What better way to escape the heat wave hitting New York this month than with an air-conditioned, soul-nourishing art exhibit? Our picks this month are about love and beauty, past and future, form and matter. They include Pepón Osorio’s theatrical installations at the New Museum, Gego’s kinetic sculptures at the Guggenheim Museum, Susan Chen’s ode to Purell hand sanitizer at the Rachel Uffner Gallery, and much more. Enjoy and don’t forget to hydrate.
One way Love
For this glorious summer exhibition, curators Vera Iliatova and Sarah Peters have brought together artists who struggle with the notion of love in their own work, in particular their “desire to capture something in their work that remains forever beyond their grasp. ”, according to the curatorial introduction. The results are mostly small objects that reflect this devotion.
Ann Agee’s beautiful little ‘Raised Curtain Madonna’ (2020) is one of those objects that ‘works’, if you know what I mean, and I found myself reviewing and re-examining its composition and unexpected magnetism . While Shari Mendelson and Ohad Meromi both create sculptures that seem to self-reflect on the act of their own making in particular ways, it’s all very invigorating. I don’t know if the concept fits together perfectly (I love it regardless), but it’s a great opportunity to see a collection of good works in dialogue with each other. Other notable works include works by Craig Kucia, Rema Ghuloum, Dennis Kardon, John Newman and Julia Kunin. It’s a show with a strong love of materials. —Hrag Vartanian
Nathalie Karg Gallery (nathalieekarg.com)
291 Grand Street, 4th Floor, Lower East Side, Manhattan
Until July 20
Denzil Hurley: To have pain is to have lived feeling
If I told you these days that an exhibition of largely monochrome canvases is really worthwhile, some of you might roll your eyes. But the works of the late artist Denzil Hurley would give Clement Greenberg – the critic who notoriously argued that minimalism was whimsical and unbiased – a run for his money. Hurley, who died in 2021, infused emotion into his oil-on-linen paintings by arranging them in strips, resting them on worn wooden elements or subtly marking their surfaces; the result is a calm yet powerful visual vocabulary of humanity and sentiment. —Valentina Di Liscia
Canadian Gallery (canadanewyork.com)
60 Lispenard Street, Tribeca, Manhattan
Until July 22
Julia Standovar: I’m Kinky Concrete
Concrete, we can all agree, is an unlikely medium for sexual exploration. And yet, Brooklyn-based Hungarian artist Júlia Standovár embraced the particular characteristics of the material – hardness, density, fragility – to plumb the depths of sensuality. Inspired in part by conversations with her mother, Zsuzsanna Bede, a sex therapist, the artist combines concrete with found objects, photographs and contrasting elements such as delicate crystals in sculptures that are at once absurd, strange and deep, just like human relationships. —DV
Radiator gallery (radiatorarts.com)
10-61 Jackson Avenue, Long Island City, Queens
Until July 22
Stereo images and sounds
A solid concept is at the heart of this show which presents works that consider sound as a material. It’s the kind of show you can lose yourself in as you explore its various threads.
Gil Scott-Heron’s selection of Reneé Stout is perfect, while Ben Godward’s choice of an Elvis Presley song was unexpected but charming, particularly paired with his gloriously colorful new work that plays more than ever with transparency and the form. It’s a wide selection and will help you see the work of JJ Pinckney, Hermann Nitsch, Michael Brown, Marie Watt and others in new ways. While music and sound can often be invisible partners in artistic creation, their role is highlighted here and I hope this concept will develop into a bigger and bigger show. —excl. tax
Mark Straus (marcstraus.com)
299 Grand Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan
Until July 30
Rachel Rossin: SCAN
There is a hypnotic quality to the small circular display screens placed throughout Rachel Rossin’s latest exhibition. Covered with thick cast glass lenses and mounted on metal clamps, they evoke underwater portholes peering into an unknown abyss – a metamorphosed matrix of animated forms, biomorphic characters and infrared images born from Rossin’s experiments with interfaces. brain-computer. The objects refer to the practice of scrying, a method of divination dating back to ancient Babylonia that involves the perception of signs and symbols on reflective surfaces and other mediums. Installed in the center of the ceiling, Rossin’s lenticular LED screen work “The Maw Of” (2022) immerses the near-abstract paintings on display in a warm, eerie light. The show is a meditation on the future of technology. —DV
Magenta Plains (magentaplains.com)
149 Canal Street, Chinatown, Manhattan
Until August 11
Suzanne Chen: Purell Night and Day
In the spirit of Susan Chen’s playful hand sanitizer paintings, allow me to introduce her show with a limerick poem:
Just when you thought, no more pandemic
And your very last Purell a relic
This illusion is tainted
By the bottles painted by Chen
Cause of all our ills, apathy is the most pathogenic.
