Will Ryman at Chart Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest ShowPosted on Comments are Disabled

Not many gallery exhibitions are outright funny, but Will Ryman’s latest sculpture at Chart Gallery is bound to have visitors chuckling.  Chock-full of eccentric New York characters crafted roughly in what looks like clay (actually resin), the show includes a platform-shoe wearing senior citizen perched on an NYPD barrier and a couple of noodle-slurping Goths on a subway seat.  Here, in a piece initially conceived of at the time of the sub-prime mortgage crisis in 2008, an exterminator scatters a crowd of mini businessmen.  (On view in Tribeca through Oct 22nd).

Will Ryman, The Exterminator, wood, resin, mesh, paint, screws, hose, plastic, 65 x 105 ½ x 159 ½ inches, ’08 – ’22.

Anila Quayyum Agha at Sundaram Tagore Gallery

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Inspired by Islamic art and architecture, Anila Quayyum Agha’s pattern-based practice celebrates the intricacies and pleasures of floral and geometric design.  Her installation Beautiful Despair, commissioned by the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas, literally immerses the viewer in patterns that are projected from a central cube onto the floor, walls and ceiling of a room at Sundaram Tagore Gallery.  With the piece, Quayyum Agha commemorates those lost to Covid (including her sister) while expressing hope for the future.  (On view in Chelsea though Oct 8th).

Anila Quayyum Agha, Beautiful Despair, lacquered steel and halogen bulb, 60 x 60 x 60 inches, 2022.

Urs Fischer at Gagosian Gallery

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Van Gogh’s flower paintings were intended to be life affirming, representing joy, appreciation of nature and mankind’s love of the divine.  In this installation view of Urs Fischer’s piece ‘Denominator’ at Gagosian Gallery, a replica sunflower painting is overlaid with a projection of talking heads sourced from the internet, a juxtaposition geared to suggest that our devotion has shifted to the virtual realm.  The painting is part of a recreation of a room in London’s National Gallery, the added heads commenting on how traditional ways of spreading culture have shifted to individuals using on-line platforms. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 15th).

Urs Fischer, Denominator, database, algorithms, and LED cube, 141 ¾ x 141 ¾ x 141 ¾ inches, 2020-22.

Kate Clark at 542 West 24th Street

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Recent high-profile court cases have argued for basic human rights to be applied to animals while at the same time, many people exist with a remarkable remove from nature.  Kate Clark’s skillfully rendered hybrid human/animal characters question the nature of the relationship between humans and animals by existing as both and neither.  Confronting audiences with preternatural calm, Clark’s figures suggest an otherworldly intelligence and recall wise fictional characters from the worlds of entertainment and mythology.  (On view at 542 West 24th Street through Sept 28th).

Kate Clark, Twins, pronghorn hide and horns, blesbok antelope hide and horns, foam, clay, thread, pins, rubber eyes, H 34” x W 27” x D12”, 2021.

Hank Willis Thomas at Jack Shainman Gallery

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Race is “at the nexus of so many social currents and tensions,” wrote a Daily Beast reporter while engaging a 2015 exhibition by Hank Willis Thomas.  Yet Thomas’ polished stainless steel sculpture Nexus (in the foreground of this photo), now on view in his solo show at Jack Shainman Gallery, models colorblind mutual aid in the form of two individuals grasping hands.  Elsewhere, a bronze sculpture of two clasped hands in different colored patinas titled ‘Loving,’ celebrates a mixed-race marriage while the show’s largest piece, ‘Embrace’ depicts Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King’s arms enfolding each other.  A neon piece spelling out Thomas’ oft repeated phrase (honoring his murdered cousin’s last words) ‘Love Over Rules’ reinforces the artist’s message.  (On view in Chelsea through Oct 29th).

Hank Willis Thomas, Nexus (in detail in the foreground), polished stainless steel, 96 inches tall, 2022.