“Bodies merge with stuff,” explains LA sculptor Anna Sew Hoy of her recent sculptures, succinctly introducing her intention to build bodies that allow reshaped thinking. Installed at Koenig and Clinton Gallery in Chelsea, denim ‘worms’ and arms lifted to create an oval shape bespeak fluidity and openness. (Through July 29th).
Mexican-born, New York-based assistant art professor Aliza Nisenbaum’s focus on U.S. immigrants inspired James Cohan Gallery’s excellent summer group show ‘Intimisms,’ which features close portraits of artists’ friends and family. Here, her painting of the Women’s Cabinet of the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs is more public yet portrays the individuality of each community leader. (In Chelsea through July 29th).
Global art commerce comes to mind in Sadie Benning’s painting of abstracted airplanes bearing mini-paintings on their wings. The planes disappear right off the panel in an apparently never-ending cycle of supply and demand. (At Callicoon Fine Arts on the Lower East Side through July 29th).
Caroline Wells Chandler’s crocheted smiley creatures run and jump along the gallery wall in Danese Corey Gallery’s textile-related summer group show, ‘Common Threads.’ Goofily happy, they are pure fun. (In Chelsea through July 29th).
Designer Cey Adams – former street artist and Founding Creative Director of Def Jam Recordings – memorializes victims of random gun violence in this site-specific mural at Chelsea’s Jane Lombard Gallery. (Through August 12th).
As summer travel season rolls around, ‘Shrines to Speed’ at Chelsea’s Leila Heller Gallery acts as something of a cautionary tale. Sylvie Fleury’s smashed and sliced car – covered in nail polish – rests near an ominous pair of van doors by Richard Prince and a crushed Fiat 500 by Ron Arad. All are enticing objects but each undermines the glamor of car culture. (In Chelsea through July 9th).
Spanish artist Cristina de Miguel offers an update on Picasso’s 1905-6 Boy Leading a Horse with a version that crops the boy (as if shot on film) and adds expressionist patches of color reminiscent of the post-war CoBrA group. The horse’s expression – he’s in on the joke? – adds humor. (At Freight and Volume on the Lower East Side through July 10th).
At the top of a stepped pile of dirt, a domed chamber houses bees (contained in the top of the structure by a screen) and offers visitors a place to sit for quiet contemplation. Artist Terence Koh explains that the ‘bee chapel’ came to him in a dream as a way of offering sanctuary to the beleaguered insects. (At Andrew Edlin Gallery on the Lower East Side through July 1st.)
Under the direction of photographer Sandro Miller, actor John Malkovich plays a series of unexpected roles in a recent body of work at Chelsea’s Yancey Richardson Gallery. As Warhol’s Marilyn, Arthur Sasse’s Albert Einstein and here, Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother, Malkovich’s face makes some of art history’s most iconic images eerily unfamiliar. (Through July 8th).
Self-taught super realist painter Lordan Bunch paints children from class photos and photo-booth shots, pulling their identities from oblivion to act as memento mori. (At Foley Gallery on the Lower East Side through June 30th).
Russian-American artist Asya Reznikov takes on the role of Manet’s bar maid at the Folies-Bergere, only she serves the demands of just one client and from her own body. Transplanted from the public realm into the domestic sphere, Reznikov’s character still manages a tight ship but with little apparent enjoyment. (At Nancy Hoffman Gallery in Chelsea through July 1st).
New York painter Joanne Greenbaum takes mark making into three dimensions with ceramics that evoke natural forms and architecture in vibrant color at Rachel Uffner Gallery on the Lower East Side. (Through July 1st).
Aperture’s exhibition ‘Tiny: Streetwise Revisited’ is a fascinating glimpse into the life of Tiny, the petite Seattle teen memorably photographed in 1983 by Mary Ellen Mark for Life magazine and filmed by her filmmaker husband Martin Bell for his 1984 documentary Streetwise. As a young woman in this photo, she dreams of having riches and a family of 10 kids. In the exhibition, Mark follows Tiny as she fulfills her second wish as poverty and addiction define her life. (In Chelsea through June 30th).
