New York Art Tours Blog

Stephen Shore Photos at 303 Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show June 28, 2024February 11, 2025No Comments

Known for banal yet memorable photos like his 1973 image of a diner table set with pancakes, a glass of milk and a half cantaloupe, Stephen Shore’s images of rural and small-town America are now iconic documents of life in the later 20^th century. Shore’s latest body of work from his ‘Topographies’ series at 303 Gallery has been shot by drone, allowing him to pull away from his subjects and picture interactions between the built environment and nature. In one image, a pipeline crosses a road in upstate New York creating an artful X on the landscape while in other scenes, crossroads dominate sparsely populated communities and single-lane roads stretch on into eternity in developments that represent the imposition of human will on the landscape. Here, Shore juxtaposes majestic mountain views in Montana with a gleaming trailer in the foreground to consider contemporary fantasies of living on the land. (On view in Chelsea through July 3^rd).

Stephen Shore, Brisbin, Montana, July 30, 2020 45 30.659555N, 110 36.520175W, UV curable ink on Dibond aluminum, 24 x 32 inches, 2020 (printed 2024).

Beatriz Morales at Praxis Art

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show June 26, 2024June 26, 2024No Comments

Berlin and Mexico City-based artist Beatriz Morales’s monumental hanging fiber artwork ‘Quimera’ dominates Praxis Art’s Chelsea gallery like a living wall of color and undulating form. The cascading agave fibers that give the artwork such dynamism nod to Mexico’s history with this material prior to the introduction of synthetics and are dyed with natural substances native to the country. Described as ‘3D brushstrokes’ by the gallery, the fiber bunches join abstractions on the jute surface that suggest eyes, ancient wall paintings, maps and more. (On view in Chelsea through July 5^th).

Beatriz Morales, Quimera, agave fiber, natural dyes, ink, acrylic and cotton embroidery on jute, 106 ¼ x 192 7/8 inches, 2024.

Beatriz Morales, (detail of) Quimera, agave fiber, natural dyes, ink, acrylic and cotton embroidery on jute, 106 ¼ x 192 7/8 inches, 2024.

Charles Ray, 8FLU100 at Matthew Marks

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show June 24, 2024February 11, 2025No Comments

Just three sculptures, varying in scale and material, yet all in white-toned materials make up LA-based sculptor Charles Ray’s current show at Matthew Marks Gallery in Chelsea. To the rear of the gallery, a nearly 9-foot-tall woman constructed of handmade paper steps out of her pants. Towards the front of the space, two slightly larger than life-size supine nude male figures made from marble lie dead on a platform while on a nearby pedestal rests a small, crashed car, hand-crafted from hundreds of pieces of paper. Though apparently unrelated, the three sculptures suggest that one could be doing something as ordinary as getting dressed one moment and encounter an accident or even death the next. Titled 8FLU100 after Ray’s own license plate and referring to a crash suffered by the artist, the car is both testament to the fragility of life and statement about art’s role in processing reality. (On view through June 29^th).

Charles Ray, 8FLU100, paper, 7 7/8 x 11 ¾ x 23 ¾ inches, 2024.

Jennie Jieun Lee in ‘Channeling’ at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show June 21, 2024June 19, 2024No Comments

Inspired by visitations from a spiritual entity, late self-taught British artist Madge Gill produced drawings of anonymous female figures surrounded by patterns; selections of her work from the ‘40s and ‘50s ground Nicelle Beauchene Gallery’s vibrant 3-person show in Tribeca. Bright, patterned paintings by Chelsea Culprit and lushly glazed ceramics by Jennie Jieun Lee add color and, in the case of Lee’s sculpted heads, introduce decidedly otherworldly figures with appealingly ambiguous identities. (On view through June 29^th).

Jennie Jieun Lee, Red Face, slipcast porcelain, glaze, stoneware stand, 10 x 8 x 8 inches, stoneware stand 2 x 6 x 6 inches, 2024.

Zheng Lu, Colosseum at Sundaram Tagore Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show June 19, 2024February 12, 2025No Comments

Beijing-based artist Zheng Lu’s signature steel sculptures feature lassoing splashes of water that allude to a person’s changing inner states; Zheng’s new work at Chelsea’s Sundaram Tagore Gallery introduces more abstracted forms inspired by the natural world, including this piece titled ‘Colosseum,’ a stainless-steel whirlpool which visitors can enter. Viewed from the outside, ‘Colosseum’ allows viewers to observe the scale and consequence of the swirling vortex on one who may be inside. In Chinese poetry, water has long pointed to a person’s inner state; here, Zheng suggests dramatic workings of the mind. (On view through July 12^th).

Zheng Lu, Colosseum, stainless steel, 46.46 x 46.46 x 188.92 inches, 2024.

Isca Greenfield-Sanders, Wildflower Hill at Miles McEnery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show June 17, 2024February 14, 2025No Comments

It’s always a perfect day in Isca Greenfield-Sanders’ landscape paintings, now on view at Miles McEnery Gallery in Chelsea. The sky is blue, the road is open and the wildflowers are abundant in scenes of the natural world rendered in soft and pleasing tones. Based on found vintage photographs, each image was originally meant to epitomize the beauty of a landscape and remind the photographer of an ideal moment. (On view through July 3^rd).

Isca Greenfield-Sanders, Wildflower Hill, mixed media oil on canvas, 34 x 34 inches, 2023.

Ronny Quevedo at Alexander Gray Associates

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show June 14, 2024February 9, 2025No Comments

Born in Ecuador and raised in New York, Ronny Quevedo incorporates concepts of movement and migration into subtle yet dynamic abstractions at Alexander Gray Associates in Tribeca. Incorporating McCall’s clothing patterns that act like maps of the body and referring to the checkerboard-like grid of the Aymara flag in pieces like ‘broadway wiphala,’ Quevedo posits the body as register of both cultural continuity and change in diasporic life. Titled ‘quipu (and another one)’ after the Incan tool for record keeping and recording information, the long strips in this piece echo the arrangement of a quipu’s cords while the broken colors allude to the abstract but essential information represented by its knots. (On view through June 15^th.)

Ronny Quevedo, quipu (and another one), pattern paper and screenprint on muslin, 50 x 70 x 2 inches, 2023.

Ronny Quevedo, (detail) quipu (and another one), pattern paper and screenprint on muslin, 50 x 70 x 2 inches, 2023.

Goshka Macuga at Andrew Kreps Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show June 12, 2024June 11, 2024No Comments

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 15^th).

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

Hugh Hayden, Hughmans at Lisson Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show June 10, 2024February 11, 2025No Comments

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 15^th).

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

Marianne Nielsen at HB381

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show June 7, 2024June 4, 2024No Comments

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 15^th).

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

Lucas Arruda Paintings at David Zwirner Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show June 5, 2024February 11, 2025No Comments

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 15^th 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

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show June 3, 2024May 29, 2024No Comments

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 19^th 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 15^th).

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

The Haas Brothers Exhibition at Marianne Boesky

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show May 31, 2024February 11, 2025No Comments

Inspired by tree fungus, coral and other structures in the natural world that build up over time, The Haas Brothers’ bronzes at Chelsea’s Marianne Boesky Gallery are typically quirky in form and attractive in their shiny and patinaed bronze surfaces. Inspired by psychedelic aspects of Stevie Wonder’s 1973 album ‘Innervisions,’ after which the artists titled the show, the works trend towards the hallucinatory. In this piece, tentacle-like forms seem to reach out towards visitors like living extensions of the seed-like form below. On the wall, patterned paintings formed by squeezing bottles of acrylic paint echo the accretion process used to make the bronzes while adding lush color to the exhibition. (On view through June 15^th).

The Haas Bros, Holden Ball-field, patinated cast bronze, marble base, bronze: 34 x 28 x 13 inches, 2024.

Lubaina Himid at Greene Naftali Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show May 29, 2024May 29, 2024No Comments

Water, chickens, talismans and chairs are some of the goods on sale in vibrant and lively paintings of tradesmen and women in Lubaina Himid’s show of new paintings and prints at Greene Naftali Gallery in Chelsea. Accompanying each merchant is a signboard touting the seller’s wares in phenetic spellings that encouraging visitors to sound out each sales slogan. Here, a woman selling baskets leans into a breeze while the world behind her manifests as a sturdy woven framework. Her signboard touts the tight weave of her baskets; on the verso appear the seller’s private thoughts – in this case, an invitation, ‘feel them with your fingertips.’ (On view through June 15^th).

Lubaina Himid, Basket Seller, acrylic on canvas, 96 x 72 inches, 2023.

Lubaina Himid and Magda Stawarska, Baskets Tightly Woven, unique screenprint acrylic paint, and Charbonnel etching ink on Somerset Tub Sized 600 gsm paper (double-sided), 36 5/8 x 29 7/8 inches, 2024.

Lubaina Himid and Magda Stawarska, Baskets Tightly Woven (verso), 2024.

Maurizio Cattelan at Gagosian Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show May 28, 2024May 22, 2024No Comments

“I had become addicted to shooting, like one becomes addicted to a drug,” said artist Niki de Saint Phalle of her ‘Shooting Pictures’ from the ‘60s, for which she fired a shotgun at surfaces prepared with bags of paint. Maurizio Cattelan’s ‘Sunday,’ a 71’ wall of gold-plated steel panels marked with holes and bullets on view at Gagosian Gallery, argues something similar, but with the U.S. as the speaker. Telling the New York Times in a recent interview that “we are completely immersed in violence every day, and we’ve gotten used to it,” Cattelan hired locals at a New York shooting range to create a bullet-riddled gold and steel wall that towers over gallery visitors, confronting us with our own reflections amid the damage. (On view in Chelsea through June 15^th).

Maurizio Cattelan, (detail of) Sunday, 24-karat gold plated steel panel shot with different caliber weapons, 854 x 213.5 x 1.5 inches, 2024.

Yvonne Pacanosky Bobrowicz at Sapar Contemporary

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show May 24, 2024May 22, 2024No Comments

In her 70+ year career, Yvonne Pacanosky Bobrowicz helped pioneer fiber art as fine art, teaching for decades at Drexel University and placing her work in both corporate and public collections. Two years after she passed away at the age of 94, Pacanosky Bobrowicz’s beautiful and complex sculptural work is on view at Sapar Contemporary in Tribeca. Created from knotted monofilament which she mixed with fiber and gold leaf, the artist’s signature ‘cosmic energy fields,’ as she called them, express her fascination with physics and philosophy. (On view through June 1^st).

Yvonne Pacanosky Bobrowicz, Cosmic Series Amber, 16 x 14 x 4 inches, monofilament, 2015.

