Mapping the Invisible, the final show of the ’23-’24 season at the Flinn Gallery in Greenwich, Connecticut, showcases the work of Laura Battle, Jaq Belcher, and Amy Myers, each of whom contemplate and explore the mysteries of our existence through the lenses of science, math, and geometry. Co-curated by Francene Langford and Caren Winnall, the show runs till June 19, 2024. Langford elaborates on the curatorial process and highlights the work in this show.
Rarely has there been a group of people as uniformly elegant and graceful as those who inhabit Lubaina Himid’s paintings, currently on view at Greene Naftali in Chelsea. Entitled Street Sellers, Himid has created a group of large, figurative paintings that pulse with vibrant color and life. These graceful, solo figures proudly present their wares to us–eggs, birds, musical instruments, and fish, as they move through the landscape.
David Packer, Bears that Dance, ceramic with glaze, each 12” high approx, 2024
The three-person show Travelers, Liars, Thieves at Garrison presents the work of artists Margaret Lanzetta, David Packer, and Niki Lederer, who also curated the exhibition. Margaret Lanzetta’s paintings, crafted with acrylic on satin, cotton bedsheets, and sari fabric, explore the fusion of decorative traditions from various cultures, reflecting interconnectedness between cultural and political narratives. Niki Lederer’s artwork, made from repurposed discarded materials such as umbrella canopies and nylon threads, highlights environmental concerns. David Packer’s bear sculptures serve as a metaphor for personal, economic, and political upheavals. Collectively, the three artists re-imagine the world with united boundaries, new environmentalism, and migrating identities.
Sari Carel, A More Perfect Circle, 2024. Courtesy KODA, photo by Argenis Apolinario.
Artist and activist Sari Carel created A More Perfect Circle, a series of ceramic sculptures inspired by the single-use coffee cup, a ubiquitous object that brings into focus people’s daily experience of interacting with trash. Lentol Garden in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, hosts its first public art project that includes columns built of stacked ceramic forms and disks in the shape of plastic cup covers. The handmade, intentional, and individualized quality of each unit contrasts with the mass-manufactured coffee cup that inspires this project. Some of the drawings, experiments and observations that inform the installation are on view at the Greenpoint Library. A series of programs with 350Brooklyn and Climate Families NYC accompany the exhibition. Find out more here. The project is organized by KODA, a New York-based nonprofit arts organization dedicated to mid-career artists of diverse backgrounds. It is curated by Jennifer McGregor, who interviews Sari Carel for the Hot Air section in Art Spiel.
Installation view Womanhood 102 (with Lesley Bodzy’s Soft Embrace I, 2022. Acrylic. 69 x 43 x 11 inches, on the left and works by Katie Commodore in the middle and on the right). Courtesy of the curator.
A golden, shimmering drapery cascades from the wall—the skin-like surface of Soft Embrace is from Lesley Bodzy’s experimental work with acrylic paint. She uses the liquid pigment as a sculptural material, shaped into a malleable cloth, reminding of Lynda Benglis’s poured latex on the floor or Eva Hesse’s visceral and alluring sculptures. The sensuous object evokes a tactile experience, an imagination of how touching it might feel, through looking. Matter surprises, entering a threshold between fluid and solid, elasticity and delicacy. Jamaica Kincaid’s 1978 story Girl tells a mother-daughter dispute about how a girl should behave. “…on Sundays try to walk like a lady and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming…” The mother’s advice seems endless and castigating, instructing every aspect of daily living. Side-by-side, Bodzy’s curved drapery recalls ‘how girls should behave,’ as it seemingly hides things beneath and its smooth surface presents an image of flawless elegancy, concealing feelings in a muted position.
Textures of Feminist Perseverance at James Gallery CUNY Graduate Center.
Poignant moments of reflection burst from the seams in this week’s roundup of not-to-miss exhibitions across Manhattan. Exuberance, symmetry, and swathes of color bathe viewers in myriad ways through these must-see shows across New York City.