Glass, mirrors and distorted perspectives turn nature into a candy-colored wonderland in new photos by Paris-born, NY photographer Karin Laval. This hyped-up version of nature literally moves into the gallery space as Laval presents an image on the wall and as sculpture. (At Chelsea’s Benrubi Gallery through July 1st.)
Miroslav Tichy surreptitiously photographed unsuspecting women in the Czech Republic for decades; the resulting images are often celebrated in New York galleries and museums. For her solo show at the New Museum, Polish-born artist Goshka Macuga created this tapestry, featuring women from Tichy’s photos (and other sources) along with two women who wear body suits based on Tichy’s drawings. The women in the tapestry clean Karl Marx’s tombstone, summoning not workers but women to unite. (At the New Museum through June 26th).
The woman at the center of Nicole Eisenman’s portraits ‘Weeks on the Train,’ (the writer Laurie Weeks) is casually posed, but commands an unusually large amount of room. The space creates an aura around her and gives her a sense of approachability that eludes the two oddballs seated in front of her. (At Anton Kern Gallery in Chelsea through June 25th).
Taking an 80s aesthetic as inspiration, Ben Sander’s steel vase is a surprisingly sturdy support for an abstract design of floating shapes and heavily textured lines of lavender paint. Sander’s accompanying 2-D work behind likewise balances the substantial – thick marks resembling giant paint strokes – with unanchored shapes including ping pong and Wiffle balls to offer an amusing musing on taste. (At Chelsea’s Asya Geisberg Gallery through June 25th).
Large mirrors intersect with clear glass frames in Berlin-based Polish artist Alicja Kwade’s first solo show at 303 Gallery, confusing the sightlines and adding intrigue to the gallery’s stunning new space on 21st Street. In the foreground, Kwade offers a beautiful brass sculpture that suggests the trajectory of a slowing spinning and falling hoop, arresting a sequence of events as a sculpture. (In Chelsea through June 30th).
East Asian tradition meets folk tale characters in the late Kirk Magnus’s ceramic demon, now part of the artist’s mini-30 year retrospective at James Cohan Gallery. Magnus’ deep knowledge of the world’s ceramic arts and his sense of humor are evident in a variety of vessels crafted with different techniques and featuring an assortment of oddball characters. (On the Lower East Side through June 26th).
From this single-projection light work from 1968 now on view at Pace Gallery to his stunning transformation of the Guggenheim Rotunda into a light installation in 2013 James Turrell suggest that light can manifest in physical form. Juke Green – glowing an emerald green that suffuses the room with color – conjures a giant gem or a portal into another world. (At Pace Gallery’s 534 West 25th Street location.)
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).
‘We were dealing with art as a way of mediation,’ explained late West Coast painter Lee Mullican of his pattern-driven, energetic work inspired by Native American art and design. (Seen here in detail.) (At James Cohan Gallery’s Chelsea location through June 18th).
A ghostly face and a walking figure arise out of a tangle of clothing in Thornton Dial’s energetic 2007 work ‘Winter Jackets.’ The late self-taught artist returns to political themes in this show – the first since his passing in January. Here, we ponder the movement of a solitary (uniformed?) individual who strides forward with purpose. (At Marianne Boesky Gallery in Chelsea through June 18th).
Richard Tuttle celebrates fifty years of art making with a show of work from his last 26 New York solo shows. ‘Titel 3’ from 1978 typifies Tuttle’s sometimes ephemeral arrangements; a washy drip of brown watercolor on the wall interacts with a crisp, green arch of paper, creating a succinct contrast between chance and deliberate gestures. (At Pace Gallery’s 25th Street location through June 11th)
Brooklyn-based, Sri-Lanka raised artist Nadia Haji Omar has found inspiration for her abstract forms in Tamil, Sinhala, Arabic and French letter forms. This untitled dye and acrylic canvas nods to language as much as to natural forms found in the water or under a microscope. (At Kristen Lorello Gallery on the Lower East Side through June 12th).