Diedrick Brackens Weavings at Jack Shainman

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show May 22, 2024February 11, 2025No Comments

LA artist Diedrick Brackens has called his weavings ‘a small healing tribute’ to those who came before him, depicting Black figures in moments of peace but using materials like cotton which have a heavy history in the U.S. His latest solo show, on view at Jack Shainman Gallery’s Chelsea and Tribeca locations, includes the dramatic, ‘if you have ghosts,’ which features a silhouetted figure surrounded by a swirling wind. Reminiscent of Leonardo da Vinci’s perfect proportions expressed by his Vitruvian Man drawing and including Romanesque architecture, the figure appears to step forth from history to command this supernatural event. (On view through May 24^th in Tribeca and June 1^st in Chelsea).

Diedrick Brackens, if you have ghosts, cotton and acrylic yarn, 105 x 105 inches (approx.), 2024.

Teresita Fernandez, Soil Horizon at Lehmann Maupin Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show May 20, 2024February 12, 2025No Comments

From the caves of Cuba’s Vinales Valley to the Aurora Borealis, Teresita Fernandez’s elegant sculpture is inspired by the beauty of nature but questions mankind’s relationship with the land. In ‘Soil Horizon,’ Fernandez’s current solo show at Lehmann Maupin Gallery, the artist titles several works – ‘Bardo,’ ‘Sky/Burial’ – after Buddhist concepts relating to the gap between lives. A 24’ long concrete arch hints at a burial mound while thousands of ceramic cubes installed on the wall speak to a body’s dispersal after death. A third piece in tiny ceramic tile suggests weather systems or other dynamic forces that create larger or small-scale impact on humans and the planet. (On view through June 1^st).

Teresita Fernandez, installation view of ‘Soil Horizon’ at Lehmann Maupin Gallery, May 2024.

Ernie Barnes at Ortuzar Projects

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show May 17, 2024May 14, 2024No Comments

Ernie Barnes’ ‘Room Ful’A Sistahs’ at Ortuzar Projects is a painting conveying a moment of joy, a highlight of the artist’s current solo exhibition featuring work from 1966 to 2000. After a brief career in pro-football, the artist served as the AFL’s official artist and artist of the ’84 Olympic Games while creating iconic artworks like ‘Sugar Shack,’ which appeared as an album cover for Marvin Gaye’s ‘I Want You.’ Sports, dance, church and everyday life provide subject matter for dynamic paintings populated by lithe figures that move through the world with grace and beauty. (On view in Tribeca through June 15^th).

Ernie Barnes, Room Ful’A Sistahs, acrylic on canvas, 25 7/8 x 37 ¾ inches, acrylic on canvas, 1994.

Kimsooja at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show May 15, 2024May 14, 2024No Comments

Titled ‘Meta-Painting,’ Korean artist Kimsooja’s exhibition at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery questions the essence of painting via an installation of unpainted panels and a light-absorbing black orb. In one of the gallery’s main spaces, raw linen on stretchers hang from the ceiling while the artist’s signature bottari (a cloth bundle referencing the act of packing one’s belongings in bedclothing) rest nearby. Kimsooja speaks of both panels and bundles as paintings, though they were not made with paint, much as Deductive Object – a welded steel oblong covered in paint that absorbs ambient light – has presence in its own gallery yet has boundaries that are difficult to perceive. Linked to the Brahmanda stone of Indian origin, this mysterious object hints at profound mysteries of life. (On view through June 14^th).

Kimsooja, Deductive Object, painted welded steel, mirror, wood, 72 x 43 ¼ x 43 ¼ inches, 2016.

Lucas Arruda at David Zwirner Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show May 13, 2024May 7, 2024No Comments

Lucas Arruda’s meditative paintings at David Zwirner Gallery fall into the rough categories of seascapes, jungle landscapes and monochromes with hovering rectangles of color. Though ostensibly representational, landscapes like this untitled painting from the artist’s ongoing Deserto-Modelo series feature fields of hazy form that can bring to mind clouds, mist, fog, or other atmospheric conditions. This canvas reverses the color arrangement in several of the show’s other paintings, positioning light colors toward the bottom of the composition, as if we’re glimpsing bright skies ahead whilst still under the dark of night or storm. Peaceful and contemplative, Arruda’s paintings are a tonic for over-stimulated eyes. (On view through June 15^th).

Lucy Puls, Equulus Duo at Nicelle Beauchene

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show May 10, 2024February 14, 2025No Comments

The Latin words ‘Equulus Duo’ (two horses, in English) might bring an exalted equestrian sculpture to mind, while the designation ‘two horseys’ shrinks the words down to the speech of a small child. Both phrases are included in the title of Lucy Puls’ ‘Equulus Duo (Two Horseys),’ a sculpture of two ‘My Little Pony’ toys encased in resin and now on view in Tribeca in Puls’ mini retrospective at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery. Sculpture from Puls’ ‘In Resin’ series elaborates on the passage of time and the vicissitudes of consumer culture by presenting once sought after consumer items – a mid 80s Mackintosh 512, a stack of vinyl singles – preserved as if in amber. (On view in Tribeca through May 18^th).

Lucy Puls, Equulus Duo (Two Horseys), resin, steel, toy horses, 6 ½h x 12w x 5d inches, 1993.

Claude and Francoise-Xavier Lalanne at Kasmin Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show May 8, 2024May 7, 2024No Comments

There’s just one more day to see Kasmin Gallery’s presentation of selected works by the late French husband/wife sculptors Claude and Francoise-Xavier Lalanne, known as Les Lalanne, whose unique, surreal vision of the natural world continues to resonate. At nearly 10’ long, this huge, mysterious animal with a cat’s head, fish’s tail, cow’s lower body and bird wings serves not just as a creative response to hybrid creatures in classical literature (Lalanne worked as a guard in the Egyptian and Assyrian galleries of the Louvre for a short while), but is opened to serve as a bar cart. Initially conceived of for a private commission by a French architect and now on view as part of the Lalanne’s eldest daughter’s collection, the piece prompted Francois-Xavier Lalanne to remark that the cat was living all nine of its lives at once. (On view through May 9^th in Chelsea).

Francois-Xavier Lalanne, Grand Chat polymorphe, brass, bronze with stainless steel pin, 72 ¼ x 117 x 25 inches, 1998/2008.

Nora Correas at Institute for Studies on Latin American Art

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show May 6, 2024February 14, 2025No Comments

Titled after a line in a poem by exiled Chilean artist Cecilia Vicuna about how threads (textiles) connected her to her homeland, ‘Threads to the South’ at the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art considers how fiber-based art has alluded to customs from grape harvests to quipus. Here, Nora Correas’s 1981 undulating virgin wool floor sculpture ‘En carne viva (In the Raw)’ is abstract but evokes living forms; complex textures suggest earth or clay while shapes formed from horizontal lines resemble cocoons. Created as a response to Argentina’s military dictatorship, the piece and Correas’ other fiber-based work from the time is an expression of grief, ‘a scream’ explains the artist in a text alongside the work. (On view in Tribeca through July 27^th).

Nora Correas, En carne viva (In the Raw), virgin wool, 1981.

Beau Dick at Andrew Kreps Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show May 3, 2024May 1, 2024No Comments

Late hereditary chief and Kwakwaka’wakw master woodcarver Beau Dick’s current solo show at Andrew Kreps Gallery features carved wooden masks intended to be used in ceremonies as symbols of the spirit world. Made between 1979 and 2015, the carvings reinvent traditional supernatural figures such as ‘Crooked Beak,’ seen here. Made for a ceremony revoking the cannibal spirit and reinforcing correct behavior in an initiate, the mask also exists now to allow an appreciation of Kwakwaka’wakw spiritual practice. (On view through May 11^th).

Beau Dick, Kwakwaka’wakw, Musgamakw Dzawada’enuxw First Nation Crooked Beak, red cedar, cedar bark, acrylic, 12 x 8 x 34 inches, 1994.

Lumin Wakoa at Harper’s Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show May 1, 2024May 1, 2024No Comments

Once small-scale and resolutely abstract, New York painter Lumin Wakoa’s latest paintings at Harper’s Gallery have grown explosively in size and dynamic allusion to the natural world. Branching forms appear in many works, supporting abundant blossoms or snaking between zones of color that suggest the blinding sun, bright flowers or cool, blue oases. Here, intense yellow and orange flowers dematerialize into a mass of pleasurable tones while the work’s title, ‘Briefly Brilliant,’ suggests that there is a time limit on this glorious display. (On view in Chelsea through May 5^th).

Lumin Wakoa, Briefly Brilliant, oil on linen, 82 x 70 inches, 2023.

Milano Chow at Chapter NY

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show April 29, 2024April 23, 2024No Comments

In the mid to late 19^th century, property developers in Tribeca could style their buildings by selecting decorative elements from catalogues of cast-iron components. Contemporary artist Milano Chow’s drawings of fictional building facades – made precise with the aid of a drafting tool – at Tribeca’s Chapter NY recall such foundry publications as well as architectural elevations, dollhouses, and images from art and architecture history books. In contrast to practical illustrations, however, Chow adds intriguing details – partly drawn curtains, figures peeping out from windows and dramatically lit shop windows – to each scene. Here, a figure standing recessed in a dramatically columned house exudes mystery, as if appearing in the opening scene of a detective story. (On view in Tribeca through May 4^th).

Milano Chow, Entrance with Statues, graphite, ink and photo transfer on paper, 15 5/8 x 10 ½ inches, 2024.

Milano Chow, (detail) Entrance with Statues, graphite, ink and photo transfer on paper, 15 5/8 x 10 ½ inches, 2024.

Philip Guston at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show April 26, 2024April 23, 2024No Comments

In the late 60s, abstract artist Philip Guston stopped painting, then restarted his practice by building a new, figurative artistic vocabulary. The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s newly installed mezzanine gallery features solitary painted objects – a lightbulb, a shoe – on small canvases that demonstrate how the artist weighed up the meaning and import of everyday objects that he would later repeat. This untitled painting shows a partial view of the artist himself, apparently painted over and covering another image. Wide-eyed and looking straight at the viewer, Guston is only partially visible, but his wary stare speaks volumes about his desire to communicate. (On view on the Upper East Side in the Met’s ‘Philip Guston: The Panel Paintings, 1968-72 which includes work from Musa Guston Mayer’s promised gift.)

Philip Guston, Untitled, acrylic on panel, 1968.

Barbara Takenaga, Red Turnout at DC Moore Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show April 24, 2024February 12, 2025No Comments

Abstract painter Barbara Takenaga stakes out new territory in recent works at DC Moore Gallery in Chelsea, introducing compositions dominated by curvy organic shapes (recalling bodies by Gladys Nilsson) and bordered by bright red contour lines. The 12 foot long ‘Two for Bontecou’ features a fragmented circular object with a void at center a la sculptor Lee Bontecou, and appears to combine deliberately rendered forms with Takenaga’s signature change-driven mark-making. Here, in ‘Red Turnout,’ a multi-colored form snakes up from below while a signature explosion of white marks covers the canvas, contributing to this painting’s dynamic impact. (On view through April 27^th in Chelsea).

