The Brooklyn Rail

On Edge(s)

In 2009 the Museum of Modern Art made a major announcement concerning its displays that was dutifully reported by the New York Times: the chief curator of painting and sculpture, Ann Temkin, had decided to remove the frames from the museum’s collection of Abstract Expressionist paintings, thus “freeing” the paintings from the “domestication” of the gallery space.

In Conversation

JO BAER with Amanda Gluibizzi

Artist Jo Baer speaks with Rail ArtSeen editor Amanda Gluibizzi about her two exhibitions at Pace Gallery, The Risen and Originals, playing with space, and how she wants her work shown.

In Conversation

Ghada Amer with Amanda Gluibizzi

Amanda Gluibizzi talks with Ghada Amer about her new body of work on view at Marianne Boesky Gallery.

In Conversation

MICHAEL JOO with Amanda Gluibizzi

Michael Joo speaks with Amanda Gluibizzi about liminal space, the physicality of his performance works, and his scientific research methods.

In Conversation

Alex Hay with Amanda Gluibizzi

An artist with an eye resolutely toward possibility, Hay has been omnivorous, taking advantage of opportunities as they’ve presented themselves, whether in terms of subject matter or medium. As Hay tells us, “the genesis of my work is circumstances.”

In Conversation

Dan Colen with Amanda Gluibizzi

This fall, the artist Dan Colen will revisit and expand upon themes that have long preoccupied him in venues as diverse as Gagosian Gallery’s West 21st Street space, the Donald Judd Foundation’s Soho building, and United Nations Plaza. Gagosian will be displaying paintings from Colen’s “Mother” and “Woodworker” series, billboard-sized images that continue his exploration of ideas of home, the development of artists and artistic pursuits, and familiar cartoons as springboards to compositional questions and narratival complexity.

In Conversation

Tavares Strachan with Amanda Gluibizzi

Tavares Strachan’s current exhibition at Marian Goodman’s New York gallery leads its viewers through experiences that refute passive contemplation. Installed in several interlocking rooms, The Awakening continues Strachan’s project of uncovering the lives and achievements of forgotten—in his words, “invisible”—people that Western history books regularly overlook. The major character here is Marcus Garvey, an early 20th-century orator and entrepreneur, but figures such as United States congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie, and the astronaut Robert Henry Lawrence Jr. also make appearances, either directly by being represented by Strachan in paint or objects or obliquely through suggestive iconography such as depictions of the night sky.

In Conversation

Emily Mae Smith with Amanda Gluibizzi

The possibilities of painting are on full display at Emily Mae Smith’s current exhibition, Heretic Lace, installed at Petzel’s new Chelsea space. This concise show of eleven paintings demonstrates Smith’s command of her medium in strategies such as bravura brushwork, naturalism verging on trompe-l’œil, seamlessly liquid gradients, and backlit contre-jour effects.

In Conversation

Cinga Samson with Amanda Gluibizzi

Cinga Samson was born in South Africa and spent his early life traveling back and forth between the Eastern and Western Capes. He received his art education from fellow artists, moving into a studio shared by the artists Gerald Tabata, Xolile Mtakatya, and Luthando Laphuwano who helped him to develop and hone his craft.

Reframed: The Woman in the Window

Throughout the Dulwich Picture Gallery’s wide-ranging Reframed: The Woman in the Window, thoughtfully curated by Jennifer Sliwka, we are reminded of that binary—who has agency and who may not?—and the roles that we then assume as viewers of the women represented.

Ursula von Rydingsvard: LUBA

When the cedar is fresh and you first cut into it, Ursula von Rydingsvard has said, the wood inside is pink, like “flesh.” Perhaps this is part of the reason why von Rydingsvard has long referred to her sculptures as “she” (though GÒRKA [2021], with its central, vertical lingam may be a “he”)—they’re alive and soft and individual, even as she works within her own aesthetic parameters.

Christian Marclay

Appearing simultaneously at the 2019 edition of the Venice Biennale and this fall at Paula Cooper Gallery, Christian Marclay’s 48 War Movies (2019) and an accompanying series of woodblock prints called “Screams” (all 2018 or 2019) testify to the strangely complex relationship we have with war and its imagery.

Joanna Pousette-Dart

In her first solo exhibition at Lisson Gallery, Pousette-Dart has included larger-scale paintings alongside vivid 12-inch square gouache and acrylic studies that at first glance look like they mimic the paintings, before going their own ways, and similarly-sized fuzzy sumi ink sketches that have seeped into the weave of their rice paper grounds.

