This week’s gallery picks explore the intertwined nature of environment, memory, and culture.
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1. Observations in Nature is bound thematically by the metaphor of the shark. Influenced by philosopher Slavoj Zizek’s analysis of the film “JAWS” (1975), Abdul Mazid’s conceptualization of the shark refers to society’s tendency to insist upon the “othering” and villification of people, ideas, and practices at Shoshana Wayne Gallery
2. The Chosen Form of Your Destroyer is focused on a new series of mixed media works by Ian Francis depicting the coexistence of beauty and destruction in modern society at Lazarides Rathbone
3. My Dakota captures not just the state of South Dakota’s changing economy and landscape but also a personal catharsis. Rebecca Norris Webb came to understand the series as a means of addressing her grief for her brother—“to try to absorb it, to distill it, and, ultimately, to let it go.” at The Cleveland Museum of Art
4. Robert Minervini’ Invisible Reflections surveys six monuments in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Each of the six paintings depicts one individual monument, but interwoven with this imagery are white line drawings which represent the memorial’s historical framework. Minervini’s work invites the viewer to become more engaged with the rich history of San Francisco, with the hope that it will inspire further inquiry into our surrounding environment at Rena Bransten Gallery
5. Inspired by Argentinian author Adolfo Bioy Casares’ 1940 novel, The Invention of Morel, the exhibition Memory Burn observes mortality and death in relation to recording devices. The title of the exhibition refers simultaneously to unforgettable visions burned in the mind and to digital burning used to archive memories.
at bitforms
6. FAILE, a Brooklyn-based collaboration between artists Patrick McNeil and Patrick Miller, raises questions about our relationship to consumer culture, religious traditions, and the urban environment by blurring the boundaries between fine art, street art, and popular culture at Brooklyn Museum
