The second installment of our NYC Galleries Scene column is filled with our top picks of new gallery exhibitions opening in New York City through April 17, 2016. Focusing on contemporary and modern art in Chelsea, Uptown Manhattan and Brooklyn, we've picked a diverse range of new art exhibitions to add to your art going list. Expect to find new directions by artists or rarely seen ones. Gallery shows feature photography, installation, assemblages, painting, sculpture and more. Read on to discover our picks for new gallery shows opening in New York City through April 17, 2016.

CHELSEA:

Alexander Gray Associates: “Hassan Sharif”

Alexander Gray Associates presents “Hassan Sharif” on view from April 7 to May 14, 2016. An Opening Reception will take place on Thursday, April 7 from 6 to 8 p.m. 

The exhibition features recent sculptures and woven assemblages by Hassan Sharif. A pioneer of conceptual art and experimental practice in the U.A.E., Sharif is known for his integration of ordinary, everyday and inexpensive objects into his work to explore increasing industrialization and consumerism in the U.A.E (United Arab Emirates), where the artist is from. The woven surfaces in his work stem from the ancient tradition of tapestry making while referencing the hyper-modernization impacting everyday life and the abandonment of old traditions that held communities together in the past.

Alexander Gray Associates is located at 510 W 26th St, New York, NY 10001. www.alexandergray.com.

Click here for exhibition details.

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Anton Kern Gallery: “Anne Collier”

Anton Kern Gallery presents “Anne Collier” from April 9 to May 14, 2016.

This exhibition features new photographs by Anne Collier that continue her explorations into the nature of photographic images while exploring perception, representation and the mechanics of the gaze. The exhibition features a new series of large works titled "Women Crying". Sourced from album covers from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, the work explores staged and implied emotions through a gender-specific lens. The show also includes Collier's signature visual motifs of the open book.

Collier's work negotiates between autobiography, nostalgia and pop-melancholia. Her work balances tensions between a forensic-like objectivity and the subjective and emotional context highlighted in her work.

Anton Kern Gallery is located at 532 W 20th St, New York, NY 10011. www.antonkerngallery.com.

Click here for exhibition details.

Claire Oliver Gallery: "Lauren Fensterstock: The Order of Things"

Claire Oliver Gallery presents “Lauren Fensterstock: The Order of Things,” on view from April 14 to May 21, 2016. An Opening Reception will take place on Thursday, April 14 from 6 to 8 p.m.

The centerpiece of "The Order of Things" consists of three sculptural elements taking the appearance of large ornamental cabinets with objects and a collection of shells cloaked in monochromatic black. The piece appears as though it has grown stalactites and suggests stagnation, the passage of time, and a return to the natural order. The piece explores the desire to understand and order the world amid nature's wild strength and the unknown and the recognition of limits of humanity. The exhibition also includes smaller works by the artist.

Claire Oliver Gallery is located at 513 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001. www.claireoliver.com.

 Click here for exhibition details.

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UPTOWN:

Acquavella Galleries: “Jean Dubuffet: Anticultural Positions”

Acquavella Galleries presents “Jean Dubuffet: Anticultural Positions” on view from April 15 to June 10, 2016. An Opening Reception will take place on Thursday, April 14 from 6 to 8 p.m.

"Anticultural Positions" is the first survey of Jean Dubuffet's early work in painting and sculpture in over two decades. The exhibition is curated by Mark Rosenthal and focuses on Dubuffet's work from 1943 to 1959. The show highlights the artist's use of unorthodox materials and his "anti-cultural" approach in his depiction of subjects. Many of the works on view exemplify the raw tendencies of Art Brut and were created in opposition to what Dubuffet saw at the time as the stifling conformity of French culture.

Acquavella Galleries is located at 18 E 79th St, New York, NY 10075. www.acquavellagalleries.com.

Click here for exhibition details.

RELATED: "NYC Museum Highlight: “Art Brut in America” at the Folk Art Museum" by Pat Rogers.

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BROOKLYN:

Microscope Gallery: “Takahiko Iimura: Seeing Double”

Microscope Gallery presents “Takahiko Iimura: Seeing Double” on view April 8 to May 15, 2016. An Opening will take place on Friday, April 8 from 6 to 9 p.m.

This exhibition centers around five seminal installation works by New York-based Japanese artist Takahiko Iimura. The works were created between 1964 and 1983 and are being exhibited together for the first time. In each installation, Takahiko explores how elements of duality, be it sculptural, cultural, logical, visual or auditory, can be a means to achieve unity through film and video art. Takahiko also explores the linguistic and symbolic differences between Japanese and Western cultures through the medium of video.

Microscope Gallery is located at 1329 Willoughby Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11237. www.microscopegallery.com.

Click here for exhibition details. 

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Front Room Gallery: “Amy Hill: Young and Innocent”

Front Room Gallery presents “Amy Hill: Young and Innocent” on view from April 15 to May 22, 2016. An Opening Reception takes place on Friday, April 15 from 7 to 9 p.m.

"Young and Innocent" will feature figurative oil paintings by Amy Hill. Hill is known for modernizing earlier eras in art history, in particular renaissance painting. In "Young and Innocent", Hill combines folk artist's depictions of children as innocents in bucolic settings in a series of portraits of urban children who have embraced modern living influences including materialism, consumerism and drug use.

Front Room Gallery is located at 147 Roebling St, Brooklyn, NY 11211. www.frontroom.org.

Click here for exhibition details. 

Ortega y Gasset Projects: “PASS / FAIL”

Ortega y Gasset Projects presents the group show “PASS / FAIL” on view April 15 to May 15, 2016 at the Main Gallery. An Opening will take place on Friday, April 15 from 6 to 10 p.m.

This group show curated by Will Hutnick features the work of Adam Ekberg, Robert Otto Epstein, Leif Low-Beer, Erin O’Keefe, Gabrielle Roth, Megan Stroech and Denise Treizman. Expect to find art that channels the creative process, creation itself and the space between "passing and failing", where the new teeters between pulling it off and succumbing to something less.

Ortega y Gasset Projects is located at 363 3rd Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11215. OyG is a collective and incubator for dialogue and artistic exchange that unites artists from multiple states. www.oygprojects.com.

Click here for exhibition details.

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NURTUREart Gallery: “Dead Lands: Karkaot Mawat”

NUTUREart Gallery presents “Dead Lands: Karkaot Mawat” on view April 16 to May 15, 2016. An Opening Reception will take place on Friday, April 15 from 7 to 9 p.m.

Curated by Rotem Rozental, the exhibition features work by Michal BarOr, Assaf Evron, Josh Franco, Dor Guez, Gaston Zvi Ickowicz, Yaron Lapid, Metehan Özcan, Alona Rodeh. The exhibition explores identity conflicts revealing artistic practices uncover identity shaped through real and imagined geographies. Participating artists use institutional systems such as archives, communal rituals and national visual rhetoric to subvert the narratives these systems seek to preserve. In this way, the artists portray their struggle to negotiate their identities in contrast to the land that seeks to define, celebrate, marginalize or exclude them.

NUTUREart Gallery is located at 56 Bogart St, Brooklyn, NY 11206. www.nurtureart.org.

Click here for exhibition details.

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