New York City art galleries offer a strong slate for art viewing (and collecting) in February 2020. There's always more art to see that's possible to view in person so we've picked 10 gallery shows of interest to add to your list of exhibitions of note this month. Gallery shows are set in different art neighborhoods and are a diverse range of contemporary and modern or historic art. Expect to find solo shows of new work, themed group shows plus exhibition that trace abstract expressionism's impact on artists who followed.
CHELSEA
1. ACA Galleries - "Track Work: One Hundred Years of New York City’s Subway"
January 15 to March 14, 2020
A survey of artists' interpretations of the New York City Subway over the last century is on view ACA Galleries in "Track Work: One Hundred Years of New York City's Subway." The exhibition feature narrative works which reveal the subway as a unifier of New York City, providing a place where people from different classes, boroughs, races and ethnicities come together.
A symbol of modernity, the exhibition presents artists who adopted a narrative interpretation in their work. Exhibiting artists include Raphael Soyer, Reginald Marsh, Joseph Peller, Saul Chase, Doug Safranek, Edmund Yaghjian, John Sloan and others.
ACA Galleries is located at 529 West 20th Street New York, NY, 10011. www.acagalleries.com.
Click here for exhibition details.
2. Loretta Howard Gallery - "Specific Forms"
January 23 to March 7, 2020
Opening Reception: Thursday, January 23, 2020 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.
"Specific Forms" at Loretta Howard Gallery presents a group show of abstract art, informed during the late 1950s-mid 1960s, but purposefully redirect abstract art’s disposition by infusing specificity into their art. Exhibiting artists represent a curated sampling of the artists who synthesized their own strategies mixed with artists working in the minimalist, pop and color-field movements.
The show includes work by artists Edward Avedisian, Richard Anuszkiewicz, Darby Bannard, Billy Al Bengston, Judy Chicago, Gene Davis, Thomas Downing, Marcia Hafif, Al Held, Ray Parker, Larry Poons, Leon Polk Smith and George Sugarman.
Loretta Howard Gallery is located at 521 West 26th Street, 1st floor, New York, NY, 10001. www.lorettahoward.com.
Click here for exhibition details.
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Installation view of "Specific Forms" at Loretta Howard Gallery. Courtesy of the gallery.
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3. "Gladys Nilsson: Honk! Fifty Years of Painting" co-presented at Garth Greenan Gallery and Matthew Marks Gallery
January 30 to March 14, 2020 at Garth Greenan Gallery
January 31 to April 18, 2020 at Matthew Marks Gallery
Gladys Nilsson, a bold watercolorist rooted in Chicago’s surrealist ’60s art group, is having a noteworthy moment with two solo shows on view in Chelsea. Taken together, art lovers can receive a near survey of Nilsson's art and represent the largest presentation of the artist's work to date.
Garth Greenan Gallery exhibits recent paintings and works on paper while Matthew Marks Gallery's exhibition offers a paintings and drawings made between 1963 and 1980.
Nilsson’s recent paintings at Garth Greenan Gallery are filled with winding, playful imagery that make full use of their monumental scale. Intricately detailed, Nilsson's painting are densely-layered and are her first on canvas since the early 1990s and the largest works since the 1970s. At Matthew Marks gallery, Nilsson's earlier works depict brightly colored figures in enigmatic scenarios with the exhibition showcasing her range of materials on canvas, panel and plexiglass.
Garth Greenan Gallery is located at 545 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011. Matthew Marks Gallery is located at 523 West 24 Street New York 10011. www.garthgreenan.com | www.matthewmarks.com.
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"A Red Tree" by Gladys Nilsson, 2018. Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 74 inches. Courtesy Garth Greenan Gallery.
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4. George Billis Gallery - Solo Shows for Randall Mooers and Liz Sloan
February 11 t0 March 14, 2020
Opening Reception: Thursday, February 13, 2020 from 6 to 8 p.m.
