New shows are opening this week in New York, highlighting a wide range of post-war and contemporary artists. Shows in Downtown, Brooklyn and Uptown galleries showcase contemporary Pop art and retrospectives on Abstract Expressionist artists. Art exhibitions feature artists experimenting with unexpected tools, such as a soldering iron to draw, and unexpected mediums, such as soft pastel. Below are our picks for the NYC Gallery Scene through September 24, 2017.
DOWNTOWN
Blank Space: “Yuki Matsueda: Super Ordinary”
September 21 through November 19, 2017
Opening Reception: Thursday, September 21 from 6 to 8 p.m.
BLANK SPACE will present “Yuki Matsueda: Super Ordinary,” the artist’s first solo show in New York.
Yuki Matsueda, a Japanese artist known for his multi-planar wall sculptures, will present several pieces representative of his overall body of work. His sculptures, which examine the blurring relationships between art and design with wit and humor, portray objects springing out of frozen states or pouring onto a surface, as if capturing an isolated moment in time. Matsueda will show works such as his Be Ready to Run series, in which he reinterprets Andy Warhol’s famous Campbell soup prints, and his Super Egg series, in which a yolk springs from a broken egg.
Blank Space is located at 30 Gansevoort St, New York, NY 10014. www.blankspaceart.com.
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Aicon Gallery: “Saad Qureshi | When The Moon Split”
September 21 through November 4, 2017
Press Preview & VIP Reception: Thursday, September 21 from 6 to 8 p.m.
Aicon Gallery will present “Saad Qureshi: When the Moon Split,” the artist’s third solo exhibition with the gallery featuring new work created specially for the space.
The exhibition, which centers on a sculpture of the moon and six drawings on wood, is inspired by a story in which the Prophet Muhammed caused the moon to split in two halves to show the inhabitants of Mecca a sign of his faith. Qureshi, who is fascinated by the tale and the symbolism of the moon throughout history, created a split moon to be suspended in the center of the gallery.
The artist’s drawings, depicting imagined landscapes in the moonlight, were created by painstakingly applying a soldering iron on handmade watercolor paper washed with layers of iron oxide pigment. The exhibit, which juxtaposes the heavenly body and the human body, explores the artist’s fascination with the magical quality of moonlight and the mythical qualities of the moon.
Aicon Gallery is located at 35 Great Jones St, New York, NY 10012. www.aicongallery.com.
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Karma Karma: “Nicolas Party: Pastel”
September 24 through November 5, 2017
Opening Reception: Sunday, September 24 from 6 to 8 p.m.
In his first exhibition with Karma Karma gallery, Nicolas Party will present “Pastel,” an exhibition featuring works in soft pastel.
Creating a unique environment for the viewer, Nicolas Party’s work focuses on four visual characters: trees, fruit, humans and landscapes. His art, referred to as non-narrative, non-Surrealist and non-Symbolist, uses visuals from his vast knowledge of art history as building blocks to be employed, transformed and integrated into his own language of precise forms. The use of soft pastel, a medium that can be applied or destroyed with the swipe of a finger, yields works that feel both solid and fleeting, as if they could be blown away no matter how complex and color-drenched the work appears.
Karma Karma is located at 188 E 2nd St, New York, NY 10009. www.karmakarma.org.
Click here for exhibition details.
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"Still Life" by Nicolas Party, 2017. Soft pastel on canvas. 55 1/8 × 51 3/16 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Karma, New York.
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UPTOWN
Gagosian Gallery: “John Chamberlain: Masks”
September 19 through October 28, 2017
Opening Reception: Wednesday, September 27 from 6 to 8 p.m.
Gagosian Gallery will present “John Chamberlain: Masks,” an exhibition featuring the late artist’s rarely-seen metal mask sculptures.
John Chamberlain (1927-2011), an artist best known for his distinctive metal sculptures, started creating mask sculptures in 1991. The exhibition will showcase his steel masks, many of which are on view for the first time, alongside abstract wall sculptures made from the 1970s to the 2000s. The masks, created with intricately cut, painted metal parts, are adorned with overlapping strips, shards of metal and nails as hair, beards, eyebrows, teeth and crowns. Spray paint and drips familiar to viewers from his later work can also be found in the masks and wall sculptures, which possess visual dynamism and showcase the anthropomorphism of Chamberlain’s abstraction.
