Barkley L. Hendricks at Jack Shainman Gallery

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

Known for his portraits of stylish Black people painted from the ‘60s onward, Barkley L. Hendricks’ lesser-known body of work merging minimalism and basketball is now on view at Chelsea’s Jack Shainman Gallery.  Between attending the Pennsylvania Academy of Art and Yale, Hendricks worked for the Philadelphia Department of Recreation as an artist with access to the courts and games that inspired pieces like ‘Two!’  Though the ball is in motion here, a sense of stillness pervades, as if the artist is savoring a moment in a game.  Though circular and rectangular forms dominate and bring to mind hard-edge abstraction, Hendricks evokes the flat stillness of a momentous scene in an early Renaissance painting.  (On view in Chelsea through April 30th).

Barkley L. Hendricks, Two!, oil on linen, 44” diameter, 1966-67.

Camille Norment at the Dia Art Foundation

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

Norway-based American artist Camille Norment conceives of social relationships past and present in terms of sound in two new commissions at the Dia Art Foundation in Chelsea.  For this untitled piece, microphones in the gallery pick up ambient sound and send it down the stem and into the bell below.  As sound creates more sound and feeds back into the loop, auditory events in the room become, in Norment’s words, “an exponential saturation of voice, existing and experienced as a negotiation of control.” (On view through Jan 2023).

Camille Norment, Untitled, brass, sine waves, autonomous feedback system, and archival radio static, 2022.

Jonathan Baldock at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery

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

Describing his new stoneware vessels at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery as ‘imperfect reliquaries,’ London-based artist Jonathan Baldock imprints the cylindrical forms with evidence of his own hand and adds cast body parts and funereal herbs.  In additional sewn works, 3-D heads emerge from flat felt and hessian textile backgrounds, staging a miraculous entrance from the picture into real space.  Likewise, the uncanny ceramic forms suggest an unknowable quality to the human body and its manifestations.  (On view in Tribeca through April 2nd).

Jonathan Baldock, Scuffle, stoneware and glaze filled with rosemary, 22 x 14 x 13 inches, 2022.

Mika Horibuchi at 55 Walker

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

Betrayal and concealment are words applied to Mika Horibuchi’s deceptively masterful paintings at 55 Walker, which replicate her grandmother’s amateur watercolors.  At first glance, triangular tabs appear to be adhered to the surface to hold up a printed photo.  A closer look reveals that they, like the ‘photo,’ are meticulously painted.  The cat image is a rendition of a printed snapshot sent to the artist in Chicago by her grandmother in Japan, who has taken up painting later in life.  A nearby display case shows the original snapshots along with other photos, drawings, and more.  Here, the professional mimics the hobbyist, but the work conveys respect and consideration.  (On view in Tribeca through March 26th).

Mika Horibuchi, Watercolor of Pi-ko, oil on linen, 42 x 55 x 1 ¾ inches, 2021.

Michael Heizer at Gagosian Gallery

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

What carries the idea of rocks as artwork?  ‘Massive weight,’ replies Michael Heizer in a gallery statement announcing his current exhibition of new stone and steel sculpture at Chelsea’s Gagosian Gallery.  Sheer size, heaviness, and a certain kind of audacity in relocating huge pieces of nature blasted out of place and trucked into art-related settings are the hallmark of Heizer’s practice.  In the recent sculpture, rocks seem to almost perch on thick planes of rusted steel in geometric shapes, setting up a dynamic interplay between manmade and natural forms that suggests both symbiosis and antagonistic struggle. (On view on 21st Street through April 16th).

Michael Heizer, installation view of Rock/Steel at Gagosian Gallery, March 2022.