Concise Archives - Art of Landscaping

September 13, 2022

Your Concise New York Art Guide for September 2022

Everyone knows September to be the month of art fairs, but the big Manhattan attractions are just a few of New York’s autumnal offerings. It isn’t quite winter yet, so you can still catch the tail end of an artist-made birdhouse show beside Prospect Park. All the same, a group exhibition of politically charged textiles along the Long Island Sound packs a punch in an area otherwise flooded with wealth. Our other highlights for this month include a sanctuary of African healing out on Governors Island, colorful deconstructions of gender and sexuality, and transmissions from a post-worker dystopia in Brooklyn.

* * *

Gerardo Dexter Ciprian: Medicina de Amor

Dominican artist Dexter Ciprian’s new solo exhibition transforms deeply personal items into universal symbols of resilience. The artist breaks apart family-owned furniture pieces and reconstructs them as lanterns, bringing light to the island nation’s chronic blackouts. Likewise, he recalls the bricks of his childhood home in the Bronx through chunks of Jabón de cuaba, an all-purpose soap used throughout the diaspora. Named after a popular Dominican anthem, Medicina de Amor is a meditation on the home remedy, which becomes the first line of defense when no other support is in sight.

Bronx Museum of the Arts (bronxmuseum.org)
1040 Grand Concourse, The Bronx
Through September 4

Mis-Shapes

If there is an ethical kind of “gender-critical,” Bushwick gallery Tiger Strikes Asteroid is nailing it. Three artists spanning South, Central, and North America — Ad Minoliti, KC Crow Maddux, and Madeline Jimenez Santil — deconstruct the social constructs of gender and sexuality, taking the uterus out of its traditional “female” context and presenting the binary as a soulless, outdated formula. In the exhibition essay, Nicolas Cuello laments how queer, nonconforming artists of color have long faced a “historical accumulation” of stigmatized discrediting despite marginal recognition in cultural institutions. Mis-Shapes is thus the antecedent, providing bodily and formal experimentations with space to breathe.

Tiger Strikes Asteroid (tigerstrikesasteroid.com)
1329 Willoughby Ave #2A, Bushwick, Brooklyn
Through September 11

Threading the Needle

The aesthetics of sewing unite this group show of living and deceased textile artists. The late poet Edel Adnan’s warmly hued tapestries portray her lifetime of longing, contrasted by the vigorous protest rugs of Philadelphia-based Tabitha Arnold and Mexican artist Margarita Cabrera’s cacti made of border patrol uniforms. Despite their different styles, a shared textural foundation hints at the medium’s gendered and often political history. Threading the Needle thus centers the labor of marginalization, and in turn the marginalization of labor.

The Church (thechurchsagharbor.org)
48 Madison Street, Sag Harbor, Long Island
Through September 18

Eros Rising: Visions of the Erotic in Latin American Art

The 10 artists in ISLAA’s Eros Rising ruminate on the unpredictable joys of being truly felt in one’s own skin, exchanging outward sexuality for colorful abstraction. Skin tones in Wynnie Mynerva’s sparse watercolors are reflected in Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro’s non-objective charcoal sketches, culminating in Oscar Bony’s photograph of two anonymous tongues forever on the verge of contact. Influenced by the pastels of Argentinian conceptualist David Lamelas, Eros Rising translates the simple act of touch into a revelation that can affirm one’s understanding of self and truth.

Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (islaa.org)
50 East 78th Street, Upper East Side, Manhattan
Through September 30

Nadia Gould, “Playful Sunshine” (c. 1964) (courtesy Derfner Judaica Museum and Hebrew Home at Riverdale)

Unlisted: Underappreciated Women

Historian Michael Lobel recently noted the market-centric pitfalls of labeling artists as “forgotten.” Accordingly, Derfner Judaica’s Unlisted tells the stories of several Jewish modernists through the lens of patriarchal erasure. Expressionist portraits by Lithuanian artist Yuli Blumberg appear alongside abstracted wild horses by Romanian painter Magdalena Rădulescu and jagged non-representational pieces by Nadia Gould and Gertrude Perrin. Presented in-person and online, these colorful, challenging works expand our understanding of how war, faith, and immigration shaped mid-century artists, reinforcing that the “Ninth Street Women” were hardly alone.

Derfner Judaica Museum (derfneronline.org)
5901 Palisade Avenue, The Bronx
Through October 1

Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, “Sinner Get Ready” (2022) (courtesy the artist and Galerie Lelong)

Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum: I have withheld much more than I have written

Pamela Sunstrum has already lived many lives in the United States, Africa, and Southeast Asia. But as her latest exhibition title reveals, much of that experience has yet to be expressed. Thus, the individual painted canvases that comprise I have withheld — many of which are paired into diptychs or built into three-dimensional installations — together form a surreal tableau of placelessness. Sunstrum layers denim jeans, volcanic mountains, palm trees, and checkered tiles into visions of kaleidoscopic splendor, as if drawing from overflowing wells of memory. Perhaps, then, the artist is more prepared to speak than she lets on.

Galerie Lelong (galerielelong.com)
528 West 26th Street, Chelsea, Manhattan
September 8–October 22

Olalekan Jeyifous, “Birdega” (2022) (courtesy Brooklyn Botanic Garden)

For the Birds

The phrase “for the birds” often carries a dismissive connotation, yet the Brooklyn Botanic Garden means it literally. Dedicated to its diverse avian life, For the Birds scatters colorful artist-made birdhouses throughout the grounds, all designed and placed specifically to foster community. From a blue heron fishing platform to a crow’s nest of trash and a tiny communal sculpture garden, these makeshift maisons serve each species’ survival needs and bring a bit more color to the lush landscape.

Brooklyn Botanic Garden (bbg.org)
990 Washington Avenue, Crown Heights, Brooklyn
Through October 23

LaJuné McMillian, “Black Movement Library” (2021) featuring dancer Roukijah Rooks (photo by Guy de Lancey, courtesy Recess)

LaJuné McMillian: The Black Movement Library

LaJuné McMillian’s dynamic Black Movement Library series synthesizes the Black radical tradition and political unrest today. Using archives of motion-capture data collected from misrepresented Black performers and character base models, McMillian recreates their movements while wearing perception neuron motion-capture suits. Recordings from their many public workshops and performances with artists Roobi Gaskins, Renaldo Maurice, Ntu, Roukijah Rooks, and RaFia Santana show the Brooklyn Public Library’s entire facade illuminated as they dance to a crowd of onlookers. Drawing from archival footage of peoples’ movements around the world, McMillian’s work collapses the time between revolutions, warning us how quickly the inroads can be reversed.