Gagosian Gallery is located at 980 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10075. www.gagosian.com.
Click here for exhibition details.
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"Opus 90" by John Chamberlain, 1998. Painted steel. 21 x 17 1/2 x 10 1/2 inches. © 2017 Fairweather & Fairweather LTD/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo by Rob McKeever. Courtesy Gagosian.
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Galeria Nara Roesler | New York: “Daniel Senise: Printed Matter”
September 19 through October 19, 2017
Opening Reception: Tuesday, September 19 at 7 p.m.
Galeria Nara Roesler will present “Daniel Senise: Printed Matter,” the artist’s first solo exhibition at the gallery’s New York location and his first show in New York since 2004.
Daniel Senise will exhibit 15 works in which he has appropriated and repurposed pages of vintage books. Of the works, four feature recycled or shredded paper, while the rest utilize paper to build a geometric landscape on an aluminum base. Senise used collected material, sourcing from materials such as artist monographs and religious books, to create a new pictorial platform. This exhibition, curated by Dr. Isobel Whitelegg, allows Senise—typically thought of as a “painter,” according to the gallery—to transcend the artistic category of a painter while retaining the visual language for which he is known.
Galeria Nara Roesler | New York is located at 22 East 69th Street, 3R, New York, NY 10021. www.nararoesler.art.
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Elizabeth Dee: “John Giorno: Perfect Flowers”
September 20 through November 4, 2017
Opening Reception: Tuesday, September 19 from 6 to 8 p.m.
In the gallery’s first show of the season, Elizabeth Dee will present “John Giorno: Perfect Flowers,” an exhibition featuring new work by the artist, performer and poet.
Occupying two floors of the gallery, the exhibition will be the largest overview to date of new work by John Giorno. The exhibition, more than two years in the making, includes 25 original new compositions and additional works on paper in two site specific installations on the second floor. Featuring works with titles such as “CHERRY BLOSSOMS ARE RAZOR BLADES” and “CARNATIONS GLORIOUSLY SELF-SERVING,” the exhibition plays with the frankness of Giorno’s communication with raw and intensely energetic work, according to the gallery.
Elizabeth Dee is located at 2037 5th Ave, New York, NY 10035. www.elizabethdee.com.
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"CHERRY BLOSSOMS ARE RAZOR BLADES" by John Giorno , 2017. Acrylic on canvas. 40 x 40 inches. Courtesy of Elizabeth Dee.
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Ceysson & Bénétière: “Lauren Luloff – The Evergreens”
September 20 through November 4, 2017
Ceysson & Bénétière will present “Lauren Luloff – The Evergreens,” the artist’s first exhibition in the gallery’s New York location.
The exhibition features new paintings and wall-mounted ceramic works inspired by the natural oases and cemetery near Luloff’s Brooklyn home. Luloff, who made the work after the birth of her first child, depicted plants and trees during various stages and seasons to reflect the “rawness, beauty and brutality” of pregnancy and childbirth as well as the contradictory strength and fragility of living things. Luloff’s paintings combine detailed drawings of plants, flowers and trees with patterned fabrics handpainted by the artist with bleach. The spontaneous gestures and weighty forms of the ceramics contrast with the ephemeral paintings.
Ceysson & Bénétière is located at 956 Madison Avenue, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10021. www.ceyssonbenetiere.com.
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Portfolio: Lauren Luloff on Creating Paintings without Canvas, Primer and Paint written by Pat Rogers.
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"Blue Spruce" by Lauren Luloff, 2017. Bleached bedsheets and fabric, 92 x 110 inches. Courtesy of Ceysson & Bénétière.
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Austrian Cultural Forum New York: “Wild West”
September 20 through January 22, 2018
Opening Reception: Tuesday, September 19 from 6:30 to 8 p.m.
Austrian Cultural Forum New York will present “Wild West,” a group exhibition dedicated to the late Franz West and his dynamic legacy.
Featuring work by Franz West, the artist’s New York-based contemporaries, and commissioned works by emerging artists from New York and Austria, the exhibition celebrates West’s nonconformist, anarchic approach to artmaking. The exhibition, curated by former West collaborator Andreas Reiter Raabe, features Reiter Raabe’s 2017 film “Franz West,” which provides an intimate look into West’s studio practice.
