Devon DeJardin "Echoes Of The Past" Opens This Week @ Albertz Benda In New York

Albertz Benda presents the second solo exhibition with the gallery by Los Angeles based artist Devon DeJardin. In this exhibition entitled Echoes of the Past, the artist has reimagined Old Master  portrait paintings, redefining a visual language for the traditional genre. DeJardin’s new paintings are the culmination of five years of his exploration into what the artist terms secular ‘guardians,’ who appear as central figures in his compositions. Comprised of geometric shapes assembled into  anthropomorphic forms, the guardians have a distinctly modernist feel in their tenuous balance between figure and abstraction: 20th century artists from diverse contexts including Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, and Yves Tanguy come to mind as significant inspiration.  

In Echoes of the Past, the artist delves further back across art historical eras, interpreting his portraits through the lens of Flemish Primitive and Italian Renaissance artists to the Dutch Golden Age and Spanish Romantic  masters. While classical portraiture throughout these epochs focused primarily on royalty and pinnacles of  society, DeJardin’s paintings conjure imaginary guardians that protect a wounded society.  

The cheerful themes of DeJardin’s earlier work have evolved into a darker, more limited palette, reinterpreting  choices by many of history’s greatest artists, including Goya, van Eyck, and Rembrandt. They are conceptual reflections of the era in which the artist has lived as DeJardin’s generation has never known life in a world without war—from the Gulf War and the War on Terror to the ongoing conflicts in the Ukraine and the Middle East. DeJardin metaphorically and physically mines the darkness in society to create his work, using shading and light to subtly tease figures from abstract shapes. The orb-like eyes of his figures appear lighter in tone, signifying a purity of spirit and hope for the future.

As always, his paintings are notable for their meticulous rendering. His figures are so sculptural that they almost seem to emerge from the wall. DeJardin goes straight to the canvas, working without a maquette to depict the figure and background in an organic, liberatory process. In recent years the artist has experimented with framing devices for these figures, including floral, architectural, or landscape imagery. In each of the new canvases, the background corresponds to the era from which the artist reimagined the imagery: six smaller works reflect the intimate and domestic scale of Dutch Golden Age paintings, while two larger vertical works lean on an Italian Renaissance tradition, complete with landscape and drapery surrounding the figures. The show serves as a testament to the enduring power of portraiture as a genre of storytelling, with each painting offering a glimpse into shared human experience across centuries. 

On view from March 7 to April 13 at Albertz Benda NYC. 515 W. 26th Street, New York, New York

Pipenco Lorena's Knitted Gowns Are A Delicate Homage to Her Mother's Post-Communist Immigration


photography by Kelli McGuire
creative direction and styling by Neptune Quek
set design by Lane Vineyard
makeup by Shoko Kodama
styling assistance by Madison Lynn
talent Millie Dunstan & Emma Deegan

The maternal determination to provide a life of opportunity for her post-Communist kin is woven with care into every stitch of Pipen Colorena’s knitwear gowns and slippers. Her newest collection is a delicate transmogrification of her family’s lived experience of immigrating from Romania to London, a push and pull between the pride and struggle of embracing a new chapter while mourning all that’s left behind.

Colorena takes inspiration from the creative exercises her grandmother developed for her as a child while her mother was away at work. After drawing a row of women in dresses on the page, her grandmother would challenge the young designer-to-be to find inventive ways of coloring and elaborating on them based on the various women within their community. Harkening those early mental souvenirs, a coquettish play with the memory of their softness, kindness, and flamboyant nature gives shape and dimension to each and every piece.

There is also a heavy dose of Romanian cinema and art from the 1970s imbued in the gowns, giving them a very personal sense of romantic nostalgia. Finally, to complement the elegant construction of finely knitted fabric, there are moments of conspicuous unraveling—a candid omission of subjection to struggle, the hardship inherent in the process of immigration and assimilation. It is an ode to the fortitude of a mother and a future generation made stronger by the crucible of passion and hardship.

