Exhibition Spotlight; Fall, 2020
With art galleries closed for months in the wake of the Covid-19 crisis, a seemingly sudden change of season ushers in a new kind of gallery experience this fall. Open mostly by appointment only with exhibition press releases available by QR code, galleries return with a renewed sense of resurgence, and an array of incredible exhibits to bring visitors back to their spaces. We welcome you to engage in some moments of reflection with a healthy (and much needed) dose of escapism by visiting these shows currently, or soon to be on view, between September and November at galleries in New York City, Los Angeles and London.
Cheyenne Julien
Phantom Gates and Falling Homes
Sep 2 - Oct 11, 2020
Chapter NY - 249 East Houston St, New York
Chapter NY presents Phantom Gates and Falling Homes, an exhibition of recent paintings and works on paper by Cheyenne Julien.
Born and raised in New York City, Julien reconstructs the places and people closest to her, drawing on the built environment as an important source of inspiration. In this highly personal series of works, Julien uses memory as a perceptual tool, revealing the ways in which bodies can alter the environments that confine them, dictate our understanding of those spaces and uncover the often hidden physical conditions that enable racial perception. Pictured below is her monumental portrait of her father surrounded by records and gazing at his audience from within the context of their family home.
Cheyenne Julien, Master of House, 2020, Oil on canvas, 60 x 52 in / 152.40 x 132.08 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Chapter NY
Tal R
Boy Walking and Cinnamon: Sculptures and Paintings
Sep 9 – Oct 24, 2020
Anton Kern Gallery - 16E 55th St, New York
Danish artist Tal R presents his first solo show with Anton Kern, running until October 24. Entitled Boy Walking and Cinnamon: Sculptures and Paintings, the show consists of fifteen paintings and for the first time, twelve sculptures — a striking parade of creatures in patinated bronze.
Characterized by a mythologized reality, the body of work presents the colourful exuberant universe the artist is known for, distorted and enriched by an assortment of refrences, a chest of drawers, a caged bird, muted by moonlight on a quiet, cozy winter night.
Tal R. Courtesy of the artist and Anton Kern Gallery
Tal R. Courtesy of the artist and Anton Kern Gallery
Toyin Ojih Odutola
Tell Me A Story, I Don’t Care If It’s True
Sep 10 – Oct 2020
Jack Shainman - 524 W 24th St, New York
Jack Shainman Gallery presents Tell Me A Story, I Don’t Care If It’s True, a solo exhibition of new works on paper by Toyin Ojih Odutola.
The show comprises of 33 intimate works rendered in graphite, ink and coloured pencil. A series of small portraits are presented within thick matte frames, often accompanied with hand-written texts. “What happens when an image and text work in tandem?” the artist urges the viewer to ask. “What faculties of understanding are needed when a text reads as “chair,” but the image depicts infatuation or a loss of love? Does a third meaning arrive by combining the two?”
Built on a fascination with the unreliability of narratives presented via text and/or image, the body of work showcases a series of invented stories that question the degrees of bias that effect the legibility of these very drawings — “the gulfs between what is intended (by the artist) and how it is received”. The drawings present implied irreverent, painful, humorous and disturbing narratives, but ultimately the artist is interested in exploring what other stories might emerge “from within these spaces of missed connections”.
Toyin Ojih Odutol, Tell Me A Story, I Don't Care If It's True, 2020, colored pencil, graphite, and ink on Dura-Lar 11x14 in (drawing), 8 1/2 x 10 1/2 in (text), 33 1/2 x 41 1/2 in (framed). Courtesy of the artist and Jake Shainman Gallery
Toyin Ojih Odutola, As He Watched Him Walk Away, 2020 (detail), colored pencil and graphite on Dura-Lar 11 x 14 in (drawing). Courtesy of the artist and Jake Shainman Gallery
Ivy Haldeman
Hello, the Future Is Certain
Sep 12 – Oct 11, 2020
François Ghebaly - 2245 E Washington Blvd, Los Angeles
“I trace new humanisms that I see reflected in banal situations, finding poetry in such things as the heaviness of gravity and the softness of a hotdog bun” . Welcome to the deliciously weird and wonderful world of Ivy Haldeman’s stiletto’d lady hot dogs, sneaky banana peels and dancing power suits.
Rendered in clean graphic forms, a new body of work presented at Francois Ghebaly in Los Angeles features a series of Haldeman’s most recognizable characters. Anthropomorphised lady hot dogs contemplate the universe lounging in fluffy white buns, their high heels tossed carelessly to the side and hairdos in a twist. Colourful power-suits strut by defiantly, as if filled with the broad frame of a well padded shoulder and the curve of ample hips. Two right hands do the can-can and a wretched banana peel spells disaster for a high-heeled passerby.