Sargent’s Daughters’ homage to Dutch New Yorker Anton van Dalen includes this painting from 1986 featuring behavior psychologist B.F. Skinner, whose pigeon experiments included a plan to train the birds to guide missiles in WWII. Himself a pigeon fancier, van Dalen reimagines the pigeon’s world to fascinating effect. (On the Lower East Side through June 12th).
Iconic German artist Sigmar Polke created this painting the year after a trip that took him around Asia, from Papua New Guinea to Thailand and beyond. Painted on checked fabric, Polke’s hovering, calligraphic mountains compete with a rectangular pattern of curving black splashes, creating an almost mythical realm at center. (At David Zwirner Gallery’s 20th Street location through June 25th).
Meg Webster’s environmentally friendly project at Paula Cooper Gallery uses a solar-powered electrical system to power grow lights that maintain planters full of herbs, lettuce, flowers and more. Mylar-covered walls reflect light and emphasize how unnatural Webster’s carefully maintained, secluded slice of nature is. (In Chelsea through June 24th).
LA artist Naotaka Hiro’s fragmentary, cast self-portraits question what we do and don’t see from the exterior. ‘Big Question’ also appeals our sense of hearing as the artist demonstratively takes hold of his ear. (At Brennan & Griffin on the Lower East Side through June 5th).
Anish Kapoor’s monumental sculpture ‘She Wolf’ appears to be tipping over under its own weight, or deliberately leaning to the gallery floor from its marble pedestal. Given the title, giant quasi-oval shapes suggest teats, though a covering of soil over the structure’s rocky forms ties it to the earth, creating a kind of living geology. (At Barbara Gladstone Gallery’s 21st Street location through June 11th).
New York artist Josh Blackwell morphs a plastic carrier bag into a wonder of colorful stitching in a free-standing sculpture that’s a poster child for reuse and recycling. (At 11R on the Lower East Side through June 5th).
Inspired by a sculpture in a David Cronenberg sci-fi horror film, Dora Budor’s enormous head houses a seating area – a lounge for contemplating the life of the mind and how it can be controlled. (At Ramiken Crucible through June 5th).
How do you make a 2-D image that is also a time-based artwork? Willy Le Maitre’s answer is to include multiple images in a lenticular print, so that, for example, a children’s play area runs together with icy branches and a glowing screen. Le Maitre explains that as viewers move back and forth before a piece, they use their eyes and their memory of what they’ve just seen to complete the picture. (At Canada NYC on the Lower East Side through June 5th).
Crushed green glass spills from a crate like a magical substance while the color echoes in the painted palms behind a confident young man wielding a pool cue in this sculptural installation by Atlanta artist Radcliffe Bailey. Is there an alchemy in the game of pool for this player? (At Jack Shainman Gallery in Chelsea through June 11th.)
Josh Kline’s stunning new show at Lower East Side gallery 47 Canal imagines a world in which technological advances have created mass unemployment. Carts with bottles and cans rendered in flesh tones suggest a sinister equivalence between recyclables and bodies that have been rendered redundant by ‘progress.’ (Through June 12th).
Abraham Lincoln’s vision for the U.S. literally explodes from his eyes in Brian Tolle’s sculpture of Lincoln with the text from his inaugural addresses bursting in red, white and blue from his eyes. The sculpture is part of a show featuring U.S. presidents from Washington to Obama with attributes that relate to their roles in the country’s history. (At CRG Gallery on the Lower East Side through June 12th).
Belgian artist Luc Tuymans is known for paintings that evoke memories. Here, cars reflected in the canals of the Dutch town of Ridderkerk are based on Polaroids taken by the artist. A solid stone bridge meets the evocative green-tinged murk of the canal, recalling moments of leisure spent pondering the water from the land. (At David Zwirner Gallery in Chelsea through June 25th).
