Solo Shows

Solo Shows

Joy Episalla’s radical photography

Contributed by Adam Simon / Lately I find myself wondering what impact the ubiquity of cellphone cameras is having on the practice of fine-art photography. As frustrating as it might be for the serious photographer to see everyone and their cousin constantly taking and posting pictures, one salient effect could be a rising inclination to explore the limits of what defines a photograph. There has been a resurgence of interest in photograms and camera obscura for some time now, and Joy Episalla’s current show of works labelled ‘foldtograms’ on view at Tibor de Nagy are even further removed from the idea of capturing an image.

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Solo Shows

Nora Griffin’s defiant valentine to New York

Contributed by Zach Seeger / Nora Griffin’s ostensibly playful, jangled paintings, on display at Fierman West, reflect not only a galvanizing appreciation of the moment but also a deep understanding of art history and its connection to the contemporary zeitgeist. There is a sheer, crude brilliance about them, and it is inspiring.

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Solo Shows

Robert Yoder and the art of being alone

Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / In his beguiling new show of abstract paintings, drawings, and collages at Frosch & Co., Robert Yoder elegantly demonstrates a truth of late modern art: that an object found and isolated, or visual representation shorn of context, is no more derivative or inferior than a given moment in time is subordinate to one that preceded or followed it. What makes it original is the artist’s unique choices in presenting it to the world – and, by implication, the singular experiences and insights that informed them.

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Solo Shows

Gary Petersen’s Populuxe abstraction

Contributed by Patrick Neal / Full of bright and brimming lines and shapes, jumbled with quirky geometric forms and zippy colors, Gary Petersen’s paintings are giddy and uplifting. They bring to mind all manner of fun – vacation, travel, cartoons, toys, television, Creamsicles, candies, fruit slices and braided rag rugs, the flamboyant bills of toucans and pelicans. More deeply, his large abstract paintings exude a retro, utopian vibe that marries the hard-edge abstraction of late modernism with some of the quirkier strains of twentieth-century design.

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Solo Shows

Sister selves: Sasha Gordon and Maud Madsen

Contributed by Margaret McCann / In Sasha Gordon’s “The Hands of Others” at Jeffrey Deitch and Maud Madsen’s “Daisy Chain” at Marianne Boesky, fleshy females are pressed on the picture planes as if between corporeality and social stress. All are self-portraits, but the figures read more as types performing hidden allegories.

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Solo Shows

Louis Osmosis’ gleeful despair

Contributed by Jacob Patrick Brooks / Titled “PLEASE IT IS MAKING THEM THANKS:),” Louis Osmosis’s debut solo show at Kapp Kapp Gallery in Tribeca feels like a 1,000-piece puzzle that’s been dumped on a table. Everything fits together, but it’s not immediately clear how.

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Solo Shows

Edith Schloss’s deep cheer

Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / As the title “Blue Italian Skies Above” suggests, walking into the exhibition of Edith Schloss’s paintings now at Alexandre Gallery produces a kind of pastoral contentment. But don’t be fooled into thinking she was a shallow, acquiescent Pollyanna. Lurking in that casual lightness is a distinct quality of mortality and limitation.

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Solo Shows

Maureen McQuillan: Beauty in rigor

Contributed by Adam Simon / In the neighborhood of abstract painting, Maureen McQuillan’s backyard – reflected by works on view at McKenzie Fine Art until May 15 – features process-based or system-based painting. Loosely defined, this is painting for which the process of its making is its primary subject and the finished painting is understood as evidence of that process.

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Solo Shows

Russell Maltz: Radical thrift

Contributed by Adam Simon / One of Russell Maltz’s singular achievements is to demonstrate how easily utilitarian objects and materials can be transported, Cinderella-like, into the alchemical realm of fine art. This is partly a property of the materials themselves: the symmetry, weightiness, and economy of products meant for construction. “Russell Maltz: Painted/Stacked/Site” on view at Minus Space in Dumbo, through July 30, with an additional nearby storefront installation and a slide show depicting found sites of construction material.

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Solo Shows

Zach Seeger: All glory is fleeting

Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Not many good contemporary painters fully embrace sports. The subject is burdened by daunting precedent (George Bellows) and mild cliché (Leroy Neiman). But this century, as social media have enabled athletes to reveal and fans to probe the people behind and beyond the moves, sports have acquired greater social and political resonance, sending a stronger demand signal to artists.

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Solo Shows

Claire Seidl: Unbounded in time

Contributed by Tom McGlynn / Claire Seidl’s contemplative works are closely aligned with the Abstract Expressionist/Existentialist ideal whereby the painter must be eminently present in order to access and transmit the sincerity of experience. Her paintings are not history bound, however, but rooted in the perennial quest for a very personal gesture unbounded.

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