Exhibition Review – Page 19

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December 6, 2021November 2, 2022, by Ágnes Berecz

Remote Work

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Description automatically generated — Kris Grey (NYC) and Barbara Maria Neu (Austria), *Miss(ing),* 2021. Video (runtime: 4 minutes, 8 seconds), performance (15 minutes) and sculptures. Photos: un/mute team

How can artists unmute themselves and make work in creative dialogue with each other while they experience forced solitude at faraway places? How can collaborative practices be reinvented in social isolation? And how can virtual and chance encounters between strangers can lead to the making of jointly authored images and objects? The un/mute project, initiated by EUNIC New York and Undercurrent, the independent exhibition space in DUMBO, was an attempt to probe these questions by inviting 32 artists to work across borders, languages, and media, while sharing the global experience of the Covid-19 pandemic at distant locations, under varied social circumstances, and in cultural contexts.

October 27, 2021October 4, 2021, by Susan Hoffman Fishman

Revisiting HOLOSCENES During the Global Pandemic

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On May 13, 2020, in the middle of the global pandemic, the NYU Abu Dhabi Arts Center in the United Arab Emirates hosted a streaming event consisting of a four-and-a-half-hour filmed version of HOLOSCENES, a durational performance installation that was originally presented there live in November of 2016. The event also included a conversation with Lars Jan, artist, writer and project director, as well as members of his team. HOLOSCENES is comprised of performers going about common, every-day tasks while the aquarium in which they are confined fills and empties with water. Although conceived as a commentary on “states of drowning” – rising seas, melting glaciers, intensifying storms, floods, and their impact on daily life – the project takes on additional meaning as we struggle with our own physical and psychological confinements during the great global quarantine.

September 20, 2021September 20, 2021, by Sophia Ma

Trusting Hands at Andrew Edlin Gallery

One finds a simple common thread between the three exhibitions of women artists in Andrew Edlin Gallery this fall 2021: spiritual internal guidance in the artistic process. The work of German artist and known medium healer Agatha Wojciechowsky (1896-1986), curated by Aurelie Bernard Wortsman, is in Spirits Among Us at the entry and main gallery space, while the work of French artist Margot (b. 1982) is in Margot’s Cosmic Sanctuary at the back gallery. The solo presentation of American artist Karla Knight (b. 1958) was at the recent Independent Art Fair in New York City, which briefly overlapped with these two fall season starters at the gallery. Led by their individual connection to the otherworldly, the artists make work that invites viewers to ponder the source of creation and artistic agency.

August 27, 2021August 31, 2021, by Vittoria Benzine

Generations of Public Artists Converge at Welling Court Mural Project

*Daze and Crash for Welling Court Mural Project. Photo by Joe Iurato*

A few weeks back, an intergenerational group of five iconic NYC graffiti and street artists descended on Welling Court Mural Project (WCMP) in Astoria, Queens. The latest batch of mid-sized murals to grace this otherwise unassuming treasure trove of paint at the intersection of Main Avenue, 30th Avenue, and Welling Court includes Chris “Daze” Ellis, John “CRASH” Matos, JM Rizzi, Queen Andrea, and Joe Iurato, a world-class lineup whose collective come-up eras span the 1970s into the aughts.

August 24, 2021October 4, 2021, by Sara Farrell Okamura

Guzman Revisits Kurt and Courtney

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Description automatically generated — Guzman, *Kurt Cobain In Bed, Los Angeles*, 1992, Archival Ink on Mulberry Paper, 32 x 22 inches

Portraits are collaborations between the sitter and the artist. Sometimes the artist can be overwhelming or patronizing but in most cases the sitter’s vision of how they would like to be seen now and in perpetuity wins out. This is particularly seen in cases of well known personalities. Prime examples are the portraits of Andy Warhol exposing his scars after being shot to both Alice Neel and Richard Avedon. In these vastly different images Warhol clearly wanted the world to know what had been perpetrated against him and how his suffering lingered. When the portraits are images of celebrities, particularly those in the last few decades, the public has a strange sense of possession, teetering on full-blown obsession. The success of the portrait hinges on several factors from the artist including generosity, intelligence, empathy, skill, and creative facility. Fortunately this is what is on exhibition at LABspace in Hillsdale NY, Kurt and Courtney, by collaborative photography duo Guzman. Guzman is made up of Constance Hansen and Russell Peacock. In their 30+ years of photography they have solidified a reputation across all genres from conceptual and documentary work to bringing cool, enlightened, humanizing aesthetics to the commercial worlds of fashion, advertising, and celebrity portraits. As summed up in a recent discussion about their work, Constance Hansen said the intent is not to make a mean photo, but a photo that embraces the person.

