a tangle of bodies as familiar and comfortable as the material depicting them.  (On view in Tribeca through Nov 22nd).

Melissa Joseph, Auntie Loretta, needle felted wool in industrial felt in found silver platter, 10” diameter, 2023.

Enoc Perez at Harper’s Books

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Based on vintage Bacardi rum ads and travel brochures, Puerto Rican artist Enoc Perez’s paintings of his home country at Harper’s Gallery feature pristine beaches, bright blue pools and abundant tropical vegetation.  Created in a painting style akin to printmaking, for which the artist rubs paint onto canvas using an oil coated sheet of paper and a pencil, the details of each supposed paradise are rendered slightly indistinct.  Titled ‘Stockholm Syndrome,’ the paintings revel in an abundance of natural beauty yet withhold a richer appreciation of it, forcing the question of how much of each image is just marketing.  (On view in Chelsea through Nov 11th).

Enoc Perez, View of San Juan, P.R., oil on linen, 2023.

Jay DeFeo at Paula Cooper Gallery

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After completing her iconic 2,000+ lb painting ‘The Rose,’ in 1966, Bay Area artist Jay DeFeo delved into photography, creating the 70 photographs, collages and photocopies now on view at Paula Cooper Gallery in Chelsea.  Like ‘The Rose,’ DeFeo’s photographs feature complex textures, moody tonal contrasts and nature-related imagery in straight shots of mushrooms on a fallen tree or chemigrams – abstract images created in the darkroom.  Among the representational works, a single resting hand seen from the side or a section of an illuminated lampshade pictured from below against a black background convey stillness while this powerful shot of rushing water embodies nature’s dynamism and power.  (On view in Chelsea through Oct 28th).

Jay DeFeo, Untitled, gelatin silver print, 6 x 8 7/8 inches, 1973.

Eamon Ore-Giron at James Cohan Gallery

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Can a deity’s identity change over time?  Struck by Octavio Paz’s observation that interpretations of a sculpture of Coatlicue in Mexico City’s Museo Nacional de Antropologia have gone from “goddess to demon, demon to monster and from monster to masterpiece” in the centuries since Spanish conquest, Eamon Ore-Giron imagines contemporary identities for familiar divinities in new paintings, ceramics and textiles at James Cohan Gallery.  Here, in ‘Talking Shit with Mama Killa,’ Ore-Giron pictures the Incan moon goddess with her geometric fan-shaped crown creating angular and organic shapes that cover her upper head while the lower half of her face is transformed by triangular patterns and tear-like blue drops.  Characterized by angular features that appear to be morphing, this divinity’s identity is capable of shifting and updating by the moment.  (On view in Tribeca through Oct 21st).

Eamon Ore-Giron, Talking Shit with Mama Killa, mineral paint and flasche on canvas, 72 x 72 inches, 2023.

Toba Khedoori at David Zwirner Gallery

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At one end of David Zwirner Gallery’s vast white cube space hangs a detailed painting of tangled, leafless branches by Toba Khedoori; across the room is the artist’s painting of a grid of variously hued blue rectangles.  In the juxtaposition of natural forms vs those that echo the built environment, Khedoori presents dichotomies of art practice: expressive freedom or impersonal rigidity.  While most imagery in Khedoor’s show is centered at the middle of large sheets of wax-coated paper, one painting of tall grasses offers linear forms arranged to depict wildness, bridging the dynamic and measured in one small canvas.  (On view in Chelsea through Oct 21st).

Toba Khedoori, Untitled, oil and graphite on canvas, 27 ½ x 24 ½ inches, 2023.