This month’s Manhattan highlights focus on artists tapping into the natural world, where these practices converge with the man-made in a clash of stunning reinvention and compelling engagement. These exhibitions channel the experimental through exploratory processes that harness our attention and hold us in their spell.
Prayer / Pattern / Prayer at Morgan Lehman offers a mesmerizing view of patterns as a deeply seated human instinct. Fittingly, a radial symmetry unfolds from the vertex of the L-shaped room. Yet curator Jan Dickey balances this evenness with a syncopated rhythm of paired artworks and bold standalone pieces. In creating a pattern of patterns, this show offers a metonymic view of artists running with different strands from the fabric of a species-wide impulse toward order and adornment.
August in New York is nothing without its heat waves and epic weather. While many escape the city, there are lots of wonderful gems to behold. Here are some cool current exhibitions not to miss downtown that will bring some good energy on those hot days.
Double Space at D.D.D.D., Installation shot. Photo taken by Rachel Kuzma
Anna Gregor often remarks, half in jest, that she wishes she were a poet. Poems, to her, come closest to immateriality; they exist in the mind and can be accessed anytime. In contrast, a painting is a unique object that must be seen in person, confined by paint, the artist’s technique, and the viewer’s presence. Gregor, a painter in New York City currently pursuing her MFA at Hunter, examines the divide between body and mind, material and immaterial, in her art. She sees a painting as having a dual nature: a physical object of paint sharing space with the viewer and an immaterial idea formed in the viewer’s mind. This mirrors the human condition, where body and mind coexist. Gregor says she often feels trapped by her physical form and its social labels—gender, age, race, and ability. Yet, she recognizes that her body is essential for her consciousness. For Gregor, making a painting is a confrontation with matter, a commitment to the material world while striving to go beyond its limits. Viewing a painting involves a similar struggle to find meaning in the artist’s creation. “ Without the physical painting, there is no idea. But without the idea, the painting is just inert matter,” she says. This intricate relationship is central to her solo show, Double Space, at D. D. D. D.
A Stage Within a Stage-mixed media on eight fitted panels. 5 x 27 feet. 2022-2023
There’s a riot going on. That’s what I thought as I stood in front of Ye Qin Zhu’s large-scale installation piece at Dimin in Tribeca. The gallery space painted a matte black that seems to absorb all the light in the room, is dominated by one wall-mounted assemblage that is 27 feet long and five feet tall. There is a bench placed in front so that the viewer can take a few minutes to absorb the full volume of information and energy radiating from this piece.