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| What to See in N.Y.C. Galleries in March | What to See in N.Y.C. Galleries in March |
| (6 days later) | |
| Chelsea | |
| Through April 15. Alexander Gray Associates, 510 West 26th Street, Manhattan, 212-399-2636, alexandergray.com. | |
| Melvin Edwards is best known for his wall sculptures “Lynch Fragments,” a series made of welded metal scraps that he began in the early 1960s in response to racial violence in the United States. Recently, however, another side of Edwards has emerged: an artist engaged with installation — and a skillful painter. “Lines for the Poet” at Alexander Gray unveils some of these overlooked aspects of his career. | |
| Sculpture in the 20th century wasn’t a bastion of color, but Edwards shows himself to be a buoyant colorist in a series of watercolors made around 1974. Moreover, for Black artists, there was the dilemma of whether to engage with abstraction, the dominant avant-garde mode, or figurative and representational art, historically championed for pursuing social justice. The watercolors deftly engage both: There are exuberant drips and splatters but also the shadowy imprint of hooks and chains, suggesting imprisonment and repression. | |
| “Lines for the Poet,” a post-Minimalist installation made with barbed wire attached to a steel beam, was conceived in 1970 and completed this year. (Similar works by Edwards are on long-term view at Dia Beacon.) The sculpture is reminiscent of the spatial installations made with yarn by Fred Sandback, but it also paves the way for artists like Mona Hatoum, who harnessed the stark Minimalist vocabulary and used it for social critique. Modernist abstraction, after all, was supposed to signal freedom and utopia; it took artists like Edwards to remind us that, for many, liberation was still out of reach. MARTHA SCHWENDENER | |
| Tribeca | |
| Through April 1. Jacqueline Sullivan Gallery, 52 Walker Street, Manhattan; jacquelinesullivangallery.com | |
| Beatrice Bonino is an Italian based in Paris, but in this show she could be The Artist Who Fell to Earth. | |
| It’s as though she has landed in Sullivan’s classic loft space quite naïve to the aesthetics that normally rule on this planet. | |
| Needing a tablecloth for her new home, Bonino goes shopping in nearby streets and decides that skeins of steel wool would do just fine, basket-woven into a textile. | |
| Wanting a curtain to divide her space, she finds a huge sheet of translucent latex to do the job — not aware that for earthlings, that material, however soothing to the eye, evokes condoms and the rubber gloves of a recent pandemic. The black rubber she covers a stool in looks utterly funereal to us, but to her it no doubt recalls the soothing light-years of outer space she passed through to get here. | |
| Bonino’s crudely crafted clay teapots could be sketches of the fine ones that earthly potters make, the way a botanist might make a quick drawing of a new plant she’s seen, to help her understand how it’s put together and what all of its parts do. | |
| The objects in Bonino’s show get our domestic aesthetics just wrong enough to wake us up to how hidebound our tastes normally are, without ever straying into the melted-clock clichés of a latter-day Salvador Dalí. There’s “normal” beauty here, rather than frenetic novelty — it just happens to be a normal that no one has seen before. BLAKE GOPNIK | |
| Flatiron District | |
| Through March 25. Center for Book Arts, 28 West 27th Street, third floor, Manhattan; 212-481-0295, centerforbookarts.org. | |
| The nonprofit Center for Book Arts has been operating for almost half a century in New York. Its history forms part of the story of “Craft & Conceptual Art: Reshaping the Legacy of Artists’ Books,” a dense and delightful exhibition curated by the writer Megan N. Liberty. The show starts with a timeline and archival ephemera tracing the development of artists’ books in the United States between 1962 and 1996. | |
| Spanning the same period, the books and multiples on view convey the force and range of the medium’s flourishing. Fluxus, feminist and conceptual artists are represented, as well as many others whose practices don’t align with specific movements, and resonances arise between them. The accented, hand-sewn stitches of Sas Colby’s autobiographical “Lifebook: 1939–76” (1976–78) become sculptural threads anchoring books by Keith Smith and Cecilia Vicuña. With its rubber stamps and ancient lettering, Reginald Walker’s “Haqazzuzza” (1985) is as suggestively cryptic as Mirtha Dermisache’s “Diario No. 1. Año 1” (1975), an abstracted, unreadable newspaper. | |
