Whether she is Venus, Sister Ray (a Velvet Underground character), or Penthesilea, the Amazonian Queen, Danish artist Peter Linde Busk’s recurring female character has a jittery, incomplete quality owing to her construction from cast-off and fragmentary materials. Here, Smalti, natural stones, ceramics and more compose a faceless, imperfect creature. (At Derek Eller Gallery on the Lower East Side through June 19th).
Last November, a former guard at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Ohio entered the Center shortly after it opened, shooting and spray painting artworks before killing himself. Rachel Harrison’s sculpture ‘Valid Like Salad,’ which features a portrait of Al Pacino in Scarface and indirectly questions who we validate as heroes, was one of the targeted artworks. Now on display at Greene Naftali Gallery, it is a chilling witness to our current epidemic of gun violence. (In Chelsea through June 18th).
Iconic Italian Arte Povera artist Mario Merz demonstrated his ongoing interest in the Fibonacci sequence this spiral table from 1982, now on view at Sperone Westwater Gallery. Merz translates the Fibonacci numbers – in which each number is the sum of the previous two – into a symbolic display of nature’s beautiful bounty. (On the Lower East Side through June 25th).
Known for painting muscled men who radiate strength, Indonesian artist Nyoman Masriadi creates a painting seething with tension as two guards interrogate a party-goer who claims to be ‘on the list.’ Each towering painting in the show (this one is over six feet tall) seethes with drama as it pokes fun at various powerful men. (At Paul Kasmin Gallery’s 293 Tenth Ave location through June 18th).
An ostrich, Asiatic black bear and other animals look to be constructed of cigarettes but have actually been crafted from Sculpey and acrylic by Amanda Nedham. A standout in Invisible Export’s group exhibition on the current cultural status of smoking, Nedham equates animals threatened by habitat loss with another endangered species – the smoker. (At Invisible Exports on the Lower East Side through June 19th).