 
 

Read Our Interview of Puppies Puppies on the Occasion of Her Solo Exhibition @ The New Museum →

Puppies Puppies stands against a pu

Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo, known by the pseudonym Puppies Puppies, is revolutionizing trans and Indigenous visibility through her critically-acclaimed conceptual works of sculpture and performance art. Despite a very genuine and personal embodiment within the work, an air of mystery once shrouded her identity as she initially insisted on a level of anonymity rarely exhibited by artists, particularly of her generation. In late 2017, however, this shifted with the very first reference to the artist’s gender transition taking place in her Green (Ghosts) installation at Overduin & Co. in Los Angeles. Kuriki-Olivo and her then-boyfriend lived in the gallery during the hours it was closed, leaving only traces of their existence during the hours it was open. Here, she taped two estrogen pills to the wall, pointing toward her gender-affirming course of hormone therapy—a subtle gesture that gently opened the door of visibility. Employing the mundane, everyday objects that surround her life is a hallmark of Puppies Puppies’ practice and readymades are one of her favorite ways to reference the art historical canon. An initial easter egg of visibility has since swung the door open to a state of consensual voyeurism in Nothing New, her current solo exhibition at the New Museum where the artist is occupying the Lobby Gallery with nearly constant access to her comings and goings via video surveillance, live stream access, and glass walls overlooking a recreation of her bedroom. Puppies Puppies also points to elements of her multi-ethnic indigeneity—Taíno on her father’s side and Japanese on her mother’s—with the inclusion of objects and spiritual practices that connect her disparate lineages in a form of what the exhibition’s curator, Vivian Crockett, refers to as a memoryscape. Crockett got cozy in bed for her interview of Puppies Puppies on the eve of the exhibition’s inauguration to discuss their creative collaboration. Read more.

Aryana Minai's Roses in a Garden of Ruins @ Allen & Eldridge in New York

 
 


text by Hannah Sage Kay

Pulped paper bricks chart a haptic course between Aryana Minai’s eight Life Forms (all 2023) on view at James Fuentes’ lower-level project space. This rather soft, somewhat squishy pathway opens onto the wall under each Life Form for a reflective pause—during which their material simplicity and repeated compositional structure nevertheless conjure a mysterious world of color, and texture, that enshrines, within decay, seeds of new life. 

When pressed into a thick mess of pulped paper on a wire screen, a discarded textile woodblock from Tehran produces the architectural configuration undergirding Minai’s intimately scaled vignettes. In a rich array of browns, oranges, muddy blues, purples, and an unexpected chartreuse, the water-based dyes that Minai mixes with recycled paper in a blender to create pulp rise to the surface with an effervescent luminosity that remains even after the water has evaporated and the paper dried. Amongst the low-relief pattern left behind by the woodblock, a central archway frames the translucent skeleton of a rubber plant leaf from the artist’s mother’s garden. In the hollow pocket of this orifice are remnants of torn paper collected from the floor of Minai’s studio—the veritable seeds of her work; predicated on use and reuse, growth and decay, they take on a dual significance. Not only reflective of the binary cycles of her material processes, the seeds also allude, however subtly, to family, home, and the charged state of women’s rights in her native Iran. The exhibition’s title similarly speaks to a slogan adopted by the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement: You may have burned our gardens but we kept the seeds! 

These visual and metaphorical allusions may be evident to some and obtuse to others, so it is rather Minai’s poetic material configurations, her imbrication of architectural and illusionistic space, her threading through of specific cultural morphologies into broadly accessible and yet deeply personal terrain that proffer an ensnaring mystery and, as such, sustained investigation.

Roses In A Garden of Ruins is on view through October 14 at Allen & Eldridge (James Fuentes project space).

Martyna Szczęsna Addresses the Challenge of Creating Art in An Ever-Gentrifying Urban Landscape @ Open Source Gallery in New York

In Martyna Szczęsna’s Spectre at Open Source Gallery, the artist has manipulated over 500 feet of nylon construction netting into an oversized ruched curtain, winding it through the KoKo NYC lot space. A playful embodiment of drama, opera and the challenges of securing hospitable space for art and creative expression in the ever-gentrifying urban landscape of this city. The blazing orange work will be on view all summer.

