Pattern Pulp

Tuesday's Gallery Picks




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This week’s gallery picks tell their stories through the human form.

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1. Dustin Yellon’s fascinating figures encased in glass at Richard Heller Gallery
2. Erik Jones clothes his figurative subjects in brilliantly patterned areas of color and geometry. Superimposing the graphic precision of these expanses against beautifully rendered portraits, the artist offers surrealistic images through the collusion of unexpected relationships at Thinkspace
3. For this exhibition, Todd James features his women: a colorful cast of warriors, sunbathers, sorcerers and girlfriends that have populated his work from its earliest years through today at Sandra Gering Inc.
4. Yinka Shonibare’s Making Eden interprets literally the notion of overthrowing the current social order in favor of an imagined “better place” at Blain|Southern
5. Recently, Richard J. Oliver’s portraits have crossed into the dark, brooding world of Grimm’s fairytales and surrealistic subjects that help convey the emotion and tragedy of our world’s children at Known Gallery
6. Combining stylistic elements from several different artists who cross multiple generations, George Condo’s portraits subvert traditional practice and only infrequently take as their subject real people; instead, the works often portray a fantastical assembly of characters derived specifically from the artist’s own imagination at Simon Lee Gallery

Custhom's Digital Embroidery




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I always look forward to emails from CUSTHOM. Their collections are unique and boundary-pushing, with meticulous technique and execution. You’re always left wondering, how did they pull that off and why don’t we have a store selling their products in the US? 

Their latest launch, Aves, presents an Otomi pattern rooted in Mexican tradition with modern edge. Digital embroidery’s been used and the final product exists on both wallpaper and fabric. What’s most impressive, to me, at least, is the tonal aspects using a single color- through careful overlap, the objects have a 3D feeling.

 

Visiting the Pérez Art Museum




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This past weekend, my husband and I swapped Manhattan’s polar vortex for Miami’s 85 degree sunshine. While we mostly sidetracked the South Beach Wine and Food Festival (except for this little gem), we took as much art, sand and sleep in as we could. On everyone’s recommendation, we visited the Pérez Art Museum, which was chock full of incredible work. The exhibitions were fascinating, vibrant and current. Sadly, I didn’t jot down all of the artists, but here are a few I was able to catch. Feel free to update the list.

1. Lynne Golob Gelfman 2. Ai Weiwei 3. Ai Weiwei 4. Unknown 5. Resting Section 6. Mojo Jojo from the Power Puff Girls series by Polly Apfelbaum 7. Ai Weiwei 8. Adrian Esparza 9. Adrian Esparza (close up) 10. Unknown

 

Tuesday's Gallery Picks




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This week’s gallery picks are for the misfits, challenging preconceived notions and calling for freedom.

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1. I Haven’t a Single Explorer on My Planet is OLEK’s massive installation with a full sized boat at its center as an expression and symbol of freedom at White Walls
2. KAWS’s work possesses a sophisticated humor while utilizing a refined graphic language that revitalizes figuration with big, bold gestures and keen, playful intricacy. at Galeria Javier Lopez
3. Richard Colman’s new works are vessels for structure and chaos. They are contemporary in both composition and palette and at the same time ancient Greek in narrative and figure at v1 Gallery
4. Paul Mavrides is from that last generation of cold war babies who had to fight for their right to party so the rest of us could, well, party. Self-taught and street smart, he’s still suspicious of the government Steven Wolff Fine Arts
5.  Misfit Island invites us to journey across territories that might be as well tropical or urban, celestial or earthbound at Museum of Contemporary Art in Rochechouart
6. Hassan Hajjaj’s confident, upbeat portraits of young women wearing  veils and djellabah while posing on motorcycles subvert preconceived notions of Arab women; his subjects are traditionally clad but defiantly modern, bearing bright smiles and the markers of youth, independence, celebration and fun at Taymour Grahne Gallery

Tuesday's Gallery Picks




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The artists in this week’s gallery picks brood about the intricacies of life and art in moody, muted palettes.

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1. Collaging ephemera collected from New York City sidewalks with artist Simon Evans’ own notes, the artist’s abstractions resemble dense, gestural almost-landscapes. Their expansive accumulation parallels the omnipresent digital cloud, archiving the trace elements of human experience to map a collective consciousness at James Cohan Gallery
2. George Condo has explored the relationship between the directness of drawing and the controlled methods of painting. His new works on paper are characterized by a dark brooding palette and a return to the figurative in subject matter at Skarstedt Gallery
3. Ross Chisholm distorts traditional portraiture with interventions and various manipulations – such as injecting geometric abstraction, combining figures from different centuries, or even updating a noblewoman’s fashion with 1980s punk accents at Green Art Gallery
4. For The Bestiary, Phlegm creates a modern bestiary within his own universe through an immersive and large scale installation in wood, clay and plaster. at Howard Griffin Gallery
5. Tiffany Wollman raises questions about the impact of the oil & gas industry and the Harper Government on fresh water in her latest work at AVALANCHE!
6. “Drawing is explosive, it is direct, and it is amoral.  Drawing is honest, and deceitful, it is raw, out of control, and it is measured, it is the pristine page of a notebook and also debris of the studio floor.  Drawing is the wellspring of the mind pouring onto the page – the most direct form of visual communication.” at Greenpoint Terminal Gallery

 

Wagner & M.M. Lafleur's Bird of Fortune




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Off the heels of President’s Day, we thought we’d share a collaboration that hits an interesting cultural mark. Miyako, the creative director behind the women’s workwear brand, M.M. Lafleur, along with mixed media artist, Mark Wanger, have teamed up to create an impressive piece of wearable art.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OuvQvAgMy4

Made entirely from collaged currency, Wanger’s peacock entitled, Bird of Fortune, is a departure from his regular editorial and media collaborations. Merging masculine and feminine along with capitalism and anarchy, this monetary creation is a beautiful deconstructed piece, filled with innuendos. The elegant wrap and flow obscures the obvious, spurring interest and intrigue. We’re big fans. What do you think? Click here to explore and/or purchase.

 

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