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By Travis Diehl, Martha Schwendener, Jillian Steinhauer, Will Heinrich, John Vincler, Seph Rodney and Holland Cotter
Want to see new art in New York this weekend?Visit an exhibition at the Mishkin Gallery that will pay homage to Puerto Rican art. And at MoMA PS1 in Queens, two artists explore their Aymara roots.
Flatiron District
Through December 8. Mishkin Gallery, 135 East Street, Manhattan; 646-660-6653, mishkingallery. baruch. cuny. edu.
Six years ago, Puerto Rico endured the best typhoon of Hurricane Maria and a budget crisis, while the discourse on decolonization reached its climax on the mainland. But the art scene has long been local and adaptable. Embassy (or “Embassy”), nicknamed Manuela Paz and Christopher Rivera, ambitiously brings the recent history of Puerto Rican biennials to Manhattan, with an examination of works from the past included in 3 series of exhibitions by foreign organizations held between 2000 and 2016. The artists and the problems that aroseremain active and sharp. Several participants, such as Edra Soto and Daniel Lind-Ramos, have recently participated in Caribbean primary research at the Whitney and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. The exhibition in Mishkin offers a glimpse.
In the gallery, a row of rolled coins snakes around a display box of ephemera. Mexican artist Damián Ortega produced “100 dollars de dieta” for the first PR Invitational living without cash and exchanging his $100 stipend for 10,000 cents. The Great Tropical Biennial hosted beaches and jungles, represented here through “Escuela de Oficios”, the carpet of belfry and boxes of prints from a library through Jorge González Santos. On the wall, Jessica Kiré’s “Anti-Zika Ponchos” mesh embodies the specter of fever. Mike Egan on stage the 3 Cave-In are demonstrated in a cave that once housed nationalist rebels. Artists such as Rivera, Andra Ursuta, and Candice Lin have created site-specific works. Andy Meerow stuck symptoms on the rock that read “Wet Pain”; On the walls of Mishkin, this raw message hits the mark. TRAVIS DIEHL
City of Isla Larga
Through October 2 on MoMA PS1; 22-25 Jackson Avenue, Long Island City, Queens; 718-784-2084, momaps1. org.
At the beginning of the last century, Francisco Tancara helped Protestant Adventist missionaries build schools in Bolivia on indigenous lands. Today, these paintings, possibly in the name of paintings of Aymara indigenous networks, have been used to justify the continued presence of the Church in the homeland. and similar stories shape the basis of a project at MoMA PS1 through Chuquimamani-Condori and Joshua Chuquimia Crampton, California-based brothers who belong to the Pakajaqi nation of the other Aymaras (Tancara, their great-great-grandfather) and who have also released a number of highly acclaimed musical recordings.
The installation here, which references their ancestors in front of the colonial church and state officials, included two symposiums on indigenous and immigration justice, a live musical performance, and what’s left: a collage-shaped banner that spans two floors and a seating area in front of this “talking altar. “The banner reads like a cosmic map or a science fiction video game, but also features a form of Aymara writing with photographs called qillqa. In the middle is a giant qillqa head that breaks to reveal images of Tancara. and the great-great-grandmother of the artists, Rosa Quiñones. With headphones you can hear the stories of a circle of relatives who bought their land from a colonial government, as well as stories of clashes with the authorities.
Rather than simply telling stories of dispossession, the brothers refer to their paintings as “medicine,” particularly Aymara Q’iwa and Q’iwsa medicine, or “queer medicine. “Forget about aesthetic contemplation, artistic innovation or financial value. The purpose here is art rescued through artists for ritual purposes: to heal old wounds and even, perhaps, a planet with poor health and suffering. MARTHA SCHWENDENER
Brooklyn
Through September 10. Art Lot, 206 Columbia Street, Brooklyn; artlotbrooklyn. com.
New York is a sensitive position for public space. Many parks and squares are privately owned, and many network gardens have limited opening hours. When you’re tired, sick, or homeless, the city can seem hostile to you, in part because it’s so hard to find a position.