Recess (recessart.org)
46 Washington Avenue, Clinton Hill, Brooklyn
September 15–October 29

Elissa Blount-Moorhead and Bradford Young: Back and Song

On Governors Island, a two-person show examines the poetics of health in the African diaspora. Blount-Moorhead and Young collaborated on four-channel films and installations set within the dark, desolate Lower Gallery of the Arts Center, juxtaposing personal testimonies of doctors, morticians, and health aids with clips of meditations and ritual performances. Equally critical and cleansing, Back and Song rejects the dominating singularity of Western colonial medicine, rooting generations of Black healing in community and lived experience.

The Arts Center (lmcc.net)
Building 110 at Soissons Landing, Governors Island, Manhattan
Through October 30

Rodrigo Valenzuela, “Afterwork #10” (2021) (courtesy the artist and Asya Geisberg Gallery)

Rodrigo Valenzuela: New Works for a Post-Workers’ World

Two photo series by Rodrigo Valenzuela, Afterwork and Weapons, imagine what may have happened if machinery actually made workers obsolete. For each shoot, he assembled elaborate, dystopian scenes out of old wood and scrap metal, concocting surreal yet familiar representations of what he calls a “post-workers’ world.” Drawing heavily from conceptual art and communist theory, Valenzuela depicts industrialism as a dehumanizing force that led capitalists to believe machinery would replace an imperfect and increasingly demanding laborer. Housed within a structure the artist built inside BRIC House, New Works for a Post-Workers’ World portrays a public sphere where the cause of labor is defeated, and it seems pretty terrifying.

BRIC House (bricartsmedia.org)
647 Fulton Street, Fort Greene, Brooklyn
September 22–December 23

Editor’s Note, 9/2/2022, 4:39pm EDT: An earlier version of this article misidentified KC Crow Maddux as Latinx. This has been corrected.

August 29, 2022

Your Concise New York Art Guide for August 2022

Jamel Shabazz, “Flying High. Brownsville, Brooklyn” (1982) (courtesy the artist and Bronx Museum of the Arts)

The dog days of summer are quickly approaching, and New York’s art spaces are providing some welcome respite. As we ride out a prolonged heat wave, some exhibitions are embracing the casual calm of the city in late summer, with others reminding us to stay focused on the political challenges ahead. Our highlights for August include excavations of feminist surrealism, retrospectives dedicated to underground legends, and contemporary perspectives on print media. Stay cool out there, y’all.

***

Portia Munson, “Bound Angel” (2021) (photo by Lance Brewer, courtesy the artist and P·P·O·W)

When: through August 19
Where: P·P·O·W Gallery (392 Broadway, Tribeca, Manhattan)

Portia Munson’s latest solo show at PPOW is a delightful smorgasbord of high-femme ephemera. Installations, sculptures, and drawings explore the artist’s preoccupation with kink, introversion, nihilism, and romance. Drenched in shades of white and hot pink, Munson’s angels are bound not just by rope but also a deep desire to carve out a heaven of their own making.

Mariana Parisca, “to: Insulated Investments (after Fort Knox)” (2020) (courtesy the artist and CUE Art Foundation)

When: through September 2
Where: CUE Art Foundation (137 West 25th Street, Chelsea, Manhattan)

At CUE Art Foundation, three Latin American artists explore the meaning of currency in Chile, Venezuela, and Puerto Rico. Tropical fruits appear hardwired, while bank vaults radiate warm neon from behind cold steel doors. Rather than portraying an exchange for goods, Gatica, Parisca, and Torres-Ferrer depict money as inherently ideological and extractive, revealing how exploitation is always present even when not detectable.

Installation view, *A Few Small Nips* at Mrs. (photo by Olympia Shannon, courtesy Mrs.)

When: through August 12
Where: Mrs. (60-40 56th Drive, Maspeth, Queens)

The latest group exhibition at Mrs. aims to confront our surreal reality. Referencing Frida Kahlo’s 1935 painting of the same name, A Few Small Nips addresses the performance of womanhood, from the subtle disguises women wear to the social construction of female gender identity. Drawing from mid-century Surrealism, nine artists explore internal and external pressures forced on them — from beauty branding to political violence and religious fundamentalism — reimagining femininity as a realm where anything is possible.

Installation view, *Unfolding Forms: Multiple Approaches to the Book* (courtesy Miriam Gallery)

When: through August 21
Where: Miriam Gallery (319 Bedford Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn)

In recent years, art book criticism has shifted to embrace analyses of the physical object itself. From photo monographs to chapbooks and zines, print has become an auxiliary format to the ideas presented within, leading artists to experiment with physical distribution. Miriam Gallery’s new group exhibition visualizes this critique in a series of contemporary artist-made books, showing how online and social media has influenced perspectives around self-promotion.

Installation view, *Forever Is Twice as Long from the Ground* (photo by Stan Narten, courtesy Anna Zorina Gallery)

When: through August 19
Where: Anna Zorina Gallery (532 West 24th Street, Chelsea, Manhattan)

For Azikiwe Mohammed, the last two years have proven the limits of working for change from within the system. In his immersive new exhibition, the mixed-media artist carves out space for people of color to exist autonomously. Gorgeous paintings on wooden boards appear on the wall and are folded into standing human forms across Anna Zorina Gallery, with LED fixtures illuminating their technicolor palettes. Dreamy and defiant, Forever Is Twice As Long From The Ground aims to radicalize rather than lead to despair.

Vincent Namatjira, “Elizabeth and Vincent (on Country)” (2021) (courtesy the artist, Iwantja Arts, and Fort Gansevoort)

When: through August 20
Where: Fort Gansevoort (5 Ninth Avenue, West Village, Manhattan)

Fort Gansevoort’s latest group exhibition brings together three artists from Iwantja Arts, one of 11 Indigenous-owned Aboriginal arts centers on Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara lands. Following their online exhibition last year, Namatjira, Whiskey, and Yatangki blend brightly colored Indulkana symbolism with British and American iconography, referencing Western influence in Australia and the joys of spoofing the oppressor.

Installation view, *The Tale Their Terror Tells* (photo by Charles Benton, courtesy Lyles & King)

When: through August 12
Where: Lyles & King (21 Catherine Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan)

Climate change isn’t a monolithic disaster. As we have seen, its effects manifest in myriad ways at different times all over the world. As such, Lyles & King’s diverse group show provides some concrete examples, fusing ecology with horror. Broken, dead trees impale bodily forms as dark, polluted ravines fester on the gallery walls. Curated by Geena Brown and Lauren Guilford from more than 20 mixed-media artists, The Tale Their Terror Tells insists that symptoms of our self-inflicted apocalypse are already evident, and that art can help us interpret the signs.

