Nicolas Party at Hauser and Wirth Gallery

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At the entrance to New York artist Nicolas Party’s exhibition of new work at Hauser and Wirth Gallery is a vividly colored, full-wall pastel painting of a forest fire.  A nearby drawing depicts a vulnerable-looking baby while further into the show, a tiny oil on copper painting of a dinosaur adds to a meditation on changes to the earth’s climate that forewarns an extinction event.  In this tiny triptych, Party repeats the forest fire imagery as backdrop to a portrait resembling a northern Renaissance devotional image, typically verdant and detailed-filled vistas replaced by destruction.  (On view in Chelsea through Oct 21st).

Nicolas Party, Triptych with Red Forest, oil on copper and oil on wood, open: 12 3/16 x 19 5/16 x 2 9/16 inches, 2023.

Yasumasa Morimura at Luring Augustine Gallery

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From Marilyn Monroe to Marlene Dietrich, Yasumasa Morimura mimics the iconic looks of famous figures in the series ‘100 M’s Self-Portraits,’ now on view at Luhring Augustine’s Tribeca gallery space.  Having made a name for himself in the ‘80s through to the present day via vividly colored photos that depict his reenactments of famous artworks with himself dressed as the main character (he started as Van Gogh with a bandaged ear), the now 72-year-old photographer opted for smaller format black and white images to create his 100 piece portrait series from the 1993-2000.  Here, he takes his version of Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s into the subway, having his audience watch a passerby react as we also consider the implications of his race and gender transgressing role play. (On view in Tribeca through Oct 21st).

Yasumasa Morimura, one image from ‘Once Hundred M’s self-portraits, 100 gelatin silver photographs, each 13 ¾ x 11 inches, 1993-2000.

Tetsuya Ishida at Gagosian Gallery

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Workers are expendable in the alienated world depicted by Japanese artist Tetsuya Ishida in the late artist’s paintings at Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea.  Coming into adulthood in the Japan’s economic depression in the ‘90s, known as the country’s ‘Lost Decade,’ Ishida catalogued the dehumanizing effect of corporate culture in images that depict workers taking in food from nozzles as if in a gas station or emerging from train doors in the form of boxes with heads, ready for delivery and consumption.  Here, in ‘Exercise Equipment,’ a worried looking individual with Ishida’s features runs not for the health benefits, but to keep ahead of the workers poised to yank him from the treadmill.  (On view in Chelsea through Oct 21st).

Tetsuya Ishida, Exercise Equipment, acrylic on board, 1997.

Kathrin Linkersdorff at Yossi Milo Gallery

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German artist Kathrin Linkersdorff’s ‘Fairies,’ a series of vividly colored yet ethereal photographs of flowers now on view at Chelsea’s Yossi Milo Gallery, takes up the age-old concept of memento mori – a reminder of life’s brevity – with contemporary imagery of flowers.  While spending time working in Japan as an architect, Linkersdorff embraced her host country’s reverence for nature as well as the concept of wabi-sabi, or acceptance of imperfection and impermanence.  With both philosophies in mind, Linkersdorff dries flowers over long periods of time, extracting their pigment and reintroducing it into a liquid medium in which the flowers are suspended.  Resulting images like this one emphasize the delicacy and structure of the plants.  Pictured as if the pigments had suddenly dropped away from the petals, the artist suggests a magical deviation from expectation.  (On view through Oct 21st).

Kathrin Linkersdorff, Fairies, VI/3, archival pigment print on Hahnemuehle photo rag ultra smooth, 2021.

Sanford Biggers at Marianne Boesky Gallery

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‘Meet me on the Equinox,’ the title of Sanford Biggers’ show at Marianne Boesky Gallery in Chelsea deliberately evokes a point of convergence between different places or ideas, appropriate for new work that combines objects from a mix of cultures.  Pieces like this marble, wood and textile sculpture titled The Repatriate, continue Biggers’ interest in combining artifacts with different backgrounds, in this case a mask that is itself a collage of various African masks, a wooden platform inspired by bases of roadside shrines in Asia and beyond, and quilts that recall stories of textiles used to send messages on the Underground Railroad.  As its title suggests, Biggers explains that he was thinking of objects with identities that have been altered by context; as ownership changes, identity continues to evolve.  (On view in Chelsea through Oct 14th).

Sanford Biggers, The Repatriate, green marble and antique quilts on custom cedar plinth, 73 x 24 x 24 inches overall, unique within a series, 2023.