Barbara Takenaga, Red Turnout, acrylic on linen, 70 x 60 inches, 2024.

Cal Lane at C24 Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show April 22, 2024April 17, 2024No Comments

Cal Lane’s steel sculptures of lacy underwear – incongruous in their industrial material vs subject matter – are real attention grabbers but take a back seat to altered found materials in the artist’s mini-retrospective at C24 Gallery in Chelsea. Though they appear light and whimsical, these shovels from 2016 recall steel sculptural panels commissioned by the MTA for Knickerbocker Ave station which were inspired by the area’s architecture. The wheelbarrow is one of the show’s best pieces for pushing the material, achieving a surprising delicacy via intricate patterning. (On view through May 10^th).

Cal Lane, Untitled (Wheel Barrow), plasma cut wheel barrow, 55.5 x 25.5 x 6 inches, 2007 and 3 x Untitled (Shovel), plasma cut steel and wood, 2016.

Sarah Crowner at Luhring Augustine Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show April 19, 2024April 17, 2024No Comments

Barbara Hepworth’s pierced organic abstractions, Henry Moore’s curvilinear reclining figures and the undulating forms of Chinese scholar stones come to mind when viewing Sarah Crowner’s attractive new bronze sculptures at Luhring Augustine Gallery’s Tribeca space. Reflecting Crowner’s vibrant paintings, which have fittingly vivid titles like ‘Red Oranges Over Orange with Curve,’ or ‘Violets Over Reds,’ the sculptures are enhanced by and enhance their environment. (On view through May 4^th).

Sarah Crowner, installation view of ‘Hot Light, Hard Light,’ at Luhring Augustine Gallery, Tribeca, March 2024.

Ian Mwesiga at FLAG Art Foundation

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show April 17, 2024April 17, 2024No Comments

Forest mist and a pool’s smooth surface mirror each other in color and tranquility in Ian Mwesiga’s intriguing painting ‘Man and His Shadow’ at the FLAG Art Foundation, but the scene isn’t as peaceful as it first appears. The work is a standout in the Kampala-based artist’s first New York solo show and one of several that feature pools of water as troubled places. In one painting, a woman glides underwater while a friend acts as lookout under a ‘no swimming’ sign; in another piece, a corporate logo dominates the scene. Here, the water looks least inviting for a dip, as fallen leaves indicate a change of season that might bring a chill to the air. Standing between two cracked columns that suggest ruins and leaning on a more solid-looking, modern wall, a young man in swim trunks peels off a sock. Apparently the sole agent who can decide how this scenario moves forward, viewers look to him, anticipating what will happen next. (On view in Chelsea through May 4^th).

Ian Mwesiga, Man and His Shadow, oil on canvas, 70 7/8 x 59 inches, 2023.

Mary Carlson at Kerry Schuss Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show April 15, 2024April 10, 2024No Comments

Modeled after El Greco’s ‘The Penitent Mary Magdalene,’ Mary Carlson’s small-scale sculpture of one of Christ’s most devoted followers is both delicate in her tiny features and monumental in her seated, robed body. Now on view at Kerry Schuss Gallery, displayed on wall-mounted wooden shelves amid scrolling copper piping, Carlson’s new sculptures evoke the figures and decorative designs on the pages of medieval manuscripts. Characterized by world-weariness vs El Greco’s doe-eyed young woman, Carlson’s saint is pictured in the process of receiving a revelation and puts a hand to her bare chest. Less erotic than El Greco’s version, Carlson’s Mary is a substantial woman engaged with the life of the mind and spirit. (On view in Tribeca through April 27^th).

Mary Carlson, Mary Magdalene (after El Greco), glazed porcelain, wood, copper, 29 x 36 x 8.75 inches, 2024.

Dabin Ahn at 1969 Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show April 12, 2024April 10, 2024No Comments

Inspired by traditional Korean ceramics, Chicago-based artist Dabin Ahn’s new paintings at 1969 Gallery combine art historical references with a feeling of wonder and whimsy. Painted like an apparition, the top section of this vessel hovers in lighter tones above the more solid-looking segment below. Perhaps once part of the decoration, the birds’ white wings continue the contour of the vase while they appear to cavort in mid-air. Materializing as if from memory or history, the vase may be broken, but its magical quality remains. (On view in Tribeca through April 20^th).

Dabin Ahn, Phantom, 18h x 17w inches, oil on linen, 2024.

Maria Calandra at Fredericks & Freiser Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show April 10, 2024April 10, 2024No Comments

Red-orange skies appear to be ablaze in Maria Calandra’s landscape painting of Weir Island in Maine while her blue skies over Como, Italy are a tranquil color but feature roiling clouds. Apocalyptic in their color and Mannerist in their elongated forms, Calandra’s paintings at Fredericks & Freiser Gallery are hallucinogenic visions that offer visual pleasure via their dynamic fluidity. Here, Mont Sainte-Victoire, made famous by Paul Cezanne’s many images of the mountain near Aix-en-Provence, rises above a field of flowers and greenery that appears to be flowing up the mountain. (On view in Chelsea through April 13^th.)

Maria Calandra, Mont Sainte-Victoire, acrylic on linen, 2023.

Oliver Beer at Almine Rech Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show April 8, 2024April 3, 2024No Comments

Inspired by 17^th century German scholar Athanasius Kircher’s cat organ, which elicited sounds made by cats, British artist Oliver Beer created ‘Cat Orchestra,’ a musical instrument crafted from 37 found objects in the form of hollow cat vessels. Now on view at Almine Rech Gallery’s Tribeca space, the piece’s sound is activated by a keyboard that turns on microphones in each vessel to produce resonances that together form an ethereal musical performance. Motivated to find music where it’s least expected, Beer awakens viewers to possibilities everywhere. (On view through April 27^th).

Oliver Beer, installation view of Cat Orchestra, 37 hollow cat vessels and sculptures, plinths, microphones, speakers, audio equipment, dimensions variable, 2024.

Francesca Woodman at Gagosian Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show April 5, 2024April 3, 2024No Comments

Known for small-scale black and white photographs that focus on her own body in rooms that look uninhabited and neglected, Francesca Woodman has influenced generations of photographers attracted by the ethereal and enigmatic quality of her work and its psychological charge. In a show of the artist’s photographs from 1975 – 1980 at Gagosian Gallery’s 24^th Street Chelsea location, the gallery walls are lined with intimate images, interrupted by the monumental ‘Blueprint for a Temple (II),’ featuring contemporary women as caryatids on an ancient Greek temple. Notes and additional shots of the Greek key pattern in New York rental apartment bathrooms are positioned around the edge of the partial temple, connecting an ancient sacred space with the modern bathroom, two places Woodman identified as, ‘offering a note of calm and peacefulness.’ (On view through April 27^th).

Francesca Woodman, installation view including Blueprint for a Temple (II), 1980. March 2024.

Kaloki Nyamai at James Cohan Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show April 3, 2024April 3, 2024No Comments

Nairobi-based artist Kaloki Nyamai’s New York solo debut at James Cohan Gallery introduces an artist who uses acrylic paint, stitching and photo transfer to create complex surfaces that suggest complicated histories. This painting’s title, ‘The one who stole my heart,’ features a figure leaning back into a man whose outward-looking eyes connect with our gaze. In contrast to the couple’s intimate, relaxed moment, partially visible figures in the background raise their arms in what could be celebration or protest. Elsewhere, photo transfers contrast happy moments of communal activity with news articles about political unrest as Nyamai juxtaposes the lives of individuals with larger social happenings. (On view through May 4^th).

Kaloki Nyamai, Ula wosiee ngoo yakwa II (The one who stole my heart), mixed media, acrylic, collage stitching on canvas, 2024.

Kaloki Nyamai, (detail) Ula wosiee ngoo yakwa II (The one who stole my heart), mixed media, acrylic, collage stitching on canvas, 2024.

Zaria Forman at Winston Wachter

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show April 2, 2024March 25, 2024No Comments

Zaria Forman’s monumental polar landscapes, rendered in intricate detail in pastel, have afforded her national recognition and the chance to work with NASA as an artist. In her latest solo show at Winston Wachter Gallery in Chelsea, Forman continues to capture the beauty of ice in renderings of an Icelandic glacial lagoon. Fragments of ice washed ashore and resting on black volcanic sand look like jewels, while bubbles trapped in ice form a dynamic, abstract composition. Forman’s focus is on the specifics of landscape vs the climate changes impacting it, and her work offers a moment to appreciate the sublime as it presently exists. (On view in Chelsea through March 30^th in SoHo).

Zaria Forman, Fellsfjara, Iceland, No. 5, April 22nd, 2022, soft pastel on paper, 40 x 51 1/8 inches, 2023.

Zaria Forman, (detail) Fellsfjara, Iceland, No. 5, April 22nd, 2022, soft pastel on paper, 40 x 51 1/8 inches, 2023.

Vik Muniz, American Bison at Sikkema Jenkins

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show March 29, 2024February 11, 2025No Comments

Known for constructing replica of famous artworks from unlikely materials (a well-known image of Jackson Pollock rendered in drizzled chocolate, junk from a landfill arranged to resemble a Picasso painting), Vik Muniz’s latest exhibition at Chelsea’s Sikkema Jenkins & Co includes new images of American icons constructed from shredded US currency. Sourced from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the bills are arranged to picture individuals including Harriet Tubman (whose image is scheduled to appear on the $20 bill staring in 2030) and the Lakota chief American Horse as well as images seen as representing the country, like the American eagle and this bison. Once symbolic of the vast and fertile North American landscape, informed contemporary viewers might now see bison as victims of mass slaughter by European settlers. (On view in Chelsea through April 27^th).

Vik Muniz, American Bison, after John James Audubon, Legal Tender, archival inkjet print, 40 x 49 ½ , 2024.

Vik Muniz, (detail) American Bison, after John James Audubon, Legal Tender, archival inkjet print, 40 x 49 ½ , 2024.

Emilija Skarnulyte at Canal Projects

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show March 27, 2024March 25, 2024No Comments

Lithuanian artist Emilija Skarnulyte pictures herself swimming between the cold, concrete-colored waters of Brazil’s Rio Solimoes and the warmer darkness of the rainforest fed Rio Negro in an absorbingly fantastical video on view at Canal Projects in SoHo/Tribeca through Saturday. Wearing a mermaid costume and navigating these two water bodies as they meet but before their distinctive colors, temperatures and chemical makeup merge into the Amazon River, Sharknulyte introduces many viewers to a phenomenon so strange (the waters go for 6km before finally mixing) as to seem unreal. As the artist swims, pink Amazon River dolphins playfully come near, an interaction which adds to the disbelief and amazement, allowing viewers to appreciate a wonderous ecosystem. In an unfortunate coda, climate change and fires in the Amazon caused this waterway to dry up after filming, killing many of the area’s famous dolphins. (On view through March 30^th).