Ivy Haldeman, Colossus, Shadow Cast Over Eye, Ring Finger Touches Lips, Pinky Out, 2020. Acrylic on canvas, 83.5 x 57.5 inches / 212 x 146 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Francois Ghebaly
GaHee Park
Betrayal (Sweet Blood)
September 12 - October 17, 2020
Perrotin - 130 Orchard St, New York
Opening September 12, Perrotin New York presents Betrayal (Sweet Blood), an exhibition by Seoul-born New York-based artist GaHee Park. Marking her second solo show with the gallery, the exhibition showcases a new collection of works imbued with Park’s mysterious melodramas, made up of fractured perspectives, intertwining psychological spaces, and amorphous appetites and desires. Consisting of paintings and a selection of detailed sketches that often result in finished works, the show offers a rare glimpse into the process of the artist.
GaHee Park. Voyeur, 2020. Oil on canvas. 45.7 x 38.1 cm | 18 x 15 in. Image by Guillaume Ziccarelli. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin.
GaHee Park. Invitation, 2020. Oil on canvas. 25x20in / 63.5 x 50.8 cm. Image by Guillaume Ziccarelli. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin.
Aks Misyuta
The days of the Comet
19 Sep. — 31 Oct, 2020
Union Pacific - 17 Goulsten St, London
Artist Aks Misyuta defines her working process as a meditative form of self-portrait. Biomorphic, fleshy characters populate her work, with giant hands and feet flaying across the confines of her canvasses. The ‘inflatable’ appearance of her subjects depict a certain sense of vulnerability, as if the smallest pin-prick could destroy them in an instance. “It’s all about self-cognition and interactions” the artist explained in a recent interview “all the figures, like balloons, are floating in their own pensive universe.”
Aks Misyuta, Siblings, 2020, Acrylic on canvas, 39x47in / 100x120cm. Courtesy the artist and Union Pacific.
Hana Yilma Godine
Spaces within Space
Sep 27 - Nov 1, 2020
Fridman gallery - 169 Bowery, New York
The Lower East Side’s Fridman Gallery presents the first solo show for young Ethiopian painter, Hana Yilma Godine.
Godine’s fresh perspective is heavily influenced by her upbringing in Addis Ababa and travels in Europe and the United States. Her work features a cast of elongated figures reminiscent of historical Ethiopian icons, posed in an array of patchwork interiors, layered with the reflection of the urban architecture of a metropolis, as if reflected from a nearby window. Unburdened by the rules of realistic representation, Godine is able to bring parallel worlds onto a single plane.
"I think about painting as a space that mediates time and place, reconciling the past, present, and future into one unified form. The figures' colorful, transparent, collaged surfaces suggest embedded histories and embodied feelings. My practice has long focused on women–their bodies, as well as their social and societal roles. I work symbolically to communicate the complexity of their lives and see them as a source of life within my paintings. " Hana Yilma Godine
Showcasing 12 works, the exhibition is set to a soundtrack of Ethio Jazz, a multi-faceted genre of music born as a result of the realities of a globalized world, much like the paintings on view that take us through a journey of co-existing histories and geographies.
Hana Yilma Godine, Spaces Within Space XIV, 2018, Oil, acrylic, charcoal on canvas , 48 x 36 in. Courtesy of the artist and Fridman Gallery
Hana Yilma Godine, Spaces Within Space, 2019, Oil and acrylic on canvas, 36 x 36 in. Courtesy of the artist and Fridman Gallery
Louise Bonnet
The Hours
September 29–November 7, 2020
Gagosian Gallery - Park & 75, New York
Gagosian presents a new body of work by Swiss born, Los Angeles based painter Louise Bonnet. Known for her impossibly distorted, ambiguously gendered figures, this new body of work depicts her characters engaged mundane routines such as eating and sleeping. Reflecting
engaged in nightmarish variations on mundane routines, such as eating and sleeping. Reflecting the nature of human experience during the crisis of the current pandemic, Bonnet’s figures, with their bloated extremities and faces devoid of features, are uncanny embodiments of emotional tension.
Known for her portraits of exaggerated proportions and grotesque features, Louise Bonnet continually explores emotions of melancholy, loneliness, nostalgia and grief in her works on canvas or paper.
Louise Bonnet, Red Wailer, 2020, Oil on linen, 72x120in / 182.9x394.8cm. Courtesy of the artist & Gagosian Gallery