picks October 07, 2016

Colleen Asper

The gaze that’s key to Colleen Asper’s latest works in “Nobody/Monobody” is utterly contained within the self. Asper’s show is a heady concoction that depicts the female body in a wide range of commonplace, yet complicated, yoga poses. The artist’s scrupulously rendered oil paintings, many of which are photorealistic, are built upon rigorously geometric compositional structures and make subtle references to modernism. In {forward fold, legs wide; triple triangle}, 2014, a woman doing a headstand while bent at the waist, her legs in an upside-down V formation, mirrors the black and white triangles

picks July 29, 2016

A. R. Penck

The painting at the entrance of the gallery, Elektrischer Stuhl (Electric Chair), 1960, sets the tone for this offering of A. R. Penck’s early work. A baby-faced man sits strapped in an electric chair while an anonymous crowd looks on. In the front row, a woman covers her face with her hands in agony. Hands and heads form visceral motifs in this exhibition, where the artist’s trademark stick figures and symbols are already present as sophisticated visual agents tracing a history of violence.

In Untitled (Group), 1961, a small being is flanked by two towering men. The man on the right, with a

picks June 17, 2016

Anna Sew Hoy

The twelve artworks in Anna Sew Hoy’s show mostly stand apart from one another. But, via supports and sightlines, they are all inextricably intertwined. Cords are embedded in resin arms, while ovoid sculptures form frames around neighboring works. Oozy blue-jean tentacles creep into your peripheral vision. There’s really no place in the gallery to hide from Sew Hoy’s creations. The voyeuristic mirror-eyes of Invisible Tattoo, 2016—also the exhibition’s title—reflect all the dimensions of the surrounding pieces. The artist uses the mirrors as mute figures of surveillance, and each one is hugged

picks May 20, 2016

Richard Tuttle

“26,” the title of Richard Tuttle’s solo exhibition here (which refers to the number of previous one-man shows the artist has had in New York since 1965) gives us a deep view into a fully substantiated system with a coherent internal logic—fifty years of artistic hits that have subtly bent and shaped art history. These works, though profound in effect, are humble in facture. For instance, in Red Dots, Deep Maroon over Green, 1986, the hot glue doesn’t hide its job as binding. The work’s materials, such as stickers, masking tape, and Styrofoam, don’t fuss with pretenses—they are what they are.

picks April 08, 2016

Nicola Tyson

While the subjects in Nicola Tyson’s exhibition closely resemble women, winged creatures, and flowers, her most consistent visual (or for lack of a better term, thing) is a weird dancing figure that feels somehow familiar. Tyson’s drawings elide pat definitions, and the forms we encounter are polymorphously perverse—daffodils become faces and then turn into freaks, feathers, and sex organs, pictures from and made specifically for the subconscious. A rounded jigsaw puzzle–shaped nub serves as both head and arm for a lean, confidently drawn female humanoid in Standing Figure #7, 2016. The artist’s

picks March 04, 2016

Sue Tompkins

“When Wayne Went Away,” Sue Tompkins’s first solo gallery show in the United States, requires close viewing. Her small, textured canvases of rich, dried-out paint don’t read from a distance or online. Neither do her typewritten fluorescent paper pieces “New Trances,” 2016, where pressed letters and carriage returns output textual shapes on a field (e.g., an orange page where the phrase “FEEL SO ALIVE” levitates over a tidy square of backslashes). With these forms, Tompkins shows a sincere urge to vocalize. They instantiate a moment when thought looks for language as a means of expression, or as

picks February 12, 2016

Zoe Beloff

“I want to feel free and do things as I please . . . normal human things . . . as normal human beings want to,” says a paranoid young woman in Zoe Beloff’s film The Infernal Dream of Mutt and Jeff, 2011. Fulfilling this desire is a part of the utopian ideal, and the efficient use of time and technology can be a means to that end. Beloff presents this argument as an archaeological display of workaday paraphernalia staged on an industrial movie set. Her film, however, is the exhibit’s centerpiece, a study of solutions broken up over three channels (the other two show archival industrial films)

picks January 29, 2016

Lari Pittman

In a suite of eight paintings, Lari Pittman’s “NUEVOS CAPRICHOS” depict familiar, shadowy figures on the giving and receiving ends of a world of hurt. The show’s title comes from Francisco de Goya’s “Los Caprichos,” 1797–98, a set of etchings where the court artist laid bare his withering observations on human folly and savagery. Pittman’s homage probes the same ugly impulses and similarly uses animal/man imagery as well as interiorized dialogue, voiced here in word swirls and banners that contain verses from Emily Dickinson’s poems.

Pittman’s jam-packed orchestration of supergraphic decorative

Yin Ho