Claire McConaughy: Nearby at 490 Atlantic Gallery

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Delicate Rainbow, 2021, 24”x30”, oil on canvas, photo courtesy of the artist

In her solo show at 490 Atlantic Gallery, New York based painter Claire McConaughy features landscapes depicted in vivid colors and expressive linear marks. In Delicate Rainbow for instance, the painting plays on tension between horizontal, vertical, and diagonal orientations – an unexpected pale pink flow becomes a backdrop horizon to green vegetation spreading its limb-like branches diagonally upwards; on the top, blue-purple brush strokes depicting sky or water, lead the eye sideways, and then right above, a surprising orange linear brush stroke with the other rainbow colors hinted, stretch across the middle top.

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Paul Loughney – Consequences of Competing Narratives at Vorderzimmer

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Paul Loughney and Halona Hilbertz. Photo credit: Renée Ricarrdo

Paul Loughney’s collages resemble daydreams where seemingly unrelated elements coalesce into a fantastic mindscape where body parts, typography, geometric shapes, and hints of architectural elements scramble into unique environments that are oddly believable despite their quirky nature.

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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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Baris Gokturk: Danse Macabre in Public Spaces: Painting Euphoria and Madness in Times of Crisis


Baris Gokturk, working on All Saints at The Boiler@ ELM Foundation

Baris Gokturk’s installations are intricate, layered, and admirably ambitious in both meaning and form. The Turkish born New York based artist asks the big questions – what is his role as an artist, individual, immigrant within the larger context of a world in crisis? In All Saints he exhibited at the Boiler space at the ELM foundation he combined imagery of dance and fire into a monumental installation.

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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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Fei Li -The Unofficial History of Tomorrow at First Street Gallery

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The artist and her work, photo courtesy of Christine Collado

Fei Li’s large-scale paintings in her solo show at First Street Gallery are layered with paint, collaged fragments of dollar bills, magazine cutouts and jetsam of daily life. These visual cues are immersed in vivid yellows, blues, and greens, altogether representing the chaos of our moment. Drawing on a wide array of sources—Chinese calligraphy, pop culture, science fiction, myth, and current events—Li invites us to engage with her own anarchic universe.

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Nice to See you Again at Underdonk

Featured Project: with curators Leonora Loeb and Keisha Prioleau-Martin


Opening night of Nice to See you Again, In the foreground: Madeline Donahue, Butterflies, 2021, glazed ceramic, 8” x 7” x 6”

The group show Nice to See you Again at Underdonk features work by ten artists whose paintings, sculptures, and photographs address the loaded meaning of the outdoors during the pandemic—a shared sense of longing for the openness of the outdoors while simultaneously also craving for the warmth of the indoors. The show is organized by Leonora Loeb and Keisha P:rioleau-Martin and runs from October 30 th through November 20 th , 2021.

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Where We Meet Ourselves at Yi Gallery

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Installation view: GJ Kimsunken, Figuration 21. 15, 2021, Oil on canvas; Debra Ramsay, Twilight & Dawn_ 2_3, Twilight & Dawn 9 3:1, Twilight and Dawn 4_9 3_1, 2021, Acrylic on cast acrylic 

The two-person show Where We Met Ourselves at Yi Gallery’s new space in Brooklyn’s Industry City, features abstract paintings and works on paper by Debra Ramsay and GJ Kimsunken. Both artists share a minimalist sensibility to painting and each of them explores in their own way notions of transcendent spaces through form and color. Although they both use reduced color palettes to create elegant and restrained abstractions which are subtle and luminous, their work is grounded in different traditions.

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Jim Condron and Ilse Sørensen Murdock – Toss at Platform Project Space

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Installation view, Jim Condron (front), Ilse Sorensen Murdock (back)

At first glance, Jim Condron’s whimsical sculptures and Sørensen Murdock’s landscape paintings are an unexpected match for a two-person exhibition. Yet, in Toss, the current show at Platform Project Space, artist and curator Elizabeth Hazan made it into an engaging duet. The show runs the gamut from landscape paintings on canvas to paintings and sculptures made of scavenged materials, but regardless of the used media, both artists prioritize color, texture, and composition.

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Playarts: Cultivating Creativity in our Community

Featured Project: Music and Dance at Parkside Plaza with Davalois Fearon Dance

Davalois Fearon in rehearsal for Finding Herstory – Photo by Anya Kress

PLG Arts (Prospect Lefferts Gardens Arts), in collaboration with Davalois Fearon Dance (DFD), presents Music and Dance at Parkside Plaza, an outdoor, block party-style event that celebrates the rich Caribbean heritage of Flatbush/ Prospect-Lefferts Gardens (PLG) and the growing community of local artists. The free performance will take place on October 17th at 2 pm at Parkside Plaza, located at Parkside Ave and Ocean Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11226. The event will feature live drumming by Ryan Greenidge, Agyei Phillip, and Rasaan Green, and the music of composer and woodwind player Mike McGinnis, Dancehall, and Reggae facilitated by D.J. Ayanna Heaven, and a site-specific performance of Finding Herstory and community dance-along led by Davalois Fearon, the founder and artistic director of Davalois Fearon Dance Company. In addition, she shares with Art Spiel her reflections on this public project.

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