HIGHLIGHT
Summer 2024 shows in Lower East Side galleries offer many super solo and group exhibitions. We will highlight three that range from an inaugural show at a new NYC flagship gallery, a solo show of a veteran NYC artist, and a group show of Eastern European artists. That Dog in Me at Jupiter Gallery is a solo exhibition featuring seven new paintings by Travis Fish, who continues their exploration of fandom. Susan Eley Fine Art features the work of the late artist James Moore (1938 – 2013) in the second posthumous exhibition, Something Beautiful Happened. The group show at Marc Straus features Eastern European artists of the post-communist era and their responses to the rapid acceleration of technological development.
Something Beautiful Happened, paintings by James Moore at Susan Eley Fine Art, @sefa_gallery, 190 Orchard Street, NYC. On view through August 31, 2024
On View Through: August 31st, 2024
Featured Artist: James Moore
Something Beautiful Happened at Susan Eley Fine Art features the work of abstract expressionist James Moore—a curated presentation of the artist’s canvas paintings as well as a series of small works on paper. Moore’s paintings are infused with a lifetime of experiences. He arrived in NYC in the 1960s and settled in a loft studio in Soho, motorcycling to artist centers in Woodstock and Buffalo and frequented NYC artist hangouts. Places like Cedar Tavern, and Dillon’s bar, where he played shuffleboard with Franz Kline, was where, one would imagine, Moore joined other artists to drink and transform themselves into celebrated abstract expressionists.
The work in this show features linear elements that give rise to multiple organic forms across the canvas. Moore has said about his work, “I don’t see shapes as much as I see the energy of elements interacting to move, stop, support, or explode. I mostly use clean, bright colors to keep my world hot and alive. My paintings are like a snap-shot record—trapping moments of an event where something beautiful happened.”
That Dog in Me, Travis Fish solo exhibition at Jupiter, @jupiterinc_ ,55 Delancey Street, NYC.
On view through August 17, 2024
Featured Artist: Travis Fish
Jupiter Gallery’s inaugural show at their new NYC flagship space is That Dog in Me, a solo exhibition of Travis Fish paintings. These large-scale, almost square paintings explore the connections between fashion and celebrity. It is worth exploring whether the celebrities’ relationship with fashion is personal expression, necessities of the trade, or perhaps a status flex and Fish does so by placing his famous subjects in backgrounds awash in arresting color and manipulated surfaces. To someone who is NYC-based, these works feel very LA. The quality of light that is found in an always sunny climate and represented in these works along with these southern California-based subjects drive this home.
Among the subjects in this show are musician Tyler, the Creator encircled by dogs, an amusing artist Henry Taylor snapping a pic of a Matisse painting, fashion designer and artist Josué Thomas playing piano and wearing UGGs he designed, actor and chef Matty Matheson with a motorcycle and showcasing his chest tattoos, hockey player Thatcher Demko in his hockey gear, and actor Anthony Hopkins also playing a piano. I’m not sure if this is part of the exhibition or a post-celebration of a recent event happy accident, but in the center of the show was an actual grand piano. This addition infused the space with the possibility that you, too, could be a part of this world while adding references to scale and depth to the paintings.
Shadowland, Eastern European Artists of the Post-Communist Era, Marc Straus, @marcstrausgallery 299 Grand Street, NYC.
On view through: August 2, 2024
Featured Artists: Jānis Avotiņš, Marius Bercea, Zsolt Bodoni, Josef Bolf, Matija Brumen, Robert Fekete, Adrian Ghenie, Ion Grigorescu, Elvis Krstulović, Marin Majić, Ciprian Mureşan, Djordje Ozbolt, Volha Panco, Daniel Pitin, Șerban Savu, Leonardo Silaghi, Alexander Tinei, Josef Tirić, and Zlatan Vehabović.
Shadowland, the group exhibition at the Mark Straus gallery, is a conversation overheard. The viewer is an active listener to the communal discourse of what these artists, all born after the fall of communism, have to say. The views expressed by the Eastern European artists of the post-communist era focus on multifaceted approaches and responses to their experience navigating the rapid acceleration of technological development. It is response to and consideration of the digital and the real, reflecting on if we are drifting into the shadows of the digital experience by forgoing real connections over digital.
This show is well curated to include many varied voices. Belarusian painter Volha Panco’s work Unfolding Multiplicity, 2023, is a large 90x90in oil on canvas work that explodes with the chaos of rebuilding from a destabilized place. Romanian artist Adrian Ghenie’s intimate 2011 collage Study for the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute 1 seems emblematic of a complicated relationship with past and present. Slovenian photographer Matija Brumen’s Periskop (Periscope), 2010, pigmented inkjet print on aluminum (edition of 4), is a straight on portrait of a device that because it is commonplace in its urban environment is effectively invisible.
All photos courtesy of the writer unless otherwise indicated.
About the writer: Michele Jaslow is a pioneer shaping the current visual arts landscape as a NYC-based independent curator and writer. @radarcurator
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