Galleries in NYC: 4 Art shows you should check out in Chelsea
Chelsea is the place to be for right-out-the-studio art: Today, I have a guess-who game, dreamy romance, the Addams' family real estate, and a questionable children's story for you.
Dana Schutz: Jupiter’s Lottery
It seems to me that Dana (Gen X, American) approaches painting like a DJ because all I see is remixes: There is the smooched texture of Markus Lüpertz (*1941, German) sculptures, the vulgar sexuality of Paul McCarthy (*1945, American), the uncanny lifeless papiermaché heads of Paula Rego (1935-2022, British-Portugese). It’s like a geo guesser game of art historical references: a game of cards from Balthus (1908-2001, Polish-German-French), a fleshy pink hue snatched from any Philip Guston (1913-1980, American) painting, we can go on and on and on. Dana got in trouble once in 2016 for her wild sampling when she painted the photograph of Emmett Till lying in his casket after being lynched by white supremacists. This time tho, it’s all games. Campy, quirky, creepy.
Although Dana has been a Brooklyn girlie all her life, her exhibition at Dave’s is one of Texan dimensions: Bigger canvases and bigger sculptures for the greater themes of life. A stage for her made-up allegories to perform at. The plot? More cryptic than Joe Biden’s speeches. But what I do know is that she wants to capture this current feeling of anxiety and uncertainty running havoc. Fair enough, I see it in the smeary paint turning dark grey and the rough application that makes it look much rather like a woodcut. The bronze sculptures are much rather soft graphite or molten grey wax. Looks like somebody girlbossed a bit too close to the sun.
Dana Schutz: Jupiter’s Lottery, until December 16, 2023, at David Zwirner
Roberto Gil de Montes: reverence in blue
Looking at Roberto’s (Baby Boomer, Mexican) paintings feels like taking a deep breath after an anxious day. The spaces he creates for his figures are regular but never stiff, the soft color palette of blues is harmonious but never cheesy. I can almost hear the Fiji-blue water splashing in Farewell (2023).
Roberto carefully combines imagery from Western Art History with Indigenous artistic symbols to create tender portraits of queerness. In Wrecked (2023), the young man in the boat can be a declining Venus, Interview with the Blue Deer I+II (2023) bring the Huichol symbol of fertility and life into a graveyard at the seashore. Roberto often sets the scene at the beach, a place where the earth, water, and the sky meet. The surreal dreamy result of his paintings becomes something of an art version of Call Me by Your Name (2017).
Roberto Gil de Montes: reverence in blue, until December 22, 2023, at Kurimanzutto
Meleko Mokgosi: Spaces of Subjection: Part 1 to 5
Meleko (Millenial, Motswana-American) has been working on his Spaces of Subjection series since 2020 whereby each part focuses on another aspect of Black experiences. The upper floor at Jack Shainman shows Spaces of Subjection: Zones of Nonbeing (2018-2023), where Meleko works with Epaminondas, the story of a Black boy who follows the instructions of his auntie too literally and keeps on making clumsy mistakes. The story of a boy coincidentally named after an ancient Greek general that was passed on orally in the Black community was first published as a book in 1911 by white editors. With every new edition, the Blackness of the characters either became more and more of a comical element or got erased altogether (in some versions to this day, Epaminondas is white).
Meleko transfers the images from selected book pages to blank canvases. As an editor rather than an artist, he fills the margins with red and blue annotations. They are excerpts from scripts, personal memories of not being allowed to play a role in a minstrel school show, and reflections on the name Epaminondas: Names matter. Meleko looks at simple details like yellow cake and seems to remember their importance in his own life while writing them down. I am still wondering though: Why canvas? How would the work be different if Meleko were to use actual copies of the book and edit those? Paintings, unlike books, actually get done. At some point, they are complete. Books change with every new edition. There is never a final version of a story. Every new edition slightly alters the story. Does painting secure or break away from the idea of the assumed last word?
Meleko Mokgosi: Spaces of Subjection: Part 1 to 5, until December 22, 2023, at Jack Shainman Gallery
Jonathan Horowitz & Rob Pruitt: Peacock Hill Houses
This one hits different after watching that new Dracula comedy on Broadway. The artist couple Jonathan and Rob (both Boomer, American) bring alternative goth Kenergy into doll houses. The show’s title comes from the Victorian house that the couple moved into in the early 2000s. 303 Gallery presents some of the houses that were supposed to be shown on Halloween 2012 right when Hurricane Sandy hit.
A game designed first and foremost for little girls to learn their place in the nuclear family as future wives and mothers has become heavily Lana Delrey coded. Cute Victorian mansions painted in black hold guns, pills, a copy of Émile Durkheim’s book Suicide (1897), and liquor. This mini neighborhood lets visitors sneak a peek into the home of Jonathan and Rob who made Peacock Hill into an edgy and fun place for art and party.
Jonathan Horowitz & Rob Pruitt: Peacock Hill Houses, until December 16, 2023, at 303 Gallery
Next week we’ll have a look at Henry Taylor: B Side at the Whitney, stay tuned!
Thanks for reading this review! Maybe you got some inspo for redesigning your interior? Let me know what you think through a like or a comment. And don’t forget to share, I appreciate it :)
See you soon!!!
Jennifer
The Gen Z Art Critic