Natasha marie Llorens

• 

  picks May 11, 2023

  “White Drops”

  In “White Drops,” curator Regina Fiorito pairs work by Seth Price and Tobias Pils with that of the influential Polish textile artist Barbara Levittoux-Świderska (1933–2019) to evoke the possibility of finding solace from ambient disorientation in the enigmatic fragment.

  The exhibition is titled after Białe krople (White Drops, 1997), a monumental wall-mounted sculpture that Levittoux-Świderska made with slips of plastic foil resembling used, shredded grocery bags held together with a grid of transparent fishing wire. Like an old wedding dress extracted from the clothing racks of a secondhand

• 

  print April 2023

  Dana-Fiona Armour

  A pair of long, delicately colored tubes lay in parallel on top of a low plinth in the gallery’s entrance. One end of each elongated form bent itself off the edge of the traditional pedestal, like a creature curious about what was beyond the plinth, but did not connect to anything—not to the ground, not even to its companion. Pneumatophore #2 and #4 (all works 2022), resemble oversize water-snake toys—hollow forms made of latex or rubber and filled with liquid, designed as fidget devices to train motor control and concentration. But Dana-Fiona Armour’s sculptures are made of blown glass tinted

• 

  picks March 16, 2023

  Hichem Merouche

  It is hard to get a clear view of the sea from within Algiers, even though the capital is built in terraces that cascade down the steep slopes ringing its enormous bay. In Hichem Merouche’s first solo exhibition, “Friendly Islands,” the artist grapples with the isolation of the city—a paradox, given that its inhabitants are often caught in a perpetual state of departure.

  A trio of booming, melancholy notes fill rhizome gallery’s early-twentieth-century interior, resonating off the long French windows and the brightly colored cement-tile floor. Repérages (all works cited 2022), is an hour-long

• 

  picks February 01, 2023

  Tori Wrånes

  Gorgeously awkward, the troll-like characters in Tori Wrånes’s video installation BIG WATER, 2022, have round bodies and auburn fur that ripples underwater. Each creature is really a body suit, latex flippers, and taloned gloves worn by a human diver swimming either off the shore of Thailand or in the Arctic Sea. Sometimes filmed close up in pairs and sometimes in groups of four or five, the figures float in the deep current or cluster together on picturesque craggy outcroppings, softly rocking themselves or surreptitiously playing flute instruments. There is no conflict between these beings,

• 

  print January 2023

  Gluklya

  Two yurts, a dome, and a stage: These four elements make up “To those who have no time to play,” a solo presentation by Gluklya (Natalia Pershina-Yakimanskaya), an artist based in Saint Petersburg and Amsterdam. Between these structures, a collection of figures stand facing the stage on which her play Antigone Update (2022) was performed during the opening and will be repeated once again this month. Their bodies are shaped from discarded formal dresses and rough canvas workers’ clothes; an eclectic series of sewing machines appear in place of their heads. Antigone Update was produced collaboratively

• 

  picks November 15, 2022

  Pablo Castañeda

  Pablo Castañeda’s neorealist paintings balance between fidelity to the mundane aesthetics of the border town Mexicali, where he lives and works, and an absurdist irreverence toward semiotic icons. For example, a large air conditioning unit is perched on the sloping roof of a nondescript commercial building in the center of Simulacro 21: Locura en la ciudad (Simulacrum 21: Madness in the city), 2010. The unit’s metal casing has only one remarkable characteristic: It is blocking part of Cindy Sherman’s face, which is painted on a giant billboard in the central background. The image is borrowed

• 

  picks September 29, 2022

  Ayesha Hameed

  “Radio Brown Atlantis” is an exhibition built around a radio program organized by London-based artist Ayesha Hameed and recorded across several continents between 2020 and 2022. The installation places the viewer at the bottom of the Indian Ocean, among the scattered detritus of human passage along historical trade routes. A band of gold has been painted along one wall, across the ceiling, then down the wall opposite. It functions like an entryway to an unmappable space, a space shared by the communities that have traveled or been transported across this water.

  The singular, ungraspable quality

• 

  picks September 12, 2022

  Ayan Farah

  To create the dyes for her patchwork paintings, Ayan Farah brews raw materials for months and sometimes years. She harvests rainwater, sea salt, rust, forest ash, soil, and clay and grows indigo and marigold herself. The artist uses these elements to dye fibrous antique hemp and cotton sheets, hotel-room linens, and other textiles sourced during her travels. The exchange of textiles is part of the choreography of arrival for the Somali diaspora, into which Farah was born; their surfaces bear significance in a tactile, portable manner.

  The selection of paintings on view within the exhibition “