Joel Shapiro, Untitled, 2013. Gouache and charcoal on paper, 13 7/8 x 18 3/8 in.

Joel Shapiro: Works on Paper 2011–2013
May 9 – June 28, 2014
Pace Gallery
508 West 25th Street
New York City
pacegallery.com

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Hiroshi Sugimoto “Hyena” Hyena-Jackal-Vulture, 1976. Gelatin silver print. Edition 1/5. Private collection. Courtesy of the artist

Hiroshi Sugimoto: Still Lifes
May 9 – Jun 28, 2014
Pace Gallery
510 West 25th St.
New York City
pacegallery.com

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The following are a few exhibitions throughout the Chelsea gallery scene involving art that is better when viewed alone. Maybe the art is really understated and requires your undivided attention to really bring out its subtle beauty. Maybe the work is intentionally overwhelming and you can go there alone to really get lost in it. Whatever the case, here are a selection of shows you can go see right now by yourself and be thrilled. Actually, you may want to bring your dog. They are usually good, quiet company, and all the cool people are doing it these days.

Rudolf Stingel is currently on view at Gagosian Gallery.

Rudolf Stingel
March 4th – April 19th, 2014.
Gagosian Gallery
522 West 21st St.
New York City
gagosian.com

Kiki Smith is currently on view at Pace Gallery.

Kiki Smith: Wonder
Feb 28th – Mar 29th, 2014.
Pace Gallery
510 West 25th St.
New York City
pacegallery.com

Michel Majerus has work currently on view at Matthew Marks Gallery.

Michel Majerus
February 8 – April 19, 2014.
Matthew Marks Gallery
502, 522, and 526 W 22 St.
New York City
matthewmarks.com

The post NY Arts Picks: Chelsea Gallery Shows to See Alone appeared first on NY Arts Magazine.

Paradise Lost, 2001-13, comprising of twelve 10’ x 60’ panels, is the precursor to the world of doom. Mughal artistry, Indian mythology, and medieval history come together in Shaw’s evocation of John Milton’s epic poem “Paradise Lost.” Here in the garden of innocence, untainted as yet by the ways of the world, a coyote howls ominously at the moon. Dark skies, coniferous forests, and mountainous terrains abundant with the animal kingdom reminiscent of Noah’s Ark and the Panchatantra—Indian animal fables of the 3^rd century—slowly give way to daylight, cherry blossoms, and hordes of chirping birds. Shaw proves to be the quintessential raconteur of images as his narrative plays out in languorous splendor along the lengthy canvas. The only human being in the story resembles Hanuman the Indian monkey god from the legendary Ramayana. Yet he is in bondage as he floats from the cherry tree, pointing to forthcoming difficulties. Much like The Garden of Earthly Delight, 2012, filled with bejeweled flowers and dancing peacocks that conjure life before Satan’s treacherous prevarications, Shaw uses the conventional storyteller’s technique of detail and description to enthrall his audience.

Embracing tradition in his flagrant departure from the trajectory of modernism and contemporary art, Shaw’s panoply of strange animals with zebra bodies and bear heads equipped with human mannerisms engage in the annihilation of the world. In Doomsday at Xanadu, 2011-12, Armageddon is nigh. Pillars and grand entrances to opulent empires collapse and unleash a cruel fast paced world of endless destruction. Referencing the explorer Marco Polo’s lavish description of Xanadu, the summer palace of the Mongolian ruler in 1275, with images from ancient Rome, Shaw’s phantasmagoria of a world gone berserk appears plausible. His ability to commingle the past with the present to foretell a realistic future through his make-believe fantasia is the key to his success.

Raqib Shaw, The Disambiguation of the Myth of the Last Shinobi, 2011-2013.
Oil, acrylic, enamel, glitter and rhinestones on Birch wood. 55-3/8 x 55-3/8 in.

In The Disambiguation of the Myth of the Last Shinobi, 2011-12, anxiety pervades beneath the excesses of beauty and overwhelming abundance.  A battle fought by the famous Japanese video game ninja Shinobi is the ostensible cause of the ensuing warfare.  Delivered in Shaw’s over-the-top profusion of action and wreckage, here too in a bizarre world where everything from the structures to the trees are free-floating and untethered, there is great truth behind the carnage that points to the eventual downfall of our own doing.