Though William Bailey’s serene still life arrangements share subject matter with Giorgio Morandi’s paintings of bottles, jars and vases, their contours are perfectly complete and clear, achieving comparative gravity and a sense of permanence. Still, Bailey’s objects embody a sense of apartness that makes them captivating. (At Betty Cunningham Gallery on the Lower East Side through June 11th).
Jocelyn Hobbie’s imaginary female figure is one step away from dissolving into the patterns that clothe and surround her; even her hair resembles wavy ribbons more than real locks. In the midst of all this visual input, the woman is a cipher, her far-away look suggesting she is only present physically. (At Fredericks & Freiser Gallery through June 18th).
Mitchell-Innes & Nash gallery in Chelsea aims to prove that iconic Pop artist Tom Wesselman was not only a pioneer of pop culture imagery, but a technical innovator, from collaging billboard cutouts onto canvas to molding plastic paintings. Here, Smoker reminds us that Wesselman also used shaped canvases to isolate forms that here, make supposedly seductive lips look troubling. (In Chelsea through May 28th).
Can the grandeur of the Yosemite landscape be captured on a small screen? David Hockney gives it a good shot, to luminous effect in his printed iPad drawings, now on view at Pace Gallery’s 25th Street location in Chelsea. (Through June 18th).
‘Perhappiness,’ a one word poem by Brazilian poet Paulo Leminsky, borrowed as the title of painter/musician Luiz Zerbini’s first solo show in New York, perfectly embodies the artist’s upbeat experimentation. Here, rocks that look like abstract paintings, pools of water crafted from lines of color and nests that resemble creative architecture are an homage to the inspiration of nature. (At Sikkema Jenkins & Co in Chelsea through June 4th.)
If everyone could see inside your head right now, what thoughts would be laid bare? Amy Culter’s incredible cross section shows one woman’s mental map as a series of bizarre dreams, from a scary, hostage-holding snowman to the hilarious notion that our teeth are just the caps worn by a team of ladies nestled shoulder to shoulder in our jaws. (At Leslie Tonkonow Artworks and Projects in Chelsea through June 30th).
The biggest show in town – literally – starts with a fifty-foot long walk between two thirteen foot high steel plates. Then it’s into a slightly disorienting and unexpected labyrinth of open and constricted spaces that challenge viewers to take the measure of Richard Serra’s NJ-1 with our own bodies. (At Gagosian Gallery’s 522 West 21st Street location through July 29th).
Known for photographing freeze dried flowers as he explodes them and liquid pigment as it is blasted by sound from a speaker, German artist Martin Klimas has come up with another way to make merge sound and art in a new body of work at Foley Gallery. The ‘Pure Tones’ series involves a frequency generator and still water, which is disturbed in surprisingly beautiful patterns, as evidenced by this grid of surfaces. (On the Lower East Side through May 22nd).
Aaron Siskind’s 1954 photographs of high divers leaping into Lake Michigan are included in Bruce Silverstein Gallery’s engaging group show ‘Songs and the Sky’ as an example of the artists’ desire to align his images with music, ‘…in terms of rhythm and repetitions that can be expressed visually.” The gallery takes the connection a step further by actually pairing the photos with sound; in Siskind’s case with a selection by John Cage: 44 Harmonies from Apartment House – 1776 and Cheap Imitation. (In Chelsea through June 18th).
A foam couch, a broken glass table and lamps made of driftwood define young New York artist Jessi Reaves’ slacker design aesthetic in furniture art now on view at Bridget Donahue. Here, plywood, foam and driftwood create a giant letter ‘O’ which is simultaneously a seat, shelving and an opportunity to experience an ‘Oh…’ moment while discovering Reaves’ forays into unfinish. (On the Lower East Side through June 5th).
