New York Art Shows – Page 17

Throwback-NYC Art Shows- Kerry James Marshall from “20/20” at David Zwirner

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, History, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters

Feb 012024

Black and part Black Birds in America: (Grackle, Cardinal & Rose-breasted Grosbeak), 2020, by Kerry James Marshall, was part of the group exhibition 20/20 at David Zwirner gallery in NYC in December of 2020. The painting is part of a series that explores black identity, his love of birding, and by the history and work of John James Audubon.

Below is an excerpt from a New York Times article about the work and its Audubon connection-

“There’s a disconnect between the house that’s built and the birds,” Mr. Marshall said of the crow and grackle. “It’s not designed for them, you know?” The scene considers, he said, “the pecking order.”

The series itself has been brewing in Mr. Marshall’s mind for eight or nine years, he said, and he began painting the works just before transmissions of the coronavirus accelerated in the United States in March.

A casual bird enthusiast who has been fascinated by Audubon’s draughtsmanship since he was a child, Mr. Marshall has long put Black protagonists at the center of his complex, richly layered compositions. “Many Mansions” (1994), one of his large-scale depictions of housing projects, features three Black men gardening — and, not incidentally, there are two bluebirds holding up a banner, too. The pointed inclusion of Black figures is part of what he has called a “counter-archive” to the familiar, white-centered story of Western art.

For the new series, the images hinge on Audubon’s own racial heritage: Many people believe he was, as Mr. Marshall’s title suggests, “part Black” — born in what is now Haiti, as Jean Rabin, to a white, plantation-owning father and a Creole chambermaid who may have been of racially-mixed descent. But, the theory goes, he was able to pass as white.

Flashback- NYC Art Shows- Tim Wilson at Nathalie Karg

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters

Jan 262024

Paintings by Tim Wilson from his 2023 solo exhibition, Pictures Aside, at Nathalie Karg gallery in NYC.

From the press release-

“Everything is deceptive, only the mask never lies.”
—Pierre de Marivaux

On the surface, Wilson presents a group of paintings depicting an assortment of mirrored reflections, paintings, prints, photographs, and reproductions. These pictures within the paintings adorn a variety of provisional spaces; foyers, waiting areas, bedside tables, drawing rooms, and motels. Like his previous work, Wilson recasts images of interior spaces and set dressing found in the seemingly endless availability of streaming television and film. These repurposed screen grabs are then filtered through the historical lens of premodern tendencies in representation. This practice, an attempt at slowing the viewer down for reflection remains, yet here, Wilson doubles down by zooming in on the re-depiction of those quoted histories within his own pictures. This reframing literally and metaphorically rearranges the conditions with which one engages in that contemplation.

“To me, the recursive nature of these paintings is analogous to the infinite regress of thought and meaning—in the way that the definition of words require the use of other, yet to be defined, words to describe them, and so on. Painting is a way of re-contextualizing these strange loops and harnessing meaning indirectly. For example, to quote me speaking now in this context is altogether different than the previous paragraph, despite the fact that I wrote them both.”
—Tim Wilson

He is currently showing work at JDJ gallery in Tribeca, for the group exhibition, Feels Like Home, running until 3/2/24.

Flashback- Calvin Marcus from the 2019 Whitney Biennial

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters

Jan 202024

Calvin Marcus’ Tall Snowman, 2019, (Watercolor and vinyl paint on linen), was one of several of his large paintings included in Whitney Museum’s 2019 Biennial.

He and fellow Los Angeles artist Laura Owens will be in an exhibition together at Gaga gallery’s Guadalajara, Mexico location, opening 2/2/24.

Sarah Lee’s “Night Breeze” from “Eternal Reverie” at 1969 Gallery

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, California Art Shows, France, Los Angeles Art Shows, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters, Paris

Dec 272023

This painting, Night Breeze, by Sarah Lee, was part of a group exhibition last year at 1969 Gallery in NYC. It seemed like a good choice to post in honor of tonight’s full moon, the last of 2023, known as the Cold Moon.

Lee is currently part of two group exhibitions- Quiet Storm at Long Story Short’s Paris location and Standing Still at Gana Art’s Los Angeles location.