This is, indirectly, the theme of the exhibition “Community Garden” by David L. At first glance, the name may seem too promising: the exhibition consists of 11 matching planters covered in a small fenced lot. The ground is covered with gravel and weeds, and there is only one bench. But the unpretentious aesthetic contradicts the radicality of the installation.
In the past, all planters were located elsewhere in the city. Not only were they decorative, but, according to the gallery statement, they were strategically placed to block access to shade and imaginable resting places. Johnson, who was born and raised in New York City, has a habit of surreptitiously cutting off examples of so-called hostile architecture from streets and displaying them as works of art. Here, the transposed elements were also reused: he cleaned up the garbage that was there and planted wild bergamot, which has medicinal homes and attracts pollinators.
In addition, Art Lot, available by appointment only, is open during the exhibition. Anyone can come at any time and maybe take bergamot.
Johnson’s defiant gestures are acts of care and release. In the exhibition, old obstacles become facilitators of life, and in the city, I think other people sitting where the planters once stood find some relief. JILLIAN STEINHAUER
Soho
Through September 10. Pearl River Mart Gallery, 452 Broadway, Manhattan; Pearlriver. com.
If you go beyond the sphere of the world’s most sensible level, old, easy-to-find narratives about new and modern art in New York are diminishing. “Just Between Us: From the Archives of Arlan Huang,” an exhibition by the organization held at the venerable Chinese museum export store Pearl River Mart, is a vital addition to a little-recorded narrative: the history of Asian American art and artists in this city.
San Francisco-born Arlan Huang moved to New York City in the late 1960s to study art. He has a staple in Manhattan’s Chinatown, as a practicing artist, business owner, and network organizer. There, in the 1970s, he and fellow artist Karl Matsuda opened, on a shoestring budget, an art frame company, Squid Frames, which is still in operation (albeit now in Brooklyn). Over the next two decades, Huang participated in two groundbreaking Asian-American art collectives: Basement Workshop and Godzilla: Asian American Arts Network. Both nurtured artists who had found little acceptance among the general public and expanded what Asian American could mean, as a transnational identifier.
Huang also collects works of art, maximum through exchanges or small gifts from other artists, resources all in an exhibition that is a time capsule of an era and an artistic culture. Most of the works are small, the length of a table drawer. : engravings, photographs, drawings, paintings. Some names are familiar to me (Tomie Arai, Ken Chu, Corky Lee, Martin Wong, Lynne Yamamoto and Danielle Wu, curator of the exhibition with Howie Chen); others not so much. As a testament to an ever-growing history, Huang’s archives are a must; Article via love object, it is also a delight. HOLLANDE COTTER
Soho
Through September 10. The drawing center; 35 Wooster Street, Manhattan; 212-219-2166, Downtown dessin. org.
“In fact, you will be relaxed when your days are not carefree and your nights without misery or sadness,” wrote Lebanese-American writer Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931) in his bestseller “The Prophet” (1923). When those things surround your life and yet you rise above them, naked and loose. Gibran’s book, a synthesis of poetry, faith and inspiration for non-public development, has sold over a hundred million copies. But he was also an artist, as can be seen in more than a hundred works in this highly anticipated exhibition curated by Claire Gilman, lead curator of the Drawing Center.
In the same way that “The Prophet” explored the human experience, in search of universal truths, Gibran’s works about people. There are charcoal and graphite portraits of prominent artists such as Auguste Rodin, Albert Pinkham Ryder and Claude Debussy, as well as psychoanalyst Carl Jung. and unidentified mystics. In works such as “The Summit” of around 1925 or “The Cascade” (1919), the bodies are intertwined and the earthly connection suggests union with the divine.
