Kapwani Kiwanga at the New Museum

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Paris-based artist Kapwani Kiwanga’s fifth floor exhibition ‘Off-Grid’ at the New Museum makes powerful use of the gallery’s high ceilings with two large-scale installations employing evocative materials.  Lengths of light-colored sisal hang in a curving grid to create what the museum calls a ‘warm cocoon,’ though with the piece, Kiwanga also references the freighted history of sisal in Tanzania, from colonial introduction to contemporary export.  The show’s other piece, a two-part combination of geometric mirrors and hanging beads, features surfaces spray coated with aluminum meticulously harvested from floodlight reflectors used by urban police forces.  The metallic surface reflects the gallery’s natural light, vs the light of nighttime surveillance.  (On view on the Lower East Side through Sept 5th).

Kapwani Kiwanga, installation view of ‘Off-Grid’ at the New Museum, July 2022.

Cecilia Vicuna at the Guggenheim Museum

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Killed for objecting to mining and dam projects, Indigenous women activists Berta Caceres (top) and Maria Taant (right) are honored in Cecilia Vicuna’s ‘Liderezas (Indigenous Women Leaders)’ painting, now on view in Vicunas’ retrospective at the Guggenheim.  Made in 2022 for this exhibition, the painting also pictures Nemonte Nenquimo at center, who has successfully led her community in resisting the destructive advances of oil companies in the Ecuadorian Amazon, Chilean activist Elisa Loncon and Peruvian activist Maxima Acuna. Together, the museum explains, their arrangement forms the Southern Cross constellation, metaphorically guiding humans to exist harmoniously with each other and nature.  (On view through Sept 5th).

Cecilia Vicuna, Liderezas (Indigenous Women Leaders), oil on canvas, 2022.

Jake Clark at A Hug From The Art World

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Children delight in balloons and bunnies frolic on a Central Park lawn in new ceramics by Australia-to-New York transplant Jake Clark at A Hug from the Art World.  Titled ‘At the Carlyle,’ Clark’s show is an homage to murals by Marcel Vertes’ in The Carlyle’s Café and the famed wall works by Ludwig Bemelmans (author of the Madeline children’s books) in the Bemelmans Bar.  Large, colorful and joyous, the focus of the ceramics is more on Clark’s vibrant interpretation of Bemelman’s illustration than The Carlyle’s dimly-lit spaces, fitting for a late summer show.

Jake Clark, Bemelmans Bar (Dancing Bunnies), glazed earthenware, 16.15 x 5.1 inches, 2022.

Sonia Gechtoff at 55 Walker

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Wholly abstract yet suggesting recognizable forms, late painter Sonia Gechtoff’s canvases invite and resist interpretation simultaneously.  Successful from a young age with shows at the San Francisco Museum of Art (now SFMoMA) and the De Young Museum, Gechtoff’s move to New York’s male-oriented abstract expressionist art scene in the late 1950s slowed her career and recognition.  Her current retrospective at 55 Walker (run by Bortolami, kaufmann Repetto and Andrew Kreps Gallery) contributes to correcting the record of her importance, showcasing work from the ‘50s to 2017, the year before her death at age 91.  It includes ‘Celestial Red,’ a composition dominated by circular forms evoking the planets and moons of a solar system, and behind them all, a powerful, glowing celestial body not fully known or seen. (On view in Tribeca through Aug 26th).

Sonia Gechtoff, Celestial Red, acrylic on canvas, 77 ¾ x 78 in, 1994.

Naotaka Hiro at Bortolami Gallery

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Framing an artwork is normally a secondary consideration to making it, but in Naotaka Hiro’s new works at Bortolami Gallery, the frame includes a wood panel onto which Hiro works directly.  After securing the panel a foot above the ground, Hiro lies underneath and records the position and movements of his body in acrylic, graphite, grease pencil and crayon.  The resulting abstraction continues the artist’s exploration of the body, specifically what can and cannot be seen except through camera or mirror.  Represented as gouges at center, striped and scale-like patterns and asterisk-like marks, the physical and spiritual aspects of the body merge in a unique self-portrait.  (On view in Tribeca through Aug 26th).

Naotaka Hiro, Untitled (3 Rings), acrylic, graphite, grease pencil, and crayon on wood, 58 1/8 x 42 x 2 in, 2022.