On a winter day, it is lovely to visit galleries in a compact location such as 57th Street where many excellent exhibitions can be seen in and around the Fuller Building on 57th Street and Madison.
This winter season there are many terrific exhibitions to see and here are Artview NYC’s highlights with a focus on photography.
57th Street Galleries:
“Karine Laval”, bonnibenrubi.com, 41 East 57th Street, 13th floor
This is the third exhibition at this gallery for Laval, a French artist (b. 1971) educated at the Sorbonne, Cooper Union and the New School. Her large- scale color saturated photographs depict swimming pools with dream-like reflections, which vascillate between the real and the surreal.
“I see the pool more as a metaphor, a mirror whose surface reflects the surrounding world but is also a gate into another – dreamlike – world, a sort of mise en abyme.” says Laval.
“Process”, houkgallery.com, 745 Fifth Avenue, 4th floor
In light of the extraordinary wealth of technology available to contemporary artists, this exhibition addresses the recent shift in the public’s perception of what constitutes a photograph and explores the techniques utilized by some of today’s leading photographers.
Artists include: Sebastiaan Bremer, Christopher Bucklow, Lynn Davis, Susan Derges, Lalla Essaydi, Adam Fuss, Richard Learoyd, Vera Lutter, Sally Mann, Joel Meyerowitz, Abelardo Morrell, Vik Muniz, Robert Polidori, Thomas Ruff and Victor Schrager.
For each object chosen for this exhibition, the technique will be explained and discussed in detail, so that the viewer will be able to learn about some of the various processes, and then be able to start asking the larger questions of why the artist chose this process and what the technique signifies in the broader scope of the artist’s career and the greater history of the medium.
“Tibor de Nagy Gallery Painters & Poets”, tibordenagy.com, 724 Fifth Avenue, 12th floor
This exhibition marks the gallery’s 60th anniversary celebrating the gallery’s pivotal role in launching the New York School of Poets and fostering a new collaborative ethos among poets and painters in post-War New York. The exhibit focuses on the gallery’s first two decades, the 1950s and ‘60s, when its vibrant, salon-like atmosphere and director John Bernard Myers’ passion for both art and poetry gave birth to these unique partnerships.
The show features paintings by Helen Frankenthaler, Alfred Leslie, Trevor Winkfield, Nell Blaine, Joe Brainard, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, Jane Freilicher and Fairfield Porter; poetry collections published by the gallery’s imprint, Tibor de Nagy Editions, and featuring work by Frank O’Hara, Kenneth Koch, James Schuyler, John Ashbery, Barbara Guest and others, with illustrations by Tibor de Nagy artists; photographs and films by Rudy Burckhardt; letters, announcement cards and other ephemera; and archival photographs of leading cultural figures of the day by John Gruen and Fred McDarrah.
“Sharon Ellis”, Greenberg van Doren, gvdgallery.com, 730 Fifth Avenue, 7th floor
This is the second solo exhibition at the gallery by Los Angeles-based artist, Sharon Ellis. Ellis’ evocative approach to landscape painting showcases a vibrant energy pulsing through the natural world. By pictorially manipulating natural environs, Ellis’ paintings touch upon the sublimity of the wild with rich hues, dramatic light sources and marked proportions.
“Allen Ginsberg”, howardgreenberg.com, 41 East 57th Street, 14th floor
An exhibition of vintage photo booth strips, “drugstore” prints, and uniquely captioned prints by renowned poet Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997). This group of photographs made between the late 40s and early 80s, traces his life from New York to San Francisco to Tangier and elsewhere. His pictures are candid photographs of legendry “Beat” writers and poets – including William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady, Gregory Corso, and Jack Kerouac as well as the counterculture generation. The early photographs were taken as his friends were on the cusp of achieving great fame and notoriety and reveal an “intimate communication” between Ginsberg and his subjects.
CURRENT/UPCOMING MUSEUM EXHIBITIONS:
“Modern Life: Edward Hopper and his Time” at the Whitney Museum
“Abstract Expressionist New York” and..
“Picasso: Guitars 1912-1914” at the Museum of Modern Art
“Steiglitz, Steichen, Strand” at the Metropolitan Museum