| Liberty’s premise is that when it comes to books, conceptual art, which privileges ideas over materials, is actually not so far removed from craft, which privileges materials over ideas. Her argument is convincing, especially when a single work seems to borrow from both, like Ed Ruscha’s mischievous “Stains” (1969), a portfolio of pages he stained with things like sperm and cabbage. The lingering question, then, is why the art world tends to value one genre much more highly than the other. JILLIAN STEINHAUER | |
| Lower East Side | |
| Through March 22. Tramps, 39 ½ Washington Square South, Manhattan; trampsltd.com. | |
| You’re asked to remove or cover your shoes — because the cherry red floors are freshly lacquered — but also, I suspect, for the small comedy of each visitor crouching to slip off their pumps two feet from a chandelier bristling with steak knives. The artist Lizzi Bougatsos is a sharp performer, after all: The Queens native has fronted the rhythmical psych-noise band Gang Gang Dance since the early 2000s. The sculptures in her Tramps exhibition, “Idolize the Burn, an Ode to Performance,” refer to her recovery after she self-immolated during a 2001 show. On the back wall, a series of frames hold remnants of foam leggings and burn gel pads dramatically composed on metallic paper. In another corner, two eloquent collages of beige bandages and brown tape achieve patchy balance and skinlike depth, even before you notice that these are the artist’s old dressings. | |
| Trailing assemblages of chains and undergarments and burn suits set a romantic, gothic mood. There’s been violence, but the aftermath is poised, inert, a little nostalgic. The flowers and perfume bottles under tents of cellophane seem dried out; the Polaroid leaning on an electrical outlet and the snapshot tacked to the wall depict the artist as a budding dancer or violinist, a performer even then. Most of all, as you pad around the gallery in your socks, there are the shoes — piles of ceramic high heels glazed coal or beetle black; a rebar candelabra ringed with pointe shoes, waxy, as if they could catch on fire. TRAVIS DIEHL | |
| Noho | |
| Through March 18. Eric Firestone Gallery. 40 Great Jones Street, Manhattan; 646-998-3727, ericfirestonegallery.com | |
| Martha Edelheit’s paintings caused a minor furor in 1974, perhaps because people object to looking at flesh with more than 18 percent body fat, or, more likely, because she was a woman painting phalluses. Edelheit’s nudes are tame by today’s standards (and, really, 1974’s), not as explicitly sexual as Joan Semmel’s or as literally sourced from pornography as Betty Tompkins’. Mostly they simply hang out around town, splayed across rooftops, their pallid skin melting into the white brick skyline, or lazing in Sheep Meadow, like a more equitable “Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe.” If Edelheit’s protagonists are confrontational it’s because they retain the personality of their sitters, their faces slack with boredom, as though showing up in the buff to the Central Park Zoo were as blasé as picking up bagels. | |
| Edelheit’s vision occasionally drifted from New York, imagining bodies stretched across the astral expanse of the Southwest. But her figures achieve true transcendence in the real space of the city. (It’s easy to feel unencumbered in the endless vacancy of red sand mesas; try doing it in view of the George Washington Bridge.) The frisson of a rippling deltoid foregrounding the unloveliness of crumbling infrastructure, as in “Major Deegan Expressway With Fruit” (1972-73), both sends up Western traditions and refreshes them. | |
| For Edelheit, the city’s built environment is as spiritually revelatory as any desert. Bodies rendered in creamy pastels merge into a single mass before the seal enclosure, or dissolve into Central Park’s lake, becoming the landscape itself, a poetic depiction of art’s fundamental indispensability from life. MAX LAKIN | |
| Upper East Side | Upper East Side |
| Through March 25. Sprüth Magers, 22 East 80th Street, Manhattan; 917-722-2370, spruethmagers.com. | Through March 25. Sprüth Magers, 22 East 80th Street, Manhattan; 917-722-2370, spruethmagers.com. |
