Chelsea Art Galleries – Page 3

NYC Art Shows- Robert Indiana at Kasmin

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Conceptual Art, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters, Sculptors / Sculpture

Mar 272025

“LOVE”, 1967, Oil on canvas

“LIP”, 1960-1, Oil on canvas

Robert Indiana: The Source, 1959–1969, currently on view at Kasmin, presents a fascinating selection of the artist’s work from that decade. Several of his well known paintings like LOVE (pictured above) are included, but it is interesting to see his lesser known work as well as the progression in his work throughout this period.

From the gallery about the exhibition-

…Featuring 20 works drawn exclusively from the artist’s personal collection as endowed by Indiana to the Star of Hope Foundation, the exhibition includes an example from the artist’s first edition of LOVE sculptures, conceived in 1966 and executed between 1966—1968, and a vitrine display of archival materials including some of the artist’s journals. This exhibition marks Kasmin’s first collaboration with the Star of Hope Foundation, which was established by the artist in his lifetime, and the gallery’s eighth solo exhibition of work by Indiana since 2003.

Robert Indiana: The Source, 1959–1969 chronicles the Minimalist origins of Indiana’s signature use of signs, symbols, words and numbers. Pairing canonical works with those rarely seen by the public, the exhibition provides a deeper understanding of Indiana as an artist whose output remains emblematic of American culture. The paintings on view demonstrate the personal iconography the artist ascribed to his artwork: as his peers withdrew from the aesthetics of self-expression, Indiana embarked on a career-defining inquiry into the power of symbols to represent meaning. Organized thematically, the exhibition charts Indiana’s influential depictions of words and numbers in bold colors through his early abstractions, reflections on his personal history and the stages of life, and the poetic inevitability of transcendence—a return to the source.

From the gallery about LOVE and LIP–

After discovering a trove of nineteenth-century packaging stencils in 1960, Indiana began incorporating words and numbers in his paintings, spearheading the adoption of commercial advertisement as a language of art. LIP (1960–61), an early example of a single word painting, features the title word’s yellow letters at the center of two intersecting orbs, whose contours suggestively form a pair of red lips. Unraveling the distinction between sign and symbol, the composition suggests a kiss, a universal bodily expression of love.

More selections and information from the gallery below-

“October Painting”, 1959-60, Oil on canvas

Indiana began this composition, which depicts the shadows of a dracaena plant, in October 1959. “This, I feel, is a very seminal painting,” he wrote in a journal entry the following December, seeking to distinguish his own visual language from artists Jack Youngerman and Ellsworth Kelly.

“Ra”, c.1961, Oil on canvas

From the gallery-

After painting a series of orbs in 1959, Indiana revisited the theme in Ra (c. 1961), a triptych arranging a number of red, blue, and green circles in flattened pictorial space. This work’s title reflects Indiana’s early interest in mythology, referencing the Egyptian sun god Ra, historically depicted with a red solar orb and cobra over his head.

Circles appear in Indiana’s work as early as 1958 and resound through paintings such as Mother and Father (1963-66) and Hallelujah (Jesus Saves) (1969). The arrangement of orbs in Ra suggests Indiana’s fascination with sequences, an avenue he would explore in paintings of numbers including Cardinal Nine (1966), on view nearby.

“Cardinal 9”, 1966, Oil on canvas

Indiana’s Cardinal Numbers series (1966) depicts the numbers one through zero in red, blue, and green. Adopting the typography of a business calendar, Indiana conceived of each number to represent a stage of life. Cardinal Nine represents the near end of the sequence, just before zero. The palette held sentimental significance for Indiana, who recalled memories of the red and green signage of Phillips 66, the gas company where his father worked, against the open blue sky.

“Mother and Father”, 1963-1966, Oil on canvas

From the gallery-

Indiana’s extraordinary diptych Mother and Father (1963-66) depicts the artist’s scantily dressed adoptive parents entering a Model T Ford within two circles, as if observed through a pair of binoculars. Conceived as the first to depict his parents in each of the four seasons, Indiana only realized one iteration of the series, set in the winter. Details of the vehicle’s license plate allude to Indiana’s conception ahead of his birth in September 1928, as if to mythologize the artist’s biography.

