The artists in this week’s gallery picks use location as metaphor and inspiration.

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1. Kapwani Kiwanga’s Continental Shift reflects on the hypothetical underground passage connecting Europe to Africa across the Strait of Gibraltar at Galerie Jérôme Poggi
2. James Hyde’s Ground “uses the flat field of painting as a topological arena that ties together the physical substance of painting and the ground on which it is laid, extracting spatial dimensions and new meanings from this relationship. In these increasingly direct works, he utilizes abstraction to break photography’s semantic hold on the way we construct an image of the world” at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles
3. Inspired by scenes from his everyday life, this entirely new body of work continues Nobuyuki Takahashi’s careful observation of place and distills from an undulating world a quiet sense of equilibrium at Rena Bransten Projects
4. The cycle of the destruction and rebirth of Detroit at Five Myles
5. Where Seonna Hong’s previous works focused on reckoning, forgiveness and ‘wishing I said all the things I didn’t say,’ If You Lived Here I’d Be Home by Now explores the possibilities of what’s to come. In the artist’s words, “My once melancholic and somber pieces have given way to a new kind of hopefulness.”  at Jonathan Levine Gallery
6. Mary Iverson, on her latest show You and Me in the Aftermath: “For many years, I have been inserting shipping containers and shipwrecks into pristine landscapes, inspiring conversations about the relationship between the environment and industrial activities. In my current body of work, I have brought the figure into the scene, adding another layer to the narrative.” at G. Gibson Gallery