| Karen Kilimnik is a master of the deliberately glib. Her paintings, equally wistful and willfully naïve, their imagery scavenged from art history, fashion magazines and other pop culture artifacts, evoke the affections of a teenage girl with the studied aloofness of the slacker, each pose inhabited with self-possessed camp. | Karen Kilimnik is a master of the deliberately glib. Her paintings, equally wistful and willfully naïve, their imagery scavenged from art history, fashion magazines and other pop culture artifacts, evoke the affections of a teenage girl with the studied aloofness of the slacker, each pose inhabited with self-possessed camp. |
| Curated with good humor by Mireille Mosler, “The Kingdom of the Renaissance” places the artist’s horses and hounds alongside old master works of similar interest, so that Kilimnik’s kitschy-sweet “cats playing in the snow, Siberia” (2020) joins Henriëtte Ronner-Knip’s similarly powdery “An odd-eyed cat” (1894), and the majestic stag in Edwin Landseer’s “The Highland Nurses” (1854) dribbles into the crayon lines of Kilimnik’s coloring book reindeer. These pairings can appear funny, like someone doing a bad impression, but Kilimnik’s pictures are deceptively sophisticated. The looseness of her brushstrokes suggest someone whose attention has already moved on. | Curated with good humor by Mireille Mosler, “The Kingdom of the Renaissance” places the artist’s horses and hounds alongside old master works of similar interest, so that Kilimnik’s kitschy-sweet “cats playing in the snow, Siberia” (2020) joins Henriëtte Ronner-Knip’s similarly powdery “An odd-eyed cat” (1894), and the majestic stag in Edwin Landseer’s “The Highland Nurses” (1854) dribbles into the crayon lines of Kilimnik’s coloring book reindeer. These pairings can appear funny, like someone doing a bad impression, but Kilimnik’s pictures are deceptively sophisticated. The looseness of her brushstrokes suggest someone whose attention has already moved on. |
| This is less a study of Kilimnik’s fealty to her source material (basically zero) than a canny dissection of the way she excavates its tropes and romantic obsessions, which in their echo prove pretty campy themselves. (The only direct relationship here is Kilimnik’s “dinner in the alley” (2010), an efficient distillation of Jan Baptist Weenix’s anxious pooch guarding its meal, from 1650, which Kilimnik spotted in an auction catalog; like most of us, she saw it in person for the first time at this show.) If she’s devotional, it’s to a theory of consumption, the way the hypercirculation of images mashes everything into a muddy pulp. In Kilimnik’s revisionism, the pulp is endlessly elastic. MAX LAKIN | This is less a study of Kilimnik’s fealty to her source material (basically zero) than a canny dissection of the way she excavates its tropes and romantic obsessions, which in their echo prove pretty campy themselves. (The only direct relationship here is Kilimnik’s “dinner in the alley” (2010), an efficient distillation of Jan Baptist Weenix’s anxious pooch guarding its meal, from 1650, which Kilimnik spotted in an auction catalog; like most of us, she saw it in person for the first time at this show.) If she’s devotional, it’s to a theory of consumption, the way the hypercirculation of images mashes everything into a muddy pulp. In Kilimnik’s revisionism, the pulp is endlessly elastic. MAX LAKIN |
| Nolita | Nolita |
| Through March 18. Andrew Edlin Gallery, 212 Bowery, Manhattan; 212-206-9723, edlingallery.com. | Through March 18. Andrew Edlin Gallery, 212 Bowery, Manhattan; 212-206-9723, edlingallery.com. |
| Ray Materson’s embroideries are astonishing for their size and intricacy: detailed images rendered in rectangles that never measure more than 5 ¼ inches on either side. One of the smallest pieces in his current exhibition is titled “Sunrise Sunset” (1999) and depicts a room bifurcated by a doorway leading to a balcony and beach beyond. A red bra hangs on the railing, and the sun setting over the water outside complements a framed image inside of a couple watching a colorful sunrise. Materson fits all this and more into an area that’s only 2 by 2 ¾ inches. | Ray Materson’s embroideries are astonishing for their size and intricacy: detailed images rendered in rectangles that never measure more than 5 ¼ inches on either side. One of the smallest pieces in his current exhibition is titled “Sunrise Sunset” (1999) and depicts a room bifurcated by a doorway leading to a balcony and beach beyond. A red bra hangs on the railing, and the sun setting over the water outside complements a framed image inside of a couple watching a colorful sunrise. Materson fits all this and more into an area that’s only 2 by 2 ¾ inches. |