In an accompanying artist statement, Indiana described this painting as an essential part of his celebrated American Dream series (1961-2001), which earned Indiana’s first major recognition after early acquisitions by The Museum of Modern Art, Van Abbemuseum, Art Gallery of Ontario, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and elsewhere.

Indiana exhibited this painting in an early state in 1964, later adding its stenciled lettering in 1966. He continued to exhibit the work extensively, including in the São Paulo Biennial in 1967 and his traveling institutional retrospectives of 1968, 1977, 1982, and 2013.

“August Is Memory Carmen”, 1963, Oil on canvas

From the gallery-

The number 8 held special resonance for Indiana, whose mother, Carmen, was born in the month of August. August Is Memory Carmen
(1963) incorporates the title of a lyric poem Indiana wrote in 1953, four years after her death. Indiana depicted her portrait alongside his father, Earl, in Mother and Father (1963-66), installed nearby.

This exhibition closes 3/29/25. It is presented in dialogue with Pace Gallery’s upcoming exhibition Robert Indiana: The American Dream, which will open May 9, 2025.

Mar 262025

Jennie C. Jones, “Fluid Red Tone (in the break)”, 2022, Architectural felt, acoustic panel, and acrylic on canvas (left) and Steve Wolfe, “Untitled (Bookends)”, 1990, Bronze, lacquer (bottom right)

Unrecorded Betsi-Nzaman artist, Fang peoples Male Reliquary Guardian Figure (Eyema Byeri), 19th Century Wood, metal, pigment (center sculpture), Andy Warhol, “Close Cover Before Striking”, 1962 Acrylic and collage on linen, (right) and Judy Linn “James Joyce on 23rd st.”, early 1970s, Archival pigment print (on window)

Ronny Quevedo, “body and soul (Reflection Eternal)”, 2022, Pattern paper, gold leaf, and metal leaf on muslin (left) and Christian Marclay and Steve Wolfe, “La Voix Humaine”, 1991, Wood console, oil and screenprint on aluminum (right)

Larry Wolhandler, “Bust of James Baldwin”, 1975, Bronze, and Rudolf Stingel, “Untitled”, 2016, Electroformed copper, plated nickel, stainless steel frame (right)

Medardo Rosso, “Rieuse”, 1890, Wax on plaster, and picture of Joan Didion

Ellen Gallagher “DeLuxe”, 2004–2005 Grid of 60 photogravure, etching, aquatint and drypoints with lithography, screenprint, embossing, tattoo-machine engraving; some with additions of plasticine, watercolor, pomade and toy eyeballs

Writer Hilton Als has brought together a wonderful collection of works exploring art and language for The Writing’s on the Wall: Language and Silence in the Visual Arts at Hill Art Foundation. Quotes from several authors are included alongside the art, adding another dimension to the show.

From the gallery-

This group exhibition presents artists whose work explores the relationships between communication and language. In the curatorial text, Als explains: “for this exhibition, I wanted to show what silence looked like—at least to me—and what words looked like to artists.”

“Writing and erasure have been important sources of inspiration for many of the artists in my family’s collection, including Christopher Wool, Rudolf Stingel, Vija Celmins, and Cy Twombly,” says J. Tomilson Hill, President of the Hill Art Foundation. “Hilton Als has identified a fascinating motif and introduced important loans to illustrate the rich history of these lines of inquiry into the present day.”

In his accompanying essay, Poetics of Silence, Als probes the power of visual art to skirt the written or spoken word. The works included convey “the sense we have when language isn’t working,” evoke “EKGs of rhythm followed by silence, or surrounded by it,” reveal “painting as language’s subtext,” illustrate “what we mean to say as opposed to what gets said,” and “find beauty in the tools that one uses to erase words—and then to make new ones.” He reflects on his own entry into the art world as an art history student at Columbia in the 1980s, and his efforts as a writer and curator to create a democratic “language of perception” that transcends traditional connoisseurship.