Installation view of *We Flew Over the Wild Winds of Wild Fires* (courtesy the artists and MOTHER)

When: through September 18
Where: MOTHER Beacon (1154 North Avenue, Beacon, New York)

Zoë Buckman and Vanessa German are all too familiar with mainstream media’s disregard for non-White and queer people. As such, their latest exhibition at MOTHER Gallery’s upstate outpost is a study of political resilience. German’s sculptures and paintings play on racialized stereotypes and depict Black women over pages of the United States Constitution, complementing Buckman’s meditative and propagandistic tapestries. Focusing on oppression within the imperial core, the artists establish common ground in collective forms of refusal and survival.

Honor Titus, “Thy Margent Green” (2022) (photo by Steven Probert, courtesy FLAG Art Foundation)

When: through August 12
Where: FLAG Art Foundation (545 West 25th Street, 9th Floor, Chelsea, Manhattan)

FLAG Art Foundation’s current Spotlight show features a new large-scale painting by artist and musician Honor Titus. Balancing a love of elegance with class consciousness, Titus strives for beauty in increasingly tenuous social conditions. Portraits substitute faces for flowers, heightening style over identity, or otherwise convey highly personalized scenes of love and friendship. Interchanging intimacy and anonymity, Titus’s work focuses on fractured personal relations, yearning for a past that perhaps never existed.

Tianzhuo Chen, still image from “Trance” (2019) (courtesy the artist, BANK/MABSOCIETY, and Asia Society Museum, NY)

When: through December 31
Where: Asia Society Museum (725 Park Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan)

Asia Society’s latest group exhibition explores an up-and-coming generation of artists who came of age during the liberalization of China’s economy. Unlike their predecessors, these seven young conceptualists move beyond traditional Chinese motifs to critique the fast-paced changes experienced in their lifetime so far. Sculptures, video installations, and photographic works confront Western corporate infiltration while ruminating on queerness and censorship, revealing forms of self-reflection that elide concrete definition.

Lou Reed photographed by Mick Rock in 1972, restored 2021 (courtesy New York Public Library)

When: through March 4, 2023
Where: New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (40 Lincoln Center Plaza, Upper West Side, Manhattan)

Lou Reed passed away in 2013, but archivists are still studying the mark he left on New York’s counterculture. The late art-rock icon is receiving his first-ever retrospective exhibition at the New York Public Library, pairing with the release of rare tracks (including particularly lovely 1965 demos of “I’m Waiting for the Man” and “Heroin”). Archival materials from the Velvet Underground years are on display with seldom-seen photographs and sound art installations featuring his most controversial recordings, exemplifying how his work still provokes artists today.

Jamel Shabazz, “Rush Hour. Brooklyn, NY” (1980) (courtesy the artist and Bronx Museum of the Arts)

When: through September 4
Where: Bronx Museum of the Arts (1040 Grand Concourse, The Bronx)

Jamel Shabazz is among the most iconic street photographers New York City has ever known. A lifelong Brooklyn resident, Shabazz has captured the innocence and joy of the borough’s Black communities since the 1980s, creating portraits that continue to resonate for their candid charm. His latest retrospective at the Bronx Museum is one of the largest collections of his photographs to be displayed, providing a bit of healing to a blistering summer.

Editor’s Note, 8/4/2022, 6:32pm EDT: An earlier version of this guide incorrectly stated the number of works on view in Honor Titus: Spotlight. This has been corrected.

July 25, 2022

Your Concise New York Art Guide for July 2022

Installation view of *Lizania Cruz: Every Immigrant Is a Writer/Todo Inmigrante Es un Escritor (*2022) (photo by Shark Senesac, courtesy the International Studio & Curatorial Program)

Cancer season has arrived once again, and us water signs are embracing the creative impulse. Across the city, new art exhibitions pay tribute to overlooked masters of their craft, address the urgency of direct political action, and evoke a shared sense of nostalgia. Our top exhibitions for July include installations on the global climate crisis, pedagogical studies of Japanese photographers, and a throughline between ancient and contemporary printing traditions.

***

Ajay Kurian, detail from “Hedgehog” (2022) (photo by Joerg Lohse, courtesy the artist and 47 Canal, New York)

When: through July 9
Where: 47 Canal (291 Grand Street, Second Floor, Lower East Side, Manhattan)

Last year, Ajay Kurian told BOMB magazine that he envisioned two future exhibitions in his mind that were “loosely about failed escape: one where we’re in the process of leaving the planet and mourning the loss of it. And the other where we’re somewhere else and mourning our circumstances there.” This latter idea, which addresses the neocolonial tendency of space exploration, forms the basis of his latest series. The mounted foam core sculptures of Missing Home are cerebral and celestial. From afar, they merge ancient Indian sculpture techniques with Rorschach test imagery; up close, they reveal microcosmic worlds that appear to float serenely in the gallery space.

Zulu Padilla beside one of his works from *Everything Is Migrating* (image courtesy the artist)

When: through July 23
Where: The Compound Cowork (1120 Washington Avenue, Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Brooklyn)

Zulu Padilla’s newest series merges two seemingly unlikely developments: the seasonal migration of warbler birds and queer cruising in Prospect Park. Padilla’s colorful mixed media and photo collages draw visual comparisons between used condoms, which degrade down to just rings, and the life cycles of the small birds who visit the city once a year. Everything Is Migrating brings to mind the varied meanings of flight in New York, and how gentrification influences Brooklyn’s nature and culture.

Yasuhiro Ishimoto, “Japan” (c. 1950s–60s) (image courtesy Alison Bradley Projects)

When: through July 29
Where: Alison Bradley Projects (526 West 26th Street, Suite 814, Chelsea, Manhattan)

Renowned Japanese artist Tokuko Ushioda is largely known for her series Bibliotheca (2017), which uplifted books and printed ephemera as valid art objects. Her latest exhibition, From Student to Master, traces the pedagogical influence of Ushioda’s lesser-known mentors, Yasuhiro Ishimoto and Kiyoji Ōts uji. Presented together, their intimate images of domestic scenes and streetscapes illustrate the private and public lives of Japanese photographers long before they were strongly represented in the field.

