Reframe is a monthly column in which contributor Sam Falb discusses timely openings to view in New York. Each edition offers commentary on the latest exhibitions, performances, and installations. Dynamic and ever-evolving, the content reflects the fluidity of the market it travels through.
This month’s edition features a variety of emerging talent, mixed media, and galleries that have traversed various models ranging from pop up, to residency, to one-weekend extravaganzas. It was also a treat to learn from these artists and curators. Their visions range from capturing the future of their medium and a long career ahead, to a retrospective that charts historical trends and asserts important themes about our society writ-large. While a flurry of fairs, events, parties, and afters begin to take shape in the fall-winter calendar, these shows coax in a season rife with flavor and excitement for the blustery (but creatively stimulating) months to come.
1. Gratin Gallery: Lorenzo Amos (October 24-November 25)
Visiting Lorenzo Amos at his East Village studio-in-transition (one of Gratin’s gallery spaces), it felt like there were many more people in the room than just the two of us and gallery partner Tarek. Amos’s work for his upcoming solo show relies on various characters from his life–friends, a tattoo artist, and others illustrated on large canvases amidst a sea of multi-color streaks and splashes. The works almost seem to be in movement, a demonstration of the artist’s capability to capture a moment in time with intimacy and real storytelling. After all, the 22-year-old artist already has quite the story to tell in his young life. Raised in the East Village, he spent his high school years in Italy before returning to New York (and the East Village), just blocks from the gallery that serves as his studio for this show among neighbors including KARMA, Half Gallery (where Max Karnig’s solo annex show gets an honorable mention), and MARCH. A fledgling collector with an army of influences and creative contemporaries at his side, Amos’s work will certainly be one to watch as he charts his path in New York’s art ecosystem.
2. LUmkA: Cult of Domesticity (October 19-Extended View)
On a panel of curators at Gonzo’s a few weeks ago, LUmkA curator Cortney Connolly recounted hosting a show (Basement Workshop Series) that could only be accessed by a single viewer, traipsing blindly down a ladder into a below-ground space with dimly lit, but nonetheless breathtaking works. It’s this commitment to unique exhibition opportunities that drives the LUmkA project forward. Returning with the multi-artist Cult of Domesticity show, the exhibition serves as a springboard for exploring gender identity and femininity via unorthodox means. Featuring Ilayda Celik, Ruby Chen, Nerieda Patricia, Eden Taff, and Sophia Nunez, the show is once again site-specific, this time to a bedroom. The works provide a collision of comfort and tension. New domesticity, à la “Trad Wives” and “Soft Girl Living” are explored alongside the notion of “what blossoms in a private space,” as the exhibition notes read. Is Chen’s chainmail work (Performance piece 001) capturing its female wearer or empowering her? What is the context behind the watery, blue eyes of Eden Taff’s subject in Untitled (Woman on Striped Bed) – satisfied repose or apprehension? Conversation is alive and well at this show, and viewers are invited to take part, piece by piece.
3. Visionary Projects: The Collective II (October 18-November 22)
Haylee Barsky and Blayne Planit are the forces of nature behind Visionary Projects. Their first group show in the very new, very cool Forsyth Street space will be (by this author’s humble estimation) somewhat of a culmination of the excellent offerings they’ve offered at various pop ups and their long-term residency at Anderson Contemporary in Tribeca. What sets Visionary apart is their democratic approach to building out a checklist: a combination of open call and artists in their proprietary members’ group Tableau build the world of most of their shows, ensuring a satisfyingly eclectic range of styles, perspectives, and price points (if you’re in the market). A global portfolio of artists ranging from the figure-oriented abstractions of Caroline Pinney, to the deliciously bright, red and magenta-forward canvases of Zach Zono will be on display. Stay tuned for more programming coming out of their space, where they host dinners, expert panels, and other events to bring the Visionary Projects community together.
4. 52 Walker: Baby Blue Benzo (October 4-December 21)
In the gallery’s thirteenth exhibition, multi-medium artist Sara Cwynar presents a new film (where the title of the show gets its name), alongside a series of related imagery dotted throughout the gallery space. The fresh production is a combination of new work with the folding in of archival imagery found in her archive. Inspiration is drawn from the 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR, the most expensive car to ever be sold at auction (no, really), as well as larger themes including late-stage capitalism. A visual cameo from Pamela Anderson is included, as well as a sonic cameo from a Charli XCX track. Throughout the film, representations of the artist, hired models, and crew are depicted as the car flashes in and out amidst dialogue and musical experimentation. Cwynar’s work with collage comes to the fore in the film as well – explosions, sculptures that could have been pulled from Greek antiquity, or a shot of Earth from the Moon, which are all players. The sonic landscape contains multitudes – think car sampling (revving and the like) as well as classical and pop music tracks. The dizzying interplay of details create a uniquely Cwynar-esque work, brazen, bold, and playfully thought-provoking.
