Art Spiel – Page 20 – Contemporary Art and Culture

November 28, 2024December 10, 2024

Stephanie Beck: Bough in Wave Hill
by Anna Shukeylo

hot air

If you haven’t visited the little paradise up in the Bronx called Wave Hill recently, now is the time to go there, not only to experience the beautiful gardens but to see exhibitions that are not to be missed, one of them being Stephanie Beck’s Bough. Beck, who has always been a risk-taking sculptor, either building cities out of paper or manipulating wood into gravity-defying constructions, speaks with me about her latest body of work constructed from materials found at Wave Hill and bringing to light crucial environmental issues beautifully and elegantly. This is the last week to see the show, which runs through December 1st, 2024.

November 27, 2024December 10, 2024

Suzanne Wright: The Alchemy of Equals at Tappeto Volante
by Amalia Rizos

Suzanne Wright, Supreme (with arsenic), 2023, Vinyl Flashe paint, Fleur paint and Acrylic, Linen mounted wood panel, 36 × 36, photo courtesy of Tappeto Volante

Alchemy is an age-old mode of science that seeks to transform matter, turning it into something else, something new. It remains a relevant practice, prevailing as the medieval genesis of chemistry, which only went on to titillatingly promise a universal elixir to the denizens of the Renaissance. For centuries, alchemists lacked the scientific language to describe what they were observing in their experiments, as a result they projected their own subjectivity and personal processes onto external chemical operations – in this vein, the exhibition’s work at hand achieves its success. Through alchemy, lead is turned into gold, and as an 18th-century practitioner wrote with alchemists in mind: “Wherever thou art, all is brought to perfection; may the realm of thy Knowledge become subject unto thee. May our will in all our work be only thee, self-moving Power of Light! And as in the whole of Nature thou accomplishest all things, so accomplish all things in our work.”^[1] Here, a connection to the material world reigns supreme.

November 26, 2024December 10, 2024

In and Out of Lineage: Tracing Artistic Heritage Through SUNY New Paltz Faculty
by Etty Yaniv

Eva Zanardi, the guest curator of the group show—In and Out of Lineage: Tracing Artistic Heritage Through SUNY New Paltz Faculty—observes that many times in her life, art has raised her awareness and consequently even made her reconsider her point of view on important issues. Zanardi says that the prerogative that should belong to most art is to be thought-provoking; as the educator and activist Cezar A. Cruz says, “Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” Eva Zanardi shared some of her curatorial process and gave us here a brief guide through the show.

November 25, 2024November 29, 2024

Art Spiel Picks: Philly Exhibitions in November 2024
by Claire Haik

HIGHLIGHTS

Mickalene Thomas. I’m Feeling Good, 2014. Rhinestones, acrylic, oil, and enamel on panel, photograph courtesy of the gallery

The change of the seasons can stir up deep emotions. There is uncertainty and anticipation as the days get shorter, the wind picks up, and the mornings grow colder. It is at these times that I find myself both introspective and aching for connection with others. For me, this cocktail of emotional contradictions can be soothed by a good book, a show, or some art. Viewing the following exhibitions, I felt connected with fellow human beings who, through their unexpected processes and determination, create work that gives us openings into their journeys and identities.

November 23, 2024December 7, 2024

Polly Apfelbaum and Gregg Moore: Pot Shop at 56 Henry
by Theodora Bocanegra Lang

Polly Apfelbaum, Gregg Moore, Pot Shop installation view. Courtesy of 56 Henry

Currently on view at 56 Henry’s 105 Henry Street location is Pot Shop, the gallery’s second exhibition of multimedia artist Polly Apfelbaum and ceramicist Gregg Moore’s joint pottery project. The previous collaboration, Feed Your Head in 2023, presented 100 lavishly glazed mugs in a close grid on a plinth with a corresponding glaze color chart installed nearby. Pot Shop is a clear continuation of the fruitful creative relationship between the two artists, displaying 207 works that each experiment with new shapes and rich color exchanges.