The Writing’s on the Wall encompasses a range of mediums, from video installation to printed zine. Artists in the exhibition include Ina Archer, Kevin Beasley, Jared Buckhiester, Vija Celmins, Sarah Charlesworth, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Fang: Betsi-Nzaman, Ellen Gallagher, Joel Gibb and Paul P., Rachel Harrison, Ray Johnson, G.B. Jones and Paul P., Jennie C. Jones, Christopher Knowles, Willem de Kooning, Sherrie Levine, Judy Linn, Christian Marclay, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, Claes Oldenburg, Ronny Quevedo, Irving Penn, Umar Rashid, Medardo Rosso, David Salle, Rudolf Stingel, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, Steve Wolfe, Larry Wolhandler, and Christopher Wool.

Als’ essay provides not only more information on the show and the art included, but also his own experience of learning about and experiencing art.

Below is a brief excerpt but it is well worth it to read the essay in its entirety.

Part of the experience I hope to evoke here draws a line between language, which is to say active contemplation, and being, which requires nothing more than your presence first and language second (or third). You know what being is. It happens to you all the time. You may be in a museum, or a public park, or sitting dully in your house, with “nothing” on your mind, and then there you are—a kind of walking phenomenology, language-free, but not feeling. In fact, you are suffused with feeling. Your feet are on the ground, and your body, released from the chatter of the everyday, is porous to the surrounding world with its various silences—a world where everything and nothing speaks to you. The clouds; some pictures on a white wall; a beautiful, hitherto-unknown sculpture reaching for eternity; that blank wall standing between you and the wonders of a garden that manages to grow right here in the middle of Manhattan—they all became part of your being, the self that is always on the verge of discovery, if only you can listen to its silences.

Silence says so much, if you listen. (From Marianne Moore’s 1924 poem “Silence”: “The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence; not in silence, but restraint.”) And since I have been a writer all my life, it’s a relief not to think in words sometimes, and to look at pictures, which do not so much deny verbalization but are without language, only the experience of here and now. Sometimes being simply means that we are somewhere, and we are porous to contemplation. When we think about visual culture or production, words aren’t the first things that come to mind. What does is the thing itself. And for this exhibition, I wanted to show what silence looked like—at least to me—and what words looked like to artists. The struggle to speak, to say, to reveal language or an attempt at language—communication—in a visual medium that has a complicated relationship to speech.

Als’ website includes his older writing ,but you can read more of his recent essays and reviews on The New Yorker’s website and he frequently posts on Instagram.

This exhibition closes 3/29/25.

NYC Art Shows- Todd Gray at Lehmann Maupin

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Conceptual Art, Mixed Media, New York Art Shows, Photographers / Photography, Sculptors / Sculpture

Mar 262025

Todd Gray’s photo juxtapositions in While Angels Gaze at Lehmann Maupin challenge the viewer to think about the legacies of the past and the ways in which they affect our perceptions of the world today. From classical statues and European paintings, to pop artists, to the stars in the universe, the eye moves between the various layers finding the connections.

From the gallery’s press release-

Best known for his photo assemblages that feature subject matter ranging from imperial European gardens, to West African landscapes, to depictions of pop icons, to portraits of the artist himself, Gray builds critical juxtapositions in his work that examine accepted cultural beliefs—particularly around ideas of the African diaspora, colonialism, and societal power dynamics. In While Angels Gaze, Gray presents a suite of new pieces that combine images from his music photography archive, work made in the early 2000s, and photographs taken during his fellowship at the American Academy in Rome in 2023…

In his newest body of work, Gray integrates Roman Catholic imagery and architecture with photographs sourced from his own archive, including self portraits, images of the Ghanaian landscape, and figures from pop music. The mining of his multi-decade music photography archive is an important component of Gray’s practice and one that offers a view into the history of music, featuring recognizable figures from Al Green to Iggy Pop. In While Angels Gaze, Gray combines these titans of the music industry with images of Roman Catholic cathedrals and ancient Roman statuary, drawing parallels between religious or mythical personages and the idols of today. In these compositions, modern pop stars are cast as the contemporary equivalents of historical figures—where societies might once have inlaid images of saints in golden basilica ceilings or erected statues of religious leaders on building facades, modern idols play on elevated stages to crowds of tens of thousands, becoming enshrined as mass media icons.