If one were to draw a connection between Shaw’s images and the Kenyan collage artist Wangechi Mutu’s strange cyborgian women festooned with rhinestones and glitter, one sees a similar fetish for over-extended imagery. It raises an important question about the new lingua franca of non-western artists who blend techniques, traditions, and inspiration from the east and west to communicate their worldviews. For Shaw as much as for Mutu, their outrageously outlandish landscapes inhabited by mysterious creatures both lure and repel as they have a transformative hold on the viewer. Innovativeness and a new kind of aesthetics marked by a combination of extreme forms of beauty and ugliness is their de facto mode of expression. Endlessly fascinating and interpretable works of art emanate from this new language.

Ultimately, Paradise Lost succeeds in engaging the viewer such that there might be the possibility of hope that arises from decay and decadence, and all may not be lost to an unfulfilled paradise.

By Bansie Vasvani

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The exhibit was comprised of three parts: photographs of the Roden Crater, bronze and plaster models of areas within the crater, and fifteen Autonomous Structures.  These freestanding chambers are inspired by ancient structures like Machu Picchu, where the Incas built rooms and named them for the viewing experience each created for its visitors. They are: the Hitching Post of the Sun, the Temple of the Sun, and the Room of Three Windows.  The goal behind the Roden Crater and these structures is to create spaces in which intergalactic light and cosmic movement can be experienced.

After becoming a pilot at 16, Turrell delivered supplies to remote mine sites and mapped the skies.  At a young age, he became used to perceiving the earth from above, seeing the photons around it.

“We live within this reality we create, and we’re quite unaware of how we create the reality. So the work is often a general koan into how we go about forming this world in which we live, in particular with seeing,” he told Interview Magazine in 2009.

Turrell calls for experiencing nature in a more profound way. He has called us light-eaters, crustaceans, people who build and become cities. With the Roden Crater he’s showing us how to crack open our surroundings and reach for that kernel inside us that promises the light we ate was not wasted.

by Maria Anderson

pacegallery.com

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Lin became the center of controversy in 1981 when she won the competition to design the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Still a student, and virtually unknown, her design was chosen from over 1,400 submissions.  I remember seeing an exhibit of many of those entries and being astonished at the judges’ insightful choice of a delicate series of small color pencil drawings over the extensive technical plans and sculptured memorial models surrounding them. Lin’s clear vision was to create a “v” shape cut in the earth of dark granite with the names of those lost listed by the years they had fallen. It is a quiet and powerful timeline of the ravages of war. Originally derided by many veterans, business leaders and politicians, a more customary sculpture of uniformed soldiers was added nearby. But it is the stark, haunting memorial itself that became the site of grief and healing that the nation needed.

Since then Lin has created environments, architecture, and sculptures throughout the world. She is visually eloquent about a variety of subjects but none more so than environmental issues. These are often meditations on geography and topography. She is brilliant in her depiction of elements that represent the transformations of the passing of time. Her work is both cerebral yet profoundly recognizable and always deeply moving.

Image courtesy of Pace Gallery

In 2006 Lin started making studies of all of the world’s major rivers. These large sculptures penetrate the gallery’s walls with aerial views. Using recycled silver and steel pins she has turned flowing water into abstract shapes of cool, silvery light.

The Pin River series is particularly ethereal. The images are created, not only with the vertical shafts and dotted heads of the thousands of pins themselves, but by the translucent shadows extending their space, dependant and changing by the surrounding source of light, like the earth itself.

On the floor area you will find dense sculptures of longitudinal and latitudinal sections of the meridian that passes through Manhattan. Their weight is in stark contrast to the delicacy of the River series. Beginning with drawings informed from computer analysis to track the terrain of the ocean floor, models were created and translated into marble.

“It’s a process that balances scientific data with the handmade.” says Lin. If the end form looks only like the idea of the information, then it fails. It has to become its own form – evocative, beautiful, strange.  I start with extremely complex scientific data points and then, through a visual editing process, I find the scale and simplicity of the form – revealing a landscape both visually discernible and compelling.”

In a separate room we are enveloped by videos, music and text from her “What is Missing” project and website, a poetic and meticulously researched consideration of earth’s vanishing forests, waterways and animals. The effect we’ve had on our environment and the fury of time’s passing are the subject of this multi-dimensional project. Viewers are encouraged to add their own memories of lost habitats or species to the site. Started more than 20 years ago, and added to continually, installations of the project will continue to be exhibited worldwide. Lin says this all-encompassing project will be her final memorial.

By A. Bascove

whatismissing.net/#/home

April 26^th through June 22^nd, 2013     Pace, 32 E 57^th Street     New York, NY, 10022

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