Martyna Szczęsna (b. Olsztyn, Poland) is a multi-disciplinary artist working with photography and sculpture. She is a graduate of the Cooper Union and completed her MFA studies at UCLA. Szczesna lives and works in Brooklyn. Select exhibitions include: ARRAY at Penumbra Foundation, If Rittenhouse– at Callicoon Fine Arts, Portrait of a Landscape at the Museo Sivori, BsAs, and Bronx Calling: The Third Bronx Biennial. Szczesna’s work has been supported by residencies at Yucca Valley Material Lab, Franconia Sculpture Park, HDTS Wagonstations, and The Watermill Center.

Spectre is on view through August 31st at Open Source KoKo NYC Lot at 440 19th Street, Brooklyn NY 11215.

Read Our Interview of Wynnie Mynerva On the Occasion of Their Inaugural US Solo Exhibition @ The New Museum →

Wynnie Mynerva looks into the camera wearing Heaven by Marc Jacobs

top and earrings: Heaven by Marc Jacobs

The question of original sin has no relevance in Lima-based artist Wynnie Mynerva’s Book of Genesis. For their inaugural American solo exhibition curated by Bernardo Mosqueira, the artist will be presenting The Original Riot, opening tomorrow (June 29) at the New Museum with a site-specific installation that constitutes the largest painting ever to be presented by the institution, as well as a sculptural element that was surgically removed from the artist’s own body. The readaptation of both mythology and anatomy is central to Mynerva’s quintessentially plastic life and practice; one that finds itself in a constant state of radical change. Painting and performance are a fluent oscillation of being as demonstrated in their 2021 exhibition Closing to Open at Ginsberg Gallery in Madrid when the artist had their vagina sutured three quarters of the way shut, allowing only for the flow of their bodily fluids to function as necessary. The corporeal roles of masculine and feminine are constantly being subverted and abstracted in works that bleed, scratch, beguile, and thrust their way through the patriarchal canon with an air of wanton ecstasy. The binary creation myth was recently addressed in Mynerva’s first UK solo exhibition Bone of My Bones Flesh of My Flesh at Gathering London earlier this year, introducing many for the first time to the role of Lilith in Judaic and Mesopotamian folklore as Adam’s first wife who was created from the same clay (equal in nature) as her husband. Her pitiable fate varies from one myth to the next, but the creation of a second wife (Eve) from his rib remains consistent. The artist’s decision to remove Adam’s body from their own for The Original Riot demonstrates the power to readapt our personal realities at will. It is a reflection of the agency that we unwittingly deny ourselves when we allow allegory to shape our internalized perspectives. The following interview was conducted in Spanish and is presented here in its original form, followed by its English translation. Read more.

Lanise Howard and Robert Peterson Present "Reflections" @ albertz benda New York

 
Robert Peterson [American, b. 1981]. Soulful, 2023. Oil on canvas. 72 x 54 inches | 183 x 137 cm. Image courtesy the artist and albertz benda, New York | Los Angeles. Photo by Thomas Müller.

Robert Peterson [American, b. 1981]. Soulful, 2023. Oil on canvas. 72 x 54 inches | 183 x 137 cm. Image courtesy the artist and albertz benda, New York | Los Angeles. Photo by Thomas Müller.

 

Albertz benda New York is presenting Lanise Howard and Robert Peterson’s Reflections. Both artists are known for their exquisite paintings of people of color. Given the lacuna of positive representations of people of color in the history of art, both artists contribute to remedying this historical erasure, creating works that reveal their sitters as beautiful, strong and complex beings. The American painter Barclay L. Hendricks (1945 – 2017) is acknowledged as an inspiration to both artists and their work may be read in this lineage of figurative painting.