Gibran was inspired by several apparent sources: Symbolist art, with its supernatural goals; the blurred aesthetics of pictorialist photography; and the idealizing classicism of the Pre-Raphaelites. He overwhelmingly rejects the abstraction that reigned in twentieth-century art, which partly explains why he has been overlooked as an artist. But there is also an unbridled sweetness and fragility in his paintings that have been considered kitsch by many hardened modernist critics (much like, for example, the way they viewed Marc Chagall). In our own moment of crisis, Gibran’s art, like his words, is a balm and a portal to rise without restraint. above conflicts. MARTHE SCHWENDENER
Queens
Through September 10. Queens Museum, New York City Building, Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Queens; 718-592-9700; queensmuseum. org.
Aliza Nisenbaum grew up in Mexico and now lives in New York City. So did many citizens of Corona, Queens, whom he spent years portraying in their homes and workplaces, in his studio at the Queens Museum, or while enrolled in a course he once taught. called “English through the History of Feminist Art”. The museum’s glorious “Queens, Lindo and Dear,” an extensive exhibit of his work, includes portraits of Delta Air Lines and Port Authority employees; Hitomi Iwasaki, the curator of the exhibition, in her complete plants; and an artistic elegance that Nisenbaum presented to volunteers in the museum’s pantry, displayed with a variety of volunteers’ own works (“The Workshop, Queens Museum”).
All this is worth mentioning, because Nisenbaum’s interest in people, his desire to bond with them, not only provides content to his paintings, but is shown in their form. Realistic but with enhanced colors and flattened flats, they are warm and glamorous. , capable of absorbing a number of idiosyncratic details. ” The Workshop” features 10 aspiring artists, five of whom paint self-portraits in small mirrors, against the backdrop of the unreal purple mists of Corona Park in Flushing Meadows. . And then there are the paintings within the painting, each with its own unique style, not to mention the 19 naïve, multicolored games of the “exquisite corpse. “It is a triject to Nisenbaum’s generosity – and his compositional skills – that all inhabit in one piece in harmony. HEINRICH
TriBeCa
Through October 7. Walker, Walker Street, Manhattan; 212-727-1961, walker. com.
Rather “Naked pigs”. Photographer Heji Shin is known for combining the sensible with the passive: gigantic studio portraits of Kanye West one minute, hardcore gay crime porn the next; as comfortable in fashion magazines as in disjointed galleries. Fittingly, this exhibition makes a play on celebrity skin photographs taken by art and fashion photographer Helmut Newton in the 1980s (called “Great Nudes”). With titles like “Standing Figure” and “Eat Yo,” several large-scale exuberant photographs show fleshy, fluffy pigs in eerily patterned poses, complemented by flirtatious rows of teats and tongue petting. Reclining Nude”, his peach-colored theme trotting on a homogeneous background, is the quintessence of the soft pork-center.
Shin’s other series is darker: 3 sets of MRIs. The scans show the artist’s brain, with the layers stretched out for analysis. If photographs of faces and postures promise to penetrate the essence of the subject, Shin’s brain scans are another kind of portrait. But even if a medical imaging device exposes the greasy seat of consciousness, the user remains opaque. The scans take the vanity of pig photographs into comically dark territory. “The Great Nudes” promises intellectual excitement but provides mortality. Newton’s exquisite models are replaced by an animal intelligent enough to lend us its central valves, intelligent enough to spice up our sausages with guilt. The cosmic pun on naked pigs, really, is to describe either species as meat, in addition to magic. TRAVIS DIEHL
Northern State
Through October 29. Thomas Cole National Historic Site, Catskill, New York; (518) 943-7465, thomascole. org.
A sign on Thomas Cole’s porch indicates where the patriarch of the Hudson school enjoyed gazing out over the valley and lamenting the loss of nature. The irony is that Cole’s fantastic landscapes never existed: he did not regret nature, but the ideal he had built into it. An exhibit at Thomas Cole National Historic Site shows how landscape perception has been rethought. Her former apartment and studio houses the works of thirteen new women and collectives, plus Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Wendy Red Star and Jean. A stairwell poster by the Guerrilla Girls demystifies the Hudson River School boys’ club, while Anna Plesset’s trompe-l’oeil painting, the fall view of Cole Manor copied by her sister Sarah, shows the complexity of the Hudson School. legacy.