Adam McEwen: Execute

As I walked through Adam McEwen’s latest show at Gagosian, I was surprised to find my hands clenching. Normally I’m an alert art-viewer, of course, but with this exhibition everything felt taut, from the tightly stretched canvases to the tips of Bic pens painted barely to touch the corners of the pictures’ surfaces, and my body responded in-kind.

Three Christs, Sleeping Mime, and the Last Supper; Pagan Paradise

Materiality, finish, the artist’s hand or lack thereof, and the imitative potential of sculpture: Ray is, in this installation of his work and its important bronze precedents, presenting a philosophical discussion of sculptural possibility. In his essay, Ray asks, “Does my mime sleep, or does he mime sleep?” and his question is justified: sculpture can only ever mime the real.

Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror

At the Whitney Museum of American Art, Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror starts off with such a strong installation that it’s nearly impossible to pick a favorite piece.

Suzanne Bocanegra: Wardrobe Test

Throughout Wardrobe Test, we encounter women trying things on: costumes, other voices, new or different personae. And yet despite, or even through, this garb, we also witness glimpses of what we have to assume or hope to believe is the person within, the compassionate collaborator and mourner, the artist as empath, the woman of faith above all else.

No W here: Alice Hope, Bastienne Schmidt, Toni Ross

As they were planning their joint exhibition at Ricco/Maresca, Alice Hope, Bastienne Schmidt, and Toni Ross agreed to choose an evocative object from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art that would serve as an organizing principle for each artist’s portion of the show. To their surprise, all of them chose the same piece.

Bayne Peterson: Mirage

“These things are BANANAS,” commented another visitor to Bayne Peterson’s Mirage on view at Kristen Lorello. He wasn’t wrong.

Robert Grosvenor and David Novros

Taking advantage of Paula Cooper Gallery’s West 26th Street double storefront windows, Robert Grosvenor has placed a floor-bound sculpture in each space.

Esteban Cabeza de Baca: Nepantla

In his first solo exhibition with Garth Greenan, Esteban Cabeza de Baca shows paintings and ceramic sculptures that flicker with the colors of Southwest border towns: turquoise and marine blue, dusty terracotta, and the bloody hues of open sky sunsets.

Larry Bell: Still Standing

The best decision Bell has made is to bevel his edges. Throughout, the bevels bisect fields, color, and visitors, acting as zips that direct the eye and project us around the room. Perhaps most important of all, they let Bell’s contours be sharp, soft to the touch but sharper than glass has ever been.

Bruce Nauman

Having spent time with the newer works currently on display at Sperone Westwater, I suspect that they might be his most searching philosophical inquiries. That they were undertaken at moments of career retrospection, recovery from illness, and the care of and mourning for a partner make the underlying melancholy that I somehow always feel when reading Wittgenstein that much more palpable.

Adriana Varejão: Talavera

Talavera, reveals a somewhat different direction for Varejão, who made her name by referencing the look of azulejo tiles.

Michael Rakowitz: The invisible enemy should not exist

The visitor enters the gallery and is immediately confronted not by Rakowitz’s recreations of Nimrud’s sculptures but with the backs of their supports. Each of the five panels is displayed in a surround made of wooden two-by-fours, the material recalling nothing so much as shipping or storage crates, the temporary housing of artifacts unearthed (or stolen) from their archaeological environments to be removed to new homes for study or display.

Wilhelm Sasnal: New Paintings and One Film

Wilhelm Sasnal’s paintings are sometimes described as “photorealistic,” but that’s not strictly the case. As his film Paintings and Bikes (2019) makes clear, the images in paintings occupy their own spaces and are preoccupied with their own concerns, not ours.

No Tears: In Conversation with Horace Pippin

By sheer coincidence, I visited No Tears: In Conversation with Horace Pippin, which situates Pippin’s John Brown Going to His Hanging (1942) in the context of critical texts and Dean Moss’s video johnbrown (2014), on December 2, the 162nd anniversary of John Brown’s hanging. It was my second encounter with the abolitionist that week, having visited Kara Walker’s exhibition—where Brown made an appearance in the artist’s video Prince McVeigh and the Turner Blasphemies (2021)—at Sikkema Jenkins just a few days earlier.

Souvenirs: Cornell Duchamp Johns Rauschenberg

Souvenirs at Craig F. Starr Gallery brings together six works by Joseph Cornell, Marcel Duchamp, Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg.

In Conversation

SQUEAK CARNWATH with Amanda Gluibizzi

Carnwath’s large-scale paintings feature her personal vocabulary of faces, vases, candlesticks, sinking ships, blocks of color, and constellations, while placing written messages squarely in front of her viewers. Notably, Carnwath also scrawls the titles of her paintings down the left and right edges of her canvases which she always displays unframed, something I wanted to learn more about.