This week, our picks of galleries in Brooklyn, Chelsea, Uptown and Downtown in New York are offering a wide variety of art exhibitions highlighting experimental mediums and departures from tradition. Artists in these new gallery shows are making work using everything from cosmetics on matchboxes to fabrics and textiles and LED-lit pigeons. Continue reading to discover our selection of gallery highlights for new shows opening in New York City art galleries through October 1, 2017.
DOWNTOWN
Art Projects International: “Suddenly a Knife: New Paintings by Il Lee”
September 27 through November 18, 2017
Opening Reception: Wednesday, September 27 from 6 to 8 p.m.
Art Projects International will present “Suddenly a Knife: New Paintings by Il Lee,” an exhibition dedicated to Lee’s white paintings.
Il Lee’s white paintings are large-scale acrylic and oil on canvas works, a departure from his signature ballpoint pen, a medium he’s employed throughout the past four decades of his career. With the white paintings, Lee follows a trajectory similar to his ballpoint ink works, with a reductive palette and tangles of looping, energetic line. Still, in some works the line is incised rather than applied, cutting away at dark acrylic paint to create light. In his work, lines contrast with velvety light areas, which have as much of their own character and variety as the lines.
Art Projects International is located at 434 Greenwich St, New York, NY 10013. www.artprojects.com.
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Peter Blum Gallery: “John Zurier: Stars Without Distance”
September 27 through November 11, 2017
Opening Reception: Wednesday, September 27 from 6 to 8 p.m.
In the first show at Peter Blum’s new downtown location, John Zurier will present new paintings in “Stars Without Distance.”
Inspired by time spent in Iceland, John Zurier’s paintings on linen meld abstraction with a visceral sense of being in the world. The dots, dashes and stray lines on the folds of linen simultaneously reinforce the materiality of the medium while implying an undefined ephemeral space. The paintings, which are both concrete and suggestive, show previous marks by the artist, whether scraped away or revealed, the marks are embedded in the weave, heightening “awareness of memory, place, time and sensation,” according to the gallery.
Peter Blum Gallery is located at 176 Grand St, New York, NY 10013. www.peterblumgallery.com.
Click here for exhibition details.
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"For Nathaniel" by John Zurier, 2017. Oil on linen, 78 x 48 inches. Courtesy the Artist and Peter Blum Gallery, New York.
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Invisible-Exports: “Vaginal Davis & Louise Nevelson | Chimera”
September 8 through October 22, 2017
Reception: Friday, September 29 from 6 to 8 p.m.
Invisible-Exports will present “Chimera,” a two-person show featuring work by Vaginal Davis and Louise Nevelson.
The work will feature 20 of Vaginal Davis’s “make-up paintings” alongside one work from Louise Nevelson’s black series. Davis, a self-described intersexed artist who rose to fame in the 1970s LA art-punk scene, is known for her small-scale cosmetics-and-tempera paintings, depicting large eyed, noseless women alongside occasional phrases such as “Corporations are not very attractive as people.” Typically painted on matchbooks, cardboard, envelopes and letterhead, the paintings include perfume, hairspray and other products of “traditional” femininity, symbolizing Davis’s refusal to prescribe to the typical norms of feminism. Nevelson (1899-1988), known for monumental, monochromatic wood sculptures, similarly redefined the visual language of feminism through her public art and assemblages. Both artists are iconoclastic and innovative in their bodies of work.
Invisible-Exports is located at 89 Eldridge St, New York, NY 10002. www.invisible-exports.com.
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CHELSEA
Magnan Metz Gallery: “Duke Riley: Now Those Days Are Gone”
September 27 through October 21, 2017
Opening Reception: Thursday, September 28 from 6 to 8 p.m. at 524 West 26th Street
Magnan Metz Gallery will present “Duke Riley: Now Those Days Are Gone,” an homage and extension of the Brooklyn-based Riley’s public artwork “Fly by Night” from 2016.
Riley’s “Fly by Night,” which was commissioned by Creative Time and the Brooklyn Navy Yard, was a public artwork in which thousands of pigeons carrying tiny LED lights were released at dusk from the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The new exhibition will feature large-scale photographs documenting in abstract compositions the flight patterns of the pigeons through long exposure shots. Accompanying the photographs will be 1,000 individual, hand-painted and embroidered portraits of the pigeons that participated, installed around the circumference of the gallery’s sky-lit walls. The exhibition will also include a large mural and three wall-based mosaic works, as well as a selection of Riley’s work from the past decade. The exhibition will be held at both the gallery and an expansive temporary space at 524 West 26th Street.