Press images of 1920s movie stars inspired Cindy Sherman’s latest body of work – photos of women who have aged out of the young starlet role but who still wear cupid lips, smoky eye shadow and wistful expressions. (At Metro Pictures in Chelsea through June 11th).
Known for clever analogue photo manipulation, John Houck’s latest body of work adds painting to the mix. Houck paints around items borrowed from friends – here a mason jar – in successive arrangements, gradually building one composite photo that disrupts traditional picture space. (At On Stellar Rays on the Lower East Side through May 22nd).
Brooklyn-based artist Elizabeth Ferry takes fuzzy dice to a new level with these tactile plaster, paint and foam cubes, now on view at Bushwick’s Honey Ramka. (On view through May 15th).
Columbian artists Diego Alvarez and Maria Paula Alvarez treat wood as if it were paper in both meticulous lattices that mimic Bogota’s fencing and this cedar oak plywood sheet that drapes over a Plexiglas shelf like a piece of fabric. (At Magnan Metz Gallery through May 21st.)
Susie MacMurray’s stately ‘Medusa,’ dignifies the maligned mythological character by refashioning her imposing figure in a beautiful surface of tiny, interlocked copper rings. (At Chelsea’s Danese Corey Gallery through May 21st.)
Light up wall decorations, picture frames and clocks are the hosts for Chadwick Rantanen’s unusual art project, which takes the form of adaptors that allow one battery to be used in place of another. With adaptors in the form of bees sticking out the back of this clock, the device is forced to keep its kitschy face to the wall. Resistance to tackiness and artistic innovation become the subject matter. (At Essex Street through May 16th).
Vietnam-based artists The Propeller Group make a surprising connection between brass bands in New Orleans and Vietnam in a mesmerizing video created for the New Orleans biennial, Prospect 3. Here, a funeral band wades into the Mekong Delta, making an elaborate journey as they accompany the dead toward the afterlife. (At James Cohan Gallery on the Lower East Side through May 15th).
Titled ‘post-paintings,’ as if they’re pioneering a new art form after painting, Strauss Bourque-LaFrance’s wall sculptures are in fact made from 2 x 2” posts and cropped pictures from the New York Post newspaper. Colored like a quilt and featuring snippets of Post sports coverage, this piece evokes all-American pastimes. (At Rachel Uffner Gallery on the Lower East Side through May 16th).
Working between London and Botswana, American artist Chloe Sells shoots the natural beauty of the Okavango Swamps, then uses screens, overlays and hand painting in the darkroom to create unique prints with what the artist calls a ‘dreamy effect.’ (At Julie Saul Gallery in Chelsea through June 11th).
Haim Steinbach’s appropriated Lion King illustration takes over the office wall at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, pitting a powerful creature against box office power against the power of immersion in the color yellow. (In Chelsea through May 27th).
Lucas Blalock’s overt manipulation of this odd but banal scene begs the question of why anyone would want to represent chopped sausage at all, never mind as both a photo and a digital rendering. The effect is to put our minds between places –simultaneously in the digital realm and in a stranger’s kitchen. (At Ramiken Crucible on the Lower East Side through May 22nd).
Water bottles, wiffle balls and even a laundry basket are the among the discarded items artist Marie Lorenz has fished out of New York’s waterways during her boat-journeys-as-art. Here, she has turned them into a ceramic mobile. (At Jack Hanley Gallery on the Lower East Side through May 22nd).
German photographer Elisabeth Hase’s 1931 rooftop photo turns workers and pedestrians into doll-like figures while paralleling the unusual perspectives adopted by Russian avant-garde photographers. (At Robert Mann Gallery through May 7th).
Shot around the world from Peru to Greece, Yorgo Alexopoulos’ videos of the natural world are a low-key sublime, prompting appreciation of beautiful landscapes unblemished by mankind. (At Chelsea’s Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery through June 11th.)