August 22, 2021August 22, 2021, by Tansy Xiao

Wei Jia: The Remembrance of Ink

At a certain point in one’s life, they stop making new marks or registering new memories. All that remains is a fluid, ever-changing assemblage of the fragments from the past. I would call it no stagnation: it is rather a moderate manner of growing at a different pace.

July 16, 2021November 2, 2022, by Alex Feim

Jorge Otero-Pailos: Distributed Monuments at Sapar Contemporary

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Description automatically generated — *Installation view of Jorge Otero-Pailos: Distributed Monuments. Courtesy of Sapar Contemporary*

One could say that the primary medium of Jorge Otero-Pailos’s work is liquid latex, but perhaps it would be more accurate to say that his medium is time – or rather, the passage of time made visible. In Distributed Monuments at Sapar Contemporary, Otero-Pailos presents a series of latex casts mounted on canvas from the old U.S. Mint in San Francisco, California and from the pool at Lyndhurst Mansion in Tarrytown, New York. Two monumental sites on opposite coasts come together – one representing the literal creation of wealth, and the other an accumulation of it by an elite family. These latex casts have extracted dust from the sites, which are both in states of preserved ruin, but can be visited by the public.

June 30, 2021July 22, 2021, by Emily Blundell Owers

History’s Shadow Marks the Beginning at Grove Collective

Installation view featuring Mitch Vowles, *Earnie*, 2021, Fruit Machine, Photographs, Water, 175 x 70 x 65cm courtesy of Grove Collective, photographed by Ollo Weguelian

Dibnah in Lights is hard to miss. The name of that legendary Yorkshire steeplejack flashing in red, white, and blue bulbs against the green felt backdrop of a repurposed snooker table is the first piece that greets you as you walk through Grove Collective’s doors. This piece by Mitch Vowles, a sculptor who works with found objects to draw out their cultural and personal contexts, nestles easily amongst Connor Murgatroyd’s pastel-hued still life paintings of anthuriums, signet rings, Sinatra albums and a scaffolders A-Z, and film photographer Alfie White’s hand-printed images of boys at Brixton bus stops, on Tottenham blocks, and playing in Burgess Park.

June 28, 2021June 9, 2021, by Rachel Jeffers

Test Kitchen: Carolyn Case at Reynolds Gallery

*Shadow Sink,* 2021 oil on panel 42 x 50 inches

Test Kitchen, Carolyn Case’s show at Reynolds Gallery in Richmond, Virginia, consisted of 4 oil paintings on panel along with 8 pastel drawings. Hefty brush strokes fill the surface area of the oil paintings. The painterly process involves a buildup of incremental adjustments, the layers of paint applied one by one until the shapes solidify into a kaleidoscopic arrangement; one nudge and the elements will shift accordingly, morphing the image into an entirely new pattern. Each of the paintings gives the impression of a specific time of day, indicated by the character of light and color playing across the space. Monet’s Water Lilies come to mind. But in place of Monet’s serene refuge, Case’s light lingers over a sink full of dirty dishes.

June 12, 2021June 9, 2021, by Sagi Refael

Melanie Daniel – No Man’s Land at Asya Geisberg

*Melanie Daniel, No Man’s Land, Installation view. Courtesy of the artist and Asya Geisberg Gallery, New York*

Melanie Daniel’s fifth solo exhibition at Asya Geisberg Gallery, No Man’s Land, continues the artist’s fascination with creating post-disaster environments, radiating with neon vibrancy and highly dense compositions. Her non-place surroundings are reminiscent of jungle clearings and scorched forests, where the trees are scarred and chopped, the water is acidic and the backgrounds swirl around the central protagonists, whether people or objects, with a restless tempo that leaves no room for the imagined tranquility.