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| Art We Saw This Fall | Art We Saw This Fall |
| (17 days later) | |
| Downtown | Downtown |
| Through Dec. 4. Paula Cooper Gallery, 521 West 21st Street, Manhattan. 212-255-1105; paulacoopergallery.com | |
| In her early, politically sharp-edged work, the American Conceptual artist Sarah Charlesworth (1947-2013) was a level-eyed teller of history. By photographing and visually editing the front pages of daily newspapers, she recorded what was happening in the world, examined how the information was being delivered, and suggested how we, as consumers, were receiving it. | |
| In “Modern History,” the absorbing mini-survey at Paula Cooper of work from the predigital 1970s to the early 1990s, we see some of Charlesworth’s editing strategies. “Historical Materialism: Chile Series (for O.L.),” from 1977, documents events in Chile, from the election of the leftist Salvador Allende to the military coup of Augusto Pinochet, through front pages of The New York Times, where the story changes placement and, by implication, importance. In “Movie-Television-News-History, June 21, 1979,” Charlesworth focuses on the assassination of the ABC television correspondent Bill Stewart by a Nicaraguan soldier by isolating a murky still from a video of the murder that appeared in American newspapers. Viewing the series in sequence turns us into violence-porn voyeurs. | |
| And “Herald Tribune, January 18-February 28, 1991” reprints the front page of one paper, as it appeared every day during the “Desert Storm” phase of the gulf war. Charlesworth deletes all text, leaving only pictures of political figures, unidentified soldiers and piles of weaponry. Without captions, we’re left with an aestheticized image of men playing war. | |
| If viewed as intended — slowly, sequentially — Charlesworth’s early work is some of the strongest and subtlest political art of its time. HOLLAND COTTER | |
| Downtown | |
| Through Dec. 4. Greene Naftali, 508 West 26th Street, Manhattan. 212-463-7770; greenenaftaligallery.com. | |
| Steffani Jemison, a Brooklyn artist on the faculty at Rutgers University, has a terrific solo show at Greene Naftali. | |
| A new video called “In Succession” provides a series of wall-filling close-ups on four men practicing some kind of human-pyramid routine, climbing and balancing on each other. Another projection, titled “Escaped Lunatic” (2011), shows men running and tumbling through urban streets. In “Broken Fall (Organic),” a 2008 piece presented on a monitor, a young man hangs by his arms from a tree branch until his grasp finally gives way. | |
| All this ought to seem joyful, maybe even comic, and perhaps it would — if this weren’t 2021, and those men weren’t African American. Given what we know of Black men’s lives, an endless arm-hang can have a whiff of hazing or even torture about it, as though Jemison’s young man is being tested rather than testing himself. Running and tumbling inevitably evokes avoidance and escape. Men climbing and grasping each other make us think of struggle rather than play. (Although “In Succession” is actually a riff on a 1931 New York Times report, of Black men who formed a human pyramid to rescue a white woman from a fire, then left without taking credit for their deed.) | |
| That these videos are by a Black woman makes Jemison’s show feel like an investigation into the state and fate of Black manhood, from someone who knows it firsthand but can also view it from a distance, across the gender gap. BLAKE GOPNIK | |
| Downtown | |
| Through Dec. 5. Fotografiska, 281 Park Avenue South, Manhattan. 212-433-3686; fotografiska.com/nyc | |
| Ruth Orkin’s most famous picture was staged in Florence. Learning from a young American student how Italian men ogled and catcalled women, Orkin posed her in a picturesque but slightly seedy setting, looking straight ahead with an uncomfortable expression as she passed a gantlet of male bystanders. Taken in 1951, the picture offers a feminist rejoinder to a celebrated Richard Avedon image made four years earlier, of a Dior fashion model standing in Paris’s decorous Place de la Concorde, as three appreciative but respectful young men stride by. | |
| Marking the centenary of Orkin’s birth, “Expressions of Life” documents the achievement of a trailblazing female photographer who, with her husband, Morris Engel, also made a charming movie, “Little Fugitive,” that foreshadowed the French New Wave. (A newly published monograph, Ruth Orkin: A Photo Spirit, offers a fuller survey of her work.) | |