Untitled painting by Lee Lozano (1963) (photo by Stefan Altenburg, courtesy Hauser & Wirth)

When: through July 29
Where: Hauser & Wirth (542 West 22nd Street, Chelsea and 32 East 69th Street, Upper East Side, Manhattan)

Hauser & Wirth’s summer programming highlights two accomplished women artists. Before her well-known “General Strike Piece” (1969), which marked the artist’s subsequent withdrawal from the industry, Lee Lozano created warm yet haunting minimalist oil paintings that elide stylistic definition. Meanwhile, a Cindy Sherman photo retrospective focuses on the prolific artist’s early series of staged images made between 1977 and ’82, the five-year period in which her many character studies reached a high point of productivity.

Installation view, *Between Worlds – Mokuhanga* (image courtesy Kentler International Drawing Space)

When: through July 31
Where: Kentler International Drawing Space (353 Van Brunt Street, Red Hook, Brooklyn)

Two group exhibitions at the Red Hook gallery trace the influence of Japanese printing traditions on contemporary artists. Mokuhanga takes its name from the water-based technique explored by artists-in-residence at the Mokuhanga Innovation Laboratory in Yamanashi prefecture, which forms the basis of the exhibition. And in Focus on the Flatfiles, a group of these artists who go by the Mokuhanga Sisters curated a related series of works from Kentler’s permanent collection. Together, the two shows detail the discipline and precision of a time-honored artform and chart its future as a collective practice.

Stacey Davidson, “Boatload” (2022) (image courtesy FiveMyles)

When: through July 17 and 31
Where: FiveMyles (558 Saint John’s Place, Crown Heights, Brooklyn)

Stacey Davidson’s “Boatload” will likely be a familiar scene for many viewers. Made with dolls, red Solo cups, and miniature American flags, the hanging installation depicts the bizarre camp of white nationalism in the United States. Floating in a sea of dead air, the piece is on display at the Crown Heights mainstay’s Plus/Space 24 hours a day. And in the main gallery, Tuçe Yasak’s summer residency Light Is Generous creates space for silent introspection, with colorful lights and shadowplay on reflective sculptural installations.

Francheska Alcántara, “Hispan@s y Candad@s” (2018) (image courtesy the artist and Recess)

When: July 21–August 13
Where: Recess (46 Washington Avenue, Clinton Hill, Brooklyn)

Bronx-based Dominicanx artist Francheska Alcántara is deconstructing cultural symbols of the Caribbean diaspora. Through an examination of “loaded objects,” such as brown paper bags and Hispano Cuaba soap, the artist unpacks histories of racial coding and governance over queer bodies. The gallery-wide installation at Recess will also allow visitors to play a makeshift game of dominoes as an allegory for breaking down layers of oppression.

Clay maquette for “Cutting Through Mountains to Bring in Water” (1958), artist Liu Shiming depicted on the right (image courtesy Godwin-Ternbach Museum)

When: July 6–August 18
Where: Godwin-Ternbach Museum (Klapper Hall at Queens College, 65-30 Kissena Boulevard, Flushing, Queens)

Chinese sculptor Liu Shiming passed away in 2010, but his art is only now receiving its due here in New York. His new retrospective brings together 62 works from his five-decade career, including his post-Revolution beginnings to Rodin-inspired surrealism. Positioned as China’s first truly modern sculptor, Shiming worked with bronze, wood, and ceramic to honor daily life in the People’s Republic using traditional and folk techniques. Rather than an assimilationist, he envisioned a world in which everyday Chinese people could be appreciated worldwide as complex and vital beings.

Steven Anthony Johnson, “Multi-tasking” (2022) (image courtesy the artist)

When: through August 12 and 26
Where: International Studio & Curatorial Program (1040 Metropolitan Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn)

Two participants of the North Brooklyn arts residency address historical trauma in the African diaspora. In Every Immigrant Is a Writer, Dominican artist Lizania Cruz presents her traveling series We the News, a wood newsstand containing written and printed testimonies from migrants around the world. Meanwhile, Steven Anthony Johnson II’s Getting Blood from Stone translates the artist’s interviews with family and friends into fragmentary sketches and sound collages that resonate across the gallery. Together, their work forms a shared vernacular of displacement and resilience.

Anas Albraehe, “Untitled” (2021) (image courtesy the artist and Anita Rogers Gallery)

When: through August 27
Where: Anita Rogers Gallery (494 Greenwich Street, Tribeca, Manhattan)

Syrian painter Anas Albraehe places marginalized men in compromising positions. The laborers and refugees in his expressionist paintings appear asleep in random public spaces, speaking to the layers of fatigue and exposure that stem from immigration. Bringing the styles of Matisse and Gauguin into landscapes from the artist’s current hometown of Beirut, The Dreamer visualizes the migrant experience of lying in wait for something unknown and unguaranteed.

Cannupa Hanska Luger, “Future Ancestral Technologies—New Myth” (2021) (photo by Stefan Hagen, courtesy Wave Hill and Garth Greenan Gallery)

When: through August 28
Where: Wave Hill Public Garden & Sculptural Center (4900 Independence Avenue, Riverdale, the Bronx)

It’s no secret that we are in the midst of a clean water shortage. Rampant desertification is leading people in African countries to leave their homes, exacerbating the global refugee crisis. Climate change, too, is melting polar ice caps and setting forests ablaze across the Western hemisphere, threatening the lives of Indigenous water protectors. With all this in mind, Wave Hill’s Water Scarcity draws from histories of resistance, with site-specific installations by Tahir Carl Karmali, Cannupa Hanska Luger, and Lucy and Jorge Orta highlighting nomadic and communal modes of survival.

Dr. Charles Smith’s Hammond, Louisiana site (2001–present) (photo by Fred Scruton, courtesy White Columns)

When: July 8–September 10
Where: White Columns (91 Horatio Street, West Village, Manhattan)

Dr. Charles Smith claims God once told him to make art as an antidote to his suffering. A Vietnam War veteran and ordained minister, Smith heeded the call by turning his family homes in Illinois and Louisiana into wondrous outdoor sculpture gardens called the African-American History Museum + Black Veterans’ Archive. More than 30 new figurative sculptures comprise his first solo show in New York City, hearkening to his experience exploring legacies of slavery in the United States and teaching himself sculpture as a remedy to personal trauma.

April 5, 2022

Your Concise New York Art Guide for April 2022

This month, bodies are everywhere — even when they’re not. Exhibitions across New York City delicately dissect the omnipresence of the body in abstract and virtual space, address corporeality’s constructed or collaged nature, explore the political potential of bodies in dialogue, and revel in the sheer absurdity of moving through the world in one of these things. Take care out there and enjoy.

