Goshka Macuga at Andrew Kreps Gallery

London-based Polish artist Goshka Macuga – known for making artwork that relates to the archives and collections of art institutions – had a major New York moment in 2019 when she installed an enormous tapestry in MoMA’s education building picturing herself surrounded by books featuring work in the museum’s collections.  That tableau was in turn a restaging of a photo of Andre Malraux similarly surrounded by his own ‘museum’ of reproductions.  Now on view at Andrew Kreps Gallery in Tribeca, Macuga’s image from the MoMA tapestry manifests as a jacquard woven soft sculpture, positioned on the floor of the gallery’s double-height space.  Titled ‘Fallen Artists/Comfort,’ the work approaches fallenness from various thought-provoking viewpoints by literally looks as if the artist has fallen from the upper gallery space and including a soft book featuring a photo of Nan Goldin’s photos of herself battered and of Nazi-sympathizers and MoMA employees Philip Johnson and Alan Blackburn when they resigned from the museum.  (On view through June 15th).

Goshka Macuga, Fallen Artists / Comfort, jacquard soft sculpture, 127 ½ x 53 ½ inches, 2023.

Hugh Hayden at Lisson Gallery

Hugh Hayden’s last show in 2021 at Lisson Gallery featured church pews installed like a chapel in the gallery; his current exhibition again transforms the space, this time into a restroom with artworks in multiple stalls, including a functioning urinal.  Visitors open doors to find pieces that refer generally to human experience: education (a distorted school desk), diasporic culinary arts and music (cooking pans merged with West African masks) and sexuality (several male torsos make a connection between guns and phalluses.)  Sequestered in their own stalls, each sculpture can be viewed alone or – though it feels strange, given the public restroom environment – with others.  Engaging with the show is irresistible; curious visitors are rewarded with beautifully crafted, surreal sculptures that prompt us to explore specific cultural commonalities.  (On view in Chelsea through June 15th).

Hugh Hayden, installation view of ‘Hughmans’ at Lisson Gallery, June 2024.

Marianne Nielsen at HB381

Realistic yet alluding to dancing figures, a creeping crustacean, a crown and more, Danish artist Marianne Nielsen’s stoneware leaf sculptures at HB381 delight in nature and its rearrangement.  In a recent essay, design expert Glenn Adamson points out the subtlety of Nielson’s ceramics in a field crowded with bold statements, noting that the sculpture nevertheless grabs attention with its craft and imagination.  Matching our delight at nature’s wonders with pleasure at her clever and skillful iterations of plant life, Nielsen’s artworks take on a life of their own. (On view in Tribeca through June 15th).

Marianne Nielsen, Large Leaves, glazed stoneware, 10.25” h x 10.75” l, 2023.

Lucas Arruda at David Zwirner Gallery

Though the skies directly ahead are dark in this small painting by Brazilian painter Lucas Arruda at David Zwirner Gallery, light shines out from behind the clouds, ready to transform the scene.  Light conditions and colors vary greatly in Arruda’s signature seascapes and jungle-scenes in response to time of day and atmospheric conditions yet each painting draws viewers in to appreciate the particular, fleeting circumstances presented.  Titled ‘Assum Preto’ after a Brazilian bird whose song alters in response to light, this show’s sensitivity to time and place is so subtle and calming as to be therapeutic.  (On view through June 15th in Chelsea).

Lucas Arruda, Untitled (from the Deserto-Modelo series), oil on canvas, 9 5/8 x 11 ¾ inches, 2022.

Sahara Longe at Timothy Taylor Gallery

Disaffected nudes, a lurking skeletal figure and an embracing couple titled after Symbolist painter Ferdinand Hodler’s macabre painting ‘The Night’ channel the expressive qualities of late 19th century painting in Sahara Longe’s show of new paintings at Timothy Taylor Gallery in Tribeca.  Here, ‘Liar,’ features a painted frame of cloudy red, white and green colored areas that recall the wispiness of Edvard Munch’s skies in ‘The Scream.’ A white-clad individual on his knees with hands in a prayerful position in the foreground contrasts with a shadowy figure behind…possibly a second self or the ‘liar’ referred to in the title?  (On view through June 15th).

Sahara Longe, Liar, oil on linen, 74 ¾ x88 5/8 inches, 2024.