New York Exhibitions of Pierre Soulages, Jesse Mockrin, Arcmanoro Niles, and More
As we settle into the fall season in New York City, art spaces are presenting exhibitions you won’t want to miss—like these on view at Lehmann Maupin, Jack Shainman, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, James Cohan, and Lévy Gorvy Dayan.
Arcmanoro Niles, “I Know I’m a Lucky Man (I Would Never Say Never Again),” 2023, watercolor, charcoal, conte, and pastel on paper, 41 x 33.5 inches; courtesy of the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London.
New York Exhibitions: What to See at Lehmann Maupin
Arcmanoro Niles: “A Moment Alone in the Shade”
September 7—November 4
Arcmanoro Niles’s first exhibition to feature exclusively works on paper, “A Moment Alone in the Shade” captures a series of tender, unassuming moments from everyday life that linger in one’s mind—a person playing guitar outside, a couple kissing, a father hugging his children. Inspired by the artist’s personal archive of imagery (both ones he has taken and old family photos) the presentation imbues a kind of collective intimacy with which we can all relate, achieved through the artist’s vulnerability in sharing this look into his mind and memory. With poetically telling titles like Jack and Coke in My Grandfather’s Car (It’s Never Nothing Like the First Time), the drawings employ a unique positioning of negative space that suggests the importance of these fragmented memories is more in the feelings they evoke than the details of time and place.
Emanoel Araújo, “Untitled,” 1986, wood and automotive paint, 85 5/8 x 126 x 20 1/2 inches (overall); © Emanoel Araújo, courtesy of the Estate of Emanoel Araújo and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
A Must-See New York Exhibition at Jack Shainman
Emanoel Araújo
September 12—October 28
Jack Shainman is presenting the first major gallery survey of the late Brazilian artist Emanoel Araújo, presenting work made between the 1970s and the artist’s death in 2022 with support from co-representatives of his estate, Simões de Assis Galeria de Arte. Araújo’s sculptural practice explored the sociopolitics of geometric abstraction and paid homage to the queer existence and his own Afro-Brazilian roots, which the artist studied extensively through tours through Nigeria and other locations in Africa. Primarily made with wood and automotive paint, Araújo’s sculptures echo ideas of mosaics, and the colors and iconography of Afro-Brazilian aesthetics, which yielded totemic and monolithic forms in sharp, clean lines and primary colors.
Yvette Mayorga,
“F* is for ICE 1975-2018 (After Portrait of Innocent X, c. 1650, Diego Velázquez),” 2018,
courtesy of the artist.
What to See at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
Yvette Mayorga: “Dreaming of You”
September 15—March 17
The first East Coast museum exhibition of the artist Yvette Mayorga, “Dreaming of You” compiles new and borrowed work from the last seven years and the product of the artist’s residency at Cerámica Suro in Mexico. Including painting, sculpture, video, and installation, Mayorga’s visual signature employs three-dimensional textures made using acrylics applied with bakery piping bags (a nod to her immigrant mother’s time working as a baker) and candy-colored, maximalist imagery decked with gold gilding that combines nods to the art historical canon with her own personal history and narrative. Central to the exhibition is a series of opulent portraits of the artist’s family laden with motifs and imagery suggesting their stories—like the artist’s grandfather depicted in a shirt covered in tootsie rolls, alluding to his time spent working in a candy factory, or references like the title F is for ICE. Through capturing her own familial history, Mayorga presents viewers with a larger discourse on the Latinx experience in the U.S. and the darker realities of the American Dream.
Jesse Mockrin, “Echo,” 2023, Oil on cotton, 72 x 100 inches overall; © Jesse Mockrin 2023, photo by Marten Elder, courtesy the artist; James Cohan, New York; and Night Gallery, Los Angeles.
The Best New York Exhibition Featured at James Cohan
Jesse Mockrin: “The Venus Effect”
September 8—October 21
Noting that art historical narratives often place women in the roles of witch, seductress, and sinner, Jesse Mockrin’s exhibition “The Venus Effect” poses, from the contemporary feminist point of view, a new context fit for the present moment. Mimicking the warm, romantic palette and soft, supple figurative style of historic Masters, Mockrin’s works on view focus on the female figure depicted while gazing into the mirror—an object that here becomes a tool by which her subjects are able to reject historical notions of narcissism and vanity while reflecting on their own power and agency. Her subjects perched delicately or lounging in swaths of rippling fabric, these scenes recreate and draw from existing historical and biblical tales, figures, and stories, like Bathsheba, Venus, and Mary Magdalene. Accompanying these paintings, the artist has also presented a series of drawings titled Women grieving that balance the exhibition’s overarching attitude by capturing more intimate and sincere, private moments.
Pierre Soulages, “Peinture 202 x 143 cm, 5 avril 2019,” 2019, Acrylic on canvas, 202 x 143 cm; Copyright Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York _ ADAGP, Paris and courtesy of LGDR.
Lévy Gorvy Dayan’s Not-to-Miss Fall Exhibition
Pierre Soulages: “From Midnight to Twilight”
September 14—November 4
“From Midnight to Twilight” is a retrospective of the artist Pierre Soulages (1919-2022) encompassing seven decades of creative practice, with a central focus on two periods and bodies of work—those leading to his rise to global recognition made during the 1950-60s and the artist’s Outrenoir (“beyond black”) paintings, which were executed in the later 40 years of his practice. Organized in collaboration with Colette Soulages, the artist’s partner of 80 years, the show is the first at the gallery’s East 64 Street global flagship to fill the entirety of the exhibition space. Featuring works on loan from major institutions like the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago, the presentation takes viewers on a journey through Soulages’ rise to prominence through an academically focused examination that includes documents, photographs, and other attributes that unravel the details of his unprecedented practice and his relationships with prominent figures like Mark Rothko and Louise Bourgeois.