***

Richard Hawkins, “Legend” (2022), collage, oil and pencil on paper, paper: 14 1/2 x 12 1/2 inches, frame: 19 7/8 x 18 inches (courtesy the artist and Greene Naftali, New York; photo by Zeshan Ahmed)

When: through April 23
Where: Greene Naftali (508 West 26th Street, Ground Floor, Chelsea, Manhattan)

A bait fisherman by day and painter by night, Forrest Bess (1911-77) made symbolic abstractions inspired by an elaborate personal philosophy that tied hermaphroditism to immortality and prompted him to explore body modification. For The Forrest Bess Variations, contemporary artist Richard Hawkins, whose work grapples with bodily taboos via (counter)cultural reference points, probed Bess’s lexicon through a research deep dive, hypnagogia, and Jungian Active Imagination. Hawkins’s painted and collaged variations on Bess’s work incorporate legends that interpret the meaning of specific colors — white means “penetrable” — and shapes — a black line is a “prostate stimulator” and “sounding rod.”

Morgan Bassichis, “Pitchy #3” (2020), single channel video (color, sound), commissioned by the Renaissance Society for Renaissance TV. Filmed by and featuring Max Silver. Captioning by Isaac Silber. 4:27 (© Morgan Bassichis, courtesy the artist and Bridget Donahue, NYC)

When: through April 23 (Performance dates: April 1, 8, 14, 22 at 7:30pm)
Where: Bridget Donahue (99 Bowery, 2nd Floor, Chinatown, Manhattan)

“Why were you so curt in your appointment reminder text?” comes a whisper from the hidden speaker in a potted plant by an analyst’s couch. Comedic musical performer and obsessive list-maker Morgan Bassichis brings their subversive hilarity into a solo show context with offerings spanning videos (“My father told me one day I’d grow up and have a line of saunas,” Bassichis informs us), informational pamphlets (“Questions to Ask Before Visiting Marfa”), and to-do lists (“To do: Silent meals (conversation is peer pressure)”). The show will also feature a live solo performance, “Questions to Ask Beforehand,” directed by Tina Satter.

Frida Orupabo, “Comfort” (2022), collage with paper and pins, 65 1/2 x 57 1/2 x 2 1/2 inches (© Frida Orupabo, courtesy the artist and Nicola Vassell Gallery; photograph by Adam Reich Photography)

When: through April 30
Where: Nicola Vassell Gallery (138 10th Avenue, Chelsea, Manhattan)

Taking its evocative title from Gayle Jones’s Corregidora (1975), a novel on intergenerational trauma, Closed Up Like A Fist features a group of 16 haunting collages and digital prints by Norwegian Nigerian artist and sociologist Frida Orupabo. Pinning together cut-up imagery, much of it culled from colonial archives, Orupabo constructs anonymous, fragmented Black women subjects, sometimes with White body parts. These figures variously spread their sweeping batwings, crush Black and White dolls underfoot, stare out from behind chairs, or hold out an apple as if it were a pistol in a Western shootout — or a gift.

Detail of Uuriintuya Dagvasambuu, “Zoom Meeting” (2021), acrylic on canvas, 55 1/8 x 55 1/8 inches (courtesy Sapar Contemporary and the artist)

When: through May 7
Where: Sapar Contemporary (9 North Moore Street, Tribeca, Manhattan)

A master of contemporary Mongol Zurag, Uuriintuya Dagvasambuu hails from a generation of Mongolian artists that revived a style of pictorial painting on secular and nationalist themes that was suppressed for the bulk of the 20th century under Soviet influence. Dagvasambuu’s fantastical, hyper-detailed paintings capture some of the surreality of the pandemic, remote work, and life online: A blue deity wears a protective mask on each of its many faces; a dachshund stretches across two Zoom screens, simultaneously inhabiting the deep sea and a meadow; icons from a phone’s home screen float above a roiling tumult of horses and sheep.

Rose Nestler, “Three Tongues” (2022), velvet, carved soapstone, fabric, thread, batting, wood, staples, epoxy, 29 x 24 x 5 inches (courtesy Mrs. and the artist)

When: through May 7
Where: Mrs. (60-40 56th Drive, Maspeth, Queens)

In her sculpture-centric show too bad for heaven, too good for hell, Rose Nestler takes on the freakiness of femininity with discerning wit and a wicked sense of body humor. Wooden hands lift a tulle skirt to reveal a young woman/old woman optical illusion; a massive florid cone bra presides over a bent, phallic red candle; a parade of red high-heeled shoes circling around a frilly centerpiece evokes Hans Christian Andersen’s twisted fairy tale The Red Shoes. The exhibition also features a new video work exploring the phenomenon of women-produced TikToks dedicated to the satisfaction of playing with slime.

Cameron Welch, “Gravity Chasm” (2022), marble, glass, ceramic, stone, spray enamel, oil, and acrylic on panel, 120 x 288 inches (courtesy the artist and Yossi Milo Gallery)

When: through May 7
Where: Yossi Milo Gallery (245 Tenth Avenue, Chelsea, Manhattan)

In historically scaled mosaics made from marble, stone, glass, paint, found objects, and tile (some of which is cheekily printed to mimic marble), Brooklyn-based artist Cameron Welch brings a contemporary collage- or graffiti-style aesthetic to an ancient art form that has similarly prized flat, graphic imagery at many points in its history. These monumental mosaics are densely packed with a temporally and thematically diffuse iconography of cartoonish figures — ranging from a cross-eyed cowboy to an anti-police protester to a Modigliani-style nude — along with animals, handprints, ceramic pots, skulls, blood, and masstige clothing.

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, still from *Permutations* (1976), 16mm film, black and white, silent; 10 min (Collection University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; gift of the Theresa Hak Kyung Cha Archive)

When: April 6–September 5
Where: Whitney Museum of American Art (99 Gansevoort Street, Meatpacking, Manhattan)

Hotly anticipated and only slightly delayed, the 80th edition of the Whitney Biennial is the brainchild of Whitney Museum curators David Breslin and Adrienne Edwards, who elected to follow a “series of hunches” about the present moment rather than a “unified theme.” The presentation features an artist list that is as interdisciplinary as it is intergenerational: The works of long-established artists such as Tony Cokes, Ralph Lemon, and Yto Barrada can be found alongside those of relative newcomers such as Aria Dean and Andrew Roberts, and several figures often more associated with literary arts — including Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, N.H. Pritchard, and Steve Cannon — are also given room to shine.

