Starting 2017 off right, the artwork exhibited showed incredible diversity in color, composition, and mediums. The sheer creativity that stems from Chelsea and the Lower East Side out of all 468.9 square miles of New York City is truly incredible.
In Chelsea, at Cheim & Read, Tal R’s work beautifully reflects a collection of romantically rendered storefront facades. In both black crayon and somber toned paint, he manages to capture haunting memories of locations that just may never have been. With the understanding that the entire concept of a storefront is to reflect that which is within, Tal R does not allow the viewer the satisfaction of knowing what is beyond the doors, allowing it to remain forever a mystery. In Cheim & Read’s backroom, Louise Bourgeois forges dazzling dreamlike imagery using holograms. When directly facing the work, these illuminating holograms fiercely spring into life, bringing the viewer personally in contact with the deep royal reds and striking blacks that make up the image. Bourgeois creates profoundly intimate worlds that immediately flatten as you walk past them.
UNTITLED (detail), 1998-2014,
At Marianne Boesky Gallery, William J. O’Brien exhibits the various mediums he works in. For example, elegant bronze sculptures that utilize organic patterns to create delicate yet playful artwork. Additionally, his works on paper employs vivid blue tones to create dynamic movement. Boesky’s second space in Chelsea exhibits Hannah van Bart’s “The Smudge Waves Back.” Van Bart’s work consists of full-body portraits whose subject is stripped of context. The works directly confront the viewer in their own timeless space. Her damp pale palette of light pinks and subtle blues combined with loose brushwork brings a modern approach to her classic style. At first glance there are similarities in her invented figures, yet, upon second look, each unmistakably has a pronounced individual personality that separates them from the others.
In the Lower East Side, Benjamin Senior at James Fuentes creates beauty in his play with colors and unique perspectives while distorting human lines. In particular, one work distinguishes itself by a blue light diffusing through an umbrella onto a man walking through a storm.
Suite of 8 Holograms,
In his 30th Anniversary Exhibition, Jack Hanley’s gallery is a tribute to his own personal art history with the walls completely covered in the work of 42 artists that showed with the gallery throughout it’s lifetime. Works include an assortment of pieces by Jack Pierson, Sarah Braman, Charles LeDray, and Jim Lambie (to name a few).
Farley Aguilar’s first solo show in New York, “Bad Color Book” at Lyles & King does an amazing job of transforming mundane photos and finding the buried feelings within them. The self-taught painter distorts the source image with loose jagged lines and intense colors to reflect the inner horror that is hidden within everything. He builds upon his light background of rough graphite lines with bright bold oil. He brings a whole new dimension of emotion to the image.
Each about 11 x 14 in 27.9 x 35.6 cm, photoby Matthew Schreiber, © The Easton Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, NY, courtesy of Cheim and Read
Canada’s extraordinary show “Elizabeth Murray: a life a legacy”, somehow manages to speak to me in a very personal way through vibrant movement and vivid color. Murray’s geometric doodles go beyond the modest lined paper she covers in pastel, crayon, and ballpoint pen to capture the life of a memory.
Overall, the work presented so far in 2017 has been incredibly promising. I greatly look forward to what is to come.
Installation View, Attics of My Life, courtesy of Jack Hanley.
