Using the landscape as a jumping off point for lush abstractions in this week’s gallery picks.

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1. IN MEDIAS RES is a chronicle of José Parlá’s life, beginning with his childhood and including his extensive travels around the world. Through choreographed, painterly works, the artist creates impressions of life-altering moments that have impacted his art making process at Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery
2. David Johns’ work combines fine art training with the traditional teachings he learned as a child and the Dine philosophy of life by which he lives. The symmetry of David’s paintings reflect this harmony and balance; the colors and textures he creates reflect the beauty of the land from which he comes at Zane Bennett Gallery
3. A look into the brief but critical period in Helen Frankenthaler’s career during 1962–63, when she “composed with color” rather than with line, resulting in the freer compositions that came to exemplify her long and prolific career at Gagosian Gallery
4. David Kinsey’s “Cushion of Memory” takes cues from the likes of the Sequoia National Park — near his home on the west coast — to create deep, abstract landscapes at Library Street Collective
5. Angelina Nasso’s presents a new group of oil paintings inspired by the lush forest setting of upstate New York where she lives and works. Her use of vibrant color and abstract forms is a vehicle for her continued study of the notion that all things come about from unity by means of adaption at McClain Gallery
6. Sue Williams’ work has long been known for combining themes of gender politics and the body. The exhibition features some of Williams’ earlier anthropomorphic paintings from the late 1990s leading to current works painted during the last seven or eight years, moving from the untidy, abject visual play on the body and bodily functions, to paintings which address traumatic geopolitical and environmental events at James Cohan Gallery