Emilija Skarnulyte, detail of Aequalia at Canal Projects, March 2024.

Emilija Skarnulyte, installation view of Aequalia at Canal Projects, March 2024.

Frank Stella at Deitch Projects

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show March 25, 2024March 19, 2024No Comments

Five works by octogenarian painter and sculptor Frank Stella fill Jeffrey Deitch’s large SoHo space with looping, colorful segments of fiberglass and aluminum, their scale dominating and delighting visitors in equal measure. The work here, ‘K.144 Large Version’ is part of a series titled after a musicologist who catalogued 18^th century Italian composer Domenico Scarlatti’s sonatas. To create his complex and vibrant sculpture, Stella starts with computer models which are 3-D printed, developed, constructed by fabricators in the Netherlands and Belgium and finally finished back in the artist’s Hudson Valley studio. Trucked down to SoHo on double-wide flatbed trucks, the final products make their presence felt. (On view through April 20^th).

Frank Stella, K.144 Large Version, fiberglass on foam core, 197 x 208 x 150 inches, 2014.

Marie Watt at Print Center New York

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show March 22, 2024March 19, 2024No Comments

This tower of blankets embodies the memories of individuals, responding to an open call, who donated them to artist Marie Watt during the pandemic. Now a highlight of Watt’s retrospective, ‘Storywork: The Prints of Marie Watt’ at Print Center New York, the stack is reminiscent of mid-century minimalism but favors warm materials and personal associations over cold, fabricated components. Watt’s stacks are sometimes accompanied by metal I-beams that reference her fellow Seneca citizens’ work in New York’s steel industry, while her use of textiles refer to Native American practice of gifting blankets at important life events. Watt’s other signature forms (ladders and looping dream catchers) and nods to cultural figures like Marvin Gaye and Jasper Johns broader her own story, celebrating cultural interconnectedness.

Marie Watt, Blanket Stories: Great Grandmother, Pandemic, Daybreak, reclaimed blankets and cedar, 2021.

Thomas Woodruff at Vito Schnabel Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show March 20, 2024March 19, 2024No Comments

As the magnolia start to bloom in New York this week, Thomas Woodruff’s painting of dinosaurs as the Three Graces from Botticelli’s Primavera seems perfectly timed for the season. One of several paintings in Woodruff’s solo show at Vito Schnabel Gallery that feature dinosaurs, the creatures enjoy their Edenic surroundings apparently unaware of their impending destruction. Exploding volcanos and incoming meteorites appear in most of the show’s works, announcing an extinction event designed to excite fears about our own fate as the climate changes. Coming a few years after Woodruff’s retirement from his long-term teaching career at the School of the Visual Arts, the artist explains that his subject matter also alludes to his own aging and suggests that he intends to go out with a bang. (On view through March 30^th).

Thomas Woodruff, The Three Graces, acrylic on canvas, 96 x 78 inches, 2022.

Sarah Ball at Stephen Friedman Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show March 18, 2024March 11, 2024No Comments

At over eight feet high, British artist Sarah Ball’s portrait of Elliot has stunning presence in Stephen Friedman Gallery’s Tribeca space. Drawn to young individuals whose self-fashioning demonstrates their creativity and defies gender norms, Ball meticulously renders details of face, hair and dress in an appreciation of each subject’s unique identity. (On view in Tribeca through March 23^rd).

Sarah Ball, Elliot, oil on linen, 100 3/8 x 80 7/8 inches, 2023.

Silas Borsos at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show March 15, 2024March 11, 2024No Comments

‘Green Orchestra’ positions an apple, pear, watermelon and limes like a chorus line, while a mountainous pile of blueberries rises up behind four plums and half an apple in Silas Borsos’ paintings at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery. Featuring delightfully idiosyncratic arrangements of fruit that suggest table-top performances, Borsos’ paintings depart from traditional histories of still life in fanciful ways. Here, ‘Orange Peel Pyramid’ presents a sole segment of orange leftover from an orgy of peeling, alongside five blueberries nestled as delicately as robin eggs in discarded pulp. (On view in Tribeca through April 6^th).

Silas Borsos, Orange Peel Pyramid, oil on linen, 11h x 14w inches, 2024.

Vija Celmins, Snowfall at Matthew Marks

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show March 13, 2024February 11, 2025No Comments

Titled ‘Winter,’ Viya Celmins first New York solo show in six years at Matthew Marks Gallery sees out the season with paintings featuring snow against dark backgrounds. Those familiar with the artist’s signature subject matter may identify the work as a night sky painting for which she is renowned, but what look like stars are in fact flakes of snow. Celmins has explained in an interview that she aims to wrestle something vast down into the space of the canvas, fixing it there. The new snow-related paintings suggest she’s taken the universe and transposed it into something positioned right before our eyes. In a further twist, the piece’s title, ‘Snowfall(coat)’ reveals that the snow is not actually seen in front of the darkness of night but has been pictured instead on a black coat. (On view in Chelsea through April 6^th).

Vija Celmins, Snowfall (coat), oil on canvas, 19 5/8 x 13 1/8 inches, 2021 – 23.

Raymond Saunders at Andrew Kreps Gallery and David Zwirner Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show March 11, 2024March 6, 2024No Comments

Thought-provoking and pleasurable as it was, Andrew Kreps Gallery’s 2022 exhibition of iconic west coast painter Raymond Saunders’ work turns out to have been just a taster for the artist’s tour de force three-gallery show now on view at Kreps and David Zwirner Gallery, curated by Ebony L. Haynes. Known for poetic compilations of text, signage, drawing, and materials from everyday life, Saunders’ paintings – mostly from the 80s and 90s – show him making layered allusions to the act of art making. In this untitled piece from the mid ‘90s, faint drips, frost-like paint marks and a huge white brushstroke bring to mind an artist’s stylistic options. A monumental fruit at center seems to nod to still life tradition while a page from a text on how to build a flat human figure drawing model, positioned near a text giving instruction on how to play a game, slyly suggests a calculation of artistic success. (On view through April 5th/6th).

Raymond Saunders, Untitled, acrylic, spray paint, chalk, collage, and mixed media on canvas, 23 ¼ x 20 5/8 inches, 1995.

Mernet Larsen, The Bathers at James Cohan Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show March 8, 2024February 11, 2025Comments are Disabled

Fascinated for decades by Post-Impressionist artist Paul Cezanne, painter Mernet Larsen applies her own delightfully eccentric perspectival distortions to her French forebear’s iconic imagery in new work at James Cohan Gallery. Larsen diversifies the cast of characters in ‘The Bathers (after Cezanne)’ adding bikinis to figures more robotic than robust and emphasizing artificiality in the human figures that replace Cezanne’s stabilizing triangle of trees in the original. A diving figure heading into flat waves akin to the slats in Japanese Bunraku puppet theater (which allow figures to move through water) and a woman to the left literally holding up the top of the painting add dynamism and complexity. By alluding to Cezanne but shifting away from his focus and results, Larsen emphasizes the choices behind a painting’s design and nods to the many iconic painters who have moved beyond inspiration to find their own unique results. (On view in Tribeca through March 16^th).

Mernet Larsen, The Bathers (after Cezanne), acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 59 ¼ x 39 ½ inches, 2023.

Gerald Lovell, Portals (Cala Deia) at PPOW

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show March 6, 2024February 11, 2025Comments are Disabled

Tourist photos of Cala Deia in Mallorca tend to focus on the picturesque geometries of limestone houses rising on the island’s hills. New York-based painter Gerald Lovell’s on-the-ground version of the age-old village at PPOW Gallery instead ushers viewers up a hilly street. Embraced between a rocky outcrop on the right and the warm tan colors of the buildings on the left, greenery on one side and characteristic green shutters on the other, a pedestrian might feel the upward pull of the narrow lane toward more discoveries. Lovell’s current solo show features paintings of his friends as well as his recent travels and, he explains, celebrates the life he is getting to live. (On view in Tribeca through March 9^th).

Gerald Lovell, Portals (Cala Deia), oil on pastel, 60 x 48 inches, 2024.

Tuli Mekondjo at Hales Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show March 4, 2024February 27, 2024Comments are Disabled

Displaced as a child from her native Namibia, Windhoek-based artist Tuli Mekondjo considers her country’s past in textile and photo-based work now on view at Hales Gallery in Chelsea. This piece’s title, ‘Khaxatsus (Gibeon), 1863,’ refers to the original and the colonial names for the hometown of IKhowesin chief Hendrik Witbooi, who is recognized for his military action against German colonizers in the late 19^th – early 20^thcentury. Posing in a photograph with his family and surrounded in a frame of lace at the center of this textile piece, Witbooi is pictured as family man as much as national hero. (On view through March 9^th).

Tuli Mekondjo, ‘Khaxatsus (Gibeon), 1863,’ image transfer, silk, linen, sheer fabric, cotton yarn, lace, tracing paper, soil, plants, and rusted enamel cup, 67 ½ x 50 x 2 inches, 2024.

Maureen Gallace at Gladstone Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show March 1, 2024February 27, 2024Comments are Disabled

Maureen Gallace’s signature small-sized oil paintings, now on view at Gladstone Gallery, are a welcome reprieve from February in New York, her renditions of bright yellow roadside flowers, the sun rising over Long Island Sound and crashing ocean waves promising that winter will eventually end. Recent life changes find her living in a house by the beach in Connecticut where she takes account of her surroundings in paintings that isolate pleasurable impressions. (On view through March 9^th).

Maureen Gallace, Late August, oil on panel, 9 x 12 inches, 2023.

Thomas Hirschhorn at Gladstone Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show February 28, 2024February 27, 2024Comments are Disabled

Known for gallery-filling installations made of cardboard and packing tape, Paris-based artist Thomas Hirschhorn marshals these materials to transform Gladstone Gallery’s 21^st Street location into a room resembling a destroyed command center or gaming parlor. Titled ‘Fake it, Fake it – till you Fake it’ the gallery’s huge space houses rows of desks littered with cigarettes and coffee cups cut roughly from polystyrene and cardboard computers (some with smashed screens) featuring war-destroyed buildings from both real places and video games. Hanging from lengths of packing tape, images of soldiers taken from video games populate the room’s aisles, their faces covered by emojis, which also hang like mobiles from the gallery ceiling. Hirschhorn’s deliberately low-tech materials contrast the realistic imagery from the video game (seen in this photo on one screen) and disturbingly blur the line between real and fake. (On view in Chelsea through March 2^nd).

Thomas Hirschhorn, installation view of ‘Fake it, Fake it – till you Fake it,’ cardboard, prints, tape, polystyrene, aluminum foil, dimensions variable, 2023.

