Rose Quartz Surprise: Kathleen Ryan at KARMA Gallery

What it is:

A giant sea-shell made from rusted car parts and THOUSANDS of rose quartz crystals (the entire inside).

Why it matters:

Check out the video below! This is a private video I made 2 years ago (for your eyes only!) that walks through her previous exhibition of huge “rotting fruit” made from thousands of precious stones. This new "seashell" is certainly quieter than the fruit, but it invites and equal wonder of investigation. Pro tip: Notice how the size of the original car informs the size of the shell. It looks like there  have been VERY few (if any) modifications to the individual car parts (just rearranging them).  In other words, the size of the car informs the size of the shell and therefore creates a satisfying dance between the original intent of the material and its current transformation that goes both ways. Don’t be afraid to get close to check out all those crystals!

Kathleen Ryan at KARMA Gallery, 22 East 2nd St, ends 10/28/23 —>Exhibition Link

Solid Lightning: Ugo Rondinone @ Gladstone Gallery

What it is:

Three 22-foot-tall bronze “lightening bolts”. Each is a bronze 3D-scanned "enlargement" of small twigs!  Amazing from a distance (I haven’t seen anyone walk by the gallery who didn’t do a double-take and jump inside) and even more thrilling to walk under these massive day-glow-yellow lightning sculptures.

Why it Matters:

Click the image below to view the secret non-public YouTube video link  that features Ugo's last exhibition. Skip to the 6-minute mark to see the section on Ugo Rondinone. It'll also give you a cool quick history leading up to this moment.

But there’s an even bigger secret! Click here for an article on Ocula.com that features photos of Ugo's studio about 18 months ago. By coincidence, it was at an early stage of planning for THIS exhibition, so it shows some full-scale models that he was working on. Wow!!

FYI: His studio is a converted Romanesque church in Harlem, built in the 1800's, with jaw-dropping stained-glass in the front living quarters and a massive studio in back that allows him to test his ideas at full scale. Unfortunately we can't visit, but W magazine did a cool photo-essay, linked below.

Above: Ugo Rondinone’s studio in Harlem. See a cool photo-tour in W Magazine here. Photos by Jason Schmidt for W Magazine.

Below is the 18-month-old photo I was talking about that has the "model" for the current show. See all the photos & the article on Ocula.com here. Though the article doesn't mention it, they happen to show his “mock-ups” of the lightening sculptures, which look like enlarged xerox copies on cardboard so he can test the size?  You’ll also find a photo of an original small “twig” in that article link, that I'm assuming is one that was 3D scanned and enlarged.

The above photos is from the article on Ocula.com

All to say:

1. Go see it

2. Learn much more about his studio and process in my zoom lectures and VIP tours!  Links: VIP tours here and the corporate zoom lectures here.

Ugo Rondinone @ Gladstone Gallery, 530 W 21st St, thru 11/9/23 —>Exhibition Link

Beautiful Glitches: Jacob Hashimoto @ Miles McEnery Gallery

What it is:

Jacob Hashimoto creates 3-D abstractions from hundreds (thousands?) of paper “kites”. Every footstep you take reveals new colorful patterns between multiple weightless layers of color and pattern. The whole exhibition is entered through a white cloud-like installation (below)! Don’t miss the smaller back room beyond the main space of the gallery for more.

Advanced Viewing:
Rules are literally made to be broken. Check out that yellow horizontal line in the image above, or the blocks of color below. For me, these “anchors” are the secret key to every work, because they are a subtle "foundation" that can be “broken”... like a stable launchpad into a buzzing world of colorful chaos.

Check out the exhibition link below for the official gallery images or watch this cool mini-documentary with Hashimoto talking about his work.

Jacob Hashimoto @ Miles McEnery Gallery, 511 W 22nd St, ends 10/21 —>Exhibition Link

The Space Between: Wolfgang Tillmans @ David Zwirner Gallery

What it is:
77 exceptional photographs by one of the most famous photographers in the world. And like all his exhibitions, Tillmans is OBSESSED with the space between those images. The walls are SO critical, that the artist spent over 2 weeks “living” in the gallery to decide on the exact size of each image (often testing many variants) experimenting with their exact placement and height on the walls, and even altering the architecture of the gallery itself. Everything matters - the exact sizes, groupings, location, wall color, and whether or not it’s framed. To see this exhibition is to consider the “object” of the photograph and the air in the room, as much as the images he captures.

Advanced viewing:

In every image, Tillmans leaves a section of the paper “blank”, - sometimes it’s an even border around the whole photograph, or (my favorite) when it’s a large chunk of one edge like in the above. He’s said that he always wants the viewer to remember that it’s a piece of paper.  Consider both paper and image simultaneously usually has a pay off.  For example in the image above, notice how the white "blank" on the bottom is echoed in the white line of the "wall" within the image, and that the white of the "wall" in the image is different than the white of the real wall in the gallery. The t-shirt plays with these connections and overlaps.   know it sounds insane, but point is: in real life, there’s a quiet visual poetry that always expands beyond the image. So let your attention widen more than your usual experience with photography.

My favorite quote from the artist’s walk-through press presentation (thanks again for invite!) was in reference to one of the images above. He said: “The biggest images are not the most important - for example, the small portrait in the other room”. He then spoke about how powerful and important the content and images of a “postcard” is, even though it's so small.  It's a great reminder that you should pay even MORE attention to the smallest images in the exhibition.

For example: Below are 2 “standard size” photographs (the kind you get from a 1-hour-photo place), tare images of the orange light in New York due to the Canadian wild-fire smoke. Fun fact: The lower image one looks up, the upper image looks down.

Tillmans also mentioned that BECAUSE he cares so much about the space between his images, he asks for all his exhibitions to be lit evenly, often to the confusion of museum technicians who have been so trained on how to spotlight artwork. The point is: every element of this exhibition asks you to consider the world between the photographs as much as the images themselves. 

I mean, all this is just a huge bonus.  He is ALSO my favorite photographer of all time before you even start talking about the walls and installation and lighting, so check the exhibition link below for great representations of the images themselves.  He has a way of transforming the most mundane subjects into something worthy of sustained appreciation. 

Wolfgang Tillmans @ David Zwirner Gallery, 525 & 533 W 19th St, ends 10/14 —>Exhibition Link

Bending Reality: Fred Eversley @ David Kordansky

Above: The gallery when empty (courtesy of the gallery).

82-year old artist Fred Eversley first worked for NASA before a tragic car accident shifted his focus to creating highly-labored optical sculpture (that story and a look at his insane process is in the 11-minute video below).  His NEW work on view through this Saturday is bigger than ever. I just wrote an article about it on Design Milk, but long story short:  These are solid resin sculptures measuring 7-9 feet tall. If you go alone, you're missing the most exciting part of the show!  Each sculpture also functions like a fun-house-mirror lens that distorts other viewers in the room.  So, with friends or strangers, don't see it alone.

My 2 photos on a recent visit with my wife Jane, exploring the distortions. 

Bonus: In the above photo, check out the 2 people taking a picture of us (top left) and the family with 2 kids reflected on bottom right. Every sculpture is simultaneously a thing to look "at", a thing to look "through", and a thing to see what's "behind you".

Fred Eversley @ David Kordansky Gallery, 520 W 20th St, ends 6/10 -->Exhibition Link

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