The art of the magazine is not lost on MOCA, where curator Herb Tam (an artist unto himself) has expertly crafted an exhibition of Asian-American founded and operated periodicals from the late 1960s to the early 2000s. Highlights on view include HYPHEN, a magazine with quippy subheads and imaginative art direction that explores contemporary Asian American culture with wit and intrigue. Margaret Cho stares down from the cover of A. Magazine, which offered 90s-era cultural reporting and entertainment features for Asian American youth of the time. Essential motives of the exhibition include the exploration of how these magazines reflect this demographic through the decades. Tam shared that through the works, 90% of which are sourced from the museum’s archives, his team has been able to gather priceless oral histories from publishers, editors, and readers. Their experience in the manifold contexts of the Asian American experience contribute to the important storytelling of the show. The visual diversity of the works – experimental, forward for their time, and emblematic of a wide range of cultural moments through the timeline of these works solidify the show as a can’t miss during its fall-winter run.
6. Tina Kim: There is no place (October 3 – November 2)
Transport yourself into the misty, moody world of artist Kibong Rhee at his solo show with Tina Kim. Key themes in Rhee’s work, including water as an embodiment of the fleetingness of life and observation of the world as “inherently either blurry or chaotic” as he shares, are illustrated in fine detail. Dimly lit trees in shades of glistening, dewy emerald (Connectives- B, Connectives – C) stand alongside a range of graceful, gray tableaus of vegetation, almost photographic in quality. Rhee’s work often evokes a dreamlike serenity, where nature is at once tranquil and otherworldly. His use of transparent fabric and subtleties creates a feeling of depth and suspension that you can almost hear– the wash of morning rain outside one’s window, the soft rustling of branches in a deluge – as though each scene exists in a delicate balance between the seen and unseen. In this immersive experience, viewers are invited to lose themselves in a meditative exploration of nature’s ephemeral beauty, as Rhee masterfully layers textures, and invites the viewer into a quiet, introspective space where the boundaries of the physical world blur into something more ethereal.
7. SARA’S @ Dunkunsthalle: Pictures Generation: From Hallwalls to the Kitchen, and
Visiting SARA’S in her original Chinatown space, the possibilities of curator Sara Blazej’s tactful and whimsical practice were rather endless. You could have emerged into a Whitney Review launch party, or a particularly intriguing group show, with works hung alongside the great, wide windows and whitewashed walls of the space. Her legacy continues with a residency at Dunkunsthalle on 64 Fulton Street, where you’ll find the launch of her latest show, curated by Vera Dika. A continuation of the gallery’s multi-part focus on the early days of the Pictures Generation (a group of 1970s artists known for their critical analysis of media culture). The show is meant to serve as a snapshot of the ideologies and themes that this group of forward-thinking artists were raising in the cultural dialogue of their time. Among them, Gretchen Bender, Charlie Clough, Nancy Dwyer, Jack Goldstein, Robert Longo, Cindy Sherman, and Michael Zwack are included.
8. OCD Chinatown: Studio Dress (October 2-6)
For one weekend, artist K8 Hardy brought her wearable artwork, the Studio Dress, to OCDChinatown for a retail-meets-exhibit pop up display. “Are you alive?” a sales associate named Paris said to me with a smile as I walked into the space. Outfitted in one of the blue-striped, workwear-forward frocks both on view and for sale that evening, their question was a little jarring, a lot entertaining, and just as whimsical as the purpose of the night itself. “It’s Brooklyn grandma meets auto-parts store,” Hardy explained, dressed in a burnt-orange rendition of the striped look. She went on to share how her realization that workwear doesn’t really exist in the same way for women led her to designing this piece, available in a limited-run of 200. Missed the show? Keep a lookout for two works from an editorial shot by friend Cass Bird alongside Jenna Lyons, sporting a cheeky blonde wig, black frames, and the Studio Dress, to be dropped on Phillips Auction House’s digital platform for sale on October 8.
Words by Sam Falb