The exhibition includes work by Franz West, Rudolf Stingel, Urs Fischer, Andreas Reiter Raabe, Mary Heilmann, Rudolf Polanszky, Octavian Trauttmansdorff, Tillman Kaiser, Sarah Lucas, Anne Schneider, Rirkrit Tiravanija and KAYA (Kerstin Brätsch / Debo Eilers).
Austrian Cultural Forum New York is located at 11 E 52nd St, New York, NY 10022. www.acfny.org.
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David Zwirner: “Josef and Anni and Ruth and Ray”
September 20 through October 21, 2017
For the inaugural exhibition at David Zwirner’s East 69th location, the gallery will present “Josef and Anni and Ruth and Ray,” a group exhibition that explores the relationships and influences between the artists Anni Albers, Josef Albers, Ruth Asawa and Ray Johnson.
The exhibition focuses on the four artists, who were all at Black Mountain College in the late 1940s, and explores their aesthetic and personal dialogues, which continued even after they left Black Mountain College. Anni and Josef Albers, who studied and later taught at the Bauhaus, taught ideals of radical experimentation and open interchange of ideas at Black Mountain College, influencing students Ruth Asawa and Ray Johnson. The exhibition will include work exchanged by the group, including a rare figurative composition by Ray Johnson, two Leaf Studies by Josef Albers, Asawa’s first looped-wire sculpture and a 1950 Pictorial Weaving by Anni Albers. Archival materials, such as photographs and letters between the artists, will be on display as well.
David Zwirner is located at 34 E 69th St, New York, NY 10021. www.davidzwirner.com.
Click here for exhibition details.
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"Modified Repetition" by Josef Albers, 1943. Oil on Masonite. 15 1/2 x 25 1/2 inches. Framed: 20 7/8 x 31 x 1 7/8 inches. © 2017 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation. Courtesy David Zwirner, New York/London.
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BROOKLYN
Smack Mellon: “Ron Baron: Beyond-Beyond” & “Karina Aguilera Skvirsky: The Perilous Journey of María Rosa Palacios”
September 23 through November 5, 2017
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 23 from 6 to 8 p.m.
Smack Mellon will present “Ron Baron: Beyond-Beyond” and “Karina Aguilera Skvirsky: The Perilous Journey of María Rosa Palacios,” two exhibitions that delve into the personal and collective memory.
Ron Baron’s “Beyond-Beyond” features nearly 100 pairs of life-cast ceramic shoes. Poetic and ghostly, the adult- and child-size shoes are left in an unglazed white and configured on the gallery floor, emphasizing the vastness of the space. Having suffered a profound loss in his family, Baron’s ceramic shoes are signifiers of absence and the layered meaning behind a person’s life and soul, as well as a tribute to grief and loss. There will be a blues performance and conversation with Ron Baron, Steven Ellis and Scott Williams on Thursday, October 5 from 6 to 8 p.m.
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"Beyond-Beyond" by Ron Baron. Courtesy Smack Mellon.
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Karina Aguilera Skvirsky’s "The Perilous Journey of María Rosa Palacios” is a half-hour performance-based film that documents Skvirsky’s re-creation of her great-grandmother’s 1906 journey from Ecuador’s Chota highlands to the coastal town of Guayaquil. Skvirksky’s grandmother, María Rosa Palacios, an Afro-Ecuadorian migrant worker, was one of the last workers to travel by foot and mule before the railroad was completed in 1908. Re-created with the help of a five-person film crew, the hybrid documentary-fictional film combines improvisational performances with interviews and research. Exploring identity, representation and ever-shifting boundaries of place and nationhood, the film shows how changes through time and geopolitical contexts can influence a person’s roots to a specific place.
Smack Mellon is located at 92 Plymouth St, Brooklyn, NY 11201. www.smackmellon.org.
Click here for exhibition details.
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"The Perilous Journey of María Rosa Palacios" by Karina Aguilera Skvirsky. Courtesy Smack Mellon.
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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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Copyright 2017 Hamptons Art Hub LLC. All rights reserved.