Highlights of New York City gallery exhibitions opening this week include group exhibitions, solo shows and retrospectives. Downtown, Chelsea and Uptown galleries are exhibiting sculpture, glossy photographs, collages, works on paper and pastel on sandpaper. Check out our picks for shows to know on the NYC gallery scene through January 28, 2018.
DOWNTOWN
Salomon Arts Gallery: “Mystical Forces”
January 25 through February 25, 2018
Opening Reception: Thursday, January 25, from 7 to 9 p.m.
Salomon Arts Gallery will present “Mystical Forces,” a group exhibition that explores the forces at play between thought and action.
Presented in association with Emillions Art, the exhibition will showcase work by six artists to share their visions of the mystical forces that compel humans to take action. Alain Beraud, a French Neo-cubist, presents work that dissects and reconstructs quotidian scenes. The tableaus are distorted to reveal stark planes and angles, resulting in a broken, kaleidoscopic view that reinterprets and reimagines perspective and dimension. Abstractionist artist MM Ciciovan is showing a new White Series, an homage to the great masters Michelangelo and Rodin that addresses the human need for celebration and light, depicted with oil in cast acrylic sheets.
Barbara Rachko, an illusionist, will showcase her “Black Paintings,” pastel on sandpaper works that take months to complete as she slowly layers and blends up to 30 layers of soft pastel. The sculptor Shray will present bronze sculptures, made in the subtractionist method, in which she finds form in the material rather than by adding material to create form. Lynn Charveriat and Christopher Charveriat, a husband-and-wife creative duo from Sag Harbor, NY will present their individual work: Lynn Charveriat’s meditative paintings and Christopher Charveriat’s wry, humorous art pieces play with symbols and simulations.
Salomon Arts Gallery is located at 83 Leonard St, New York, NY 10013. www.salomonarts.com.
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"Les Yeux" by Alain Beraud, 2017. Oil on canvas, 80 x 68 cm.
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Simon Preston Gallery: “House of Cards: Michelle Lopez”
January 24 through February 25, 2018
Opening Reception: Wednesday, January 24 at 6 p.m.
In her fourth exhibition with Simon Preston Gallery, Michelle Lopez will present “House of Cards.”
Michelle Lopez’s sculptural installation is an intricate framework of interlocking steel rope, wrapped lead scaffolding, and suspended glass columns. The installation, which continues the artist’s interest in the tension of deflated forms, is described by the gallery as both “tenuous and impoverished.” Defiant and contradictory, the installation re-imagines by hand the apparatus for real estate construction, with rope twisted manually by the artist and the scaffolding wrapped in lead, implicating the body in every gesture. The work, which references and contradicts Richard Serra’s One Ton Prop (House of Cards), questions the status of objects, in which wilting throne structures and suspended chandeliers are reduced to outlines, taking on a vocabulary of demise and bankruptcy while imbuing forms of resilience and strength.
Simon Preston Gallery is located at 301 Broome St, New York, NY 10002. www.simonprestongallery.com.
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CHELSEA
Nancy Hoffman Gallery: “Peter Plagens”
January 25 through March 10, 2018
Opening Reception: Thursday, January 26, from 6 to 8 p.m.
Nancy Hoffman Gallery will present “Peter Plagens,” featuring the artist’s work from the past five years.
Peter Plagens—who is concerned with his own kind of beauty, which he terms “existential”—will show abstract paintings and collages. Each painting features a chroma flag shape on a grey ground and a calligraphic gestural surround with colors ranging from pale and cool to rich and dark. With drips and amorphous shapes, the works feature lines of paint that the gallery says “seem to emanate muscle and speed” and showcase his work as a quirky and sensitive colorist. His collages, which are a nod to his literary side, are also a celebration of color. Incorporating images, words, marine debris and memorabilia and postcards collected by the Seine, the collages reject the literal and narrative, instead projecting freedom.
Nancy Hoffman Gallery is located at 520 W 27th St, New York, NY 10001. www.nancyhoffmangallery.com.
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"A Literary Sensibility" byPeter Plagens, 2017. Mixed media on canvas, 72 x 66 inches. Courtesy of Nancy Hoffman Gallery.
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Albertz Benda: “After The Orgies: Bill Beckley, The Eighties”
January 25 through March 10, 2018
Opening Reception: Thursday, January 25, from 6 to 8 p.m.
Albertz Benda will present “After the Orgies: Bill Beckley, the Eighties,” the artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery.
The exhibition focuses on Bill Beckley’s work from the 1980s, a highly experimental and emotionally charged period for the artist. Beckley, who was a major exponent of Narrative Art, a term he created, broke down boundaries between traditional media formats. As part of a radical young group of artists, Beckley exhibited glossy photographs of erotic content and typed fictions. In the 1980s, Beckley branched into painting and reexamined his practice of sculptural constructions with immersive, monumental wall pieces that incorporate elements of texture and sound. His paintings incorporated encaustic (hot wax) painting, oil paint, collage and wood trim. The works, many of which are being shown publicly for the first time, reflect the highly personal nature of painting for the artist.
Albertz Benda is located at 515 W 26th St, New York, NY 10001. www.albertzbenda.com.
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"Front Porch" by Bill Beckley [American, b. 1946], 1987. Black and white photograph, ferns, shingles and screen, 60 x 192 inches. Courtesy of the artist and albertz benda.
UPTOWN
Rosenberg & Co.: “Space And Form: Selected Sculpture”
January 24 through February 16, 2018
Opening Reception: Wednesday, January 24, from 6 to 8 p.m.
Rosenberg & Co. will present “Space and Form: Selected Sculpture,” a group sculpture exhibition.
The exhibition, which reflects the gallery’s focus on both Modern and contemporary art, will encompass a variety of schools and movements (such as the Cubists and British Modernists) and will feature artists who are contemporaries of, or influenced by, one another. The exhibition will feature naturalistic depictions of the human figure with Aristide Maillol’s voluptuous sculptures and Giacomo Manzù’s figurative works alongside more abstract pieces by Henri Laurens, Baltasar Lobo and Reuben Nakian that experiment with traditional subject matter, as well as works by Ann Christopher, Robert Adams and Bernar Venet that explore material properties of different metals, line and form.
Rosenberg & Co. is located at 19 E 66th St, New York, NY 10065. www.rosenbergco.com.
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"217.5 ARC X 19" by Bernar Venet, 2006. Rolled steel (in two parts), unique pieces, 14.17 x 16.54 x 12.40 inches. Courtesy Rosenberg & Co.
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Gladstone 64: “Amy Sillman: Mostly Drawing”
January 26 through March 3, 2018
Opening Reception: Thursday, January 25, from 6 to 8 p.m.
Two events celebrating the recent publication of “Amy Sillman: The ALL-OVER,” (Dancing Foxes Press, Mousse and Portikus; 2017) will be held in conjunction with the “Mostly Drawing” exhibition at Gladstone 64. The first is a book signing on January 27 from 3 to 5 p.m. at Gladstone 64; the second is a film screening and signing at Metrograph on March 4.
In her first exhibition with the gallery, Amy Sillman will present “Mostly Drawing” at Gladstone 64.
Defying easy categorization, Amy Sillman’s works on paper incorporate silkscreened, painted and drawn elements with imagery that vacillates between abstraction, figuration, traditional painting and comic illustration. Sillman’s work employs formal dualities, such as color versus line or flat versus recessive space, as a way to push painterly concerns to their extremes. Her work, which can take from a day up to a month to create, contains its own visual language and revels in the liminal space.
Gladstone 64 is located at 130 E 64th St, New York, NY 10065. www.gladstone64.com.
Click here for exhibition details.
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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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