Summer may not officially be over, but the season’s art lull sure is – so lace up your Adidas Originals and prepare for a much needed dose of culture. Rather than overload you with happenings all over the city, we’ll break you in slowly with openings by neighborhood. First off, the heavy-hitting galleries of Chelsea featuring some of today’s most influential contemporary artists.
David Zwirner has multiple openings at their 20th street location, first with Gordon Matta-Clark’s “Energy & Abstraction” collection on Wednesday the 9th and then Dan Flavin’s much built up show, “Corners, Barrier, and Corridors” on Thursday the 10th.
Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe (22nd St and 10th Ave) is hosting a must-see dual opening of works by Michael Reafsnyder (think Pollack meets Chloe Norgaard’s hair) and Todd Hebert (think punny but well done landscape paintings).
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery (21st St & 10th Ave) will open the fall season with American artist Sarah Sze. Her large constellations of everyday materials make for a fascinating exploration into a world that resembles a scientist’s lab (if they were suffering from serious OCD and hoarding issues).
Petzel Gallery (18th St & 10th Ave) will open the much talked about show by Dana Schutz, Fight in an Elevator. The vast paintings capture their subjects in various states of conflict while the show’s title was inspired by recent elevator fights publicized in the media (Solange Knowles, cough cough).
2015, Dana Schutz
Jack Shainman Gallery will feature a two part show by artist Enrique Martínez Celaya, Empires: Sea at the 20th St location and Empires: Land at the 24th St location. The works at both locations explore our inherent restlessness through love, dreams, nostalgia, and despair, along with the confrontation of being and time (aka very pretty paintings).
EMPIRES – LAND
Pace Gallery (25th St & 10th Ave) will host a Friday opening for all new paintings by famed artist, Chuck Close. His 16th show at the gallery will feature his minimal grid-style paintings (though the colors in these works are much more divorced from reality than previously).
Hauser & Wirth (18th St & 10th Ave) teamed up with the Mike Kelley Foundation to release their first ever exhibition on respected artist, Mike Kelley. The works focusing on his Superman-inspired series of superbly lit sculptures, “Kandors”.
Paul Kasmin (27th and 10th) is showing the Frank Stella collection, “Shape as Form” at the 10th Avenue location, which will undoubtedly get everyone hyped for the Whitney’s retrospective on the commended American artist at the end of October.
Kasmin’s West 27th location will be displaying two new sculptural installations by Will Ryman, “The Situation Room” and “Classroom” – both commentaries on political and historical complexities from around the world.
Gagosian Gallery’s West 24th location will be featuring a replica of Roy Lichtenstein’s original 1983-84 Greene Street Mural. (You’re probably thinking – why would I want walk an extra couple blocks just to see a copy of Lichtenstein’s work?) Well, the story dates back to Lichtenstein’s desire to create something that nobody had ever done before, which prompted him to create a site-specific mural at the Castelli Gallery (then located at 142 Greene Street) that was intentionally destroyed at the end of the exhibition. In accordance with the original 1983 show, the Gagosian replica will be demolished at the end of the show in October.
Also opening this week: Barnaby Furnas at Marianne Boesky Gallery (24th St), Mark Grotjahn at Anton Kerns Gallery (20th St), Anne Truitt & Ron Nagle at Matthew Marks Gallery (22nd & 24th St), and Robert Overby at Andrew Kreps Gallery (22nd St).
Not into the elite atmosphere of blue chip galleries? Stay tuned for tomorrow’s highlights of downtown galleries and their emerging artists.
