Matvey Levenstein, LY, 2018

Currently at Kasmin Gallery are Matvey Levenstein’s paintings depicting scenes from his life in North Fork, Long Island. There’s a quiet, peaceful quality to the works, which begin with snapshots before they are turned into paintings. This exhibition closes Saturday 3/2/19.

Across the street at another of Kasmin Gallery’s Chelsea locations, and worth a visit, is an exhibition of some of Andy Warhol’s polaroid portraits.

Matvey Levenstein, Pink Moon, 2018

Susan Inglett Gallery is showing Slim… you don’t got the juice, an exhibition of work by Wilmer Wilson IV. His work with staples may seem familiar from its inclusion in the New Museum’s 2018 Triennial: Songs for Sabotage.

From the press release-

Slim… you don’t got the juice presents multidisciplinary departures from familiar modes of figurative representation, as they have evolved in the realm of photographic discourse. Wilmer Wilson IV has developed strategies of redaction and annotation in his work that begin to destabilize the norms of making and viewing portraiture through visual, material, and technical manipulation. An exploration into the complex renderings of individual subject-hood versus object-hood in portraiture, the artist has conceived of a stapled-surface-as-viewing-device that mediates image with material. The device is manifest in a series of staple works that almost fully shroud the photographic subjects beneath dense fields of metal fasteners. The austere, randomized application of the staples onto the surface of each portrait results in a resistance of visual penetration from many angles, complicating access to the underlying figures and deconstructing the voyeuristic inclinations of the viewer.

This exhibition closes 3/16/19.

Wilmer Wilson IV, Host, 2018

At Lehmann Maupin’s 24th Street location is McArthur Binion, Hand:Work, an exhibition of the artist’s grid paintings created with oil paint stick and paper on board. The patterns created in the work are overwhelming at first glance but then when seen up close, the personal details add a new dimension to the paintings.

From the press release–

…For Binion, his personal documents represent the sum total of one’s social life: relationships, citizenship, vocation, and family life. The revealing and obscuring of these aspects of his life also addresses the larger sociopolitical reality of African-American identity—often obscured or erased from common knowledge, yet always present in tandem with major movements in American culture. In his newest Hand:Work paintings, Binion takes an introspective approach that is more closely aligned with the artist’s own self-perception—effectively, his first self-portraits. Using copies of a photo of the home where he was born, along with a photograph of his hand as the ground layer of the paintings, Binion pares down his identity to its most essential elements. These images are tiled in repeated succession, layered under his repetitious line work in oil stick. These gestures themselves relate to memories Binion has of his early childhood farm life, a disciplined approach to the cyclical, sustained effort he maintains in his work today. Through the insertion of his hand, literally in the photographs, and figuratively in his intricate, overlapping mark-making, the artist relates to his earliest introduction to artistry in his mother’s quilting, a tradition he modified and carried into his practice.

This exhibition closes 3/2/19.

McArthur Binion at Lehmann Maupin

McArthur Binion at Lehmann Maupin, detail of above painting

Robert Mann Gallery is showing the newly discovered work of photographer Ed Sievers. The exhibition of black and white photos also includes his later work from the 1970s in Venice Beach. The gallery also has an exhibition of Michael Kenna’s series of black and white female nudes made in Japan (not shown). Both shows close 3/2/19.

Ed Sievers, Untitled (woman in the shadows), c. 1960s, courtesy of the artist, image via Robert Mann Gallery

Damn! The Defiant, a group show curated by Damon Brandt and Andrew Freiser at Fredericks & Freiser Gallery, brings together “images of rebellion and dissent in contemporary portraiture” and includes a wide variety of work in different mediums from an incredible selection of artists that includes Mary Ellen Mark, Gordon Parks, Dana Schutz, Bruce Davidson, Whitfield Lovell and many more. It’s a show that’s very appropriate for a time period that is going to require more and more defiance.

From the press release-

Nothing creates projected personal territory more than the emotional push back generated from the recalcitrant expression of a defiant subject. Yet ironically, it is the very nature of this engagement that makes it difficult for the viewer to quickly detach or withdraw from what in fact amounts to an extended glare or moment of social tension. In a time of undeniable anxiety, finding both the common and contrasting ground in the portrayal of defiance speaks directly to the angst and pre-occupation for self-determination that has been and continues to be a pervasive human concern.

This exhibition closes 3/2/19.

Installation view of Damn! The Defiant, image via Fredericks & Freiser