 
 

Howard creates open calls for models to pose for photographs as source material, and often constructs scenarios in which her sitters wear specific garments in staged poses. Her work positions contemporary African American people as protagonists in paintings that can be read as allegorical and that are often set in ethereal landscapes that imagined a world without colonialization. Howard’s backgrounds range from ombre amber or stormy dark skies to verdant green flora, presenting the earth as a magical protagonist.

Peterson is known for his depictions of young men seen in the reality of their daily lives: do-rags, white tanks, and low-slung jeans, which are often described in pejorative terms in popular culture, are elevated in his work. He focuses, as he says, “on the beautiful thing that is black life”. Working from short photo shoots—he keeps them brief so that they feel natural rather than staged—he uses people from his local area as sitters to create poignant and confident portraits of contemporary black life.

Reflections is on view through July 8 at albertz benda, 515 West 26th Street New York, NY 10001

Seonna Hong Presents MURMURATIONS @ Hashimoto Contemporary in New York

Seonna Hong, Super Position, 2023. All images courtesy of Hashimoto Contemporary.

Seonna Hong, Super Position, 2023. All images courtesy of Hashimoto Contemporary.

On June 10, Hashimoto Gallery is set to present Murmurations, a solo exhibition by Los Angeles-based artist Seonna Hong.

In her latest body of work, Hong revisits larger figurative themes, relational dynamics and human connection. Looking to these themes as a way of understanding how people are emerging from the pandemic, Hong seeks to reconnect with the world around her.

Finding inspiration in murmurations (defined both as the way in which birds flock together, as well as the utterance of low continuous sounds) and its two distinct meanings, the artist is searching to find ways to connect and communicate. Through this journey, Hong came to understand that human connection is needed not only for contentment, but also for mental and physical well-being. The paintings in Murmurations reflect Hong’s attempt to connect with forgotten landscapes, encouraging us to rediscover the world around us.

Murmurations is on view through July 1 @ Hashimoto Contemporary, 54 Ludlow Street New York

 
 

Highlights from Frieze New York Celebrate Politically & Historically Centered Artworks

NAN GOLDIN Gold, 2016 Archival pigment print, in frame60 1/4 x 116 1/4 x 2 1/2 inches (153 x 295.3 x 6.4 cm)Ed. 1/3© Nan Goldin Courtesy the artist and Gagosian

NAN GOLDIN
Gold, 2016
Archival pigment print, in frame
60 1/4 x 116 1/4 x 2 1/2 inches (153 x 295.3 x 6.4 cm)
Ed. 1/3
© Nan Goldin
Courtesy the artist and Gagosian

text by Jennifer Pjieko

“It’s a lot of work, but I’m free now. I’m free!” Artist ektor garcia gestures to the logo on the T-shirt he’s wearing—a black staffer shirt with FRIEZE spelled out in white letters across the middle. garcia had taken some artistic liberty with the art fair-and magazine-branded top, blacking out the letters I and Z with marker, leaving only FREE legible. 

 
ektor garcia, cadenas perpetuas, 2023 (detail)Welded steel, hand bent, handmade steel hooks, found metal, glazed ceramic with copper wire, horseshoe nails, and crochet leather. Dimensions variable.

ektor garcia, cadenas perpetuas, 2023 (detail)
Welded steel, hand bent, handmade steel hooks, found metal, glazed ceramic with copper wire, horseshoe nails, and crochet leather.
Dimensions variable.

 

We were standing around inside Cedric’s, the top-floor café of Frieze New York, underneath garcia’s installation la llorona, a hanging mobile of mixed-metal woven teardrops that illustrated the indigenous Mexican mythical figure of La Llorona: The “weeping woman” drowned her hungry children after their father, a wealthy Spanish man, abandoned the family, and she sheds tears of mourning for them for eternity. Here, as part of Frieze’s curated program, her shimmering, coppery chains gathered into teardrops evade the heavy, matte black net that is there to catch them and float over us as we get together for cocktail hour (we’re not sure which one we are part of at that moment; the restaurant, like Day 1 of any VIP preview day of an art fair, hosts a cluster of many overlapping celebrations at once, bringing cheers and the pop of champagne bottles to crowds from opening to closing hours. 