Throughout the exhibition, Gray’s lens extends beyond imaging pop icons, with some works devoid of figures all together. In Blues Ship (makes me wanna holla) (2024), for example, Gray depicts an image of a ship in the foremost panel, which appears to sail out of an image of the cosmos captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. Both photographs are set in circular frames against a rectangular foundation image that shows an ornately decorated ceiling. The ship is a model of a French slave ship from the Maison des Esclaves (House of Slaves) museum on Gorée Island, a UNESCO world heritage site and former center of slave trading on the African coast, while the ceiling is located in Villa Torlonia, the former residence of Benito Mussolini in Rome. Here, Gray’s use of cosmic imagery functions as a conceptual bridge, condensing the time between the painting of the ceiling and the photographing of the ship. In works like these, Gray moves beyond celebrity adoration to examine the veneration of other false gods—commerce, wealth, power—exploring the enduring nature and consequences of such idolatry across centuries.

While Angels Gaze also showcases Gray’s use of formal compositional techniques. The curving ovals and circles the artist employs in this body of work disrupt his consistently rectangular format, creating portals through time that bridge the far past and the present. Throughout the series, Gray creates a sense of visual reverb—body gestures are mirrored from one figure to the next in works like Other tellings (Hollywood, Florence, Cosmos) (2024), architectural shapes blend across images in Gorée Island, Villa Torlonia (2024), and color palettes echo across compositions, from the gold-ground mosaics of St. Marc’s Basilica in Venice to the glittering sequins of Michael Jackson’s shirt in Glitter ’n Gold, 2(St. Marks) (2024).

Although Gray’s scenes are overlaid and juxtaposed, his work is never meant to be dissected—rather, each image can be thought of as a discrete stanza that composes a poem of completed work, reflecting his deeply intuitive process. In The Song Remains (assumptions about the nature of time) (2024)—one of the exhibition’s smallest works, composed of just two panels—Gray depicts Iggy Pop in black and white, his image overlaid against a statue from Villa Torlonia of a figure holding a pan flute. The gesture of the statue’s outstretched arm on the left is mirrored in Iggy’s raised hand on the right, connecting the two figures across time as if by an invisible thread. The image suggests an enduring human archetype, different and yet unchanged over the course of many centuries, and invites wider questions about the essence of human nature. Throughout While Angels Gaze, Gray invites us to ask not only who we are, but who we have been—and how much, if at all, this has changed over the course of millennia.

This exhibition closes 3/29/25.

NYC Art Shows- Nathalia Edenmont at Nancy Hoffman

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, New York Art Shows, Photographers / Photography, Sculptors / Sculpture

Mar 202025

For Nathalia Edenmont‘s exhibition Out of Body at Nancy Hoffman Gallery, she explores the symbolism of the egg through photography and sculpture.

From the gallery-

While she is known for her portraits of women wearing dresses she composes of flowers or fruits and vegetables, as well as for her collages of butterfly wings that she magnifies into monumental photographic compositions, she was ready to take a leap into unknown territory inspired by her personal connection to the beguiling goose eggs.

In 2012 the artist acquired a collection of unfertilized goose eggs. When Edenmont was told she was infertile and incapable of bearing a child, she rediscovered these beautiful objects, and realized they were a metaphor for her life, and that she could transform them, turning them into evocative, mysterious sculptural forms she could photograph as subject and object. Mostly white against a stark black background, the eggs are also black, and turquoise and red, each having a character of its own. Her magnum opus sculpture, Out of a Fertile Summer Sun, is an egg within an egg, the larger egg cracked open to reveal a smaller one, bringing to mind images of the Madonna and child throughout art history.