| The artist got his start in prison, where he was serving time for robberies committed while addicted to drugs. Thinking of his grandmother, who sewed, he fashioned a makeshift embroidery hoop out of a plastic bowl lid and unraveled a pair of socks for thread; a guard gave him a needle. That was in 1988. Materson has since gotten clean and left prison, and he has continued embroidering. He’s shown his work in galleries and museums, some of which have collected it, too (like the American Folk Art Museum). Sock threads are still his preferred material. | The artist got his start in prison, where he was serving time for robberies committed while addicted to drugs. Thinking of his grandmother, who sewed, he fashioned a makeshift embroidery hoop out of a plastic bowl lid and unraveled a pair of socks for thread; a guard gave him a needle. That was in 1988. Materson has since gotten clean and left prison, and he has continued embroidering. He’s shown his work in galleries and museums, some of which have collected it, too (like the American Folk Art Museum). Sock threads are still his preferred material. |
| The works here cover the three-plus decades of his career. They range from personal pieces, like a depiction of his father, to sentimental portraits of cultural icons, and from charged political statements to campier or more surreal images like “Invasion” (2022), a sci-fi scene with aliens. Whatever the subject, the embroideries are evocative. Materson’s deft compositions and meticulous stitching give his works a richness that lingers after the novelty of their making has faded away. JILLIAN STEINHAUER | The works here cover the three-plus decades of his career. They range from personal pieces, like a depiction of his father, to sentimental portraits of cultural icons, and from charged political statements to campier or more surreal images like “Invasion” (2022), a sci-fi scene with aliens. Whatever the subject, the embroideries are evocative. Materson’s deft compositions and meticulous stitching give his works a richness that lingers after the novelty of their making has faded away. JILLIAN STEINHAUER |
| Tribeca | Tribeca |
| Through April 1. 52 Walker, 52 Walker Street, Manhattan; 212-727-1961, 52walker.com. | Through April 1. 52 Walker, 52 Walker Street, Manhattan; 212-727-1961, 52walker.com. |
| A cartoonish cacophony governs the inspired pairing of Gordon Matta-Clark and Pope.L in the show “Impossible Failures” at Zwirner’s revamped downtown space. Matta-Clark, of course — who died in 1978 at just 35 — famously, elegantly sliced and severed condemned buildings, including in the South Bronx. He was also among the artists who homesteaded SoHo in the 1970s, and his work’s presence in 52 Walker feels pointed. Three videos (transferred from films) depicting cuts in progress are projected onto three walls; where Matta-Clark and crew bore through Parisian flats in documentation of “Conical Intersect,” it’s almost like they’re sawing into the gallery. | A cartoonish cacophony governs the inspired pairing of Gordon Matta-Clark and Pope.L in the show “Impossible Failures” at Zwirner’s revamped downtown space. Matta-Clark, of course — who died in 1978 at just 35 — famously, elegantly sliced and severed condemned buildings, including in the South Bronx. He was also among the artists who homesteaded SoHo in the 1970s, and his work’s presence in 52 Walker feels pointed. Three videos (transferred from films) depicting cuts in progress are projected onto three walls; where Matta-Clark and crew bore through Parisian flats in documentation of “Conical Intersect,” it’s almost like they’re sawing into the gallery. |
| Pope.L actually has: The first work visitors see is a one-foot-diameter circle hacked through the wall of the building’s foyer, comically puncturing one of the Matta-Clark projections on the other side and deflating the solemn white cube. Known for abject performances, especially a series of epic “crawls” around New York dressed as a businessman (or Superman), Pope.L brings a sardonic sense of urbanism to Matta-Clark’s poetic one. A new installation by Pope.L, “Vigilance a.k.a. Dust Room,” sits at the gallery’s center: A white box of two-by-fours and plywood, rigged with shop fans on timers, sounds like a choir of leaf blowers. Two small windows on one side reveal its dim interior thick with whirling foam pellets, light and dark. It’s powerful and