November 22, 2024December 7, 2024

Llyn Foulkes: The Untied State of America
by Melissa Stern

A person with a face cut out of paper Description automatically generated — Pat, 2020. Pigment print, oil, acrylic, red oak, and found objects on wood. 31 3/8 x 25 3/8 x 1 7/8 inches

Llyn Foulkes is a 90-year-old painter, jazz musician, troublemaker and visionary. After making a splash entrée on the American art scene in 1961, he hopscotched around the artworld, changing genres and styles as his restless mind embraced new ideas. He has been “consistently inconsistent” (from his website), wonderful for an artist, but not always strategic for a career. The commercial art world can be somewhat conservative, preferring that an artist find a groove and stick to it. As a result, though brilliant, Foulkes has not yet achieved the wide recognition that he deserves.

November 21, 2024December 7, 2024

Art Spiel Picks : Art and Technology NYC Exhibitions November 2024
by MICHELE JASLOW

HIGHLIGHTS

CHANNEL by Scope Collective at Biobat Art Space. Photo courtesy of gallery.

The three exhibitions Digital Being: Radio Row, Water Stories, and GUI/GOOEY explore memory, technology, and sustainability across time. In Digital Being: Radio Row, Taezoo Park breathes new life into obsolete machines, reimagining New York’s Radio Row as a digital hub of the past and future. Water Stories at BioBAT Art Space celebrates water’s ecological and cultural roles through multisensory art, urging conservation for future generations. GUI/GOOEY at Plexus Projects blurs boundaries between digital and organic realms, examining how interfaces reshape our perception of the body and nature through digital media.

November 20, 2024December 7, 2024

Art Spiel Picks: Chelsea Exhibitions in November 2024
by Yasmeen Abdallah

HIGHLIGHTS

Installation view, *DWELVE: A Goosebump in Memory* at Gagosian

Painting is infused with jagged jolts of adrenaline and endorphins this month, as evidenced by the markedly etched walls of white cubes sprinkled across Chelsea. Broad, gestural sweeps across canvases move into sculptural territory through the decisive claiming of space through prescient encounters. At Gagosian, Jadé Fadojutimi’s flourishing brushstrokes are illuminated by radiant pearlescent and neon hues that push and pull with hypnotic intensity. One is lifted off their feet and transported to an alternate world teeming with dance cards chock full of visual tangos with electric punctuations. At Seizan Gallery, Yashushi Ikejiri also embraces striking, colorful combinations through vibrant representations of the mundane, bringing an almost surrealist figuration of vignettes through a masterfully crafted language of paint. Pinaree Sanpitak’s presentation at Lelong & Co. takes a different approach through the limitations of color, where neutrals dominate with equal measures of intensity and fervor. Alteronce Gumby wonderfully bridges the two approaches of marrying bold colors with delicate textiles by showing two different bodies of work that tether these realms at Nicola Vassell. Light remained a constant inhabiting each gallery, moving across, through, or exuding from within each painting. As the brilliance of these colorscapes warms us from the inside out, each of these artists causes us to pause; the light they emit remains a constant with us as we move across our respective paths across the earth.

November 18, 2024December 7, 2024

Aggregate at Studio 9D
by Will Kaplan

Installation view of Bradley Milligan’s *Scrimmage*, 2023, tinted joint compound, scrap wood, used drop cloth, oil on panel, cotton thread, hardware. 79 x 49 x 51 inches; *Down the River*, tinted joint compound, scrap wood, automotive polish, hardware. 85 x 71 x 5 inches

In the three person show Aggregate at Studio 9D, artists Sammy Bennett, Bradley Milligan, and James Bertucci channel New York streetscapes and detritus to relay an earnest and affecting impression of the city. Bertucci’s trompe l’oeil paintings, Bennett’s fabric installation, and Milligan’s rugged sculptures overlap in a reverence for craftsmanship. Labor and construction are this show’s subject and, in many ways, its medium. In its use of material and representation Aggregate is boldly literal in its translation of the city’s chaos and beauty.

November 14, 2024December 10, 2024

Fiat Lux: Matthew Lusk Illuminates Newburgh with his solo show at Elijah Wheat Showroom
by Eva Zanardi

*Encyclopedia of Light (Today in Two Parts) at Elijah Wheat Showroom, installation view*

On March 31, 1884, the Village of Newburgh became New York’s second municipality to receive electricity, just two years after New York City. On September 14, 2024, Matthew Lusk achieved a similarly electrifying milestone by launching his solo show, Encyclopedia of Light (Today in Two Parts), an outstanding exhibition running through December 1 at Elijah Wheat Showroom in Newburgh, NY.