Jean Wainwright writes about Edenmont’s eggs:

“Edenmont’s eggs are different, they are deeply imbued with her feminine experiences, of being a woman unable to bring to life a child and it is in the process of her ‘cracking’ that we unravel the significance of these haunting photographs. Having rediscovered her shells she stored, she set to work to find a new way of engaging with her own life force, bringing new life and creative energy to the empty shells. Now colour is drained from her photographs and the process of working with fragility and delicacy lies in the power of Edenmont’s hand. She moves her fingers and palm around the white goose egg shells in a circular motion as one might caress a womb carrying a child, but then she presses with her fingers and thumb in order to crack the shell exerting different pressures to create the different depths and (amounts of) cracks. Her working method is totally immersive, intense, and time-consuming using trial and error. Many of the experiments do not work; the formation of the cracks and the fault lines in the shells not aesthetically pleasing. Nonetheless, she persevered trying again and again – tapping and pressing the shells, retaining just a previous few to photograph and losing around two hundred egg shells in the process. Each haunting photograph of the egg shell seems suspended in an infinite black universe, a potent evocation of life and loss.”

Edenmont was born in Yalta, and moved to Sweden by the time she was 20, realizing that life in the Soviet Union was disintegrating and held no future for her. Sweden was a country to which she could easily get a visa, being alone in the world after the age of 14, when both her parents died and she had no other relatives. At 27, she was accepted to Forsberg Skola, to study graphic design, where an artist mentor encouraged her to visualize her inner pictures and try to capture them with the camera. It is thanks to Per Hüttner that Nathalia is the photo-based artist she is today.

All of her work derives from her life experience. She says: “I only look inside my head. What I see in my mind is what I create. I do not sketch; the image is complete and sharp within me. I have absolute control over all aspects of what I do.” She uses a large format Sinar camera with 8×10 film and many lenses.

This exhibition closes 3/22/25.

NYC Art Shows- En Iwamura at Ross + Kramer

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Ceramic Art, New York Art Shows, Sculptors / Sculpture

Mar 192025

Currently at Ross + Kramer is En Iwamura’s Mask, an exhibition of his recent ceramic sculptures. The works combine his exploration of masks with the playfulness of children’s toys.

From the press release-

This latest body of work references the cultural and symbolic significance of the mask. As a child growing up in Osaka, the artist recalls being enamored by the global mask display at the city’s National Museum of Ethnology, showcasing masks from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In creating these works, Iwamura drew from the deep sense of mystery that he felt upon viewing the museum’s collection and his curiosity about their origins and variety. While recognizing the historical significance of the mask as a tool for religious, artistic, or ritualistic expression, this body of work reflects on their importance in our contemporary, post-pandemic world.

A driving force behind this collection of work is a reconnection to child-like senses of curiosity, wonderment, and creativity. In addition to Iwamura’s Mask series, the exhibition includes works from the artist’s “Neo Jomon: Stacking Neighbor” series. This series was born from observing his son getting to know the world through play. Much like stacked toys, these ceramic sculptures consist of two parts that fit together in dynamic ways to create a whole. This body of work, with its diverse array of shapes, colors, and expressions, retains the distinct vibrancy of glaze, softness of form, and coarseness of texture for which the artist is best known. To achieve these intricate surfaces, the artist allows his hand-built forms to air dry slightly before drawing various tools across the surface of the clay. The resulting rake-like patterns recall Buddhist Zen gardens as well as the cord-marked pottery that characterizes Jōmon culture (10,500 BCE to 300 BCE). While serving as a meditation on parenthood, this series is also an encouragement to reunite with one’s inner child.

This exhibition closes 3/22/25.

NYC Art Shows- Robert Grosvenor at Paula Cooper Gallery

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Installation Art, New York Art Shows, Photographers / Photography, Sculptors / Sculpture

Mar 182025

Robert Grosvenor’s sculptures and photographs on view at Paula Cooper Gallery capture your attention with their familiarity, but on closer inspection their strangeness becomes apparent.

From the press release-

I’ve got this hobby, making things: boats and cars. Until recently I’ve always kept them at a recreational level, just having fun.