garcia’s literal self-expressive wardrobe let everyone know his state of mind: After opening three concurrent presentations across New York City (here at Frieze; at the nearby NADA art fair, at the San Francisco gallery Rebecca Camacho Presents’s booth, and at Artists Space in Tribeca, as part of the group exhibition Clocking Out: Time Beyond Management in addition to the recently closed solo exhibition esfuerzo at James Fuentes on the Lower East Side, the artist was finally free to rest for a little bit. la llorona also comes into the fair along with a wave of other politically and historically centered artworks featured—and celebrated—in the commercial context of having lots of very expensive work on offer (or, even more likely, no longer available). While the past several years of global art fairs have been characterized by glossy abstraction and mirrorlike installations, the booths on view inside The Shed on the West Side’s High Line made space for more nuanced, sensitive forms of art. Company Gallery presented a trio of abstract paintings by Tosh Basco, which could have been an element of the artist’s poetic, fragile movement performance at the new Water Street Projects, a curatorial initiative in the Financial District, a few nights earlier; Michael Rosenfeld dedicated his gallery’s entire booth to works made in 1973, the seminal year when Roe v. Wade made its way through the U.S. Supreme Court; we are now living through the devastating consequences of its reversal. At Alexander Gray’s booth, Bethany Collins’s Antigone: 1998 / 2015 (2023), is a diptych of works on paper, which looks at race and language through handwritten parts of Sophocles’s ancient play. Tehran’s Dastan Gallery presents a survey of the past century of Iranian women artists, across a variety of challenging mediums and forms; Gagosian devotes its entire booth to Nan Goldin, who recently signed with the mega gallery; her heartbreaking images recall pain and loss as much as the golden sunlight that bathes her figures. Playful works, such as Jean-Michel Othoniel’s lustrous strands of pearls of every color at Perrotin offer moments of flirtation and light. 

As the sun started to give a little bit in the late afternoon-to-early evening hours, the multi-floored crowd began to contract up and down inside The Shed; soon it would be time for happy hour everywhere. ektor took a couple of Dobel-stamped poker chips (clever objects to be “cashed” as free-drink tickets) for his friends and collaborators outside the party. It was time to celebrate together. 

FRIEZE NEW YORK 2023, installation view Artwork © Nan GoldinPhoto: Sebastiano Pellion di Persano Courtesy Gagosian

FRIEZE NEW YORK
2023, installation view
Artwork © Nan Goldin
Photo: Sebastiano Pellion di Persano
Courtesy Gagosian

Tim Brawner Presents "Glad Tidings" @ Management in New York

 
A close-up portrait of a blue, blurry face, panicked behind a steering wheel. Tim Brawner, The Escape III, 2023 © Management, New York City

Tim Brawner, The Escape III, 2023 © Management, New York City

Tim Brawner’s Glad Tidings —featured at Management— is equally motivated by a documentarian impulse and the submission to the fantastic and weird, where saturated psychedelia defamiliarizes the compositional playing field.

Brawner’s extreme interest in portraiture yields exaggerated, almost humorous depictions of faces and objects alike, through which affect is pushed to the point of alienation.

When discussing the content of his paintings, Brawner refers to concepts of “the weird” and “the eerie,” specifically in the way Mark Fisher invokes Lacanian jouissance in his discussion of H.P. Lovecraft’s brand of weirdness, where the sublimation of negativity is accomplished through the transformation of “an ordinary object [which causes] displeasure into a Thing which is both terrible and alluring, which can no longer be libidinally classified as either positive or negative.” This serves as a basis for Brawner’s subjects as he pursues content with ongoing consideration for the failure of empathy. 

These images pulsate, stirring a bizarre drama where the audience confronts painted subjects that almost become real. There are passages where Brawner selectively pushes maximalist details, overexplaining the formal aspects so that they become hypnotic.

Text by Reilly Davidson

Glad Tidings is on view through June 18 at Management 39 E Broadway, 404

 

Nicodim Gallery Presents DISEMBODIED Group Show in New York

DISEMBODIED, curated by Ben Lee Ritchie Handler, builds and continues conversations around the violence, ecstasy, and epiphany within out-out-body experiences as-seen from the perspective of those on the ground—the leaps of faith we take to believe those who say their souls depart while their bodies remain. The works in the exhibition cover a wide swath of allegorical and tangible disembodied states, including the spiritual, the telegraphic, the psychedelic, the dissociative-induced, artificial intelligences, and alien encounters. The exhibition includes works by Jeanine Brito, Joshua Hagler, Ho Jae Kim, Rae Klein, Yoora Lee, Laurens Legiers, Tali Lennox, Jorge Peris, Mosie Romney, Nicola Samori, Krista-Louise Smith, and Nadia Waheed.

DISEMBODIED is on view through March 9 @ Nicodim Gallery 15 Greene Street New York

Emily Mae Smith "Heretic Lace" @ Petzel Gallery In New York

In Emily Mae Smith’s solo exhibition, Heretic Lace, on view at Petzel Gallery in New York, the pensive figures in the artist’s staggering and ominous paintings, who often take the form of humanoid brooms (descendants of the sweeper in Disney’s Fantasia, 1940), are trapped, blood on hands, in the rattling cage of art historical motifs. They look out over the horizon, expressionless, faceless, against a large moon or the amber hued glow of a window, with their bristled limbs in entropic environs. Flowers slightly wilted, a woodpecker gnashing at the timber, carnivorous felines, and hordes of mice invade the grain. As startlingly beautiful as they are, the paintings in Heretic Lace take on darker, psychosexual overtones (as compared to Smith’s past forays into the syntax of pop)—a distant famine, the memory of plagues and the torment of the artist in a zeitgeist at war with itself and haunted by the memories of the past. Formalities contradict themselves like brilliant paradoxes of form and perspective. There is a twisted surrealism that begs you to sweep all your nightmares under the rug.

Emily Mae Smith “Heretic Lace” is on view at Petzel Gallery until November 12th. All artwork courtesy of the artist and Petzel, New York

A Rich, Somber Undercurrent: Read Our Interview Of Alannah Farrell →

Alannah Farrell — the sexual awakening to colors and hues, to kinks and dreams. This queer, trans-identifying artist from rural New York gracefully depicts the real bodies of their queer scene in atmospheric paintings, the magic of which stems from the shapely emotional nuances of each subject. Here, their struggles are visible, but so are the celebrations. Though currently represented by Harper’s and Anat Ebgi, they've had an enduring journey to their current career, beginning as a child yearning for a creative outlet, from babysitter, to cashier, to model, to dungeon domme, and later, Cooper Union graduate, allowing their art to leap from the confines of their bedroom to their first show at The Painting Center in New York. With the vibrant bodies and milky pigments enclosed in these works, Farrell expresses the multifaceted layers of their subjects’ queer identities, supporting the normalization of all expressions of beauty and power within the LGBTQI+ community. We see these queer bodies and faces through a lens unfocused on the taboo fascination that society perpetuates. It is one that instead centers the subject and how they wish to be seen and heard. Undoubtedly a New Yorker, Farrell pursues these intimate scenes and perseverances throughout the city with heart. They allow us, the viewers, into these blissful connections. We sat down with Farrell to discuss their expansive ideas surrounding queer identity in art, the fluidity of life, and their newest solo exhibition, I Want to Thank you, at Harper’s Gallery in New York. Read more.

FOOD For Thought: Gordon Matta-Clark’s Restaurant For Artists Changed The Culinary Discourse →

In 1971, artists Gordon Matta-Clark, Carol Goodden, and Tina Girouard opened FOOD, a landmark New York restaurant on the corner of Prince and Wooster Streets in SoHo. In the urban wilds of a not-yet-fully developed or gentrified Lower Manhattan of the early ‘70s, FOOD was a revolutionary laboratory for fresh sustainable cooking and unusual culinary collaborations. Artists like Robert Rauschenberg and John Cage created meals at FOOD. Although never realized, Mark di Suvero had plans to serve dishes through the windows via a crane—he would then instruct diners to eat with tools such as hammers and screwdrivers. As a hub for young artists in the nascency of their careers, the menu was affordable and simple, which created a unique atmosphere of camaraderie and community. Although FOOD, in its original incarnation, only lasted three years, the restaurant became a fabled institution and paradigmatic lesson for the possibility of food at the intersection of art.

Originally published in Autre’s Biodiversity Issue, FW 2021

Naima Green Performs Rituals Of Intimacy In "A Sequence for Squeezing" @ Baxter St In New York

A Sequence for Squeezing is a solo show of lens-based work by 2021 Baxter St Workspace Resident Naima Green. Featuring new and recent photographs, as well as a recent video work, the exhibition continues Green’s practice of collaborating with her community to create intimate portraits and record personal scenes of play, exploration, and pleasure. Focusing on the experiences of Black, Brown, and Queer individuals, the exhibition builds on and expands the themes of Green’s previous work, exploring water as a site for pleasure and freedom, the sensuality of enjoying food, and the rituals of intimacy. 

On the back wall of the exhibition, a giant vinyl double-exposed image of the Rockaways serves as the  backdrop for Green’s video work The Intimacy of Before. The Rockaways — and water — are an important  reoccurring site in Green’s life and work, and water is featured across much of her new work, even if as a  subtle suggestion. At Baxter St, the Rockaways frame Green’s intimate video self-portrait, a sensual  exploration of self the artist shot in her apartment during the early days of the COVID pandemic. The audio  from the video, including the sounds of waves and Green’s own voice, becomes a soundtrack to the exhibition  as a whole, asking, as she does in the video, “Is it too much to want a tender and complete intimacy?” 

A Sequence for Squeezing is on view through July 23 at 126 Baxter St

Moving Past Giants: Read Our Interview Of Artist Devon DeJardin →

Devon Dejardin sits in front of a couch, arm resting on the cushion, looking into the camera.

text by Stella Peacock-Berardini

Devon Dejardin’s exploration of art may have started from the humble encouragement of a sugar daddy psychic, but it has grown into a journey of healing and reflection that continues to drive his success in the art world. Within his cubist-influenced style of work, Devon Dejardin, an LA-based painter, processes through the elements of life demanding answers to all of its most urgent lingering questions. Dejardin employs his work as a way to unpack and understand the entropic nature of the universe through his lens of belonging, going deeper into the storms he's faced that brought him to the clear sky of his creation. This 29-year-old, self-taught artist originating from Portland juggles depression and anxiety within the creative realm and expresses his gratitude for the therapeutic release his art supplies to himself and its viewers. His newest project, Giants dives into this preconceived idea of spirituality and shifts its narrative to his ideas surrounding the guardians of the world, those that protect, aid, and grow in strength and vulnerability within the boundaries of our world. His art, huge in size, mimics the ideas of giants and how they are commonly perceived, yet it develops further than that. These feelings, or challenges in life, such as sadness or grief materialize as giants, but represent the deception life can have on us all. We sat down with this artist to explore his influences, conceptions around his work as a whole, and his first New York solo exhibition at Albertz Benda. Read more.

Read Our Interview Of Sintra Martins The Precocious Saint Of Parsons →

A model in a beaded dress of primary colors lays on a bed with blue eyeshadow on and stares into the camera.

Sintra Martins may be from Los Angeles, but her designs are quintessentially New York and they are taking the city by storm. The recent Parsons graduate interned for Thom Browne and Wiederhoeft before launching Saint Sintra in 2020, presenting her first collection at NYFW in 2021, and her sophomore FW22 collection was just presented at NYFW earlier this year. In the last two years, her sculptural designs have walked the line between costume and ready-to-wear with S-curved horsehair filaments, sheer maxi skirts, colored feathers, English shetland tweeds, sparkles and bows, and so much more. Not only has she established herself as a master of disparate materials who takes inspiration from far and wide, but her designs have become instant favorites to everyone from Olivia Rodrigo, to Sydney Sweeney, Willow, Cali Uchis, and Kim Petras. We asked Martins to style model Memphis Murphy for a special editorial and sat down to ask the emerging designer a few questions about her process. Read more.

