picks November 05, 2019

Sadaf H Nava

In Sadaf H Nava’s exhibition, a suite of seven modestly sized improvisational drawings hang on opposite walls of this narrow gallery—studies in porosity that scamper into the unconscious. In them, mostly women and femmes—who don ball gowns or fetishy ensembles in latex—caper between strange urban vignettes. They cram into Jacuzzi-like cylinders in Animalic (all works 2019) as two rearing mustangs arch above them, while in Puddles of Blue, composed with a hue of colored pencil that evokes lapis lazuli, water flows off of rocks and vintage umbrellas. Different kinds of fluid appear in a number of

picks October 21, 2019

Julie Tolentino

Julie Tolentino’s “REPEATER” proposes that an exhibition is a durational experience, and attests to the poetry of staying with it. The gallery’s sole window is papered up with foil, but pinpricks allow a starscape of buttery sunlight to filter in. Sculptural items (all from 2019) are grouped, in shifting constellations, around a central rectangle of scuffed, pearl-hued flooring. During my visit, a black trestle teetered, like a pommel horse, on two legs. Another, feathered with latex gloves, brooded nearby. A wiry cube, full of unactivated space, sat tilted on a mirror-bearing box on wheels. A

diary September 19, 2019

Wings of Desire

“THE LIGHT FROM THIS SCULPTURE IS PERFECT FOR SELFIES,” crooned Nicolas Endlicher, a DJ and cofounder of Herrensauna, a monthly queer techno party (its name translates to “male sauna”) at Tresor. It was the opening night of Berlin Art Week. We were at Julia Stoschek Collection, where WangShui debuted video installations intended to activate the “hallucinatory spaces” of transitional architectures. Around the corner at FRAGILE, I swapped notes with artist Dr. Lakra and dealer Ida Yang about the corporeal afterimage of techno—that midweek sensation of muscles still pulsing to the weekend’s BPM—as

picks July 02, 2019

Violet Dennison

The centerpieces of Violet Dennison’s solo exhibition here are three large semispherical baskets, which rest on the gray-painted floor like upturned umbrellas. Bound in webs of monochromatic plastic, they present unexpected twists: Each node is an excerpt from “Disappointment,” chapter four of the young artist’s memoir. In the spirit of the exhibition’s delicate, existential humor, I can’t tell you who is disappointed, as the text is encrypted using knot cyphers that, while simple, are too quirky for a neophyte like me to decode.

Installed along two walls is Divination 2, 2019, a sound piece

picks March 21, 2019

Hon Chi-fun

Hon Chi-fun (1922–2019), a self-taught artist, began making plein air landscapes in oil while working for the Hong Kong post office in the 1950s. In 1964, he cofounded the avant-garde Circle Art Group, which, through the abstraction of traditional Chinese aesthetics, innovated a cosmopolitan modernism. One of the earliest works in “A Story of Light,” a selective, four-decade survey, is the Pop art–inspired Bath of Fire, 1968. For this silk-screened acrylic work, Hon imprinted a delicate frieze of maps, photographs, personal letters, and poems—all indistinct, like oxidation or mold—into a triptych

Harry Burke