This week’s exhibitions have a confined and restricted feel at first glance – but are they?

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1. Lari Pittman’s compositionally dense works play with the social and current realities of today, with an interest in ornamentation and surface, and draw on the legacy of history as told through the Western canon of painting and the applied arts at Regen Projects
2. Images of fantasy goddesses are hidden within Siggi Eggertsson’s densely patterned walls, ceiling and floors in his latest show at Spark Design Space
3. Yayoi Kusama’s I Who Have Arrived in Heaven at David Zwirner
4. Sandra Chevrier’s series “cages” is about women trying to find freedom from society’s twisted preconceptions of what a woman should or shouldn’t be. These women encased in these cages of brash imposing paint or comic books that masks their very person symbolizes the struggle that women go through with having these false expectations of beauty and perfection as well as the limitations society places on women, corrupting what truly is beautiful by placing women in these prisons of identity. By doing so, society is asking them to become superheroes at Reed Projects
5. “Burning Chair,” Takashi Ishida’s most recent work, was created by shooting one frame at a time to produce a “moving image” of drawing animation, in which a natural line propagates itself like a wave. Ishida drew on a wall and floor made of concrete with chalk, then sprinkled water over his drawing to erase the chalk lines. The water dried out and disappeared, creating a repetitious image; the use of such malleable materials on concrete surfaces only emphasizes the image’s generation and disappearance at Taka Ishii Gallery
6. Themes of authority, control and power feature heavily in both the technique and content of John Tsombikos’ latest show, commenting upon political and social frictions while presenting a progressive transition from graffiti into an unforgiving body of new work at Lazarides