This week, Roberta Smith covers EJ Hauser’s solo exhibition of latest work at Derek Eller, Vija Celmins’s “Winter” present at Matthew Marks and Huma Bhabha’s sculptures at David Zwirner.
EJ Hauser
By March 9. Derek Eller, 300 Broome Avenue, Manhattan; 212-206-6411, derekeller.com.
EJ Hauser’s first 5 solo exhibits in New York galleries have all the time exuded promise and offered one or two terrific work however might additionally depart you wanting extra. Now, with Hauser’s sixth, which is appropriately titled “Develop Room,” the artist breaks by to a different degree. This time, all of the work persuade and even dazzle, straddling the road between illustration and abstraction with new aptitude.
A lot of Hauser’s primordial motifs persist — probably the most frequent being repeating triangles suggestive of mountains, evergreens and historical pyramids. Additionally current are the floating spheres of varied sizes (studying without delay as snow, atoms and Christmas tree ornaments) and the play between naïve and complex and between analog and digital.
Hauser has switched from oil to acrylic, a giant distinction. Their colours have brightened; see the purple, inexperienced and burgundy of “Hawaiian Snow” or the turquoise and orange-on-yellow of “Golden Ticket,” which may learn as a framed portray. The surfaces are smoother and fewer nervous over. Hauser has all the time had an amazing contact, however at instances it has appeared so “felt” that it bought in the best way of all the pieces else. Now it’s fast and light-weight (acrylic dries sooner), which implies that there’s a sharper rigidity between saturated coloration and their attribute tough or skipping traces. The latter now can evoke stitches, which introduces analog textiles, as instructed by the title of the black-on-red “Dream Weaver.”
Though I used to be advised that nothing digital was concerned on this present, the confusion between analog and digital (and printmaking) stays. Associated: the completely different layers of drawing and portray are extra clear and distinct, making a shallow computer-screen area.
Vija Celmins
By April 6. Matthew Marks, 522 West twenty second Avenue, Manhattan; 212-243-0200, matthewmarks.com.
As an artist, Vija Celmins has all the time operated inside a slender bandwidth that she has expanded from the within out, constructing a career-long meditation on time. The time wanted for her to see, perceive and render her mesmerizing photographs; the time wanted for us to grasp them and work again by the precision of her processes to the true factor. Prior to now a number of a long time, a few of her most consuming topics have included quiet views of pure wonders: semiabstract but meticulously life like expanses of ocean waves, pebble-strewn desert flooring and star-dotted evening skies.
In “Winter,” her first gallery present of latest work in six years, Celmins has expanded her views of nature to incorporate falling snow — a uncommon depiction of climate, and of transience.
The titles typically specify viewing circumstances. The primary portray, “Snow (Coat)” portrays snow accumulating and melting on the again of a darkish coat. The snow in “Snow (Window),” a light-weight grey, daytime scene, is perhaps seen by the refined distortions of a pane of outdated, imperfect glass. In “Snowfall #1,” #2, and #3, the snowflakes are particularly starlike and distant, and bands of uneven white bubble alongside the canvases’ backside edge. Snow drifts? Foamy pounding surf? Maybe the view from a completely completely different perspective: above the clouds.
As for sculpture, the three trompe l’oeil therapies of rope (forged chrome steel, alkyd paint) could also be too deadpan, even for Celmins. A big stone and its painted bronze twin reprise, however much less completely than earlier works like this; I appreciated having the ability to see the distinction. And in case you search a bit, you’ll discover that “Snow (Coat)” has a twin of its personal, deeper within the present. Eyes large open, please.
Huma Bhabha
By April 13. David Zwirner, 537 West twentieth Avenue, Manhattan; 212-517-8677, davidzwirner.com.
Huma Bhabha’s first present of sculpture at David Zwirner, “Welcome … to the one who got here,” consists of seven sculptures — 4 figures and three heads — all radiating ruination. Sparsely put in within the two areas on the gallery’s floor ground, they present Bhabha decisively increasing each the means and expression of her work, though it ought to be stated that our troubled instances all however rise to satisfy her efforts. They appear implicitly antiwar, and, of their compressed types, the inverse of Thomas Hirschhorn’s equally wonderful “Pretend It, Pretend It — Until you Pretend It,” a sprawling extra of violence, destruction and superior expertise lately seen at Gladstone.
