The mood is for reflection and soul-searching in New York in January, as artists consider the mirrors and windows, the people we’ve lost, and the punitive and patriarchal systems – political, prison and capitalist – that have been built to fail us. . Yet hope is also present in the myriad possibilities and the limitless love that our bodies, our communities and our planet have. Take advantage of it, hide yourself and be careful.
When: until January 22
Or: Kerry Schuss Gallery (73 Leonard Street, Tribeca, Manhattan)
Organized in collaboration with Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects, this exhibition highlights five decades of reflective art by feminist artist and anti-nuclear activist Helene Aylon, who died last year at the age of 89. gauze-draped mirrors that mourn those lost in the Holocaust, and “Elusive Silver” (1969-73), the first paintings made from industrial materials like plexiglass and aluminum that change with conditions lighting and the viewer’s point of view.
When: until January 29
Or: online & Matthew Marks Gallery (522 West 22nd Street, Chelsea, Manhattan)
Completed by a virtual visualization option, Robert Gober: “Shut up.” “No. You keep quiet.” presents a selection of recent drawings and sculptures that engage with patterns of windows and openings, inhabiting the tension between interior and exterior. There is a poetry of reserve and intention in these works, which range from a formal jacket encrusted with a square section of small waterfall, to a nest containing three bluebird eggs peeking through a weathered window frame.
When: January 6 – February 12
Or: Petzel Gallery (35 East 67th Street, 2nd Floor, Upper East Side, Manhattan)
Working in the historically populist medium of woodcut, collaborating artists Zorawar Sidhu and Rob Swainston refer to images that are etched in our collective memory from 2020 and 2021, of Washington DC Park Police gassing peaceful protesters, to a fly temporarily settling on former Vice President Mike Pence’s head. Printed on aged plywood sourced from Manhattan storefronts, the images are stacked, layered and mounted to evoke the visual and emotional overload of Doomscrolling.
When: January 7 – February 19
Or: kaufmann repetto (55 Walker Street, Tribeca, Manhattan)
New York artist Shannon Ebner deepens her exploration of photographic text fields in FREIGHT SCALES, composing a “poem” from 17 screen compositions featuring photographs of an alphabet in peeled paper which has been weakly glued inside a building using water. Ebner describes the conceptual poetry, which is titled “freight” after climate reports of water evaporation rates, as a “weather event” that opposes socially coded images and signs.
When: January 8 to February 5
Or: Tanya Bonakdar Gallery (521 West 21st Street, Chelsea, Manhattan)
Sherrill Roland’s experience with the American prison system – he spent ten months in prison before being cleared of wrongful imprisonment – finds form in Retrospective bias, the artist’s first exhibition with the gallery. Characterized by a minimalist architectural appearance that belies their more personal content, the works on display incorporate materials that have significance to Roland in prison, including Kool-Aid, personal letters, and a basketball.
When: January 8 – February 13
Or: Tiger Strikes Asteroid (1329 Willoughby Avenue # 2A, Bushwick, Brooklyn)
Interdisciplinary Iranian-American artist Sholeh Asgary, winner of the TSA New York 2021 Open Call, presents videos, prints and installations with the intimate and fluid connection of sound, water and the body. In an interactive sound piece titled “Qanat” after an ancient Iranian underground aqueduct, gallery visitors can experiment by moving their bodies to modify the amplified sounds emanating from a traditional radially symmetrical carpet symbolizing a fountain.
When: January 19 – March 5
Or: Rachel Uffner Gallery (170 Suffolk Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan) and Fridman Gallery (169 Bowery, Lower East Side, Manhattan)
In this two-room solo exhibition, Hana Yilma Godine combines traditional fabric collages and layers of paint in flat, bold works inspired by her metropolitan hometown of Addis Ababa. Godine imbues everyday scenes with a vital spark: women gathering in hairdressing salons and sparsely populated domestic interiors are teeming with colors, patterns and plants. The artist also becomes fantastic; in one work, a bee seems to land on a woman’s protruding tongue, the pattern of which resembles the Ethiopian flag.
When: January 20 – February 26
Or: David Zwirner (525 & 533 West 19th Street, Chelsea, Manhattan)
Organized by writer and critic Hilton Als, who wrote Toni Morrison’s novel New Yorker Obituary in 2019, this group exhibition forms a comprehensive portrait of the late novelist and literary icon, who is famous for her depictions of black life. The archival documents relating to Morrison are interspersed with work – some of which is directly inspired by his texts – by a formidable group of artists including Garrett Bradley, Julie Mehretu, Kerry James Marshall and James Van Der Zee.
When: January 27 – May 8
Or: BRIC (647 Fulton Street, Fort Greene, Brooklyn)
Los Angeles-based multimedia artist Suné Woods’ five-channel video installation ‘Aragonite Stars’ (2021) immerses viewers in aquatic landscapes populated by humans swimming in a non-anthropocentric way, making connections between marine ecology, black feminist thought, and the spiritual and healing aspects of water. Properties. Develop an earlier version of the work that debuted at the 2018 Hammer Museum exhibition Made in LA, this iteration presents a new sound installation by Meshell Ndegeocello.
When: January 28 to June 25
Or: Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art (26 Wooster Street, Soho, Manhattan)
11 contemporary queer artists, including Math Bass, AK Burns, Troy Michie and Jibz Cameron (aka Dynasty Handbag), present an array of paintings, drawings, sculptures, assemblages and time media shaped by an exploration of bodily fragmentation. With its title taken from a 1980 text on horror and abjection by the Bulgarian-French critical theorist Julia Kristeva, Not me, not that, not nothing either considers the transformative potential of disruption and fragmentation, and the endlessness of queer bodies.
A new digital atlas, imagineRio, reveals how the city’s urban evolution unfolded from its 16th century roots to the present day.
There is something shocking about Lightscape’s use of two main culprits behind current ecological disruption: lavish energy use and literal fire.
The mural was on display until 1988, when the women’s correctional facility became a male detention center and the painting was whitewashed.
The first book of Winnie the Pooh and the first collection of poems by Langston Hughes are also available.
The Corcoran School of Arts and Design is seeking applications for full-time professors in art history, design, interior architecture and theater, as well as exhibition staff.