Jennifer Guidi, Let the Light Fall Gently at Gagosian

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show February 26, 2024February 12, 2025Comments are Disabled

Jennifer Guidi wants to share ‘calm and joy’ in her vibrant landscapes and abstractions, she says of paintings now on view at Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea. Based on views of the hills in LA and in southern France where the artist recently exhibited at the Richard Rogers Drawing Gallery, Guidi uses her signature materials of sand on canvas to depict pleasingly smooth geological forms as a counter to explosive activity in the skies. Starburst patterns appear in both representational and abstract canvases, spreading color and energy over the landscapes like a shower of beneficence. (On view through March 2^nd).

Jennifer Guidi, Let the Light Fall Gently, sand, acrylic, oil and rocks on linen, 60 x 48 x 1.5 inches, 2023.

Richard Mosse, Broken Spectre at Jack Shainman

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show February 23, 2024February 11, 2025Comments are Disabled

Even in the dark, Jack Shainman Gallery’s new Tribeca space looks stunning, its vast hall accommodating Richard Mosse’s film ‘Broken Spectre, an extraordinary warning-cry against ongoing environmental devastation in the Amazon. Shown on a 60’ wide screen and toggling between ariel views of the landscape, on-the-ground footage of people involved in rainforest clearing, mining and agri-business, and microscopic views of minute ecosystems on the forest floor, Mosse catalogues the destruction using technology – multi-spectral video, infrared film and UV microscopy – that provides unique views of the environment. Alarming and beautiful, Mosse’s film is the culmination of two years of work in the Amazon and, along with Ben Frost’s powerful soundtrack, is a persuasive argument for action. (On view in Tribeca through March 16^th).

Richard Mosse, installation of Broken Spectre at Jack Shainman Gallery, 2024.

Apollinaria Broche at Marianne Boesky Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show February 21, 2024February 20, 2024Comments are Disabled

To a soundtrack featuring readings from Charles Baudelaire’s ‘Flowers of Evil,’ Apollinaria Broche’s ceramic and bronze flowers strike gangly poses in her solo show at Marianne Boesky Gallery, exuding both wonky charm and maleficence. Like an insect to nectar, viewers are drawn into the center of colorful ceramic flowers that feature tiny bronze sculptures – a winged horse, a contented-looking cat – of cavorting magical creatures. More ominous figures – snakes, flies – appear as well, suggesting that the flowers inhabit a garden less welcoming than it first appears. In this detail image of ‘I hid my tracks Spit out all my hair,’ skulls and daggers mingle with the seeds of this lush blossoming plant, summoning a specter of death and violence where it might least be expected. (On view in Chelsea through Feb 24^th.)

Apollinaria Broche, (detail) I hid my tracks Spit out all my air, glazed ceramic, bronze, 63 x 21 x 18 inches, 2023.

Constanza Schaffner at Luhring Augustine Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show February 19, 2024February 15, 2024Comments are Disabled

Constanza Schaffner goes eye to eye with a friendly lion, laughs with abandon and basks in the light in new, fantastical self-portraits at Luhring Augustine Gallery’s Tribeca space. Here, the shadow of a large flower falling over Schaffner’s face adds complexity to her appearance while the light from another planetary orb illuminates from behind. Alongside her, her hair transforms into swirling glyphs and her uncovered shoulders come alive in a multi-color pattern of yellow, peach and blue tones that take her far from traditional portraiture into a place of inventive freedom. (On view through March 2^nd ).

Constanza Schaffner, Un canto que atravieso, oil on linen, 90 x 70 inches, 2023.

Madeline Hollander at Bortolami Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show February 16, 2024February 15, 2024Comments are Disabled

Initially trained as a ballet dancer, Madeline Hollander incorporates movement into her artistic practice in surprising and delightful ways. Her current solo show at Bortolami Gallery in Tribeca titled ‘Entanglement Choreography’ presents a grid of six mirrored pods on round pedestals which at first glance belie the magic of peering inside. Each sculpture houses a tiny rotating dancing figure, abstracted like a Matisse nude, which at a certain angle appears to both float above the pod and be contained within it. Nodding in the title to the notion in physics of quantum entanglement, when two separate particles demonstrate a connection with each other as if moving as if in a dance, Hollander’s partners manifest what Einstein called ‘spooky action at a distance.’ (On view in Tribeca through March 2^nd).

Madeline Hollander, Entanglement Choreography VI (figs. 6, 12, 18, 24), 24 x 24 x 32 ½ inches, 2023.

Luciana Pinchiero at Praxis Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show February 14, 2024February 14, 2024Comments are Disabled

The striking figures of three life-sized Greek goddesses, accompanied by the silhouettes of three women adopting positions from a how-to book about drawing the nude figure pose dramatically at the center of Luciana Pinchiero’s first NY solo at Praxis Gallery in Chelsea. Crafted from flat pieces of material, these classic and current representations of women literally lack dimensionality. Inspired by ancient stories of idealized women from Pygmalion’s sculpture-turned-live-woman to the Venus de Capua who poses as if holding up a mirror, Pinchiero’s sculpture and her paper collages juxtapose imagery from different eras to question how much representation of women has actually changed over time. (On view in Chelsea through March 9^th).

Luciana Pinchiero, installation view of Bad Posture at Praxis International Art, Jan ’24.

Glenn Kaino, Michael at Pace Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show February 12, 2024February 12, 2025Comments are Disabled

Known for working in media including performance, film and theater, LA artist Glenn Kaino turns to portrait painting, small-scale sculpture of adapted samurai helmets and Japanese punch embroidery for his first major solo show at Pace Gallery. Fresh on the heels of a soon-to-close exhibition at the Japanese American National Museum in LA for which he recreated his grandfather’s small East LA market, Kaino continues to probe his heritage as a Japanese American. The show’s portraits aim to keep a record of community in the form of paintings of Kaino’s friends, musicians and people he meets. (On view in Chelsea through Feb 24^th).

Glenn Kaino, Michael, oil on canvas, 61 x 49 x 3 inches, 2023.

Carey Young at Paula Cooper Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show February 9, 2024February 6, 2024Comments are Disabled

Google Her Honour Judge Barbara Mensah, the first Circuit Judge of African origin in England and Wales when appointed in ’05, and animated pictures will pop up of her speaking at a podium or posing in her robes and white judges’ wig. In front of Carey Young’s camera, however, Judge Mensah sits almost motionless, making steady eye contact with us, a larger-than-life presence who seems to be waiting for us to speak. She is one of fifteen female judges from the UK who are featured in the video ‘Appearance,’ now on view at Paula Cooper Gallery in Chelsea, a title which doesn’t just refer to a court appearance but to the appearance of the judges who sit on the bench and embody the law. Closeups of jewelry, hair and shoes highlight the individuality of each judge. By celebrating ‘women in control of justice,’ as she puts it, Young points to the diversity she sees in the current legal system and her hopes for the future. (On view through Feb 17^th).

Carey Young, still from Appearance, single-channel HD video (from 4K); 16:9 format, color, silent, duration: 49 min, 30 sec, 2023.

Lindsay Adams in ‘Arcadia and Elsewhere’ at James Cohan Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show February 7, 2024February 6, 2024Comments are Disabled

Spread over James Cohan Gallery’s three spaces, the immensely enjoyable group exhibition ‘Arcadia and Elsewhere’ features paintings of nature from the realist to the abstract, the mundane to the sublime. Many pieces portray idyllic natural landscapes, other scenes get more complicated, especially when humans or their traces appear. Here, Lindsay Adams’ Lonely Fire excites feeling through the fiery tones of the background and the lush colors of individual flowers that stand apart from each other while contributing to a whole that speaks to the beauty of variety. (On view through Feb 10^th).

Lindsay Adams, Lonely Fire, oil on canvas, 60 x 72 inches, 2023.

Mika Tajima at Pace Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show February 5, 2024January 30, 2024Comments are Disabled

Known for turning sound into image, Mika Tajima has gathered aural data from brain activity and turned it into visual information in her latest ‘textile paintings,’ now on view at Pace Gallery. Produced by an experimental textile lab in the Netherlands, the monumental artworks juxtapose minute readings with expansive artworks, a nod to an individual human’s relative insignificance in the face of geological time and in relation to big data. (On view in Chelsea through Feb 24^th).

Mika Tajima, Negative Entropy (Deep Brain Stimulation, Yellow, Full Width, Exa), cotton, polyester, nylon, and wood, 135 x 204 3/8 x 2 ¾ inches, 2024.

John O’Connor, Car Crash at Pierogi Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show February 2, 2024February 11, 2025Comments are Disabled

John O’Connor’s enticingly colorful drawings at Pierogi Gallery’s Chelsea popup take viewers down the rabbit hole into surreal scenarios told with endlessly inventive typography and icons. Here, the eye-grabbing ‘Car Crash’ pictures a fictional multi-car pileup in which cars of lesser value crash into increasingly more expensive vehicles, starting with a Honda Civic and reaching a Lotus and continuing with fictional cars (Dukes of Hazzard, Flintstones). O’Connor explains that the spiraling drawing represents the transfer of kinetic energy from car to car, a stand-in for a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. At the center of this dynamic, pulsing vortex is a worm hole, ready to transport cars, viewers and all into another place and time. (On view at 524 West 19^th Street through Feb 10^th).

John O’Connor, Car Crash, colored pencil and graphite on paper, 85 x 69.75 inches, 2023.

Sydney G. James at Jane Lombard Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show January 31, 2024February 9, 2025Comments are Disabled

Based on her mural that was destroyed by vandals in Miami in 2021, Sydney G. James’ ‘Serving Tee Liberation’ at Jane Lombard Gallery is a painted act of resistance. Posing with a look of sage calm, James’ friend and frequent model wears a t-shirt that announces and celebrates female autonomy, a riposte to the slogans in red text on white backgrounds which reflect past derogatory comments aimed at the artist. The painting pays homage to James’ friend Scheherazade W. Parrish, a writer and artist who wears a different text-bearing t-shirt daily during Black History Month. Via murals, painting, text and video, James’ show expresses resilience and acknowledges the support of family and community that make strength possible. (On view in Tribeca through Feb 17^th).

Sydney G. James, Serving Tee Liberation, acrylic, t-shirts, fabric, and gel medium on canvas, 113 x 91 inches, 2023.

El Anatsui, Garnett Puett & Lyne Lapoint at Jack Shainman

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show January 29, 2024February 14, 2025Comments are Disabled

Material generates form in ‘Echoes of Circumstance,’ a visually rich group exhibition at Jack Shainman Gallery of work by three artists (El Anatsui, Garnett Puett and Lyne LaPointe) whose work is driven by the non-traditional art materials they employ. Hawaii-based 4^th generation beekeeper Puett partners with bees who create honeycombs around steel structures, resulting in surreal forms. Also using a (handmade) beehive, Canadian artist Lyne LaPointe’s ‘The Song of the Queen Virgin’ presents a mystical figure shrouded in fabric. Internationally renowned Ghanaian artist El Anatsui draws inspiration from Kente cloth to make patterned, wall-mounted textiles of aluminum liquor bottle caps stitched together by copper wire. (On view in Chelsea through March 2^nd.)