unhinged and overbuilt — a monument to the entropy of the postindustrial city, and the tenuous dance of its inhabitants. TRAVIS DIEHL | Pope.L actually has: The first work visitors see is a one-foot-diameter circle hacked through the wall of the building’s foyer, comically puncturing one of the Matta-Clark projections on the other side and deflating the solemn white cube. Known for abject performances, especially a series of epic “crawls” around New York dressed as a businessman (or Superman), Pope.L brings a sardonic sense of urbanism to Matta-Clark’s poetic one. A new installation by Pope.L, “Vigilance a.k.a. Dust Room,” sits at the gallery’s center: A white box of two-by-fours and plywood, rigged with shop fans on timers, sounds like a choir of leaf blowers. Two small windows on one side reveal its dim interior thick with whirling foam pellets, light and dark. It’s powerful and unhinged and overbuilt — a monument to the entropy of the postindustrial city, and the tenuous dance of its inhabitants. TRAVIS DIEHL |
| SOHO | SOHO |
| Through March 18. Artists Space, 11 Cortlandt Alley, Manhattan; 212-226-3970, artistsspace.org. | Through March 18. Artists Space, 11 Cortlandt Alley, Manhattan; 212-226-3970, artistsspace.org. |
| Like the poet-painter Etel Adnan or the Canadian novelist-turned-artist Douglas Coupland, Renee Gladman enters the art world from a rarely used side door from the world of literature. Through poems, novels and essays, Gladman has established herself as one of the most original writers of her generation. Her series of philosophical speculative novels centering on an imaginary city named Ravicka catalyzed the founding of the taste-making indie publisher, Dorothy Project. Then Gladman wrote her way into drawing. | Like the poet-painter Etel Adnan or the Canadian novelist-turned-artist Douglas Coupland, Renee Gladman enters the art world from a rarely used side door from the world of literature. Through poems, novels and essays, Gladman has established herself as one of the most original writers of her generation. Her series of philosophical speculative novels centering on an imaginary city named Ravicka catalyzed the founding of the taste-making indie publisher, Dorothy Project. Then Gladman wrote her way into drawing. |
| In “Narratives of Magnitude,” Gladman’s New York solo debut, you will find her distinctive cursive-like lines that resemble writing but remain illegible. In her early published drawings these lines clustered and stretched elegantly to suggest architectural forms. But the more recent (2019-22), two dozen or so, drawings at Artists Space seem less assured and more tentative as Gladman pushes her work closer to painting by both upping the scale and incorporating color. The large black sheet of “Untitled (moon math)” (2022) features a dense block of white writing at left interrupted by several drawn circles, and a chalky explosion at right that conjures both mathematical theorems and medieval marginal glosses. Throughout, the works recall the graphic compositions of the Russian artist El Lissitzky, who influenced the Bauhaus a century ago. In her writing, Gladman often dramatizes thinking by weaving doubt or awareness of the body into her sentences so as to push her prose into revelatory and unexpected places. In these drawings, we find her still searching on the cusp of her next revelation. JOHN VINCLER | In “Narratives of Magnitude,” Gladman’s New York solo debut, you will find her distinctive cursive-like lines that resemble writing but remain illegible. In her early published drawings these lines clustered and stretched elegantly to suggest architectural forms. But the more recent (2019-22), two dozen or so, drawings at Artists Space seem less assured and more tentative as Gladman pushes her work closer to painting by both upping the scale and incorporating color. The large black sheet of “Untitled (moon math)” (2022) features a dense block of white writing at left interrupted by several drawn circles, and a chalky explosion at right that conjures both mathematical theorems and medieval marginal glosses. Throughout, the works recall the graphic compositions of the Russian artist El Lissitzky, who influenced the Bauhaus a century ago. In her writing, Gladman often dramatizes thinking by weaving doubt or awareness of the body into her sentences so as to push her prose into revelatory and unexpected places. In these drawings, we find her still searching on the cusp of her next revelation. JOHN VINCLER |