Thousands of books with fake titles create a false and fun library at Pierogi Gallery, where a not-quite-homey feel is completed by Carol K. Brown’s editioned porcelain plate featuring a down-on-his-luck wanderer. (At Pierogi Gallery on the Lower East Side through May 8th).
John Chiara’s New York photos – shot with homemade cameras large enough to accommodate big sheets of negative photo paper – bring apocalyptic drama to the city streets. Here, a glowing Hearst Tower hovers menacingly behind a vulnerable-looking walkup as Chiara lends familiar buildings a new character. (At Yossi Milo Gallery in Chelsea through May 21st).
Stay near the wall and the room is silent; approach the table and light sensors detect your presence, setting off a cascade of sound from an array of 72 bare speakers. The effect of Canadian sound artists Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s ‘Experiment in F# Minor’ is magical – a musical experience created for us to create. (In Chelsea at Luhring Augustine Gallery through June 11th).
It’s not the vibrant colors and energetic forms of Shazad Dawood’s ‘Anselm Chapel, Tokyo,’ (seen here in detail) but the strong diagonal lines that connect the London-based artist’s abstract painting on vintage textile with its namesake – Czech/American architect Antonin Raymond’s stark, concrete house of worship. Reconciling opposite appearances seems beside the point with such a joyous composition. (At Jane Lombard Gallery through May 14th).
Gunships approach, bombers fly overhead and the Gemini spacecraft blasts off in old press photos and artist renderings gathered by German photographer Thomas Ruff, now on view in Chelsea at David Zwirner Gallery. Ruff scanned both sides of each photo – all of which relate to the U.S. aeronautics and space program in the 20th century – then merged them to merge private notes and public image. (Through April 30th).
Brazilian artist Adriana Varejao explores the complicated relationship between western and indigenous cultures with a series of self-portraits that blend Native South American and mid-20th century minimalist aesthetics. Here, wavy feathered plumes contrast a stark geometric stripe running the length of her face and clouds of dots over her eyes. (At Lehmann Maupin Gallery on the Lower East Side through June 16th).
They’re not looking at each other, but this dancing couple makes a connection through the eyes. As if they share a common vision, or are alert to each other’s thoughts, each bears an eye of the other as they engage in an elaborate courtship ritual. (At Lower East Side Gallery Thierry Goldberg, through May 1st).
With oppressive systems as his theme, British artist Adam McEwan presents sculptures of supercomputers that move data, a rendition of airport security trays and this walk-in sculpture of the letter ‘K.’ The letter stands in for Kafka and a character in ‘The Trial’ as well as a hieroglyph for an open hand. The most convincing way to understand the mood of the piece, however, is to climb the terrifyingly steep stairs. (At Petzel Gallery through April 30th).
Set against wallpaper developed for an installation at Mass MoCA, Barbara Takenaga’s ‘Life’ looks like an implosion inside of a molecular structure. The effect is eye-popping in person. (At DC Moore Gallery in Chelsea through April 30th).
New York artist Amy Lincoln carefully studies particular plants, then incorporates them in paintings of the natural world so crisp and vibrantly colored, they’re almost hallucinogenic. (At Morgan Lehman Gallery in Chelsea through May 7th).
Arranged in vitrines or along this long shelf, Katy Fischer’s ceramic objects look like archaeological finds. They’re a humorous take on the notion that ceramics must have use-value and yet provocative in prompting consideration of what those uses might be. (At Lower East Side gallery Louis B. James through May 1st).
Painter and sculptor Volker Hueller is known for mining art history, remixing styles and associations from yesteryear into a contemporary visual vocabulary. In this recent painting, on view at Lower East Side gallery 11R, he turns one of his signature, geometric characters into art object, suggestively equating face and vase. (Through April 24th).
Above a barely noticeable landscape of frothing waves and neon-colored bridges, a strange assortment of alien characters array themselves like a contemporary, psychedelic thangka in Keiichi Tanaami’s ‘Vision in the Womb.’ The Japanese icon blends eroticism and the lingering terror of Tokyo’s firebombing in a hallucinatory scene that stuns in its creative profusion. (At Chelsea’s Sikkema Jenkins & Co through April 23rd).