—Hakim Bishara
Gallery Rachel Uffner (racheluffnergallery.com)
170 Suffolk Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan
July 18–August 13
Greater Beauty: The Drawings of Kahlil Gibran
On the occasion of the centenary of Kahlil Gibran The Prophet, this exhibition aims to introduce the public to the much lesser known artistic practice of the Lebanese-American poet and essayist, in particular his drawings. Inevitably, this will lead you to thoughts about beauty. As you walk through the show, let these wise words of The Prophet guide your way:
People of Orphalese, beauty is life when
life unveils its holy face.
But you are the life and you are the veil.
Beauty is eternity looking at itself in a mirror.
But you are eternity and you are the mirror.
—HB
The drawing center (drawingcenter.org)
35 Wooster Street, Soho, Manhattan
Until September 3
Gego: measuring infinity
Born in Hamburg as Gertrud Goldschmidt and trained as an architect, the artist better known as Gego escaped Nazi persecution in her late twenties to settle permanently in Venezuela at a time when geometric abstraction was gaining importance. Although embracing the principles of kinetic art and op art, such as concern for mobility and dynamism, Gego’s works were notable for their lightness, ethereal character, and use of humble materials, exemplified by its aerial and suspended steel and wire constructions known as dibujos sin papel — literally “drawings without paper”. This major retrospective contextualizes Gego’s practice as radical in both form and concept, representing a break from the state-sanctioned art forms prevalent in Latin America at the time. —DV
Guggenheim Museum (www.guggenheim.org)
1071 Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan
Until September 10
Pepón Osorio: My beating heart/Mi corazon latente
“Badge of Honor” (1995), one of many works by Puerto Rican artist Pepón Osorio included in this well-deserved survey, is the kind of art that stays with you forever. Osorio, known for his theatrically staged environments that recreate public and private spaces to tell lesser-known stories, filmed dialogue between an incarcerated father and his son as they cycle back and forth between a New Jersey jail and home. of the child. The images are projected onto the walls of two adjoining spaces: one is the child’s bedroom, covered in baseball cards, posters and other memorabilia of teenage joy; the other is a completely empty prison cell. Like so many of Osorio’s installations, this one proves that socially engaged art can help us feel the impact of oppressive systems, such as mass incarceration, in ways that other works cannot. not. —DV
New Museum (newmuseum.org)
235 Bowery, Lower East Side, Manhattan
Until September 17
Erika Verzutti: New Moons
Erika Verzutti’s first investigative exhibition in the United States includes over 60 sculptures that demonstrate the Brazilian artist’s technical skill and boundless imagination. Recurring patterns and textures, like the distinctive fingerprint shapes that dot what are perhaps his most recognizable wall reliefs, are visited and revisited across a wide range of materials – from wax and ceramic to paper mache and oil pigments. Verzutti isn’t afraid to go high and low, covering some surfaces with bronze and encrusting others with eggshells. Invoking art historical references from the Venus of Willendorf to the paintings of Tarsila do Amaral, she creates an entirely personal visual language, down to the visible trace of her hands and fingers immortalized in clay. —DV
Hessel Art Museum (ccs.bard.edu)
33 Garden Road, Annandale-On-Hudson
Until October 15
More recommendations from our New York Art Guide Summer 2023:
