3 Artwork Gallery Displays to See Appropriate Now

By Sept. 11. Rosenberg & Co., 19 East 66th Avenue, Manhattan, (212) 202-3270, rosenbergco.com.

This beguiling solo exhibition of 4 sculptures and nine operates on paper by the artist Dorothy Dehner (1901-1994) is provided context by a interesting if marginally piecemeal group exhibit titled “A Upcoming We Start out to Truly feel: Females Artists 1921-1971.”

An lively artist given that 1925, Dehner did not start off to display her do the job right up until 1950, soon after the conclude of her 23-year relationship to the sculptor David Smith, who noticed no require for yet another sculptor in the spouse and children. The operates in wooden are the primary attract built in the mid-1970s, they nod towards Brancusi and Giacometti but preserve their individuality. Even improved is a minimal bronze elegance titled “Garden at Night time,” which has an relieve that Smith seldom obtained These sculptures’ delicacy of line turns into dominant in the watercolor and ink operates on paper from 1949 to 1953, wherever starbursts and washes of color frequently coalesce into constellations on the site.

The team display “A Future” offers paintings, collages and watercolors, generally from the 1950s and ’60s by 22 artists (Dehner involved). Most were being born all-around 1900, and labored abstractly in the United States. 1 intriguing outlier is the Russian Constructivist Natalia Goncharova (1881-1962), whose village scene from all over 1950 evinces a softened version of the slashing fashion of Rayonism, a Russian type of Cubo-Futurism. A different surprise is the operate of the Turkish artist Fahrelnissa Zeid (1901-91): summary paintings on paper whose amazing colors peek by way of nets of black lines drawn in ink. There is considerably to see right here, together with uncharacteristic performs by Alma Thomas, Charlotte Park, Sonja Sekula, Esphyr Slobodkina, and Eileen Agars’s smooth fusion of Surrealism and geometry. These two exhibits dovetail properly: The Dehner functions remind us that every piece in the team show signifies a profession that justifies increased visibility. (Rosenberg & Co. will be closed from Aug. 28 to Sept. 7.)

ROBERTA SMITH


As a result of Aug. 27. Nathalie Karg Gallery, 291 Grand Road, fourth floor, Manhattan (212) 563-7821, nathaliekarg.com.

Spend adequate time on social media these days and photographic self-portraiture can start out to appear to be banal. The team demonstrate “Mirror, Mirror” is a rebuttal and reminder that this stays a fruitful, interesting artwork sort.

Just take the artist Tommy Kha’s “Guise Like Me” (2021). In the largest of three visuals, what appears like a cutout of Kha lies with his back again to the digital camera, keeping a mask of his confront. In a scaled-down photograph, the face reappears about the shoulder of Kha’s mom, who would seem haunted by an aged photo of herself. Kha takes advantage of playful artifice to get at an emotional fact: the fractured layering of identification.

Ilona Szwarc can take a very similar solution, with images that depict her glimpse-alike turning into a werewolf-type creature. The woman appears in colorful, lavish configurations, and it’s unclear if she’s initiating the transformation or if it’s happening to her. In “She was unsexed as a doll” (2019), the woman’s expression difficulties a form of challenge: Is this a nightmare or a fairy tale?

Paul Mpagi Sepuya’s images are a lot more authentic but not extra simple. He captures himself and pals in the studio, usually nude and intertwined, with faces concealed or obscured by cameras. There’s a thrust-pull amongst casualness and formality, what is concealed and displayed — a tension that Whitney Hubbs also appears to aim for, though in the two parts in this article, her conceptual grounding feels lacking.

What makes these operates so hanging is that they withhold as effectively as reveal. They deny the legibility frequently related with images (and selfies), alternatively providing deftly staged riddles.

JILLIAN STEINHAUER


Via Sept. 11. Michael Werner, 4 East 77th Road, Manhattan, (212) 988-1623, michaelwerner.com.

Large, brooding landscapes unfold out in Markus Lüpertz’s 13 the latest paintings at Michael Werner’s Upper East Side gallery. The reference to European art and history and literature is overt: His wobbly trees, daubed skies and unnatural lights fork out homage to the postimpressionist artwork movement in France. The mood of the paintings remember Paul Gauguin’s oeuvre — notably his function in Tahiti, which Lüpertz makes especially glaring by including a recurring woman determine equivalent in gesture to individuals in Gauguin’s she is also present in other Lüpertz is effective like “Nymphe Märkisch,” “Idylle” and “Fisher und Nymphe,” constantly with her back to the viewer. Mythological figures from Greek legends like Jason also surface in paintings this sort of as “Jasons Abschied.”

But Lüpertz, soon after shelling out tribute, veers off quickly on his have route. Contrary to Gauguin, who worked with brilliant, lively colours evoking a sense of in some cases problematic exoticism, Lüpertz uses colors that are dark and weighty and propose a sense of longing. He sheds off the sleek pores and skin in Gauguin and embraces a rocky, blocklike overall body composition for the people in his paintings, as although they were being sculptures interrupting the landscape.

Now 80, Lüpertz’s hand is unquestionably sturdy, well-properly trained, and skilled — he skillfully transports his influences into his have completely formed landscape, his possess universe. A person miracles: in wha
t ambiance did this painter do the job? Did his observe as a sculptor notify his choice of these extra fat strokes and thick swabs in generating people with stony flesh? Why is it night in all the paintings?

In 2010, Lüpertz’s “Pastoral Thoughts” confirmed at this gallery, buoyed with themes like historical past, abstraction and his signature landscape motifs. A a long time later, in “Recent Paintings,” he sheds off abstraction but moves further more into heritage. It is as if he’s dreaming backward — albeit clearer now, leaning as soon as again toward what it may well really feel like to be there in the commencing, at the backyard garden of Eden.

YINKA ELUJOBA

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