Raphael Montañez Ortiz, “The Memorial to the Sadistic Holocaust Destruction of Millions of Our Ancient Arawak-Taino-Latinx Ancestors Begun in 1492 by Columbus and His Mission to, With the Conquistadores, Colonize and Deliver to Spain the Wealth of the New World No Matter the Human Cost to the New Worlds Less Than Human Aborigine Inhabitants…” (2019-2020), mixed media, overall display dimensions 76 x 94 x 21 inches (Collection of El Museo del Barrio, New York, gift of the artist, 2020; artwork © Raphael Montañez Ortiz; image © El Museo del Barrio, New York; photography by Martin Seck)

When: April 14–September 11
Where: El Museo del Barrio (1230 Fifth Avenue, East Harlem, Manhattan)

More than fifty years ago, artist and educator Raphael Montañez Ortiz, along with a coalition of community members, founded El Museo del Barrio to counter a dearth of local arts representation for Latinx and Caribbean creators. Now, the museum is honoring Ortiz with a survey spanning six decades of his work as an artist and activist. The exhibition includes early films and sculptures resulting from destructivist performances and deconstructions of everyday objects, reclamatory work springing from ethnoaesthetics, and later participatory performances rooted in ritual and breathwork.

Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme, Still from *May amnesia never kiss us on the mouth*, 2020-ongoing (courtesy the artists)

When: April 23–June 26
Where: online & MoMA (11 West 53rd Street, Midtown, Manhattan)

Through multimedia installations and live performances, collaborators Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme create non-linear narratives that explore the politics of bodies in our endless — and endlessly catastrophic — present. The duo’s evolving project May amnesia never kiss us on the mouth (2020–ongoing), which can be viewed as a multichannel video installation at MoMA or experienced online via Dia Art Foundation, grew out of an extensive collection of found online recordings of singing and dancing in public space in Iraq, Palestine, and Syria, and features new performances that the artists made in tandem with Ramallah musicians and a dancer.

Kazuko Miyamoto, “Plant Kimono” (1991) (courtesy the artist and Zürcher Gallery, New York/Paris)

When: April 29–July 10
Where: Japan Society (333 East 47th Street, Midtown East, Manhattan)

Not long after moving to New York in her twenties in 1964, Tokyo-born artist Kazuko Miyamoto became Sol LeWitt’s studio assistant, joined the women-led nonprofit A.I.R. Gallery, and, within a decade, secured her debut New York City solo show at 55 Mercer. Marking the first institutional survey of Miyamoto’s pioneering post-minimalist oeuvre, the Japan Society exhibition spans early paintings, string construction drawings, conceptual performances, and performalist kimono pieces, tracing the artist’s evolution and increasing interest in exploring her own intersectional identity in her work.

March 1, 2022

Your Concise New York Art Guide for March 2022

There’s a “what if…” energy electrifying some of the most exciting exhibitions in New York City this month, speculative propositions ranging from “What if we saw architecture as an unsettled pastiche?” to “What if a reclamation could occur through genre choice?”, from “What if bodies voided of subjecthood gained otherworldly abilities?” to “What if indices of representation changed?” Asking “what if” can be a galvanizing, powerful thing; as you take in these shows across the city, let yourself brim and fizz with the question’s possibilities.

***

Installation view of The Black Index at Hunter College Art Galleries’ Leubsdorf Gallery, 2022. Alicia Henry, “Analogous III” (2020) (photo by Stan Narten, courtesy the artist)

When: through April 3
Where: Bertha & Karl Leubsdorf Gallery (132 East 68th Street, Lenox Hill, Manhattan)

Reviewed by Hyperallergic in its UC Irvine iteration, this traveling exhibition presents media-spanning work by six artists, including Titus Kaphar and Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle, that challenge harmful colonialist and classificatory conventions around Black figuration in the United States while proposing thoughtful alternatives. “Black people should not visually only exist in relationship to violence, crime and racial hate,” exhibition curator Dr. Bridget R. Cooks told the Los Angeles Times. “We exist in other ways and these artists are trying to represent those ways to us or to remind us there are other ways to see us, to find us in American culture.”

Still from Carlos Motta and Tiamat Legion Medusa, “When I Leave This World” (2022) (courtesy the artist, P.P.O.W. Gallery New York and OCDChinatown, New York)

When: through April 10
Where: OCDChinatown (75 East Broadway, Chinatown, Manhattan)

This two-channel video installation is the brainchild of Bogotá-born, New York-based artist Carlos Motta, whose oeuvre explores queer or otherwise marginalized counter-histories and alternative futures, and Tiamat Legion Medusa, a Texan trans performance artist who goes by it/its pronouns and has undergone extensive body modification surgery to metamorphose into a dragon, a corporeal protest against humans and what they represent. Medusa relays its personal history and politics in one video, while in the other, both artists are suspended in space through transgressive means (hooks and Shibari).

Susan Meiselas, “The Star Tease, Tunbridge, Vermont” (1975) © Susan Meiselas/Magnum Photos (courtesy the artist and Higher Pictures Generation)

When: through April 16
Where: Higher Pictures Generation (16 Main Street, Ground Floor, DUMBO, Brooklyn)

Susan Meiselas may be best known for her documentation of Nicaragua’s Sandinista revolution, but her photographic career first took flight with Carnival Strippers (1972-75), a visual record of striptease performers, their employers, and their clients at small town summer carnivals around the East Coast. Painting a nuanced picture of her subjects, Meiselas depicted the performers onstage and off and ensured that their voices were represented through taped interviews and consultation on photos. Due to a recent discovery of color film rolls in storage, images from the series are being exhibited in vibrant color for the first time.

Installation view of *Lyndon Barrois Jr.: Mirage Collar* at Artists Space, 2022 (photo by Filip Wolak, courtesy the artist and Artists Space)

When: through April 23
Where: Artists Space (11 Cortlandt Alley, Soho, Manhattan)

Cinema has long celebrated the art of the con. With an emphasis on the Three-card Monte trick, Pittsburgh-based multidisciplinary artist and writer Lyndon Barrois Jr. mines the vast archives of filmic depictions of duplicity, double-dealing, and legerdemain in his first New York institutional solo show. Transforming borrowed cinematic imagery into exactingly arranged paintings, drawings, sculptures, and installations, the artist explores subterfuge’s many flavors on formal and narrative levels.