George Billis Gallery presents two solo shows featuring new paintings by Liz Sloan and Randall Mooers.
Randall Mooers is a contemporary realism painter who focuses on still life of ordinary objects, frequently featuring fruit. Beginning with a sense of play, Mooers seeks to create balanced and harmonious compositions with attention paid to creating a high level of finish. His solo exhibition presents recent works.
Liz Sloan is a contemporary abstract artist who presents a new series of paintings in her solo show "Signature 2020." Continuing her distinctive use of flowing, curved painted lines, her new work distills these lines as a conceptual contemplation on the revitalization of personal identify that manifests through handwritten signatures. Fusing her interest in painting, sculpture and design, her new series is set upon aluminum, an element integral to the composition of the earth's creation which manifests and mingles its unique energy and harmonizes with her peaceful compositions that are filled with implied motion. Liz Sloan's work has been exhibited and represented by the Quogue Gallery in The Hamptons and presented at art fairs.
George Billis Gallery is located at 521 West 26 St., Ground Floor, New York, NY 10001. www.georgebillis.com.
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"Signature 1" by Liz Sloan, 2020. Aluminum and enamel paint, 33 x 28 x 3 inches. Courtesy of the artist.
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5. Kathryn Markel Fine Arts - Solo Shows for Sydney Licht and Stephen Pentak
February 20 to March 28, 2020
Opening Reception: Thursday, February 27, 2020, from 6 to 8 p.m.
Kathryn Markel Fine Arts is opening two solo shows for Sydney Licht and Stephen Pentak in February.
In "Scatter/Gather," Sydney Licht presents new paintings in his fifth solo show at Kathryn Markel Fine Arts. Her work modernizes the conventions of still life painting by placing a focus on signifiers of contemporary consumer culture and then abstracting and skewing the perception in order to elevate easily overlooked details and objects of everyday life.
In "Early and Late," Stephen Pentak reveals abstract and landscpae paintings in his XXX solo show at the gallery. His formal abstractions reveal color and light, drawn from the subtle palette of a late autumn in upstate New York, where the artist is based. The juxtapositions in his diptych and triptych panels create a sense of dynamic harmony, channeling the change of season from fall to winter. Pentak's latest series of landscapes channel a sense of play in he way he handles the passing of time, light and perspective.
Both shows remain on view through Saturday, March 28, 2020. Kathryn Markel Fine Arts is located at 529 West 20th Street, Suite 6W, New York, NY, 10011. www.markelfinearts.com.
Click here for exhibition details.
DOWNTOWN
6. Anita Rogers Gallery - "Mark Webber: We Shall be a City Upon a Hill"
February 12 - March 21, 2020
Opening Reception: Wednesday, February 12, 2020 from 6 to 8 p.m.
Anita Rogers Gallery presents "We Shall be a City Upon a Hill," a solo exhibition of new work by American artist Mark Webber.
The solo show features a variety of work ranging from eight-foot-tall portals to tabletop structures, as well as small, handheld fragments. Webber works with a diverse range of materials, including hydrocal, stone, steel, glass and wood. It will be the artist’s largest and most varied exhibition to date.
Webber is based in Sag Harbor, NY and has exhibited previously with the gallery in both solo and group shows. In the Hamptons, his work was recently exhibited in the group show "The slow slope of Modernism," arranged by artists George Negroponte and Virva Hinnemo and presented at Julie Keyes Gallery in Sag Harbor, NY. Click here to read more about Mark Webber's work.
Anita Rogers Gallery is located at 15 Greene Street, Ground Floor, in SoHo, New York 10013. www.anitarogersgallery.com.
Click here for a preview.
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"Untitled (Leaning Structure)" by Mark Webber, 2019. Hydrocal, painted MDF, 49 x 9 x 10 inches. Courtesy Anita Rogers Gallery.