Magnan Metz Gallery is located at 521 W 26th St, New York, NY 10001. www.magnanmetz.com.
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Carolina Nitsch Project Room: “Louise Bourgeois: Fabric Works”
September 30 through November 30, 2017
Carolina Nitsch will present “Louise Bourgeois: Fabric Works,” an exhibition featuring Louise Bourgeois’ textile books as well as other editions on cloth published by the gallery.
The gallery, which published some two dozen projects with Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010), will showcase such works by Bourgeois as “Ode à L’Oubli,” a 35-panel cloth book. Bourgeois, who as a child assisted her father in his tapestry restoration workshop, created works that used fabric and imagery to explore themes such as motherhood, birth, nature, memory and abandonment. In the last two decades of her career, Bourgeois experimented with weaving, embroidery, appliqué and types of printing on textiles. The exhibition will include works such as “To Whom It May Concern,” her last fabric work, completed in a collaboration with Gary Indiana; the woven text “I Am Afraid”; and “Night and Day,” a diptych in dyed silk that alludes to Mother Earth.
Carolina Nitsch Project Room is located at 534 W 22nd St, New York, NY 10011. www.carolinanitsch.com.
Click here for exhibition details.
UPTOWN
Acquavella Galleries: “Three Dimensions: Modern & Contemporary Approaches to Relief and Sculpture”
September 25 through November 17, 2017
Opening Reception: Wednesday, September 27 from 6 to 8 p.m.
Acquavella Galleries will present “Three Dimensions: Modern & Contemporary Approaches to Relief and Sculpture,” a group exhibition featuring a wide range of mediums and artists.
Focusing on 20th and 21st century work from Europe, the United States, South America and West Africa, the exhibition will include works from Henri Laurens to El Anatsui. The exhibition will include a wide variety of media, including ceramics by Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró, a standing metal mobile by Alexander Calder, fabric works by Louise Bourgeois and Claes Oldenburg with Coosje van Bruggen and Eva Hesse’s industrial material reliefs. Through the sculpture retrospective, the exhibition will highlight key ideas of modern and contemporary sculpture, including unorthodox materials and subject matter.
Acquavella Galleries is located at 18 E 79th St, New York, NY 10075. www.acquavellagalleries.com.
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Rosenberg & Co.: “A Different Medium”
September 27, 2017 through January 20, 2018
Opening Reception: Wednesday, September 27 from 6 to 8 p.m.
Rosenberg & Co. will present “A Different Medium,” a group exhibition featuring artists who explored outside their traditional methods and media.
The exhibition includes the work of more than 20 Modern and contemporary artists, including Jean Arp, Agustin Cárdenas, Henri Laurens, Joseph Csaky, Bernard Meadows, Beatrice Mandelman and Marcin Dudek. The survey includes artists who incorporated found materials into their work, those who worked in both two- and three-dimensions, and mixed multi-media work. The exhibition explores materiality that defies academic categorization.
Rosenberg & Co. is located at 19 E 66th St, New York, NY 10065. www.rosenbergco.com.
Click here for exhibition details.
BROOKLYN
Signal: “Rachel Rossin: Peak Performance”
September 29 through October 22, 2017
Opening Reception: Friday, September 29
In her second exhibition with Signal gallery, Rachel Rossin will present new work in the exhibition “Peak Performance.”
Rachel Rossin, who is known for work delving into virtual reality, will present new sculpture and painting exploring disembodied consciousness in digital space. The work will center on the seductive fantasy of a body freed from the limitations of anatomy and physics, as well as the potential for abuse or disfigurement and inevitable entropic deterioration.
Signal is located at 260 Johnson Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11206. www.ssiiggnnaall.com.
Click here for exhibition details.
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Artwork by Rachel Rossin. Courtesy of Rachel Rossin.
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NYC Gallery Scene - Highlights publishes weekly with exhibitions selected by Hamptons Art Hub staff. This edition was written by Genevieve Kotz. Click here to visit our Gallery Guide to find more exhibitions on view.
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