Jiwon Rhie: Suddenly, Images Explain Everything at La Mama Galleria

Installation view: Jiwon Rhie: Suddenly, Images Explain Everything at La Mama Galleria. Photo by flaneurshan. studio. @flaneurshan.studio

Jiwon Rhie often explores moments of deep personal depression, social misanthropy, and cultural alienation in her work. You would never know it, though, from first viewing. Walking into La Mama Galleria in the East Village, NY, visitors are greeted by the playful whirring sound of over a dozen mechanical toy dogs, each covered in exploding layers of colorful, fake flowers. The dogs walk across a blue moving pad, bumping into walls, each other, or the artificial boundaries Rhie erected. In the center of the moving pad, two quarter candy vending dispensers shake with the motion of encased and enflowered toys, which act, of course, unperturbed by their enclosures. Viewers are invited to borrow quarters from the gallery to dispense pods filled with custom keychains and temporary tattoos from the candy machines. Though only a corner of a room within a larger exhibition, Rhie’s Flower Dogs make it impossible to enter the gallery without stopping to smile, take a photo or video, and procure ones own custom keychain art.

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The Philosophy of Physical Existence at Tutu Gallery

A room with a fireplace and a rug

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Installation view of Gentle Mist group exhibition at the Tutu Gallery, Photo Credit: Yulin Gu and Yuhan Shen

The exhibition titled Gentle Mist at the Tutu Gallery in Brooklyn could be mistaken for primarily being idea-driven, in which case the ideas precede artwork production, along the lines of artists working with clarity of vision, such as the Conceptual artist Sol Lewitt and the Minimalist artists Tony Smith and Robert Morris. However, upon closer examination of the works by this group of New York and Baltimore artists, we realize that the makers of the art objects are more intuitively engaged with their art. There is a great deal of trial and error and improvisation in the creative process, and the ideation and production processes integrate up into a complex maneuver or dance.

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Lubaina Himid- Street Sellers at Greene Naftali

A painting of a person holding a rope

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Posture Master- 2023. Acrylic on canvas. 96 x 72

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.

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