On the other side of the garden, Cole’s former studio houses the first research on Susie Barstow, a second-generation painter from the Hudson River School, which is also the first research on a female artist from the Hudson River School, and six landscape painters. of his entourage. As men grew older, Barstow earned his reputation specializing in small- and medium-sized canvases popular in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Some of his paintings, such as the piercing chartreuse “Sunshine in the Woods,” perform the most productive trick of its kind, depicting not leaves or logs in a clearing, but something more ephemeral: the air itself. In the photograph, aptly titled “Landscape with a Faded Tree,” a trunk merges with the sky; Nature literally disappears. TRAVIS DIEHL
Brooklyn
Until September 23. Higher Pictures, Main Street, Brooklyn; 212-249-6100, UpperPictures. com.
Claire Pentecost’s recent photographs are monstrous. As in “Afterparty” (2022-23), they basically present human-animal hybrids: a woman dressed in a blonde wig and wrapped in a black ensemble sitting on top of another figure, wearing white clothes. Gloved hands and dressed in a red and red hat. Silk blouse with white stripes but deer head. Close examination shows that the “woman” in black has hooves instead of hands at the end of her emaciated arms. Is it a loose couple in a passionate hug or a couple of victims clinging to each other in terror?
The exhibition’s 21 funny, if macabre, images (all from 2022 and 2023) show characters composed of taxidermy, doll parts, clothing, and models. They repeat themselves, creating the feeling that one is looking for the pages of a shattered storybook without a logic. Its dirty spaces with white walls are spectacularly illuminated, so that the shadows themselves become figures. The drawing of a wooden high sent directly on the wall becomes a ghostly hint of its upcoming erasure in another. Many photographed scenes come with paintings, such as “Graveyard of the Pioneers,” which juxtaposes a painted self-portrait of the artist on the wall next to a headless model dressed in a white coat holding the head of a bison. Two paintings depict the artist’s mother.
The recombinant beings are reminiscent of Czech filmmaker Jan Svankmajer’s preemptive movement puppets and have affinities with Greer Lankton, Leonora Carrington and painter Paula Rego’s use of puppets as models. This dark doll game is the antithesis of Barbie. JEAN VINCLER
The lower part to the east
Through September 17. New Museum, 235 Bowery, Manhattan; 212-219-1222, newmuseum. org.
For her first solo museum performance in the United States, young Korean artist Mire Lee houses her ambiguous bureaucracy of horror framed in a PVC room within a room, with translucent sides covered in dust and covered with shredded wires soaked in clay. It is not known whether Lee’s bulbous and fibrous kinetic sculptures grow or die. Electric motors and hydraulic hoses, gurgling, shaking and dripping, animate drops of taupe-colored silicone, suspended from chains and impaled with hoses. It’s a bit theatrical at one point (rational), but at (psychosexual?), there’s emotion in vanity. Like the rubbery wounds in a B-movie horror movie, those fake viscera act on the intestines.
The exhibition of the New Museum is effective, in its rainy and dusty quarantine, to galvanize the senses: the raised technical floor of the store, covered with dust and letting tubes and cables pass, creaks under the shoes; the air tastes of sour dust; The engines squeak and the pumps squeak. Outside the store, along its periphery, are the routers, tanks and transformers, the electronics that produce the internal scenery: water dripping periodically down the crankshaft in “Black Sun: Horizontal Sculpture”; The dry suction of a pipe into a sculpture in the form of a cement cauldron with a non-printable title. At the back of the design is the mop and vacuum needed to keep the clay inside the store, out of the rest of the museum. The disturbing strength of Lee’s paintings comes from his refusal to settle for barriers: of sculpture, of obscenity. TRAVIS DIEHL
Newburgh
Through September 24. Elijah Wheat Showroom, 195 Front Street, Newburgh, New York; 917-705-8498, elijahwheatshowroom. com.
