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

Tadanori Yokoo "Death And Dreams" @ Albertz Benda In New York

Death and Dreams is the new solo exhibition of Tadanori Yokoo. Featuring the complete 1980 series Back of Head, the 2010 series Falling Woman, and the Mystery Woman series started in 2016, Death and Dreams examines the fascinating progression of the artist’s dialogue with portraiture, repetition, and appropriation of Japanese and Western  popular culture over the course of four decades. On view from September 6 through October 13 at Albertz Benda 515 W 26th street New York

Tadanori Yokoo: 49 Years Later at Albertz Benda Gallery In New York

49 Years Later is the title of the solo exhibition of Japanese artist Tadanori Yokoo at Albertz Benda. The newly opened Chelsea gallery exhibits the artist’s never-before-seen paintings that focus on two major themes, the swimmer, an ongoing investigation of the artist, and the dancing couple, borrowed from old Hollywood.  The artist builds on his early iconography; he started his investigation of the swimmers in 1966, and becomes a plagiarist of himself. The crossing figures reappear in different color pallets, with different backgrounds and in different themes, their mouths aggressively distorted in the action. The position of the swimmers can be seen as a natural predecessor to the dancing couple. Similarly to the swimmers the dancing couple gets further lost in abstraction with each painting. The swimmers faces melt into each other while the dancers are covered in different patterned blankets.  49 Years Later will be on view until December 19, 2015 at Albertz Benda Gallery, 515 W 26th St, New York, NY. photographs by Adriana Pauly