Brooklyn Art Shows- José Parlá in “Brooklyn Abstraction: Four Artists, Four Walls” at Brooklyn Museum

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Brooklyn, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters

Dec 222023

José Parlá’s majestic paintings, pictured above, are from his series CICLOS: Blooms of Mold. They are currently on view as part of the Brooklyn Museum exhibition, Brooklyn Abstraction: Four Artists, Four Walls. The other artists included are Maya Hayuk, Kennedy Yanko, and the late Leon Polk Smith.

From the museum about the work-

In his monumental compositions, José Parlá layers and scrapes paint to obscure, reveal, and abstract both text and narrative, creating landscapes with textured gestural skies interwoven with a unique code of writing to reveal a new horizon with a universal line. Parlá’s abstracted text visually recalls underground mycelium formations, complex and mysterious fungi communication networks he references that interconnect everything on earth through a web of life. The five newly created paintings on view draw upon his youth as a Cuban American in Miami in the 1980s, his world travels, his almost fatal battle with COVID-19 in 2021, and his survival and recovery.

While in a three-month-long coma after contracting the virus, Parlá experienced dreams that carried him through his healing process. While recovering in the hospital, he transformed these visions into acrylic on paper drawings and, once back in the studio, into these powerful, otherworldly paintings that evoke natural landscapes. Their distinct horizon lines and internal, precise, psychological geographies remind us of our shared humanity.

Blooms of Mold, this new body of large-scale paintings, was inspired by what the art historian Simon Schama, in describing the art of Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn, once called “blooms of mold,” which one encounters on decaying urban and natural landscapes.

Parlá chose the subtitle Ciclos (from the Greek Kúkos, meaning circle) to refer to the life cycle and the function of the mycelium. It connects to ecosystems, providing nutrients and information to trees, which, in turn, convert carbon dioxide into oxygen, providing critical support for the respiratory systems of humans and all other living beings. Without mycelium, there would be no life.

The exhibition will be on view until 7/28/24.

Brooklyn Art Shows- Boris Anisfeld at Brooklyn Museum

Art, Artists, Brooklyn, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters

Nov 082023

The image above is Boris Anisfeld’s Clouds over the Black Sea-Crimea, 1906, from Brooklyn Museum’s exhibition Monet to Morisot: The Real and Imagined in European Art which highlights European art from the 19th and early twentieth-century from their collection. The exhibition “focuses on a period of significant societal transformation, when artistic techniques, subject matter, and patronage underwent profound changes”.

About the painting from the museum-

Boris Anisfeld’s canvas presents a vertiginous view of the Black Sea from the top of the Ayu-Dag mountain in southern Ukraine. The viewer has the sensation of being placed in midair, looking down through billowing clouds at an expanse of blue water, in the midst of which is a small boat. Although the scene represents a vast space, the artist’s complex composition challenges the illusion of depth in traditional landscapes by flattening the elements-cloud, land, and horizon-onto a single plane.

This painting was included in the 1906 Salon d’Automne in Paris in the Russian galleries organized by the ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev, for whom Anisfeld designed stage sets and costumes. After the 1917 Russian Revolution, the artist came to the United States, and within a year the Brooklyn Museum hosted his first American one-person exhibition.

This exhibition closes on 11/12/23.

Throwback Thursday- Sam Falls at 303 Gallery NYC

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Ceramic Art, Conceptual Art, Los Angeles Art Shows, Mixed Media, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters, Sculptors / Sculpture

Sep 142023

“Untitled”, 2020, glazed ceramic

“Midnight Garden (Jnana)”, 2020 Pigment on canvas

“Untitled”, 2020, glazed ceramic

The works above are from Sam Falls’ 2020 exhibition at 303 Gallery in NYC. For more on these works, check out the gallery’s press release.

He is currently showing his work at The Little House, located at 451 N. La Cienega Blvd. in Los Angeles, presented by Dries Van Noten.