– Robert Grosvenor

An exhibition of recent sculpture and photography by Robert Grosvenor will survey his prolonged fascination with the aerodynamics of machinery. Since the 1980s, Grosvenor has applied his subtly elusive formal vocabulary to the vernacular of American car culture by transforming obsolete vehicles into inoperable sculptures. A series of exhibitions of uncannily altered vehicles isolated in striking or purpose-built spaces have frequently enshrined these works. Here, numerous sculptures are gathered under one roof in a lively installation that enhances their individual narrative qualities.

In the main room, a reflective deep purple sculpture is flanked with a vibrant green form on one side and a heavily rusted object on the other. Each work is a found object, perfected through small adjustments that enhance its existing form. The purple sculpture (Untitled, 2023) has no windshield and its headlights have been sprayed matt black, but it otherwise looks like it could be spurred into action. The green sculpture (Untitled, 2022) is smooth and pure, rocket-like, inanimately still. The rusted work (Untitled, 2022) was already romantically sculptural, the wooden planks of the truck bed aging like driftwood and its patina warm with wear. The machine still bears the name of its maker on its back, but the roof has been lowered to remove it completely from the realm of functionality. Arranged in a triangular formation facing the street with other smaller works surrounding them, the vehicles recall the gallery’s previous incarnation as a parking garage.

The front gallery contains a nautical sculpture (Untitled, 2023) stripped of its operative apparatus and leaning to one side. Painted in white and vibrant turquoise to accentuate its curves and points, the work is both familiar and ambiguous, imparting a distinct strangeness. On the surrounding walls are photographs of unlikely objects pictured against blue skies and green lagoons, complementing the sculpture in theme and tone. Some images depict vehicles and structures so characteristic of Grosvenor that one wonders if he made them himself. Animated with humor and vivid color, the photographs depict a compelling alternate reality.

This exhibition closes 3/22/25.

NYC Art Shows- Leslie Wayne at Jack Shainman Gallery

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Mixed Media, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters, Sculptors / Sculpture

Aug 012024

Jack Shainman Gallery is currently showing two bodies of work by Leslie Wayne for her exhibition This Land. One half of the show is paintings based on photos she took of landscapes from an airplane window while traveling from New York to the Seattle. Abstract work influenced by aspects of the natural world makes up the other half.

In a recent interview with designboom, Wayne was asked how perception and memory influenced her process for this work-

Perception is just an interpretation really, of what one sees, and while the paintings in ‘This Land is Your Land’ series were made directly from the photographs I took on a flight to the Pacific Northwest, they are infused with the feelings and memories I hold dear of my childhood. I’ve lived in New York since 1982, but I grew up in California and I still have a very strong attachment to the West Coast and to the geology and geography of the West. Even the abstract work in which I am manipulating thick layers of paint, I am drawing on those sensations I remember having of being in nature where the tectonic and geologic forces are right there for one to see and feel — millions of years of layered strata, of compression and subduction, of gravity and erosion, and certainly of the shifting plates that cause earthquakes.

More on the show from the press release-

Jack Shainman Gallery is pleased to present This Land, an exhibition of two kindred bodies of work by Leslie Wayne that express the nature of the American West through perception and memory. In each piece, Wayne considers different ways in which we interpret and imagine geological space, exploring landscape both as a vertical, abstracted force and a horizontal, figurative expanse. Named in homage to Woody Guthrie’s heartland ballad “This Land is Your Land,” Wayne offers a contemporary vision of Manifest Destiny—imbuing her symbolic, and experienced, westward voyages with topographies that are sensorial, memorial, and tectonic.

In a series of dimensional abstract paintings on large, metronome-like planks, Wayne uses a dramatic and vibrant palette to mold paint so that it cascades down the wood panel in a multitude of ways. Applying the paint in heavy layers, she encourages the influence of gravity and refines her materials to their most basic form, color, and behavior. Adopting, rather than controlling the rhythm of nature, these compositions are fluid to the viewer’s myriad associations with this image of momentum—be it reminiscent of the rush of an avalanche, the swell of hot lava, or the pileup of driftwood on a seashore.