Kia LaBeija, “Mourning Sickness” (2014) (courtesy the artist and Fotografiska New York)

When: through May 8
Where: Fotografiska New York (281 Park Avenue South, Flatiron, Manhattan)

In her first museum solo show, Kia LaBeija (“Kia”), an artist, performer, and former Overall Mother of the Iconic House of LaBeija, presents tender autobiographical photographs and self-portraiture alongside personal archival material and ephemera. Through her vulnerable visuals, Kia, who was interviewed by Hyperallergic in 2020, opens a window onto her experience coming of age as a queer, HIV-positive woman of color involved with New York City’s Ballroom scene. prepare my heart is dedicated to the artist’s late mother Kwan Bennett, an AIDS activist.

Charles Ray, “Mime” (2014), Kunstmuseum Basel (photograph by Josh White © Charles Ray, courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery)

When: through June 5
Where: The Met Museum (1000 Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan)

Quality trumps quantity in this spare presentation of 3 photos and 16 sculptures, spanning five decades, by Los Angeles-based artist Charles Ray, a “sculptor’s sculptor” who has produced around 100 works total over the course of his career — and is currently also the subject of exhibitions at Glenstone, the Centre Georges Pompidou, and the Bourse de Commerce. Spaced apart in an echo of the artist’s dictum “Space is the sculptor’s primary medium,” works on view in this focused survey range from an open aluminum box that riffs on the Minimalist cube to stainless steel figures referencing Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, a complex and problematic American cultural touchstone.

Kay WalkingStick, “The San Francisco Peaks Seen from Point Imperiale” (2021) (image by JSP Art Photography, courtesy the artist and Hales, London and New York)

When: March 4–April 16
Where: Hales Gallery (547 West 20th Street, Chelsea, Manhattan)

While we might be (rightly) inclined to associate paintings of epic North American landscapes with the acquisitive violences of manifest destiny, artist Kay WalkingStick, who is of Cherokee and Anglo descent, has painted landscapes throughout her six-decade career to instead explore and honor the relationship between Indigenous peoples and nature. The multi-panel oil paintings on view, all made in the past ten years, overlay North American vistas with meticulously researched Indigenous patterns and designs that reference the people who once inhabited or currently inhabit the area.

Tenet, “Frame 2 (Hot Pipe/Transition Strip)” (2021) (courtesy the artists and CUE Art Foundation)

When: March 5–April 2
Where: CUE Art Foundation (137 West 25th Street, Chelsea, Manhattan)

With a focus on 19th century tenement housing built with working class, immigrant, and non-White inhabitants in mind, Tenet, or the collaborative New York duo Julia Eshaghpour and Kevin Hollidge, consider New York City’s layered pastiche of architectural styles, in which various social, material, and aesthetic histories awkwardly abut one another. Droll architectural sculptures and assemblages — a pillar is inexplicably made of fruit, a pipe snakes like a living thing — underscore the strange animacy of buildings.

Dewey Crumpler, “Sundown” (2020) (courtesy the artist and Derek Eller Gallery)

When: March 17–April 23
Where: Derek Eller Gallery (300 Broome Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan)

Since the 1990s, Bay Area artist Dewey Crumpler has been painting and drawing The Hoodies, anthropomorphic sweatshirts that act as bodiless proxies for Black subjects — perhaps above all, Black boys and adolescents. Whether they are zipping through outer space in Skittles-colored vehicles, wielding smartphones to photograph Pablo Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon”(1907) and Faith Ringgold’s “American People Series #20: Die” (1967) at MoMA, or gathering at a protest with homemade signs that read “The Thang” and “Being Non Being,” the Hoodies are uniquely compelling.

Installation view of *Hassan Sharif: I Am the Single Work Artist*, Malmö Konsthall, Sweden, 2020 (photo by Helene Toresdotter, courtesy Alexander Gray Associates)

When: March 17–April 23
Where: Alexander Gray Associates (510 West 26 Street, Chelsea, Manhattan)

Emirati conceptual artist Hassan Sharif (1951-2016), who worked across media but is most closely associated with his sculptural installations of refuse, gained recognition for his political caricatures and cartoons in the 1970s. Highlighting that critical figuration remained an important thread in Sharif’s mature work, the late, Expressionism-inflected paintings on view depict decontextualized, distorted politicians who appear maniacal at press conferences or raise their hands in ambiguous public gestures emptied of meaning.

February 1, 2022

Your Concise New York Art Guide for February 2022

Installation view of Sadie Barnette: The New Eagle Creek Saloon, The Kitchen, New York, January 18, 2022–March 5, 2022 (courtesy of The Kitchen; photo by Adam Reich)

Contrary to the art world’s discursive habits, art isn’t a code you crack; it’s more like a place you go, ideally in good company. This February, go there. Lend an ear to a sonic fusion of orchestral music and noise from a concrete plant, watch furniture spring to life in protest or pleasure, and dance in a glittery reimagining of San Francisco’s first Black-owned gay bar.

Installation view, *Cosmic Geometries,* EFA Project Space, 2022. From left to right: Marilyn Lerner, *Queen Bee*, Oil on panel, 36×48 inches, 2020. Rico Gatson, *Untitled (Double Sun/Sonhouse)*, Acrylic on panel, 36×48 inches. 2021, Courtesy of Miles McEnery Gallery, NYC. Natessa Amin, variable small works, materials and dimensions variable, 2018-2021. Stephen Mueller, *Passeggiata*, acrylic on canvas, 72×66 inches, 2005, Courtesy of DC Moore Gallery, NYC. Anoka Faruqee and David Driscoll, *2017P-07*, Acrylic and linen on panel, 33.75x 33.75 inches, 2017. Dorothea Rockburne, *Lamenting Angels #2,* Aquacryl and gouache on paper, framed, 22.5×30 inches, 2021, Courtesy of David Nolan Gallery.

When: through February 26
Where: EFA Project Space (323 West 39th Street, Midtown West, Manhattan)

Hilma’s Ghost, a feminist artist collective cofounded by Brooklyn-based artists Sharmistha Ray and Dannielle Tegeder in 2020, used ritual divination — and an invocation of the spirit of the organization’s departed namesake, the Swedish Theosophist artist Hilma af Klint — to curate Cosmic Geometries. Work by a diverse group of 25 creators, including Carrie Moyer, Yevgeniya Baras, and Laleh Khorramian, unites around a shared affinity for the spiritual, the mystical, and the occult in abstraction.