From their press release-

On view will be a selection of recent work by Sam Falls which merges photography, painting, and installation which results in captivating pieces that invite viewers to explore the relationship between humans and the environment. The works in the exhibition offer a meditation on the sublime dichotomy of mortality, including ceramics combining fossilized images of nature and the human form, as well as found airbags from crashed cars that are embroidered with symbolic idioms on the transience of time and life quoted from ancient Greek and Roman sundials.

Falls’ artistic process explores the varying representations of nature and materials through the passage of time. Rain, sunlight, wind, and the gradual effects of weathering all contribute to the unique aesthetic of each piece, creating a dialogue between art and nature that captures the essence of life represented in time and space. By exposing his artwork to elements, he invites the environment to act as a collaborator in reinterpreting organic materials into new forms.

This exhibition will be on view until 9/30/23.

Athena La Tocha at Greenwood Cemetery Brooklyn

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Sep 122023

Above are two of the works from Athena LaTocha’s The Remains of Winter (Battle Hill, East), 2022, currently at Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn.

From the cemetery’s website about the work-

Athena LaTocha creates large-scale works inspired by her close observations of the natural world, from the deserts and mountains of the Southwest to the Great Plains. She often incorporates elements of these environments, including soil, sand, bark, and rocks. Recently, she has been particularly drawn to trees, considering them as record keepers that bear the markings of time.

Inspired by Green-Wood’s centuries-old trees and its legacy as a place of remembrance, LaTocha has created The Remains of Winter. She cloaked the remains of two massive European beeches on Battle Hill in thin sheets of lead, a material that has been used for centuries in coffins to slow the decomposition of the body. By hand-forming this malleable metal onto the trees, LaTocha captures the unique details of their shapes and forms, even as they slowly degrade beneath the lead.

All around these sculptures, the Cemetery is in a continuous cycle of transformation. Felled trees are turned into mulch for new plantings, earth is removed then replaced for each new burial, and even the stone monuments themselves slowly erode. Through The Remains of Winter, LaTocha memorializes these shifts and changes while also raising profound questions about what we choose to commemorate and mourn—whether it is what we can witness before us or that which, like the movement of continents and land masses, unfolds over lifetimes.

The sculptures will remain on view through September 2023.

Brooklyn Public Art- Ken Rush’s “Poolevator” at Industry City

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Brooklyn, Conceptual Art, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters, Public Art

Sep 042023

Brooklyn artist Ken Rush’s Poolevator is one of several works located in Industry City– organized by The Collision Project.

From The Collision Project about the work-

This installation represents both the reality and fantasy. The reality is depicted in the inspiring monumental architecture, while the fantasy emerges in the joyful addition of a swimming club with a celebration of swimming, sunbathing, recreation and play. For Rush, the work is a homage to Impressionist painters like Monet and Suerat, and the way that they depicted urban and rural pleasures. This is a group project between Rush and three of his students from High School Visual Arts at Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn Heights.

Throwback Thursday- Kelley Walker at Paula Cooper Gallery NYC

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Aug 312023

Kelley Walker, “Pioneer PL-518 7-inch Series Love (Is The Answer)” (2015), Pantone 4-color process silkscreen with acrylic ink on MDF

The work above is Kelley Walker’s Pioneer PL-518 7-inch Series Love (Is The Answer) (2015) from the exhibition Terry Adkins, Christian Marclay, Kelley Walker, that was on view at Paula Cooper Gallery in NYC this past March.

From the gallery about Kelley Walker-

Known for his manipulation of long-circulating images from advertising and other sources, Kelley Walker examines the consumption of visual culture using collage, screen-printing, sculpture, and installation. Bose Glitter Stock (2016) and Untitled (Screen to Screen) (2017) contain montages of superimposed silkscreen images printed on polyester mesh substrate, the armature for screen printing. Pioneer PL-518 7-inch Series Love (Is The Answer) (2015) is a grid of silkscreened panels that reproduce vinyl records and their packaging. Walker referenced the legendary Pioneer brand of turntables, famously advertised by Andy Warhol, as part of his investigation into the visual culture of the 1970s and 1980s New York disco scene.

Below is the song that the title references. It is included among the records pictured and is from the Four Tops album, Still Waters Run Deep.