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7. Sperone Westwater - Susan Rothenberg Solo Show
January 9 to February 29, 2020
Sperone Westwater presents Susan Rothenberg's 12th solo show at the gallery, which includes eight new paintings and six works on paper that are inspired by Rothenberg's surroundings in New Mexico. Pack rats, doves, and ravens are formed by urgent brushstrokes and movement. The images she builds not only charge abstraction with representation, but also confound figure and ground. These new works signal that Rothenberg continues to be an independent figure, reimagining painting at a time when a new generation of artists is vitally taking up the question.
Rothenberg first received attention on the New York art scene during the 1970s for her acrylic figurative paintings depicting life-size images of horses. During a time in New York when Minimalism was on the rise, Rothenberg was praised for fusing her imagery with minimalism, while also adding a new sensitivity to figurative art, according to the gallery. After moving to New Mexico, she began depicting specific remembered experiences, and her impressions of the southwestern American landscape have come to be an integral part of her work.
Rothenberg has been the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Skowhegan Medal for Painting, and her works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Tate Gallery in London, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
Sperone Westwater is located at 257 Bowery, New York, NY, 10002. www.speronewestwater.com.
Click here for exhibition details.
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"Susan Rothenberg" installation view, Main Gallery, at Sperone Westwater. Courtesy of the gallery.
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8. Denny Dimin Gallery - "Strange Animal"
January 31 to March 7, 2020
Opening Reception: Friday, January 31, 2020, from 6 to 8 p.m.
Denny Dimin Gallery presents an exhibition of solo works by Andy Woll in "Strange Animal."
"Strange Animal" combines Andy Woll’s most recent abstract paintings of Mount Wilson in California with a newer series that references the figure of the horse, both subjects of focused interest for the artist.
Woll's practice is devoted to repainting a prior painting of a horse or a prior painting of a mountain, akin to a painter's version of a game of telephone. This practice allows him to explore the formal aspects of painting, engendering an identifiable style of bold brush strokes in spare gestures. Brightly colored and bold, Woll's unique approach is informed by his research into modernist artists and literary figures and his work explores the relationship of an abstract artist to deeply investigated subjects (in Woll's case, Mount Wilson and the horse as figure).
Denny Dimin Gallery is located at 39 Lispenard Street, New York, NY 10013. www.dennydimingallery.com.
Click here for exhibition details.
9. signs and symbols: "About an Arabesque"
February 13 to March 8, 2020
Opening Reception: Thursday, February 13, 2020, 6 to 8 p.m.
The first New York solo show by interdisciplinary artist and choreographer Jonah Bokaer explores and softens the Western image and identification of men in the Middle East and North Africa.
"About an Arabesque" features lithographs, serigraphs, video, installation and performance developed by Bokaer during his 2019 residency at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. In each work, Bokaer dissects and expands the history of the arabesque without collapsing it, following the strands into each discipline he works within, and reconciling tensions between the graphic and choreographic arts.
The show also includes a performance by Bokaer titled "The Genie," on Friday, March 6, 2020, that further deconstructs the representation of men within the Middle East and North Africa through the emblematic image of a genie.
signs and symbols is located at 102 Forsyth Street, New York, NY 10002. www.signsandsymbols.art.
UPTOWN
10. David Richard Gallery - "More Than A Feeling"
February 1 through February 28, 2020
Opening Reception: Saturday, February 1, 2020, from 3 to 7 p.m.
David Richard Gallery presents its first solo exhibition of paintings by New York artist George Hofmann in "More Than A Feeling."
After studying during the later years of the Abstract Expressionist movement, Hofmann began his professional career as a Color Field painter in the 1960s. His work is rooted in bold, strong gestures with swaths and large passages of harmonic hues of color. Creating abstract paintings for over six decades, Hofmann explores color and form using a variety of techniques with saturated hues and dilute glazes of acrylic paint.
David Richard Gallery is located at 211 East 121st Street, New York, NY 10035. www.davidrichardgallery.com.
Click here for exhibition details.
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