In her series entitled This Land is Your Land, she creates compact, observational paintings based on snapshots she took from her seat as she flew west over the Rocky Mountains all the way to the Cascade Range in Washington State in 2021. Creating a precise mise-en-scène by placing each painting in a frame that resembles the Boeing 737 window she peered out from, Wayne transports her viewers into a precise sensation: beholding our nation as the land settles into one continuous, harmonious expanse—stripped down to simple shapes and shades. Her portholes offer a view into a terrain of awe, reminiscence, and omniscience, a collective vision of a region fraught with, and fractured by, territories and borders.

Extending beyond the format of the airplane-window frame, Wayne has also created two unique works inspired by the same journey. The first is a twenty-two-foot-long painted scroll entitled From the Rockies to the Cascades, in addition to High Dive, a large-format painting in which she stretches her canvas onto a frame of coiled springs—materials that simulate a bird’s-eye view of the landscape as if seen by a skydiver descending towards a trampoline. The paintings from this series are accompanied by a vitrine displaying Wayne’s special limited edition This Land, a handmade accordion book that illustrates the aerial photographs from her voyage, alongside Taylor Brorby’s poem “The Ages Have Been at Work” and the lyrics to Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land.”

In German, heimat is a term used to describe not only the characteristics of a place, but the complex and interdependent physical, social, and mental associations with a homeland. For Wayne, this sentiment stretches, folds, and bends from the west coast, her childhood home, to the east coast, where she has resided since 1982. Treading across this land, psychic routes unfold, and Wayne savors “That path [which] is never straight and always various, each time opening new ways of seeing and thinking about the world we occupy, the ways we inhabit nature, and the legacies we leave behind.”

This exhibition closes 8/2/24.

NYC Art Shows- Hugh Hayden at Lisson Gallery

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Conceptual Art, Fiber Arts, Installation Art, Mixed Media, New York Art Shows, Sculptors / Sculpture

Jul 312024

For Hugh Hayden’s current exhibition Hughmans at Lisson Gallery, his sculptures remain hidden behind bathroom stall doors. The well-crafted works vary in subject, size, and material, and cover a wide range of social issues. For more information on his thought process and some of the work, Hayden recently discussed the show with Art in America.

From the press release-

Following his solo exhibition in Los Angeles, Hugh Hayden continues his exploration of the prosthetics of power in a new series of works and site-specific installations created for the Lisson Gallery New York space. In Hughmans, Hayden reengages with the concept of the bathroom stall in order to investigate experiences of revelation, intimacy, desire, and sexuality – this time through the lens of the collective experience.

Known for his poignant metaphors and examinations of human existence, Hayden’s work transcends individual experience to probe the collective consciousness. Hughmans maintains his signature use of wood as a primary medium alongside bronze, resin, and silicone, amplifying the depth and texture of his narrative. At the heart of the exhibition lies an ambitious site-specific installation, unraveling the complexities of power dynamics in contemporary society. Hayden transforms mundane elements into profound symbols, inviting viewers to confront their own perceptions and assumptions of daily life.

In the gallery, visitors will find an arrangement of metal bathroom stalls, each concealing an artwork within. This unconventional setup challenges notions of privacy and intimacy, urging viewers to reconsider their relationship with public spaces. Two wooden sculptures embodying the fictional character Pinocchio will be exhibited. Ebanocchio (2024) and Nocecchio (2024) serve as contrasting counterparts, one crafted from ebony and the other from walnut. In the original fairytale, Pinocchio’s name was also derived from his physical, wooden origin, ‘Pino’ being the Italian term for pine. These works employ Hayden’s recurring conceptual gesture of wood and the intersection of materiality and identity. The artist recently unveiled another sculpture, Geppetto (2023), in his comprehensive exhibition, American Vernacular, at the Laumeier Sculpture Park. Named in reference to Pincocchio’s father, the work serves as an antecedent to the pieces showcased in New York. Like much of Hayden’s ouvre, the fantastical story of the marionette is often attributed as a metaphor for the human condition.

