Tag: Jonathan Agin

Group Shows

Tappeto Volante’s rich conversations

Contributed by Jonathan Agin / The fifth annual “La Banda” show at Tappeto Volante Projects in Gowanus features relatively new paintings, sculptures, and works on paper by over three dozen mostly local artists. Though no designated theme governs the show, it was forged in the pandemic era and celebrates New York’s creative and communal spirit. Populating a cozy space with such a density of art practices can’t help but generate new discourses across mediums, subjects, and generations. 

Solo Shows

Anne Wehrley Björk: Where sharks once thrived

Contributed by Jonathan Agin / Formed by erosion over millions of years, Chaco Canyon was the site of the Ancestral Puebloan people’s sprawling urban center. Buildings erected there in the eleventh century were among the tallest in North America until the nineteenth. These remote, enigmatic ruins, marked on early Spanish maps, were rediscovered in the modern era by US Army surveyors after the Mexican-American War. Today they are part of the Navajo Nation, which covers parts of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. When Anne Wehrley Björk was a child, her family used to take her camping there. As demonstrated in “Lost Canyon,” her new show of paintings at Margot Samel, she has never forgotten the landscape.

Solo Shows

Andrew Shea’s domestic enchantment

Contributed by Jonathan Agin / Andrew Shea’s work in recent years has evolved from geometric, high-contrast scenes of city bustle to impressionistic vignettes of home life where hues interact with considerably more freedom. Steeped in a quiet domesticity, the paintings in “Grocery Slips” at JJ Murphy Gallery seem idealized only at first glance…