Hold the Color

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Harry Roseman, Enfold at Nancy Margolis Gallery, Chelsea; ended January 14

Continuing with the black-and-white theme from last week’s story on the photographs of  Vivian Maier, I’d like to show you work from several recent and current exhibitions. The unifying element is their achromatic palette.

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We start with an installation at Nancy Margolis Gallery in Chelsea by Harry Roseman. His show, Enfold, touched on themes of particular interest to me right now: the illusion of cloth, or the use textiles to create painting and sculpture. (This is the theme of Textility, my current curatorial effort, and when I saw Roseman’s work, all I could think was, “Damn, I wish I’d known about this work for the show.”) Roseman created a theatrical site-specific wall drawing, which is what you see in the opening photo above and from a different angle below, as well as a plywood sheet carved to suggest draped fabric, and draped fabric printed to look like plywood.
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Another view of Enfold

Next, in Dialogue with Light, we have what look to be large-scale photographs by the Norwegian artist Anne-Karin Furunes at Barry Friedman Ltd., also in Chelsea. They’re not photographs. Nor are they paintings, drawings, prints or tapestries in any conventional sense, though perhaps they touch on each of these disciplines. Furunes perforates black canvas with holes of various sizes. What’s not there creates the images as much as what is. So if anything, they’re like reverse rotogravure or halftone printing, with the white wall becoming part of the image. Their darkness, and the direct gaze of her subjects are compelling in equal measure.

Anne-Karin Furunes, Dialogue with Light, at Barry Friedman Ltd., Chelsea; ended January 14

Detail below

Extreme closeup: This geometry of dots creates a small section where hair meets cheek in the full image below

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 More installation views .

Below: Portraits of Archive Pictures IV/V, 2011, acrylic-painted canvas, perforated; 78 x 63 inches and 78 x 44 inches, respectively

I'm going to continue now without narrative, just showing you a range of work I found interesting:

Matt Duffin, Bright Ideas, 2010, encaustic on panel, 22 x 20 inches; at Arden Gallery, Boston; through February 28

Connie Goldman at OK Harris, SoHo; ended January 21

The small middle gallery provided a meditative space for this is quiet show of reductive paintings, geometrically shaped with planar dimension

Arena XIV, 26 x 26 x two depths

Detail of top right, below.

Margaret Evangeline, Cry Baby,  2011, oil on canvas, 90 x 114 inches, at Kim Foster Gallery, Chelsea; ended February 4. Click here for gallery info about the show

Detail below

Tom Burr, Sentimental Suture, 2011, wool blankets and steel tacks on wood, 71.5 x 71.5 inches; in December, group show organized by Howie Chen for Mitchell-Innes and Nach; ended January 21. Click here for images from the show

Detail below

Nancy Natale, The Black One, 2011; tar paper, book parts, treated aluminum, oilstick, tacks, encaustic on panel; 36 x 36 x 1.75 inches; at the Bing Arts Center, Springfield, Mass., through April 7

Installation view below

Gerald Ferguson, Work, a career survey, at Canada, Lower East Side; ended February 19. Click here for gallery images of the show

Above: Untitled, 1969, enamel on canvas, 57 x 68 inches

Detail below

Peter Liversidge, Where We Begin, at Sean Kelly Gallery, Chelsea; through January 28

Ai Weiwei, Sunflower Seeds, at Mary Boone Gallery, Chelsea; ended February 5

Related to the exhibition at the Tate modern in 2010, Sunflower Seeds was a five-ton field of tiny porcelain sculptures, each hand painted. There was no walking on the seeds here, however; it was strictly view-from-the-perimeter. As with most of Ai's work, this installation was political in nature. Let me quote from the press release:

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"The sunflower, with its destiny to follow the sun, became a common metaphor for The People during China’s Cultural Revolution. At the same time, the seeds of the flower provided sustenance at all levels of society, and the ubiquitous discarded husks provided evidence of an individual’s existence. Ai Weiwei demonstrates that a staggering quantity of individual seeds may produce a deceptively unified field. The work is a commentary on social, political and economic issues pertinent to contemporary China: the role of the individual versus the masses, and China’s long history of labor-intensive production and export."  Click here for additional info about the show.

Detail below