I was out and about the galleries last week, starting out at the northern end of Chelsea. Northern it may be, but there was nothing cold or bleak about what I saw. Lots of exuberance and artistic energy. I found the following shows to be particularly exhilarating:
SchroederRomero Gallery at 637 W. 27th have put up “Play It Forward” – a kind of Coming Attractions group exhibition that gives a taste of the artists they will be giving a fuller showing to later in the season.
Across the hall Ed Winkleman has a boisterous installation of Andy Yoder’s latest sculptural work. A flower-encrusted garage door, gorgeous lead crystal cast hub cabs and a red coyote fur life preserver play with notions of gender, domestication and conformity. Good looking and brainy.
On the other side of The Tunnel, Black and White Gallery has more high jinx. Danish artist Jonas Pihl has splattered the entire gallery with trippy pieces that go in and out of two and three dimensions. Don’t expect to see messy. This artist works with skill and control. Virtuoso stuff.
Down the block at ATM 28 year-old Virginia Martinsen pours rather than splatters. Working in a narrower color palette than Pihl she nevertheless produces complex imagery suggesting both the aquatic and the cell based but also the celestial and cosmic.
At Priska Juschka across Eleventh Avenue at 547 W. 27th, the whole gallery is taken over by Jade Townsend’s beached pig of a battleship. Don’t ask. Just go and get inside it.
Just across the street, and in one of my favorite Chelsea spaces, Nancy Hoffman has up an astonishing show of paintings by Chinese artist Hung Liu. These bold, brushy works are a stunning creative response to human fortitude and survival in the face of devastating natural disaster. A skillfully hung show and the press release reads like a catalogue essay.
Check out Compound Editions a joint venture between Schroeder Romero and Winkleman Gallery or Mixed-Media at Black and White. Limited edition works by serious artists at not so serious prices ranging from the low hundreds.