Melissa Stern: Chat & Chew at Garvey Simon: Previewing

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In her solo exhibition Chat & Chew at DFN Projects, multi-disciplinary artist Melissa Stern features drawings, assemblages, and sculptures which probe into the surface of social decorum not only with a biting wit but also with a tender gaze. Her outlandish characters invoke in the viewer an unsettling tension between elusive simplicity of forms and deep psychological complexities. Couples stare or reach out to one another, mouthless faces seem to whisper—whether rendered with graphite, pastel, and colored pencils, or molded with clay, these figures form an array of characters we may interpret as archetypes in dreams or comic strips. They remind me of duos in a Becket play or characters in Saul Steinberg’s absurd universe—with Stern’s very own take. Stern’s protagonists express distinct attitudes and appear to have lots to say. Underneath the verbiage, you can sense a vulnerable core that is silent, on the verge of coming up to the surface.

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Not knowing is most intimate at Amos Eno


Nishiki Sugawara-Beda, Installation view of Somewhere Around There, 2022. Photo courtesy of Maggie Pavao

It is perhaps in this state of “not knowing” that we first encounter the works in artist Nishiki Sugawara-Beda’s current solo exhibition Somewhere Around There, on view at the Amos Eno gallery. The exhibition, which presents works from the artist’s KuroKuroShiro series (‘black-black-white’ in Japanese), features dynamic shapes in shaded monochrome that seem to alternately emerge and recede from view. Faced with this shifting visual field, the viewer gradually develops a kind of intimacy with these unknown forms, opening up new possibilities for interpretation and engagement.

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KATHY BUTTERLY AT JAMES COHAN GALLERY – COLOR IN FORMING

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Installation view

Staring at Kathy Butterly’s ceramic sculptures, I am overwhelmed by an urge to reach out and touch them. The marriage of color and form is perfectly wrought, shapes and colors inextricable yet sharply distinct. I want to trace my finger along that delicate whisper thin band of orange in Between Things, and feel the little bumps along the rim of Luminious Flow. I want to feel the change between matte and gloss surfaces and the weight of the sculpture in my hand. 

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Black Moves First at GAVLAK Palm Beach

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Photo by Alex Berliner

In Black Moves First, NYC-based artist Kim Dacres brings together eight new sculptures where all chess-like pieces depict solely black female figures, based on characters from the artist’s own life – mother, grandmother, sisters, aunts. The show is on view through January 2, 2022 at GAVLAK Palm Beach.

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Drawing a Line at Five Myles

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Installation view

A line drawing is a dot that went for a walk,

-Paul Klee, Pedagogical Sketchbook

From line drawings and cutouts to wall reliefs and sculptures, lines shift forms throughout the group exhibition Drawing a Line at Five Myles. Curator Klaudia Ofwona Draber says she was inspired by the gallery founder Hanne Tierney’s vision to organize a drawing exhibition. Ofwona Draber’s interest in social justice and post-colonialism guided her choice of artists as well as the theme of the exhibition – drawing a line as an action of drawing boundaries, whether to protect personal boundaries in the quietude of one’s own home, or at the heart of a political conflict. “By drawing a line, we protect ourselves, our families and our communities from the violence and inequalities that are happening around us,” says Ofwona Draber.

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Remote Work

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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.

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Evan Paul English – VIEWFOUND at Chashama

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VIEWFOUND by Evan Paul English at ChaShaMa Gallery, curated by Salt Gallery.

Brooklyn-based artist Evan Paul English uses a small viewfinder to discover compelling compositions within the fabrics he collects and enlarges them to abstract paintings of different scales, working across painting, sculpture, murals, and wallpaper. VIEWFOUND, his current solo exhibition in Brooklyn, features work along these lines and is on view at 324 5th Avenue through December 6th, 2021. Presented by Salt Gallery in collaboration with ChaShama, the show includes eight new works that translate American vintage floral design into paintings, referencing gender, sexuality, and class.

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Jon Bunge’s Presence at the Bonsack Gallery

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Installation view, 13.5′ x 10.5′ x 3.5′, 2021

In Jon Bunge’s exhibition, Presence, at the Bonsack Gallery of John Burroughs School in St. Louis, Missouri, 23 sculptures, moving and turning in invisible air currents, appear to float inches above a hardwood floor. Made from the branches of trees, they evoke both a sense of mystery and a clear expression of the universe’s forces. Eight more works are included in a display case outside of the installation.

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Joseph Fucigna: DRIP-DROP, TICK-TOCK, HERE + NOW at the Housatonic Museum of Art

Previewing with Joseph Fucigna

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DRIP-DROP, TICK-TOCK, HERE + NOW, Housatonic Museum of Art. Photo: Paul Mutino

Joseph Fucigna is a multi-media artist whose work is rooted in process, play and the innate qualities of the materials used. Through experimentation, and innovation, he creates sculptures, paintings and drawings that are known for their power to transform materials, ingenuity and odd but compelling subject matter. His one-person show, DRIP-DROP, TICK-TOCK, HERE + NOW, was originally scheduled to open at the Housatonic Museum of Art in Bridgeport, Connecticut in September 2018. Due to water damage from a fire above the space, it was rescheduled for September 2020, and postponed a second time due to COVID. At this time the exhibition opens for the third time on October 28th and runs through December 10th, 2021.

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Ballad of Spread – Michal Gavish at Delaware Contemporary

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Exponential Bloom, 2021

During the past year of the pandemic, Michal Gavish used her background as a scientist to research and draw on the sub-microscopic struggle between viruses and our body. Throughout this year of isolation, she became absorbed with the science and imagery of these biological attackers facing body defenders, the antigens against the antibodies. Imagining each virus from its initial exponential expansion to its final abrupt elimination, she sketches and experiments with color-field displays generated by genetic research. Her visual search incorporates mixed media in which she adopts the color-coded language of molecular modeling that she has learned as a chemist.

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