LES / Tribeca Runabout Fall Season Opener

Josiah McElheny's solo exhibition Observations at Night at the new Cohan flagship, Tribeca. Gallery Link

There were several of these works inset into the all, magical in the endless planar shifts that lead you back, and further still. The second room was large-scale installation.

Diana Cooper's Sightings at the new Postmasters Tribeca location (a wonderful move--congratulations to all these new galleries - close to the LES, too!) Gallery Link

From the press release she states, "Stop and look and then look again could be the subtext of this show...in my work a frame can be both a way of focusing, or one of obfuscating." Spare, detail, 2013-18.

Wonderfun, a series of cages turned in on themselves. 

Dimensional lattice in Slide Rule, 2017-2019. 

The joy in this work is its inventiveness. Engagement with the imagery resonates below consciousness, becoming a memory in the making as we view the work.

Diana Cooper, Detail, Family Safe, 2019

Full View.

Also on view at Postmasters: William Powhida's Complicities, works on paper in the tradition of Mark Lombardi's analytical diagrams. Gallery Link

Powhida lays out the connections in beautifully rendered detail.

I spent more time gawking than documenting, so please check the website link and go see for yourself. Both Postmasters shows offer much to consider, and the pairing of artists is inspired.

Delicious paintings in Graham Nickson's Eye Level at Betty Cunningham. Gallery Link 

Nobody can spin space like Nickson. He's brilliant as a  composer, painter, and teacher.

Portrait of marks...what is the black thing...why do we care...we do not, we just know it is a perfect frame for the head.

Having taken a Drawing Marathon with GN (2008), I smile wryly at the divisions of canvas, the containment of the figures, and their spatial trajectories through space.

Detail, lower left. The shoulder. The leg and the arm of the chair. The bottom right of this detail is spatially disorienting, but everything stays in its place. The range of color is extraordinary.

In the office. The eye snaps to the grid and the trajectories one bather sets off. What a delicious way to consider space!

The green plant.The black dress. The beautiful lavender that rains over hair, face, neck and dress. A master.

Jimmy Wright's sharp and attentive drawings, The Queen's Court, at Fierman. This double drawing, suggesting interior/exterior, is a favorite for the hot pink light it emits. Gallery Link

Drawn from memory or on site in the clubs of NY from a Kentucky native new to the city, these works reveal Wright's  talent for drawing, gesture, mannerisms.

A fascinating history of Wright's work and Chicago experience can be found on the Corbett & Dempsey website. Gallery Link

Within his drawings there are subdivided spaces, one a loft space/club drawn  with such brevity, but immense to wander imaginatively.
In addition to the club drawings, Wright makes flower paintings, elegies to his life love. 

Guadalupe Maravilla at Jack Barrett, reviewed in Friday's Times. Gallery Link

These works are installed with wall drawings at the baseboard and columns of the gallery.

They depict his journey through immigration and subsequent illness. The work documents the healing of these dual traumas, and also links them.

The exhibition, Saga, takes a deep dive into the relationships between trauma, illness, community, narrative, and Mayan imagery. The intelligence of this artist is clearly and delightfully confluent.

Gallery view.

Francesco Simetti at Assembly Room, one of my favorite places! The gallery's Artsy Page: Gallery Link

Simeti's hybrid landscapes on stretched fabric evoke the structure of an online operating system, with multiple windows open.

Numerous glazed ceramic works in the raku method support the botanical imagery and intensive research of the stretched fabric pieces. Simeti's work can also be seen in laminated glass at the 18th Avenue stop in Brooklyn on the D line, linked here: MTA Arts & Design, D train 18th Avenue Line link. 

Henning Haupt's NY debut at Equity Gallery, LES: Body Ritual: Freedom and Form. Gallery Link

Haupt, a trained architect, loosens line into gestures on a series of substrates sized 60 x 48. He prefers volume to intersecting planes,  applying a variety of methods and processes to achieve space between the gestures. Detail of the wood surface.

On canvas, the weave catches every mark and differentiates the speed and strength of application.

When painting he waits between sessions. Among Haupts's influences are Terry Winters, Brice Marden, abstract expressionism. The fugitive qualities of the paint escape method and in that escape content exists.