| Orkin photographed celebrities, young lovers, fellow New Yorkers and inhabitants of the new state of Israel. But where she truly excelled was in her shots of children. Indeed, only Helen Levitt rivals her in that category. This exhibition features a delightful sequence, also from 1952, of three children playing cards, which was the only photographic group in the landmark “Family of Man” show at the Museum of Modern Art in 1955. | |
| In her best portraits, Orkin captured the child in adults as well. Along with a well known picture of a guffawing Albert Einstein, don’t miss a marvelous view of the photographer Robert Capa that reveals his irresistible boyish charm. ARTHUR LUBOW | |
| Downtown | |
| Through Dec. 4. Andrew Edlin Gallery, 212 Bowery, Manhattan. 212-206-9723; edlingallery.com. | |
| The artist Roy Ferdinand was a big deal in his hometown, New Orleans, where he showed with Barristers Gallery until his death, from cancer, at the age of 45 in 2004. He was also a favorite of the New York dealer Martina Batan. But the 28 shocking watercolor and marker drawings on display at Andrew Edlin constitute his first New York solo. Documenting an impoverished neighborhood at the height of the crack epidemic, Ferdinand filled the scenes he drew with malt liquor and automatic weapons. Young men pose with assault rifles while their elders panhandle or disconsolately wait for the bus; young women are generally depicted naked, and often pornographically, but sometimes they, too, pose with machine guns. | |
| What’s really astonishing, though, is Ferdinand’s mastery of detail. He was self-taught, which you can see in the tilt many of his drawings exhibit and in a slightly obsessive fondness for shutters, clapboard and other such excuses for parallel lines. But one unforgettable drawing, just over 2 feet by 3 feet, contains a dozen vividly realized human characters, four of them lying dead of gunshot wounds and two, in prison uniforms, sneaking across a roof. There’s a sameness about the faces — most of them have an expression of resigned detachment, if not traumatized numbness, whether they’re shooting someone or being shot themselves. But there’s also an extraordinary variation in their details, a distinct individuality to his subjects that makes their shared fatalism all the more unnerving. WILL HEINRICH | |
| Downtown | |
| Through Nov. 21. La MaMa Galleria, 47 Great Jones Street, Manhattan. 212-505-2476; lamama.org. | Through Nov. 21. La MaMa Galleria, 47 Great Jones Street, Manhattan. 212-505-2476; lamama.org. |
| For the artist Betsy Damon, the 1970s were a time for rediscovery: During that decade, she found the feminist movement, left her husband and came out as a lesbian. She also began performing by covering herself in small bags filled with flour and painting her body and hair white, with blackened lips. She called herself the “7,000 Year Old Woman” (1977-78) and walked slowly in a spiral while cutting open the bags with scissors, symbolically freeing herself from the burdens of patriarchy. | For the artist Betsy Damon, the 1970s were a time for rediscovery: During that decade, she found the feminist movement, left her husband and came out as a lesbian. She also began performing by covering herself in small bags filled with flour and painting her body and hair white, with blackened lips. She called herself the “7,000 Year Old Woman” (1977-78) and walked slowly in a spiral while cutting open the bags with scissors, symbolically freeing herself from the burdens of patriarchy. |
| Damon has been an eco-artist and activist since the 1990s. Her show “Betsy Damon — Passages: Rites and Rituals,” curated by Monika Fabijanska, spotlights her early feminist performances. Represented mostly by photographs and written recollections, they are radical relics of a time when many artists from oppressed groups were finding their voices through experimentation. Damon’s work seems almost like creative consciousness-raising. In “A Shrine for Everywoman” (1980-88), women were invited to write down their stories and place them in small bags, which were strung up like flags to demarcate a space of communion. | Damon has been an eco-artist and activist since the 1990s. Her show “Betsy Damon — Passages: Rites and Rituals,” curated by Monika Fabijanska, spotlights her early feminist performances. Represented mostly by photographs and written recollections, they are radical relics of a time when many artists from oppressed groups were finding their voices through experimentation. Damon’s work seems almost like creative consciousness-raising. In “A Shrine for Everywoman” (1980-88), women were invited to write down their stories and place them in small bags, which were strung up like flags to demarcate a space of communion. |