Still from Theo Triantafyllidis, *Ork Haus*, 2022, video (courtesy of the artist and Meredith Rosen Gallery, New York)

When: through February 26
Where: Meredith Rosen Gallery (11 East 80th Street, Upper East Side, Manhattan)

“The feeling of presence: this is the defining quality of the metaverse,” a voice flatly tells us, borrowing some of Mark Zuckerberg’s vacant techno-utopic utterances. Among the highlights of Athens-born, Los Angeles-based artist Theo Triantafyllidis’s solo show are two video installations that connect contemporary feelings of alienation with the radicalization pipeline: one simulation depicts bored Orks on their electronic devices amid storms and kitchen fires, while the other features a violent clash of figures, some of whom carry white nationalist flags.

La Monte Young, *Trio for Strings*, 2021. © La Monte Young. Cover design by Jung Hee Choi with calligraphy by Marian Zazeela (courtesy of Dia Art Foundation)

When: through February 26
Where: Dia Chelsea (537 West 22nd Street, Chelsea, Manhattan)

Dia Art Foundation, which counts Max Neuhaus’s sound installation in Times Square as one of the eleven sites it manages, has been a staunch supporter of sound art for some time — and now has three releases to celebrate. In Listening Space, gallery-goers can enjoy a jukebox preloaded with the nonprofit’s sound publications, from On Kawara’s “One Million Years (Future)” (1993), in which a man and a woman methodically count, to new records by La Monte Young, Deantoni Parks and Lucy Raven, and Carl Craig.

Installation view, *Looking Back / The 12th White Columns Annual – Selected by Mary Manning,* White Columns, 2022 (photograph: Marc Tatti; courtesy of White Columns)

When: through March 5
Where: White Columns (91 Horatio Street, Meatpacking, Manhattan)

After a pandemic pause on the tradition, New York’s oldest alternative art space has opened the 12th iteration of its Annual, thoughtfully guest-curated by New York City-based photographer Mary Manning as a reflection on and response to their past year of art experiences. The exhibition features work by 25 intergenerational artists, including Patrick Angus, Aria Dean, Stewart Uoo, and Gordon Parks, and will be accompanied by a screening of Barbara Hammer’s films at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center.

Kate Millett, *Dinner for One*, 1967. Mixed media, 48 x 24 x 24 in. (courtesy of the artist and Salon 94 Design, New York. © Kate Millett)

When: through March 5
Where: Salon 94 (3 East 89th Street, Upper East Side, Manhattan)

In 1967, The Judson Gallery debuted a suite of fantasy furniture by downtown New York artist and radical feminist writer Kate Millett, who is best known today for her 1970 text Sexual Politics. The furnishings, currently on view at Salon 94, are whimsical, anthropomorphic, and wonderfully weird fusions of found objects and hand-carved wood that form a cabinet that opens its chest cavity, a bed with protruding feet, a stool that feeds itself, and even a table on roller skates (whose depiction on New York City’s streets in a 1967 edition of Life was weaponized as “proof” that Millett, a doctoral candidate at Columbia, was not a serious scholar).

Installation view of *Sadie Barnette: The New Eagle Creek Saloon*, The Kitchen, New York, January 18, 2022–March 5, 2022 (courtesy of The Kitchen; photo by Adam Reich)

When: through March 6
Where: The Kitchen (512 West 19th St, Chelsea, Manhattan)

Organized in conjunction with The Studio Museum in Harlem, The New Eagle Creek Saloon presents Oakland-based artist Sadie Barnette’s fluorescent recreation of the San Francisco gay bar that her father, founder of the Compton chapter of the Black Panther Party, operated in the early 1990s. On select Saturdays, the architectural installation is activated by DJs invited by queer scholar and artist madison moore as part of The Kitchen’s new nightlife and club culture residency; visitors are invited to dance, an homage to queer Black spaces past and present.

Liz Larner, *vi (calefaction)*, 2015. Ceramic, glaze, stones, and minerals, 36.6 x 21 x 7.5 inches (courtesy of the artist and Regen Projects, Los Angeles)

When: through March 28
Where: SculptureCenter (44-19 Purves St, Long Island City, Queens)

Don’t put it back how it was, co-organized with the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, surveys the work of Liz Larner, an astonishingly versatile sculptor and installation artist who came out of CalArts in the 1980s. The works on view run the gamut from Larner’s early experiments with bacterial cultures, to a kinetic wall-bashing machine, to the ceramic slabs that have occupied the artist for the past two decades. Though materially and aesthetically diverse, these sculptures are rooted in a common interest in the ways that bodies move and exist in social and architectural space.

Hugh Hayden’s *Brier Patch* at Madison Square Park, 2022 (courtesy of the artist and Madison Square Park Conservancy; photo by Yasunori Matsui)

When: through April 24
Where: Madison Square Park (11 Madison Avenue, Nomad, Manhattan)

Overtaking four lawns of Madison Square Park, Hugh Hayden’s ambitious sculptural installation features 100 wooden elementary school task chairs rendered unusable by the bare tree branches that aggressively sprout from them. Contemplating inequity in the American education system, Hayden’s Surrealist twist on vernacular classroom furniture depicts institutionalized learning as a thicket that is structurally uninviting, exclusionary, and absurd.

Beverly Semmes, *Eye Tooth*, 2021. Ink, acrylic over photograph printed on canvas. 54 7/8 x 40 in. (courtesy of Susan Inglett Gallery, NYC; photo by Chris Kendall)

When: February 3–March 12
Where: Susan Inglett Gallery (522 West 24th Street, Chelsea, Manhattan)

Initiated in the early 2000s, Beverly Semmes’ ongoing “Feminist Responsibility Project” intervenes with vintage porn magazines; using paint or ink to obliterate the bulk of women’s bodies in graphic images, Semmes transforms the subjects into awkward abstractions. Continuing this complex gesture, recent works on view in POT PEEK explore the resemblances between the effaced women and vessels, literally and conceptually.

Faith Ringgold, *The Wake and Resurrection of the Bicentennial Negro*, 1975-89. Mixed media, dimensions variable. (courtesy of the artist and ACA Galleries, New York, 2021 © Faith Ringgold / ARS, NY and DACS, London; photo by Ron Amstutz, courtesy Glenstone Museum, Potomac, Maryland)

When: February 17–June 5
Where: New Museum (235 Bowery, Lower East Side, Manhattan)

Celebrating six decades of art by Harlem-born nonagenarian Faith Ringgold, this long overdue retrospective features a collection of figurative paintings, narrative textiles, and soft sculptures shaped by a belief in the power of women’s labor and Black visual traditions. A highlight is the entirety of the “The French Collection” (1991–1994), Ringgold’s 12-part series of experimental story quilts exploring the life of a Black American artist and model working in the modernist circles of 1920s Paris.