Conceptual art pioneer Robert Barry uses language to transport viewers; in this handsome installation, cast resin letters painted a vibrant red form words like ‘intimate,’ ‘apparent’ that evoke strong associations. (At Chelsea’s Mary Boone Gallery through April 23rd).
Using her home and the surrounding landscape in Amagansett as subject matter, Jennifer Bartlett offers two versions of the same view. Both have been constructed with a graining brush, a tool that allows her to paint in parallel lines, taking her longstanding relationship with the grid to new directions. (At Paula Cooper Gallery through April 23rd).
A visit to the Alhambra in Spain inspired Oxford, England-based Sudanese artist Ibrahim El-Salahi to begin his ‘Flamenco’ series, in which he celebrates the music and dance of Andalusia in his signature, modernist style. (At Salon94 on the Lower East Side through April 18th).
Though they’re both solitary women illuminated by glowing backgrounds, the subject of Barkley L. Hendrick’s 2015 painting, Anthem, couldn’t be further in character from the measured cool of his iconic 1969 ‘Lawdy Mama.’ This singer is holding nothing back as she takes the stage with a double mike and unrestrained self-confidence. (At Jack Shainman Gallery through April 23rd.)
You won’t find wholesome fantasies of life in the American heartland in Iowan artist Timothy Wehrle’s surreal pencil drawings at Chelsea’s P.P.O.W. Gallery. Under rain clouds, a severed head acts as momento mori, while an upside down shoe studded with nails suggests a painful journey. (Through April 16th).
Young Johannesburg artist Serge Alain Nitegeka pushes abstraction off the wall at Marianne Boesky Gallery in Chelsea, altering the gallery with paintings that project into the room while simultaneously acting as portals into 2D illusionary spaces. (Through April 23rd).
Evocative sculpture by New York artist Sarah Braman creates a nexus between mass produced furniture and the unique art object, coldly minimal forms and a potentially cozy bedroom, a mined metal and unexploited nature in the form of a gorgeous sunset. (At Chelsea’s Mitchell-Innes & Nash through April 16th).
This shot by Rosalind Fox Solomon comes across as simple enough at first…until you register that the caregiver is a crybaby, caring for a bunny and wearing a beard, defying expectations at every turn. The unexpected and odd dominate Fox Solomon’s selection of images from her archive, shot over three decades and around the world, now on view at Bruce Silverstein Gallery in Chelsea. (Through April 16th).
Fruity filling oozes from cracked dough like blood seeping from a wound in this painting of two stacked donuts by Emily Eveleth. The painting’s title ‘Façade,’ suggests we’re only getting half of the story and backs up the impression that these donuts can be read as stand-ins for much more. (At Danese Corey Gallery in Chelsea through April 16th).
A series of charming vintage color photos from the 70s and 80s by the late Italian photographer Luigi Ghirri, currently on view in Chelsea at Matthew Marks Gallery, use framing and balance to tell stories. This photo – cropped or layered to hide how a fancifully colored turquoise grate came to stand between us and a huge factory floor – both keeps us out and the workers in. (Through April 30th).
Mary Weatherford’s Casa Reef is a standout in Skarstedt Gallery’s excellent painting show in Chelsea, bringing to mind Yves Klein’s body prints, but in geometric blocks that suggest an underwater structure emerging from swirling white foam pushed by a (literal, neon) current. (In Chelsea through April 16th).
Since lifting it from the bulletin board of a Thai ceramic factory 30 years ago, Swiss artists Fischli and Weiss have reproduced this motivational list in different locations and formats over the years, most recently installing it on Houston Street in Manhattan. From the simple instruction to ‘do one thing at a time’ to the more profound challenge to ‘distinguish sense from nonsense,’ the advice encapsulates the artists’ credo to ask questions and embrace the absurd. (On Houston St at Mott Street through May 1st. For more info, see Public Art Fund or visit the artists’ retrospective at the Guggenheim.)