The artist with PROBE, 20.5” x 15” x 15”, ceramic/paint/graphite/varnish, 2021, Photo Credit: Lisa Jennison
Entanglements, Judi Tavill’s solo show at Ivy Brown Gallery, unfolds a world of biomorphic abstractions. From intimate to immersive, her curvilinear ceramic sculptures feature intertwined graphite lines on the surface that seem to emanate from within and radiate outward. Tavill’s subsequent works on paper echo these forms, creating a captivating visual journey. Tangible forms of tree systems, mycelium networks, and biological structures intertwine with intangible psychological states, interpersonal relationships, and sociopolitical tension, entangling to form elaborate networks.
Installation view, Jenny Holzer: L: right Line, May 17-September 29, 2024. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. @2024 Jenny Holzer, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, Photo: Filip Wolak
“I want people to concentrate on the content of the writing and not ‘who done it.’ I want the work to be of utility to as many people as possible. And I think if it were attributed to me, it would be easier to toss.”
Quote by Jenny Holzer from Art21
Recently, I wrote an opinion piece on the suspect politics of Maurizio Cattelan’s show at Gagosian Gallery — it questioned why successful artists who make political claims for their work do not use their privilege to engage in direct political commentary and action rather than critique by analogy. I’m not suggesting they need to engage in social practices like Mel Chin or Tania Bruguera; I think artists like Cattelan can be more direct in their criticism or more like Theaster Gates, who acknowledges the contradictions and privilege that comes with his success to the degree that he openly differentiates between museums and institutional exhibits that permit him to experimentation and his gallery exhibits that afford him market engagement. Meanwhile, while those works have an implied politic, he is an activist who focuses on community development, which is realized through his Chicago-based Rebuild Foundation, which is a platform for cultural development and neighborhood transformation. This multifaceted approach enables Gates to navigate and influence both the art world and broader societal issues without collapsing one into the other.
Installation View: Left to Right Lu Heintz, Everything is Fiber: A New Lexicon, 2024 Graphite on paper Elizabeth Duffy Wearing / Ceremonial Costume for Gathering Rehill (1904-1972), 2023-2024, Unraveled worn braided rugs made into clothing, braided rug poncho with corn-on-the-cob holders, copper dandelion leaves, copper formed shoes, rug remnant; Anna McNeary, Common Set, 2024 Fabric, velcro, wooden rack Dimensions variable
The rhymes, homophones, and translations between the work of Elizabeth Duffy, Lu Heintz, and Anna McNeary are object manifestations of “Dreams of a Common Language.” The exhibition at Overlap Gallery in Newport, RI, offers up sweet and salty juxtapositions of textile, prints, sculptures, and installations of Providence-based artists. It takes its title from Adrienne Rich’s 1976 volume of poetry, which ruminates on the possibilities of life liberated from patriarchal constraints and the feminist community emerging from speech in common. Duffy, Heintz, and McNeary explore textile not just as a shared (and often gendered) medium but as a conceptual framework.
Beverly Fishman, I dream of Sleep, 2020. Installation. Courtesy of the artist and Miles McEnery Gallery
This is part of a series of articles for the upcoming exhibition, The Greatest Emergency at the Circulo de Bellas Artes of Madrid. The exhibition is based on Santiago Zabala’s book, Why Only Art Can Save Us: Aesthetics and the Absence of Emergency. In this exhibition, ten contemporary artists rescue us into our greatest emergencies, that is, those we do not confront as we should. Each article in the series will contextualize these artists’ practices and explore how they are linked to Zabala’s aesthetic theory and the exhibition’s themes. The first article in this series highlights the work of American artist Beverly Fishman.
Unlike many art historians and art critics, philosophers do not look for works of art that are necessarily beautiful or interesting. Most of us—at least those educated in the continental tradition of Hegel, Nietzsche, and Arendt—instead look for works that disclose a theoretical stance. Martin Heidegger’s writing on Van Gogh’s shoes paintings, Arthur Danto on Andy Warhol’s Pop Art, and Jacques Rancière on Alfredo Jaar’s photographs are paradigmatic examples. This does not mean we do not care about the artist’s effort in creating such work; rather, we focus more on whether the work discloses an aesthetic notion, political idea, or anthropological concept that has meaning for society at large. Artists, for us, have the same ontological purpose as scientists or politicians. A great work of art, new scientific discovery, or progressive policy can change people’s relationship with reality. If these works, discoveries, and policies change this relationship, it is not necessarily because they are “better” than others but because they touch our existence to a greater degree.