| It can be hard to grasp the power of Damon’s pieces secondhand, but what comes through is her embrace of vulnerability and commitment to community. She opened herself up and challenged others to as well — and the photos suggest that she succeeded. One picture shows a group of people watching her performance “Blind Beggarwoman” (1979-80) on Wall Street. They seem to regard the art with skepticism but are also transfixed, a reluctant audience unwilling to look away. JILLIAN STEINHAUER | It can be hard to grasp the power of Damon’s pieces secondhand, but what comes through is her embrace of vulnerability and commitment to community. She opened herself up and challenged others to as well — and the photos suggest that she succeeded. One picture shows a group of people watching her performance “Blind Beggarwoman” (1979-80) on Wall Street. They seem to regard the art with skepticism but are also transfixed, a reluctant audience unwilling to look away. JILLIAN STEINHAUER |
| downtown | downtown |
| Through Nov. 21. Reena Spaulings Fine Art, 165 East Broadway, Manhattan. 212- 477-5006; reenaspaulings.com. | Through Nov. 21. Reena Spaulings Fine Art, 165 East Broadway, Manhattan. 212- 477-5006; reenaspaulings.com. |
| Born in Mexicali, Mexico, Reynaldo Rivera was in California as a teenager in the mid-1970s. There, working on fruit farms and in canneries, he found a camera and taught himself how to use it. He settled in Los Angeles and began photographing the local rock music scene, but found his most absorbing subject in the city’s drag bars, particularly those that drew a Latino audience. | Born in Mexicali, Mexico, Reynaldo Rivera was in California as a teenager in the mid-1970s. There, working on fruit farms and in canneries, he found a camera and taught himself how to use it. He settled in Los Angeles and began photographing the local rock music scene, but found his most absorbing subject in the city’s drag bars, particularly those that drew a Latino audience. |
| “Kiss Me Deadly,” his New York solo debut at Reena Spaulings, is made up largely of black-and-white pictures of those bars and their performers: Miss Alex at the Silverlake Lounge; Melissa and Gaby at La Plaza, and Yoshi, the proprietor/star of Club Mugy’s. What distinguishes Rivera’s view of the performers is that he takes them seriously, lets them look as glamorous — as funny, gorgeous, too-much — as they wanted to be, and were. He’s not an outsider looking in, but an insider capturing a world he knows and loves. | “Kiss Me Deadly,” his New York solo debut at Reena Spaulings, is made up largely of black-and-white pictures of those bars and their performers: Miss Alex at the Silverlake Lounge; Melissa and Gaby at La Plaza, and Yoshi, the proprietor/star of Club Mugy’s. What distinguishes Rivera’s view of the performers is that he takes them seriously, lets them look as glamorous — as funny, gorgeous, too-much — as they wanted to be, and were. He’s not an outsider looking in, but an insider capturing a world he knows and loves. |
| It’s good that he did capture it, because the club life of that time — the 1980s and ’90s — is mostly gone. Gentrification, drugs and AIDS took it out. If you want to get a deep sense of it, I highly recommend a book of the artist’s work, simply titled “Reynaldo Rivera” and published in 2020. Edited by Hedi El Kholti and Lauren Mackler, it has many more pictures than in the show. It also includes valuable essays by Luis Bauz and Chris Kraus, and a lengthy email exchange between Rivera and the artist-performer Vaginal Davis, a vital veteran of the history that this photographer has preserved. HOLLAND COTTER | It’s good that he did capture it, because the club life of that time — the 1980s and ’90s — is mostly gone. Gentrification, drugs and AIDS took it out. If you want to get a deep sense of it, I highly recommend a book of the artist’s work, simply titled “Reynaldo Rivera” and published in 2020. Edited by Hedi El Kholti and Lauren Mackler, it has many more pictures than in the show. It also includes valuable essays by Luis Bauz and Chris Kraus, and a lengthy email exchange between Rivera and the artist-performer Vaginal Davis, a vital veteran of the history that this photographer has preserved. HOLLAND COTTER |