Iconic photographer Malick Sidibe – who will be 80 this year – pulls out more joie de vivre from his famous archives of Malian night-life with images shot at parties over the decades. Here, three young men dressed as secret agents let us in on the fun of their masquerade. (At Chelsea’s Jack Shainman Gallery through April 23rd).
Haegue Yang continues her ‘Trustworthy’ series – made from the patterned interiors of security envelopes – with this installation of abstract diagrams set against deeply soothing Yves Klein blue walls at Greene Naftali Gallery. Just as Klein offered a portal into the sublime, Yang points to the mystical with her eye-like shapes and totemic figure covered in bells. (In Chelsea through April 16th).
A moody beach scene by Norwegian expressionist icon Edvard Munch inspires this painting by William Wegman at Sperone Westwater Gallery, which incorporates and builds on a postcard at center. Wegman both adds psychological intensity and humor to Munch’s angsty scene by making the main character a creative type alone in his Spartan room. Come see this painting and more on Saturday’s Lower East Side Gallery Tour, 1 – 3pm. (Click here for tickets. On view through April 23rd).
Fractal patterns on the walls of meticulously constructed dioramas by French artist Laetitia Soulier at Claire Oliver Gallery transform each space into a fantastical realm. The dominant cube pattern in this construction leaps off the walls and into the ever-decreasing form of this Lilliputian set of nesting rooms. (In Chelsea through April 9th).
Her own nature photography and images downloaded from the Internet are the basis for several new photos by Eileen Quinlan at Miguel Abreu Gallery, including this interrupted shot of an otter. A strip from the center of the image looks like both a rip and a pool of water, while streams of photo chemicals toward the bottom of the image contrast liquids used in photo processing with the otter’s natural habitat. (On the Lower East Side through April 17th).
Celebrated Cuban artist Roberto Diago presents wall-mounted works in corrugated sheet metal that look like weather-beaten modernist abstractions with a distinctly Cuban twist revealed in the title, ‘Variaciones de Oggun,’ a nod to the Latin American deity Oggun, who is associated with metal work. (At Magnan Metz in Chelsea through April 9th).
Inspired by Artemisia Gentileschi’s famous early 17th century painting of the Biblical heroine Judith slaying the Assyrian army general Holofernes, Anna Ostoya’s quasi-cubist rendition of the scene pits Judith against herself. Now that beheadings have become current events, Ostoya asks to what extent this is self-definition and self-harm. (At Bortolami Gallery in Chelsea through April 23rd.)
Tim Hawkinson offers visitors to Pace Gallery the chance to snoop through his medicine cabinet, in the process giving us the time around the globe with what’s actually a world clock in disguise. The unassuming bathroom fixture includes a bandage representing the time in Los Angeles and a soap pump acting as a clock for Tokyo. The biggest delight is New York’s timepiece – a lotion bottle with a cap that rotates as an hour hand and a drip of lotion (plastic) that acts as the minute hand. (At Chelsea’s Pace Gallery through April 23rd).
Strong shadows and angular forms in photos of barns and rural architecture shot between the 50s and early 80s by Ellsworth Kelly bear a striking resemblance to the abstract shapes of the artist’s paintings, offering what feels like a peek at the artist’s real-world inspirations. (At Matthew Marks Gallery in Chelsea through April 30th).
Doug Fogelson’s ‘Ceaseless’ series comprises beautiful but damaged nature photos, for which the Chicago-based artist shot traditional landscape photos, which he printed and partially destroyed by applying common industrial chemicals to the surface. Ironically, the results are gorgeous. Here, a verdant forest hovers like an apparition surrounded by peeling layers of emulsion. (At Sasha Wolf Gallery on the Lower East Side through April 16th).
