Museums, Galleries, Installations, Public Art, Television Programs To See And Enjoy This Season
by Lacy Davisson Doyle and Ann Fensterstock
We strongly recommend:
NYC Museum Exhibitions
“Looking In: Robert Frank’s The Americans” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Robert Frank’s influential and controversial suite of black-and-white street photographs taken in 1955-56.
“Slash: Paper Under the Knife” at the Museum of Art and Design at Columbus Circle. International survey of paper as a creative medium and source of artistic inspiration.
“Roni Horn aka Roni Horn” at the Whitney Museum. Multi-media works by this contemporary artist (b. 1955) which often explore issues of gender, identity, androgyny, and the complex relationship between object and subject.
NYC Galleries Short List
Teresita Fernandez at Lehman Maupin Gallery
Made entirely of graphite, the works in the exhibition establish a unique and unconventional vocabulary with the material itself. Fernández pushes the boundaries of this once sought-after and coveted material. Reimagining the graphite landscape of Borrowdale, England (where graphite was first discovered), her works reflect elements of sculpture and installation and redefine the notion of precisely what constitutes a drawing.
Richard Serra at Gagosian Gallery, at the 522 West 21 Street space.
This exhibition presents two important sculptures by Richard Serra. Related in both form and scale, Blind Spot (2002-2003) and Open Ended (2007-2008) entail similar concentric structures, each consisting of six weatherproof steel plates. Walking around and inside these massive, weighty sculptures, you will have the experience of scale, presence, and even claustrophobia that is the hallmark of excellent Serra installations.
Clifford Ross at Sonnabend Gallery
Featuring 18 large-scale black and white images (Hurricanes XLIX-LXXII) photographed off Georgica Beach in East Hampton during last year’s hurricane season. Ross has said of his new Hurricane series: “I re-entered the sea with my painter’s eye and a digital photographic system as my brush. The subject is the same, but my new approach has enabled me to capture more dramatic moments, and sweeping views, while revealing more intimate details – a curious dichotomy.”
Hope Gangloff at Susan Inglett Gallery.
This wonderful painter is a collector of moments, moods, objects, and patterns. The show includes primarily portraits of her friends, Gangloff’s work glamorizes the mundane with a signature style. She describes her role among friends as observer, documenting daily activities, exchanges, and reflections. Objects and patterns that she finds visually compelling also figure into her compositions, rendered with the precision of a master draftsperson. Through this body of work, Gangloff offers a tantalizing glimpse into the lives of others—her fragmented narratives leave the viewer longing to know more.
Yvonne Jacquette: The Complete Woodcuts at Mary Ryan Gallery.
Jacquette is best known for her use of aerial perspective, which she has employed in her work since the 1970s. Working from airplanes or from the highest floors in skyscrapers—for years she had studio space in the World Trade Center–she draws and photographs the scene below, generally in preparation for larger paintings or prints. Her woodcuts, based on the underpaintings for her canvases, are monochromatic nightscapes that render familiar cities mysterious. Her nocturnes are reduced, yet all-encompassing, simultaneously intimate and remote.
Staying at Home
PBS Home Video now has all four seasons of its excellent “Art:21 – Art in the Twenty First Century” on DVD. Fascinating interviews and studio visits to contemporary artists such as Kiki Smith, Josiah McElheny, Matthew Ritchie, Ursula von Rydingsvard and many others whose work we have shown you in New York galleries.
Outside NYC
Boston: The recently opened Institute of Contemporary Art, requires a cab ride to get there but is well worth the effort. A stunning piece of architecture by Diller, Scofidio + Renfrew, the team responsible for Lincoln Center’s renovation, the dramatically cantilevered building leans out to enormous dramatic effect over the Charles River. Through year end the Mexican born Damian Ortega’s “Do It Yourself” will fill the top floor of this compact museum. A deconstructed VW Beetle hovers in mid-air, a mind-bending assemblage of manipulated Coca Cola bottles parades the length of a wall and the ‘domino effect’ video works in the side gallery are a joy to watch.
Also well worth a look, “ICA Collection: In The Making” is just that. A rotating exhibition of the museums ongoing acquisitions, this fourth installation since it’s 2006 opening includes cutting edge photography, painting and sculpture. For those who saw “Marlene Dumas: Measuring My Own Grave” at MoMA last year, you will find the first gallery of this show has much to offer.
Washington: The Corcoran Gallery, also a compact and manageable venue, has given its top floor over to the veteran Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky, an artist many of you will have seen with Artview at Charles Cowles Gallery in Chelsea. Up through December 13th, this gorgeously eerie exhibition brings together 55 of Burtynsky’s radiantly colored “Oil” studies. Tracing the history of man’s use and abuse of oil and its bi-products (cars, freeways, helicopter junk yards and ravaged landscape) the work is at once breathtakingly ravishing but soberingly dark.
Also on view through January 3rd is “Sargent and The Sea”, a skillfully curated exhibition of some 80 paintings, watercolors and drawings depicting seascapes and coastal scenes. Known more commonly for his virtuoso society portraiture, this show is built around two Corcoran masterworks executed with precocious brilliance by Sargent between the ages of 18 and 23. The accompanying works in the exhibition support, contextualize and expand upon the two central beauties.
Chicago: The new Renzo Piano addition to the Art Institute of Chicago is a work of soaring elegance and sublime interior space. Romanesque in its height and nave-like length, the facade adds yet another architectural marvel to the Windy City’s thrilling Millennium Park. Inside, I spent a thoroughly pleasurable hour walking through the 1960 to Present galleries and saw some old friends refreshingly installed as well as a handful of work entirely new to me.
In the Park, don’t miss Anish Kapoor’s “Cloud Gate” (aka ‘The Bean’ – as it has been affectionately dubbed by locals), Jaume Plensa’s towers of video-playing glass and Frank Gehry’s confection of a band shell. To my eye, the Zaha Hadid pavilion and the Ben van Berkel structure tended to push even this larger than life urban space over the edge, leaving it feeling cluttered. I was happy to learn that they are temporary installations.
– Ann Fensterstock and Lacy Davisson Doyle