Rummaging by lifeless civilizations, Bhabha, who was born in Pakistan in 1962 and got here to america in 1981, conjures ravaged idols that we all know on sight. They’ve the four-sided rigidity of each enthroned Egyptian pharaohs and Transformers motion figures. Bhabha achieves this impact by defining limbs and torsos with deep incisions however hardly ever within the spherical. (They’ll recall to mind Brancusi.)
Two of the heads resemble hole helmets of pores and skin with torn openings for eyes; they present Bhabha sculpting in clay after which casting for the primary time in iron, for a uncooked, fiery floor. The immense head of the peg-legged large titled “Even Stones Have Eyes,” has been slashed and gouged with a particular viciousness, evoking one in every of Phillip Guston’s monstrous skulls. Would that this heroic horror might unseat William Tecumseh Sherman at Grand Military Plaza.
Extra to See
‘And Ever an Edge: Studio Museum Artists in Residence 2022—23’
By April 8. MoMA PS1, 22-25 Jackson Avenue, Queens; (718) 784-2086, momaps1.org.
In 1968, the Studio Museum in Harlem initiated a yearly residency program that offered a stipend and studio area for making new artwork, with, because the museum’s web site notes, “precedence given to artists working in nontraditional supplies.” This 12 months’s cohort of three younger members handily meets that formal criterion, as seen of their vigorous topping-off present, hosted by MoMA PS1 whereas the Studio Museum’s new constructing is underneath building.
Two of the artists create imaginative worlds from discovered supplies. The very first thing you see in a gallery of labor by the Haitian-born Jeffrey Meris is a big suspended sculpture, “To the Rising Solar,” constructed from dozens of outward-bristling crutches held along with C-clamps. The photo voltaic reference makes descriptive sense, although the piece additionally suggests a large coronavirus. Apocalyptic, trending Afrofuturist, is the vibe right here, within the presence of two silicone-cast human our bodies that appear to be melting, and a monumental collage referred to as “Imperial Strike” that catches a terrestrial Large Bang in progress.
A second various universe, this one a sort of magical backyard of work and sculptures assembled by Devin N. Morris, is extra recognizably earthly, with its photographs of landscapes and other people. However it’s formally much more unorthodox, combining customary artwork supplies (watercolor, pastel, oil paint) with scraps salvaged from Harlem’s streets: cube, mirror shards, electrical cords’ wires, bamboo reeds, silk blooms, nail polish bottles and fentanyl take a look at strips. Morris turns all of this right into a sort of walk-through city Eden of grit and delicacy.
The set up by Charisse Pearlina Weston feels extra like an easy sculpture show, however this work too has its twists and contortions. Weston’s main medium is obvious blown glass, typically slumped, collapsed or damaged, and, in some instances etched with barely readable photographs and phrases. Whereas staying summary it clearly alludes to authoritarian ways together with “broken-window policing.” And the work right here — organized by Yelena Keller, an assistant curator on the Studio Museum, and Jody Graf, an assistant curator at MoMA PS1 — alongside along with her 2022 solo on the Queens Museum, establishes her a exceptional expertise, and one absolutely arrived. HOLLAND COTTER
Sarah Grilo
By March 30. Galerie Lelong, 528 West twenty sixth Avenue, Manhattan; (212) 315-0470, galerielelong.com.
The painter Sarah Grilo (1917-2007) was born in Buenos Aires and spent most of her life in Europe. However a Guggenheim fellowship introduced her to New York Metropolis in 1962, and an eight-year keep right here remodeled her artwork, as demonstrated on this superb survey of little-seen work — “The New York Years, 1962–70” — organized by Karen Grimson.
Grilo arrived right here as a purely summary painter and stayed one for some time, because the 1963 “Inexperienced Portray,” with its brushy blocks of emerald and aquamarine, attests. However america, racially divided and headed towards warfare in Asia, was in a manic temper, and New York was New York, all the time jacked to the max. These environmental elements, together with an artwork world through which Pop was big and abstraction in retreat, shook up her work.
Her paint utility started to get lighter and looser however wired. And she or he started so as to add a brand new component: language, within the type of headlines lower from information magazines. These phrases and phrases — “Our heroes,” “Win, it’s nice on your ego” — filter up from tangles of paint. In 2017 Grilo had a memorable second with the inclusion of a portray within the Museum of Trendy Artwork exhibition “Making Area: Girls Artists and Postwar Abstraction.” The work is on view within the museum’s everlasting assortment galleries, and it’s nice to have a context for it on this fuller sampling at Lelong. HOLLAND COTTER
See the February gallery exhibits right here.