Garnett Puett, (foreground) Forged Dance; Entropic Subconscious Matris (3), wax, forged steel, 40 ½ x 20 x 20 inches, 2019. … El Anatsui, (background) Skin of Earth, found aluminum and copper wire, 180 x 192 inches, 2006.

Lyne LaPointe, The Song of the Queen Virgin, antique handmade beehive, cotton mesh, ink, paper and varnish on linen in an artist frame, 83 x 44 ½ x 2 ¼ inches, 2022-23.

Soi Noma at the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show January 26, 2024February 14, 2025Comments are Disabled

This seven-foot painting on canvas by Soi Noma, a collective of female mural artists from the Shipibo-Conibo community in Lima, Peru adds a blast of color to the small but impactful group exhibition ‘The Precious Life of a Liquid Heart’ at the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art in Tribeca. Addressing water crisis in Latin America and the spiritual importance of rivers and water bodies to indigenous communities, the show includes work by artists who decry environmental damage and others who focus on an appreciation of the natural world. Soi Noma’s ‘Manifesto against Contamination’ mixes both approaches, employing kene, geometric patterns that express world views of the community, and images of animals to picture a come-back from contamination caused by oil companies. (On view through Feb 10^th).

Mujeres Muralistas Soi Noma, Manifesto against Contamination, mixed media on canvas, triptych: 86 x 51 x 1/16 inches, 2022.

Tony Matelli in ‘Friends of the Pod’ at Broadway Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show January 24, 2024January 24, 2024Comments are Disabled

‘Friends of the Pod,’ an enjoyable group exhibition at Broadway Gallery in Tribeca featuring artists linked to a podcast hosted by advisor Benjamin Godsill and Vanity Fair art columnist Nate Freeman opens with this wonderfully weird assemblage by Tony Matelli. Anyone who knows Matelli’s sculpture knows to mistrust what they see; the master of trompe l’oeil has produced realistic human bodies and floral arrangements that appear to float upside down as well as pieces of what look to be classical statuary that include pieces of fruit and vegetables. Traditionally understood in European painting as a warning of mortality, perfect fruits and flowers point to the inevitability of what will come next. Matelli’s veg avoids this fate while triumphing over a human head that no longer stands upright. (On view through Feb 3^rd).

Tony Matelli, Bust (Eggplant and Celery), concrete, painted bronze, 13 x 18 x 12 inches, 2022.

Jung Eun Hye at Ricco/Maresca Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show January 22, 2024January 16, 2024Comments are Disabled

Jung Eun Hye’s black and white conte crayon drawings of her dog Jiro, now on view at Ricco Maresca Gallery, are a testament to the artist’s appreciation of and love for an animal she rescued nine years ago. Jiro comes across as spunky, wise, laughing in various iterations. Jung enhances the dog’s vivacity with lively patterning and flowers and plant life that add interest to each composition. (On view in Chelsea through Feb 17^th.)

Jung Eun Hye, Brave Jiro, conte crayon on handmade Hanji paper, 28 x 23 ½ inches, 2023.

James Welling Photographs at David Zwirner Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show January 19, 2024February 11, 2025Comments are Disabled

Double-takes are the norm at James Welling’s show of recent photographs at David Zwirner Gallery as the iconic West coast artist continues to make images that take time to understand. In this photograph of rocks and the sea in Prouts Neck, Maine, printed in UV curable ink that adds to the images’ rich color, Welling recalls Winslow Homer’s and subsequently, John Marin’s paintings in this historic spot. The ocean is placid in Welling’s rendering but the overlaid patches of color that he adds create a visual disturbance that mimics the crashing waves and stormy surf that Homer captured. Interested in the patterning created as he cleaned off paint rollers on newspaper for another project, Welling started adding these ‘prints’ to his photos, altering areas of color to create complex images that emphasize the malleability of photography (On view in Chelsea through Feb 10^th).

James Welling, Prouts Neck near Winslow Homer’s Studio, UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum, 42 x 63 inches, 2015/2023.

Francoise Grossen & Tau Lewis at the Shah Garg Foundation

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show January 17, 2024February 14, 2025Comments are Disabled

Swiss fiber artist Francoise Grossen moved her textiles moved off the loom in the ‘60s, creating bold and colorful sculpture that existed in three dimensions. This large piece from 1977 is a highlight of the Shah Garg Foundation’s first public exhibition of its museum-quality collection featuring over eighty artists. Abstract and constructed from manila rope, this sculpture was nevertheless inspired by functional objects including rope bridges, ship lines and the ancient Incan recording device, the quipu. On the wall beyond Grossen’s piece, a more contemporary textile-based work by Tau Lewis uses recycled fabric to form a head inspired by Yoruban mask drama. (On view through March 23^rd in Chelsea, at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in Sept ‘24 and Kemper Art Museum, St Louis in Sept ’25).

Francoise Grossen, Contact III, manila rope (abaca), 1977. Tau Lewis, Saint Mozelle in the Aphid Orgy, steel, enamel paint, acrylic paint, acrylic finisher, repurposed leather, repurposed suede, organic cotton twill, and coated nylon thread, 2023.

‘Friends and Lovers’ at the FLAG Art Foundation

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show January 15, 2024February 9, 2025Comments are Disabled

Visitors to Chelsea’s FLAG Art Foundation encounter a wall of beautiful and colorful portraits by Billy Sullivan made over forty-five years at the entrance to FLAG’s hugely enjoyable group show ‘Friends and Lovers.’ Featuring work by over fifty artists and partly inspired by Alice Neel’s expressive portraits (the show includes her 1952 painting of her son, Hartley), the show is a hotbed of better and lesser-known talent and includes work by artists who have lately shown standout work in New York. Among many highlights are Jerrell Gibbs’ portrait of a dapper young man in a lively interior sitting before an image of Picasso’s iconic dove and Ruby Sky Stiler’s inclusive grouping of male, female and child models that exist in both 2-D and 3-D. (On view through Jan 20^th).

Ruby Sky Stiler, Rose Bathers, Baltic plywood, paint and hardware, 78 x 95 x 3 inches, 2021.

Jerrell Gibbs, Fly Black Boy, FLY, oil, oil stick on canvas, 72 x 60 ¼ inches, 2020.

Billy Sullivan, Various works, pastel, oil and watercolor on pastel and canvas, various dimensions, 1974 – 2019.

Kay WalkingStick at the New York Historical Society

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show January 12, 2024January 10, 2024Comments are Disabled

Known for its outstanding collection of paintings from the Hudson River School, an early-to-mid 19^th century movement that pictured the sublime in the landscape north of New York City, the New York Historical Society’s current exhibition ‘Kay WalkingStick / Hudson River School’ invites new perspectives on what is considered the first ‘American’ school of art. Kay WalkingStick, an artist of Cherokee descent, has for decades researched Native American histories in locations around the country, picturing specific landscapes overlaid with designs from local indigenous communities. Here, a Haudenosaunee pattern from the New York region indicates Native American presence in the landscape despite an absence of pictured people. The museum pairs WalkingStick’s depiction of Niagara with one foregrounding the power of the Falls by Louisa David Minot, one of the few female Hudson River artists, who referred to the scene as representative of conflict between Britain, the US and Native Americans around the War of 1812. (On view on the Upper West Side though April 14^th).

Kay WalkingStick, Niagara, oil on panel in two parts, 2022.

Louisa David Minot, Niagara Falls, oil on canvas, 1818.

Stephane Mandelbaum at The Drawing Center

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show January 10, 2024January 10, 2024Comments are Disabled

Near the entrance to the Drawing Center’s retrospective of work by late Belgian artist Stephane Mandelbaum hangs a diverse selection of portraits, arresting in their distortions and expressive immediacy, that signal his complex and conflicted experience of the aftermath of WWII. A drawing of Francis Bacon, known for painting distorted figures reflecting collective horror at the atrocities of the war, hangs next to a portrait of Bacon’s criminally connected lover, George Dyer, which in turn is close to a portrait of embattled Nazi paramilitary leader Ernst Rohm. Giving voice to a disturbing constellation of ideas via texts in Yiddish, French, Italian and German and pornographic imagery, the drawings explore the artist’s obsessions with sex and power which extend into his family life. Under the portrait of Bacon pictured here is an almost totally obscured drawing of Mandelbaum’s father, artist and professor Arie Mandelbaum, visible just as a predella, a platform on which an altar would be placed. (On view in SoHo through Feb 18^th).

Stephane Mandelbaum, Bacon et predella avec portrait d’Arie (Bacon and predella with portrait of Arie), graphite on paper, 1982.

Pipilotti Rist at Hauser & Wirth Gallery and Luhring Augustine Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show January 8, 2024February 9, 2025Comments are Disabled

Iconic Swiss video artist Pipilotti Rist is acutely attuned to the comfort of her audiences. Visitors to her atrium-filling video installation at MoMA in 2008 might have lounged on a low couch while another level of relaxation – beds – awaited at the artist’s New Museum retrospective in 2016. Rist’s current show at Hauser & Wirth Gallery in Chelsea offers both a bed and assorted furniture, enticing the public into the artwork itself to be bathed in constantly morphing patterns and images. Rist (seen in this photo conversing with visitors) conceived of Hauser & Wirth’s back gallery space as a living room; her simultaneous show at Luhring Augustine Gallery is a projection-filled back yard. (On view at Hauser & Wirth through Jan 13^th and at Luhring Augustine through Feb 3^rd).

Pipilotti Rist, (installation view) Welling Color Island West, video installation with projector skirt, projection on carpet, plants and furniture, silent, unique, dimensions variable, 2023.

Rammellzee in ‘Wild Style’ at Jeffrey Deitch Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show January 5, 2024January 5, 2024Comments are Disabled

Forty years after the release of the independent film ‘Wild Style,’ a chronicle of the early days of New York hip hop culture, Jeffrey Deitch Gallery celebrates with a star-studded exhibition of writing, painting and sculpture that captures the creativity and energy of emerging urban youth cultures in the late 70s and early 80s. Rammellzee’s sculpture Gasholear, surrounded by a cloud of spacecraft capable of producing lettering, is an astounding sight at the center of the main gallery. Grasping a combination guitar/double halberd, this futuristic character is a machine/robot/human force to reckon with. (On view in SoHo through Jan 13^th).

Rammellzee, The Gasholear (THE RAMM:ELLl:ZEE), c. 1987-1998, 180 pound exoskeleton of the RAMM:ELLl:ZEE, found objects, wireless sound system, paint and resin), dimensions variable.