Keith Rivers Curates A Chameleonic Group Show In Courage Before Expectation @ FLAG Art Foundation In New York

Courage Before Expectation is a group exhibition curated by former NFL linebacker turned art patron Keith Rivers. Inspired by quotes that intersect Rivers’s life in sports and his love of contemporary art, the exhibition explores the pursuit of dreams and unlikely trajectories. In these works we see artists taking perilous leaps of faith like they were Mikhail Baryshnikov—born to soar with grace and land with a quiet sense of control. All of them masters of varied media, what connects these artists is not so much material as it is mutable. We see sculptures from Sonia Gomes who left her career as a lawyer to become an artist, and from Thaddeus Mosley who was formerly a postman. There are paintings by Etel Adnan whose practice didn’t start until the age of thirty-four due to early admonishment from her mother. Known primarily for his representational paintings that challenge centuries of Black erasure within the canon, here we see rare photographs by Kerry James Marshall that possess his signature conundrum wherein the the figure is ever so slightly lit, creating an abjection that exemplifies a common African American experience while opening our eyes to a world of nuance. We bear witness to Philip Guston’s infamous transition into figuration, a perilous career risk at the time, which is so easily forgotten given the eventual triumph of its outcome—such that his previous abstractions are hardly remembered. This is a curation of artists who manage to clear the channel, so to speak, allowing any residual negative self-talk to recede dutifully into the background, leaving space for their most authentic expressions in the foreground. Rivers feels a kinship with these artists who show us how to be chameleonic without pretense or artifice. They change form at will with aplomb because it is their nature to do so.

Courage Before Expectation is on view through June 4 @ FLAG Art Foundation 545 West 25th Street, 9th Floor New York

 
 

Read Our Interview Of Zoe Chait And See Her Solo Exhibition Honoring The Late Sophie →

Zoe Chait projection reflected, 2017-2020 Projections on aluminum panels 9:18

Zoe Chait
projection reflected, 2017-2020
Projections on aluminum panels
9:18

Capturing Sophie, the late, hyperkinetic pop sensation whose tragic and untimely death shocked and saddened millions around the globe, is like photographing the flight of a butterfly. The prodigious and pioneering musician and producer of avant garde electronic music began her career anonymously making cosmic waves with singles like “Bigg” (2013) and “Lemonade” (2014), worked closely with a number of artists from the notorious PC Music label, and in 2017 came out as a trans woman. Developing an intimate connection with Sophie at such an inflection point was the genesis of Zoe Chait’s Noise, a solo exhibition of portraits that capture an individual who has just emerged from the cocoon with a new and fleeting lease on life. Here and gone in a flash, two artists forge a bond under painfully short exposure. A loving elegy, besotted with adoration. Chait bears witness to the weight of the sublime and the value of the present moment. Read more.

Niki de Saint Phalle: Structures for Life @ MoMA PS1 In New York

From the very outset of her career in the 1950s, Niki de Saint Phalle (American and French, 1930‒2002) defied artistic conventions, creating works that were overtly feminist, performative, collaborative, and monumental. Her first major US exhibition, Niki de Saint Phalle: Structures for Life features over 200 works that highlight Saint Phalle’s interdisciplinary approach and engagement with pressing social issues. Innovation was key to Saint Phalle’s process: from beginning to end, she envisioned new ways of inhabiting the world.

Saint Phalle also engaged with the politics of social space in her work. Addressing subjects that ranged from women’s rights to climate change and HIV/AIDS awareness, she was often at the vanguard in addressing pressing issues of her time. In particular, her work to destigmatize HIV/AIDS is highlighted through works related to her illustrated book AIDS: You Can’t Catch It Holding Hands (1986).

Niki de Saint Phalle: Structures for Life is on view through September 6 @ MoMA PS1 22-25 Jackson Avenue, Queens