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 9th).
Known for gallery-filling installations made of cardboard and packing tape, Paris-based artist Thomas Hirschhorn marshals these materials to transform Gladstone Gallery’s 21st 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 2nd).
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 2nd).
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 16th).
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 24th.)