Whitney Oldenburg at Chart Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show December 29, 2023December 23, 2023Comments are Disabled

A sculpture titled ‘Feeding Frenzy’ – three giant chrysalis forms studded with red paper admission tickets – announces Whitney Oldenburg’s first New York solo at Chart Gallery as an energetic and ambitious debut. In addition to suggestive titles, unusual materials hint at storylines – Feeding Frenzy mixes in ear plugs, helmets to bring to mind a raucous concert. Composed of molds of ‘Feeding Frenzy’ along with row after row of generic acetaminophen, ‘High Tide,’ pictured here, alludes to medicated states. Also resembling a shell big enough for Venus to arrive on, the sculpture remakes the natural world through human materials as eclectic as lollipop sticks and tiki wall, one of Oldenburg’s idiosyncratic works that beg a closer look. (Gallery opening hours change during the holidays. Check opening hours before visiting. On view in Tribeca through Jan 6^th).

Whitney Oldenburg, High Tide, molds of Feeding Frenzy, metal, clay, lollipop sticks, tiki wall, generic acetaminophen, leather, linen, resin, 60 x 51 x 28 inches, 2023.

Whitney Oldenburg, (detail) High Tide, molds of Feeding Frenzy, metal, clay, lollipop sticks, tiki wall, generic acetaminophen, leather, linen, resin, 60 x 51 x 28 inches, 2023.

Jacolby Satterwhite at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show December 27, 2023December 23, 2023Comments are Disabled

Vastly larger than any work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Jacolby Satterwhite’s commissioned six-channel projection ‘A Metta Prayer’ transforms the museum’s cavernous lobby space into a celebratory, uplifting and politically insistent digital realm. Inspired by the Buddhist mantra of loving-kindness, phrases including, “May we always hear ourselves clearly” and “May your martyred fate start a revolution against hate” (seen here) appear over computer generated individuals running as if in a video game to collect ‘mantra coins.’ In the segment pictured here, dancer O’Shea Sibley appears in white sweats, filmed months before he was murdered in a racist and homo-phobic attack in a Midwood gas station last summer. Satterwhite’s prayer continues, ‘May your candid grace deface, replace this senseless race.’ (The museum will be closed Jan 1^st. On view through Jan 7^th.)

Installation view of The Great Hall Commission: Jacolby Satterwhite, A Metta Prayer, Dec 2023.

Lynda Benglis at 125 Newbury

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show December 26, 2023December 23, 2023Comments are Disabled

Octogenarian artist and Process Art icon Lynda Benglis continues to explore organic abstraction in lively new works at 125 Newbury in Tribeca. By placing sheets of abaca paper – from a type of banana tree native to the Philippines – on either side of forms made of bamboo reeds or aluminum wire, Benglis creates dynamic shapes that recall exoskeletons or chrysalises. Titled ‘Skeletonizer,’ the show’s work references types of moths, appropriate to the dynamic sculptures that appear to climb the gallery walls. (Gallery opening hours change during the holidays. Check opening hours before visiting. On view through Jan 13^th).

Installation view of ‘Skeletonizer’ at 125 Newbury, Dec 2023.

Paulette Tavormina at Winston Wachter

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show December 22, 2023December 19, 2023Comments are Disabled

Immediately arresting for their beauty and dramatic lighting, Paulette Tavormina’s still life photos from the past several years are a standout at Winston Wachter Fine Art in Chelsea. Formerly a Hollywood food and prop stylist and contributor to National Geographic and the New York Times, Tavormina marshals her skills to create contemporary reinterpretations of still lifes by 17^th century painters, including one of the first female still life artists, Giovanna Garzoni; Spanish painter of dramatically-lit scenes Frances de Zurbarán; and Dutch Golden Age still life painter Adriaen Coorte. Tavormina – who comes from a line of avid gardeners – makes the work her own by growing most of the fruits and flowers that she uses and adding surprise elements like the pair of goldfish in the vase pictured here. (On view through Jan 6^th.)

Paulette Tavormina, Dutch Tulips & Goldfish, archival pigment print, ed of 5, 36 x 36 inches, 2021.

Jennifer Carvalho at Helena Anrather Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show December 20, 2023December 19, 2023Comments are Disabled

Derived from art historical textbooks and web sources, Canadian artist Jennifer Carvalho’s painted remakes of medieval and Renaissance imagery now on view on the Lower East Side at Helena Anrather Gallery recontextualize ancient expressions of strong feeling or devotion. Performing what the gallery calls ‘art historical archaeology,’ Carvalho digs up new meaning by cropping a face to put a focus on an abundance or tears or zeroing in on a hand supported by another person’s hands that foregrounds an emotive or tender moment. Here, disembodied arms with hands in a pose related to mourning hover over a space featuring decorative gothic architecture and a curtained bed, foregrounding a surreal but expressive gesture in a space that combines both the public and private. (On view through Dec 22^nd).

Jennifer Carvalho, Clasped hands (study of mourning), oil on canvas, 2023.

Meleko Mokgosi Paintings at Jack Shainman

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show December 19, 2023February 11, 2025Comments are Disabled

Botswanan-American artist Meleko Mokgosi’s recent paintings at Jack Shainman Gallery, grouped under the title ‘Spaces of Subjection,’ dig into the formation of subjecthood – how does a person being pictured become who they are to viewers Inspired in part by French philosopher Michel Foucault’s writings about identity formation as it derives from networks of societal influences, Mokgosi’s paintings picture individuals from various sources including studio photographs and advertising. Here, he combines a photograph taken in Atlanta of Nelson and Winnie Mandela who were speaking in the US, an image of the Mandelas with Coretta Scott King and her children, and a young woman seated on the floor and a man in a tux from South African studio portraiture from the 1950s. Known for being both subordinated by power and on the flip side, representing power, the Mandelas and Kings also exist in a power relationship with each other (enacted in Coretta Scott King’s 1986 trip to South Africa) that contrasts the presence of the two lesser-known figures. (On view through Dec 22^nd).

Meleko Mokgosi, Spaces of Subjection: Black Painting V, oil on canvas, 96 x 72 x 2 inches, 2022.

Minako Iwamura in ‘Transcendence’ at JDJ Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show December 15, 2023December 14, 2023Comments are Disabled

Work by sixteen artists in JDJ Gallery’s light-filled new Tribeca gallery space argues for the vitality and variety of abstract and near-abstract 2-D work by harnessing form, color and light to create alternative places and states. Minako Iwamura’s selection of several small paintings on wood panel and larger works including Plexus (pictured here) speak to the New York-based artist’s interest in duality which she expresses by combining linear geometry and swelling, organic forms. Alluding to the human form in their curving shapes yet transcending the corporeal with a network of thin, white lines that take the mind beyond the painting’s boundaries, Iwamura suggests a mind-expanding awakening. (On view through Jan 13^th).

Minako Iwamura, Plexus, oil and white charcoal on cradled wood panel, 40 x 30 x 1.5 inches, 2023.

Derek Fordjour, CONfidence MAN at Petzel Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show December 13, 2023February 11, 2025Comments are Disabled

Visitors to Derek Fordjour’s impressive multimedia exhibition at Petzel Gallery can enjoy two free, live performances daily, take in vibrant new paintings and walk through a magical, life-sized diorama. By far the most entertaining show in a particularly rich moment in the Chelsea galleries, Fordjour’s ‘Score’ sinks it in the basket while questioning what success is. Known for images of Black athletes and performers whose excellence lands them in complicated performative roles, Fordjour includes this loaded painting titled CONfidence MAN. One of the most attractive pieces in an enticing new body of 2D work, this colorful portrait shows a dapper man surrounded by balloons. Despite the dazzle, he is posed in front of a skull in the window behind him suggesting that customers might do well to be wary. (Show is on view through Dec 22^nd, performances through Dec 16^th.

Derek Fordjour, CONfidence MAN, acrylic, charcoal, cardboard, glitter, oil pastel and foil on newspaper mounted on canvas, 85 x 65 inches, 2023.

Calida Rawles at Lehmann Maupin Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show December 12, 2023December 12, 2023Comments are Disabled

LA painter Calida Rawles’ realist paintings of women and girls submerged in water both clearly define their subjects and at the same time obscure them through shadow and reflection, suggesting a simultaneous state of knowing and unknowing. Titled ‘A Certain Oblivion,’ Rawles first major solo show at Lehmann Maupin Gallery presents still and clean bodies of water that appear to offer a place of refuge, even therapy to women who float in or glide through the water, faces barely breaking the surface. Yet several paintings come from source photos taken after dark and were even painted in low light in the studio, complicating and making uncertain the watery realms depicted. (On view in Chelsea through Dec 16^th).

Calida Rawles, We Knew It Was Coming, acrylic on canvas, 96 x 120 x 2 inches, 2023.

Eric N. Mack at Paula Cooper Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show December 8, 2023December 7, 2023Comments are Disabled

Eric N. Mack calls himself a painter whose medium is fabric – new work at Paula Cooper Gallery in Chelsea is mostly hung on stretchers that support not canvas but collaged fabric fragments. Like painting, Mack’s work foregrounds color and pattern, but the artist doesn’t add these elements to the canvas, rather he encounters them as found materials. Instead of creating transparency and texture from paint, these are qualities of the surface itself. Sourced from divergent origins – Mack might use fabric from couture clothing or neighborhood markets – the artist collapses quality distinctions in his dynamic abstractions. (On view through Dec 22^nd in Chelsea).

Eric N. Mack, Strewn Sitbon, fabric on aluminum stretcher, overall: 41 x 34 ½ x 6 inches, 2023.

Dana Schutz at David Zwirner Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show December 6, 2023Comments are Disabled

The Face, one of the first works in Dana Schutz’s absorbing show of recent paintings and bronzes at David Zwirner Gallery, pictures a surreal scene of figures supporting and hiding under a huge mask. Barely able to control the giant visage, one character bends over to pick up a rock, perhaps intending to fire it in anonymity at a foe (us?) from behind the face. Rife with allegory, Schutz’ new work configures various groupings of individuals in unclear yet meaningful interactions – gathering to paint together, sitting on a couch as if on a talk show or clustered together in a circle, arms on shoulders. Crowded into the picture plane, dynamic and rendered in vibrant colors, the figures recall not only the exaggerated features of Italian Commedia dell’arte masks but theatrical storylines that foreground human folly. (On view in Chelsea through Dec 16^th).

Dana Schutz, The Face, 108 x 138 inches, oil on canvas, 2023.

Stefan Rinck at Nino Mier Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show December 5, 2023December 5, 2023Comments are Disabled

With only fossilized remains to go on, how do we know what dinosaurs actually looked like? German sculptor Stefan Rinck asks (and answers) this tongue-in-cheek question to humorous effect in a show of stone sculpture featuring cute lizards, now on view at Nino Mier Gallery’s Tribeca space. Though the ancient reptiles have been fashioned of even more ancient material – stones including sandstone, marble and limestone, their look is decidedly contemporary – some even sport Crocs. In the case of ‘Baguettesaurier,’ a horned creature of polished diabase, who’s to say dinosaurs didn’t also pick up a baguette on the way home? (On view through Dec 16^th).

Stefan Rinck, Baguettesaurier, diabase, limestone, 31 ½ x 18 7/8 x 19 ¾ inches, 2023.