It would possibly take an exhibit that offered more than just a visual trick to draw New Yorkers out of their Hudson Valley urban labyrinths during the sweaty days of last summer. “Souvenirs of the Wasteland,” a collaboration between Caitlin McCormack and Katharine Ryals at the Elijah Wheat Showroom in Newburgh, is a spectacle that rewards the visitor aesthetically and intellectually. It is a slightly satirical version of the universal research museum, with a wall text written by Cara Sheffler stating that the search for wisdom is necessarily “a path of infinite progress” and demonstrating instances containing strange hybrid creatures that could possibly be fossils, filled specimens or representations. of extinct species. There’s also a festive nod to horror and the abject: for example, a crocheted pig-like creature with mushrooms sprouting from its back, and a “shadow farmer” dressed in black velvet, wearing a hat felt with branches and leaves implemented all over its body. body, like a ghostly gothic dryad. Furthermore, the consequences of our ecological crisis are foreshadowed, with the representation of various bureaucracies of life, amalgamations of reasonable jewelry, synthetic hair, pearls, microplastics and silicone, which here seem to have been recovered after their extinction. The partnership between McCormack, who supplies the bait, and Ryals, who does the sculptural work, makes each artist even more strangely wonderful.
Since opening Elijah Wheat in Newburgh in July 2020 through artists and life partners Carolina Wheat and Liz Nielsen, they have consistently held worthwhile exhibitions outside of town, especially for the wild and perversely heavenly nature that this show is. SEPH Rodney
Pueblo del Este
Through September 3. Ukrainian Museum, 222 East Sixth Street, Manhattan; 212-228-0110, theukrainianmuseum. org.
If there’s one thing you know about Janet Sobel (and it’s more than most), it’s that she covered canvases with drops of paint in the mid-1940s, before Jackson Pollock did the same. However, in 1942 and 1943, some time earlier Embracing abstraction, this self-taught New Yorker of Ukrainian origin painted small, passionate pictures of soldiers, peasants, cannons and flowers, wrapped in tight compositions of agony and ardor. In the Ukrainian Museum of the Ukrainian Museum you can discover almost four dozen war gouaches from Sobel. East Village, where its finish has, to say the apparent and also the essential, a pronounced new relevance.
Sobel was born in 1893 in a shtetl near present-day Dnipro and immigrated to Brooklyn after his father was killed in a pogrom. Several photographs here incorporate Ukrainian folk motifs, adding the vinok, or wreath, which he smeared on the forehead of 3 Eumenides. Many of his characters, wired through black outlines and augmented through bespectacled eyes, have an elegant anonymity reminiscent of Dubuffet: infantrymen in profile run toward the slats, and young men huddle under a rich brown curve (is it a trench?) Artillery has an empty and eternal geometry, although today, on the same territory of eastern Ukraine, an artillery war has returned.
Under the direction of its new director Peter Doroshenko, the Ukrainian Museum has the possibility of occupying an essential place to reflect this historical war. (Other recent appearances include painter Lesia Khomenko and photojournalist Maks Levin, killed last year by Russian soldiers. )War is as much about culture as it is about territory, and New York takes culture seriously. JASON FARAGO
Jillian Steinhauer is a critic and journalist who covers the politics of art and comics. She won an Andy Warhol Foundation Art Writers Fellowship in 2019 and was previously editor-in-chief of Hyperallergic. Learn more about Jillian Steinhauer
Will Heinrich writes about new developments in modern art and in the past has been a critic for The New Yorker and the New York Observer. Learn more about Will Heinrich
Seph Rodney is a curator and critic in Newburgh, New York. He is co-curating an exhibition on games that is expected to open at SF MoMA in 2024. Learn more about Seph Rodney
Holland Cotter is the Times’ lead art co-critic. He writes about a wide diversity of art, old and new, and has made extensive trips to Africa and China. It awarded him the Pulitzer Prize for Critics in 2009. Learn more about Holland Cotter
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