While newly opened galleries in Chelsea, on the Lower East Side or over in Williamsburg and Dumbo are always a thrill to visit, a trip to 57th Street or to some of the blue chip names on Madison Avenue right now offers a powerful reminder of the pleasures of looking at seasoned work. Four stops I made last week between appointments in Midtown were well worth the time and I recommend them all in various ways.
Gerhard Richter at Marian Goodman Gallery at 24 East 57th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. A huge new body of work filling all three galleries at Marian Goodman’s always impressive space. Hauntingly beautiful abstract works in the first gallery show Richter at his most powerful in terms of pulsating gesture but mature control and structure. Some smaller works in the second gallery on a surface called aludibond confirm his mastery regardless of scale. I struggled rather more with the new Sinbad cycle executed in laquer behind glass but it is nevertheless gratifying to to see an established master continue to take new roads. Up through January 9, 2010.
Similarly with David Hockney’s new body of landscapes at PaceWildenstein Gallery, www.pacewildenstein.com, at 32 East 57th Street. Returning from his adopted Los Angeles home to his origins in the Yorkshire countryside of Northern England, Hockney has big, bright, brushy compositions both in Midtown and at Pace’s Chelsea gallery. Both Van Gogh and Charles Burchfield came to mind in looking at so much vibrating line and pulsing color but mostly its pure Hockney. The deeply penetrating country lane studies and the orthoganal sweeps of hill and hedgerow were more satisfying to my mind and eye than the tighter studies of felled trees but his palette here was thrillingly bold.
Heading up Madison Avenue, Gagosian Gallery, www.gagosian.com, between 76th and 77th is showing both Richard Prince and Cy Twombly. In the gallery to the right, however, Roger Ballen’s most recent body of work is what intrigued me most. Eerie images that haunt long after you leave them, lingering a while here is well worth your time.
Moving back through the Ballen show into the Joni Weyl at Gemini GEL space at rear, www.geminigel.com, an excellent body of small, pristinely rendered prints by the sculptor Joel Shapiro showed that neither size nor volume are required where simple mastery exists. Capturing all of the animation and dynamics of Shapiro’s three dimensional oeuvre, these nine screen prints, four with collage, present abstracted notions of “Boat, Bird, Mother and Child”. Introduced at the IFPDA Print Fair at the Armory earlier this month, these new works are priced in the low thousands and are another fine example of the quality work of this long established blue chip publisher. Some new works by Richard Tuttle are also available at Gemini and ask them about Hockney while you are there.