LES: Coffey, Hesidence, Calabrese

Susanna Coffey, Crimes of the Gods at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects through June 30th. Here, a print on paper, a counterbalance to the large abstract painting and a thesis for the woodcut prints of Greek myths that inform this show. Do not miss this show Coffey fans! Gallery Link

We get the backstory on the portraits Coffey is renowned for... 

In the large, epic abstraction of Greek myths featuring Demeter and Persephone

Amidst a lush, psychological landscape Coffey brilliantly links to #MeToo.

Here, a skull shocking in its nakedness and depth of vision.

Across from this portrait that integrates both facets of Coffey's painting.

The paint is rich and infused by the large abstractions and woodcuts made around the same time, circa late 1980s, when I first knew Coffey's work. Form and formlessness, their endless dance.

Daniel Hesidence at CANADA in his solo exhibition, Placeholders (this show closed May 27th. The gallery link images are superior in every way to these iPhone images). Gallery Link

I love this artist for the way he applies paint; surface and color are always interesting and change from show to show.

Detail. 

Also closed, the elegant Kristin Calabrese's Message To The World at Brennan and Griffin (closed May 27th). Gallery Link

Press release says, "The five works on view are still life paintings of crumpled and stained canvas. The prosaic subject of the paintings provide a surprisingly complex and mysterious reading which slowly unfolds, having ramifications both within and beyond the physical boundaries of the canvas."

Here is an overexposed detail to show the quality of paint handling throughout Calabrese's surfaces.

I loved these elegant paintings (2015-2018). On one hand, opaque surfaces, but on the other, worlds within worlds.

Another overexposed detail - see the color changes adding up to dark.

One with some color stained on to canvas surface within the painting.

Installation views.

There is another exhibition I saw but did not photograph, which closes June 16th: Sarah Peters' Figureheads at Van Doren Waxter, 195 Chrystie St. Just go. You can read all about it through the gallery link and John Yau's incisive Hyperallergic review, but even elegant images will not prepare you for the physical reality of the figures in situ. Gallery Link

This can be safely said about any of these shows and so many others - there is simply no substitute for the real thing.

Wayfarers Brooklyn - Ivan Rivera

This is Ivan Rivera, who has a studio at BK Wayfarers. Like Trestle, Wayfarers features programming and studio residencies for an evolving program of artists, who help run the studios. Studio residents have solo exhibitions and also participate in group exhibitions with outside curators. The program hosts visiting artists and critics. Here is the link to Ivan's exhibition: Gallery Link 

As 2017-18 critic in residence at Wayfarers I knew Ivan's series on child beauty pageants and sculptural forays into socio-political realities, but less a new series of collages, Mix Messages, and landscape paintings that contributed a dreamy counterbalance to denser, New York-based imagery. 

Chelsea II

Mind-blowing show: Geoffrey Chadsey at Jack Shainman, 24th St. "The pentimenti evidenced in Chadsey’s transparent process of drawing multiplies the poses on top of each other, as if they are in constant state of shedding, becoming. These men are caught up in enacting the various aspirations of the hyper-American notion of being all you can be." Read more here: Gallery Link

Then to Ancestors, the Jenny Saville show at Gagosian. Press release and images here: Gallery Link

As in the Chadwick's exhibition, an interest in combining and recombining attributes,  with less surprise, breadth of identity omitting the layer of media references that anticipate the merging of human -AI.

Amy Lincoln in Sun, Moon, Stars at Morgan Lehman, ratcheting up her glowing orbs to capture the amber street lamps illuminting her neighborhood garden. Gallery Link

At Kathryn Markel Fine Art, a duo of exhibitions by Suzanne Laura Kammin and Julian Jackson, revealing Buddhist-inspired terrains that speak to ephemeral comings and goings. Gallery Link

Impossible to capture the true color of this painting--perhaps appropriately...

Julian Jackson's soft-edged, illuminated portal                                                                                                              

In a process of disegno and color, Jill Nathanson achieves a similar sense of the ephemeral in Cadence at Berry Campbell. Gallery Link