In another stall, the artist will present Harlem (2024), a new ensemble of cast iron melting pots and copper pans – works which serve as a metaphor for the creation of America through cultural diversity. These particular sculptures will depict both facial features and functional musical instruments. This iteration of melting pots, made using sand casting, synthesizes diasporic movement and the African origins of the US. Unlike past presentations of similar works which were hung from the wall and ceiling, these works will be suspended from a New York City subway-style handrail.

This exhibition closes 8/2/24.

NYC Art Shows- Mary Heilmann at Hauser & Wirth

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Drawing, Installation Art, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters, Photographers / Photography, Printmaking

Jul 192024

Daydream Nation, Mary Heilmann’s exhibition at Hauser & Wirth, is filled with interesting forms, both familiar and abstract.

From the press release-

Curated by artist Gary Simmons, Heilmann’s friend and former student and colleague at New York’s School of Visual Arts, the exhibition celebrates her talent for distilling complex images and ideas into deceptively simple geometric forms and abstract gestural marks. Through rarely and never-before-seen works on paper from the 1970s to early 2000s, this presentation reveals how drawing functions as a form of daydreaming—of conjuring the sights, sounds and events of her past travels or her imagined future—in Heilmann’s creative process.

Heilmann is known for working across mediums and for installations which playfully combine disparate works. Reflecting on the artist’s approach to exhibition-making, ‘Daydream Nation’ brings together works on paper, ranging from watercolor studies for larger paintings to works that function as paintings on paper in their own right, alongside a selection of her ceramic sculptures and sculptural chairs to create an ambiently whimsical yet conceptually rigorous environment. Heilmann often works in series, revisiting and reimagining certain arrangements of form and color over time, as evidenced here in such recurring motifs as the chair, rosebud, spiral, wave and web. But in Heilmann’s oeuvre, repetition begets difference and from this multiplicity emerges important truths about the functions of memory and our process of translating it.

Drawing has always factored significantly into Heilmann’s practice, manifesting in a variety of forms in ‘Daydream Nation.’ The exhibition features a new mural-like installation that reimagines and expands an existing work into a new form of expression. Heilmann’s seventh wall drawing to date, this installation was developed in conversation with Simmons, who frequently explores the monumental scale of this medium in his own work.

The title of this exhibition is taken from Sonic Youth’s groundbreaking album ‘Daydream Nation’ (1988), beloved by both Heilmann and Simmons. Evoking Heilmann’s longstanding interest in daydreaming as a creative exercise and the importance of travel for her in this process, it also situates her oeuvre within the culture of youthful rebellion in New York City, the California-born artist’s adopted home since 1968 and a constant source of energy and inspiration for her both personally and professionally.

This exhibition closes 7/26/24.

For more about the artist and her work, check out this episode of Art21, below.

NYC Art Shows- Rosson Crow at Miles McEnery Gallery

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

Jul 022024

The brightly colored mixed media paintings Rosson Crow has painted for her exhibition, Babel, at Miles McEnery Gallery are perfect for the chaotic times we are currently living in.

From the gallery-

Crow’s works, rendered in oil, acrylic, and photo transfer, are hyper saturated in both palette and her own lexicon of distinctly American iconography. Often drawing direct inspiration from gathered experiences and ephemera from cross country roadtrips, her subjects range from exploding party stores and spilling over fruit stands to populist political crusades and overrun monster truck rallies.

The exhibition centers on three arc-shaped canvases depicting the construction, peak, and destruction of the biblical Tower of Babel. Pulled into the contemporary landscape, Crow’s inspiration stems from Jonathan Haidt’s 2022 essay in The Atlantic, “Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid.” Using the story of Babel as an allegory for the recent fragmentation of collective discourse, the paintings bring the viewer through this dissolution. Going from utopian idealism to the point of breaking and its aftermath, Crow confronts us all to address the parallels between her canvases and our fragmented reality of contention and polarization.

Julia Halperin writes, “Crow has always been a student of history—political history, pop-cultural history, art-and-design history. Critics have described many of her large-scale, epic compositions as contemporary history paintings. But she does not depict history as it unfolded or even as we wish it had unfolded. Instead, she shows history as we might actually receive it today: distorted, manipulated, heightened, blurred, and out of context.”

This exhibition closes 7/3/24.

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