Farah Atassi in ‘The Echo of Picasso’ at Almine Rech

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show December 1, 2023November 28, 2023Comments are Disabled

Fifty years after Picasso’s death, international gallery Almine Rech launches its new Tribeca space with ‘The Echo of Picasso,’ a group exhibition of work by contemporary artists whose work converses with their influential forebear. Farah Atassi’s ‘Reclining Woman with Oranges’ at the gallery’s entrance juxtaposes various grids – rectangular picture frames, grey lines against a peach-toned background and angular patterns on the central figure’s dress – with curving, organic forms that include a chaise longue and scattered oranges. In a show heavy on the human figure, artists from Karel Appel to Rashid Johnson explore contemporary consciousness through distortions pioneered in the early 20^th century. (On view through Dec 16^th).

Farah Atassi, Reclining Woman with Oranges, oil and glycerol on linen, 63 x 78 ½ inches, 2023.

Yinka Shonibare, Bronze Sculpture at James Cohan

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show November 29, 2023February 11, 2025Comments are Disabled

Known for sculpture and 2-D work that incorporates textiles originally inspired by Dutch wax printed fabrics, British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare gives new life to his signature material in pieces that resemble flying cloth at James Cohan Gallery. Shonibare has explained that his new bronzes came from thinking about the wind that filled the sails of ships involved in transatlantic trade and forced migration in past centuries. Now, the dynamic pieces resemble dancing forms as they elegantly and energetically swirl on their pedestals in the gallery. (On view in Tribeca through Dec 22^nd).

Yinka Shonibare, Abstract Bronze I, bronze sculpture, hand-painted with Dutch wax pattern, 78 ¾ x 57 ¾ x 49 ¾ in, 2023.

Katherine Bradford, In the Lake at Canada New York

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show November 27, 2023February 11, 2025Comments are Disabled

New York painter Katherine Bradford’s swimmers – a recurring subject – include ephemeral, washy suggestions of submerged figures and bolder, mostly visible individuals standing still in the water. New work at Canada in Tribeca favors more dominant figures, filling the space of the canvas with their solid forms and often expressionless faces. ‘In the Lake,’ features individuals who float, walk or stand in dark water perhaps lit by the moon, each in their own space; with their arms outstretched, several figures appear to be relaxing while an orange-topped figure waits and a man starts to exit the scene to the right. Bradford excels at complex realities, as past shows suggest – e.g. the terror and pleasure of waves in 2016 or the comforting and confining closeness of mothers and children in 2021. Here, mostly placid faces suggest tranquility but closeness and individual isolation among the swimmers leaves room to wonder. (On view through Dec 22^nd).

Katherine Bradford, In the Lake, acrylic on canvas, diptych: 80 x 136 inches, 2023.

Kayode Ojo at 52 Walker

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show November 24, 2023November 21, 2023Comments are Disabled

“If you look at the work, it is actually posing for you,’ explained New York artist Kayode Ojo in a past video describing his elegantly spare sculptural installations, now on view at 52 Walker in Tribeca. Having studied photography before becoming known for in-the-round artworks, Ojo now creates arrangements of fast-fashion clothing, accessories and other objects sourced via on-line shopping that elicit admiration and desire. By titling each artwork with the text originally used to sell each it, Ojo centers his practice squarely in conversations about consumption while transporting each piece into the realm of luxury art object. (On view in Tribeca through Jan 6^th).

Kayode Ojo, Comfort, New Orleans 4-Light Clear Unique/Statement Geometric Chandelier with Crystal Accents, 84 x 72 x 16 inches, 2023.

Shilpa Gupta at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show November 22, 2023November 21, 2023Comments are Disabled

‘Uncontrollable Desirrs,’ ‘Between Places’ and ‘Until they Dsiappear’ are among the suggestive phrases that appear in Shilpa Gupta’s ‘StillTheyKnowNotWhatIDream’ flapboard sculpture at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery. The sound of the board’s moving panels creates a sense of dynamism and anticipation as the text constantly changes, while the words themselves conjure unsettled feelings compounded by Gupta’s use of alternative spellings of select words. In the show’s other works, Gupta speaks the works of jailed poets into bottles, capping them and arranging them in an ‘reimagined library’ and presents a sound installation of protest songs sung globally, a collective tribute to the power of words and the need to protect freedom of speech. (On view in Chelsea through Dec 16^th).

StillTheyKnowNotWhatIDream, motion flapboard, 35 min loop, 93 ½ x 5 x 9 ½ inches, 2021.

Martyn Cross at Marianne Boesky Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show November 21, 2023November 21, 2023Comments are Disabled

Titled ‘All Shall Be Well,’ after a record of visions experienced by a medieval English religious recluse, British painter Martyn Cross’ show of mystical new paintings at Marianne Boesky Gallery emphasizes the connectedness of humans and nature. Here, in ‘You and I Are Earth,’ the link is literal, with a seascape manifesting in human form; in other paintings, a root system morphs into an old man and a giant eye appears in the clouds. Fresh from a residency on England’s fossil-rich southern coast, a UNESCO World Heritage site known as the ‘Jurassic Coast,’ Cross merely scratches the surface of deep time but prompts viewers to recenter their thinking about our relationship with the earth. (On view through Dec 22^ndin Chelsea).

Martyn Cross, You and I Are Earth, oil on canvas, 86 ¾ x 63 inches, 2023.

Ghada Amer, A Woman’s Voice at Marianne Boesky

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show November 17, 2023February 11, 2025Comments are Disabled

Inspired by Egyptian traditions of decoration on tents used for weddings or feasts, Egyptian-American artist Ghada Amer substitutes contemporary text for Islamic or calligraphic imagery in new work at Marianne Boesky Gallery in Chelsea. Using applique, in which fabric is sewn onto other fabric, Amer incorporates feminist phrases and text into designs resembling QR codes. Those these designs don’t scan, they open up histories of struggle for women’s rights via texts by late Egyptian feminist and activist Nawal El Saadawi or late Australian women’s liberation activist Joyce Stevens. Here, the writing reads, ‘A woman’s voice is revolution.” (On view in Chelsea at Marianne Boesky Gallery through Dec 22^nd. Ghada Amer’s bronze series ‘Paravent Girls’ is on view at Tina Kim Gallery in Chelsea through Dec 9^th).

Ghada Amer, A WOMAN’S VOICE,’ “A woman’s voice is revolution,” cotton applique on canvas, 82 ½ x 83 ½ inches, 2023.

Bo Bartlett at Miles McEnery Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show November 15, 2023November 14, 2023Comments are Disabled

Underexposed to art as a kid and inspired by American painters like Andrew Wyeth and Norman Rockwell, Bo Bartlett has continued in a vein of realism that presents tantalizing, slightly surreal narratives. In ‘La Corrida’ or ‘The Bullfight,’ a highlight of Bartlett’s current solo show at Miles McEnery Gallery in Chelsea, the toreador has fallen and the bull eyes the open gate from which the artist has perhaps dashed, leaving behind his jacket and materials. Flecked with blood, the bull has been provoked and further disaster is coming; the absence of people leaves viewers to ponder the question of culpability. (On view through Dec 9^th).

Bo Bartlett, La Corrida, oil on linen, 88 x 120 inches, 2023.

Candice Lin at Canal Projects

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show November 14, 2023November 14, 2023Comments are Disabled

Candice Lin’s fantastical tale of a lithium factory worker reincarnated as a sex demon draws viewers in through an abundance of media including paintings on textile, adapted Korean fermentation vessels, video and workstations featuring ceramic computers, clocks and more in a bizarre but masterful exhibition at Canal Projects. The installation – coproduced and commissioned by the 14th Gwangju Biennial and Canal Projects – is accompanied by a text detailing the story of a young woman who attempted to steal lithium to make a new life for herself and her lover. Apparently killed in the effort, she finds herself in the body of a demon – inspired by spirits in Japanese, Chinese and Malaysian lore who are attracted to bodily fluids and functions – who makes her way back to the human realm to haunt the lithium factory and its workers. Dehumanized by factory work performed to service our reliance on lithium, Lin’s worker ceases to be human, an outcome that serves as a warning to viewers. (On through on Canal Street through Dec 16^th).

Candice Lin, installation view of Lithium Sex Demons in the Factory, Canal Projects, Sept – Dec 2023.

Louis Fratino at Sikkema Jenkins & Co.

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show November 10, 2023November 8, 2023Comments are Disabled

Surprisingly, Louis Fratino’s still lives can be the most dynamic of his works – a sink full of dishes or an arrangement of fish in a market stall appear as a jumble of curving or stacked forms in constant motion. In ‘Latteria,’ from Fratino’s current show at Sikkema Jenkins and Co., the artist creates an intriguing balance of action and repose as he combines the bustle of the figures in the café, tables that tilt and floor tiles that rear up with the stillness of the central figure who sits with a quiet and pensive look. (On view in Chelsea through Dec 9^th).

Louis Fratino, Latteria, oil on canvas, 47 x 42 inches, 2023.

Hilary Harkness at PPOW Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show November 8, 2023November 8, 2023Comments are Disabled

In the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s audio guide to its famous 1866 painting ‘Prisoners from the Front’ by Winslow Homer, the Union general Francis Channing Barlow is described as a ‘restrained Northern Puritan’ type vs the ‘dashing and impulsive’ Southerner at center. In Hilary Harkness’ version of the painting, seen here and now on view at PPOW Gallery, Barlow is nothing of the sort. In a series of paintings that Harkness created over a four-year period from 2019 to 2023, she reimagines Barlow as a trans man, in love with Charles, the Black Union solider pictured here (a major alteration from the original), who fights with such single-minded fervor for the Union that he pauses only briefly (and secretly) during battle to give birth to Charles’ child. Told through meticulously detailed paintings that picture Charles’ heroics while documenting the racial injustices and oppression of Confederate culture, Harkness’ narrative is both absorbing and unforgettable. (On view through Nov 11^th in Tribeca).

Hilary Harkness, Prisoners from the Front (1866), commissioned by Arabella Freeman, oil on panel, 12 x 19 inches, 2019.

Willie Stewart at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest Show November 8, 2023November 8, 2023Comments are Disabled

Warhol’s poppies, Roy Lichtenstein’s 1964 painting ‘Gullscape’ and a urinal recalling Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’ all make an appearance in Willie Stewart’s new 3-D, wall-mounted sculpture now on view at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, signaling the artist’s intent to make something new from modern art samplings. Set upon a support that resembles a shelf or mantelpiece, Stewart’s Springer Spaniel represents the idea of the loyal family pet; paired with Warhol’s poppies, flowers associated with remembrance, the piece turns nostalgic and wistful. (On view through Nov 25^th).

Willie Stewart, Dog (Springer Spaniel), colored pencil with ink, gouache, and graphite on cotton board, polychrome wood and acrylic on canvas over artist-made panels, 60 h x 69 w x 5.5 d inches, 2023.

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