Here are our picks of the six must-see shows in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood this season, from the Art in America Guide to Chelsea.
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“Home Life” at Matthew Marks Gallery
Image Credit: Charles Ray: Clothes pile, 2020, painted aluminum, 5 7/8 by 34 3/8 by 32 1/2 inches; at Matthew Marks Gallery. ©Charles Ray, courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery Through Mar. 20
Nayland Blake, Alex Da Corte, Thomas Demand, Lucian Freud, Robert Gober, Nan Goldin, Ken Price, Charles Ray, and Peter Fischli/David Weiss
Domesticity is the theme of the group exhibition “Home Life,” conceived during the ongoing pandemic. Taking its title from a drawing of the same title that Lucian Freud made during the first winter of World War II, this show reflects the many forms the domestic has taken. Highlights include Charles Ray’s sculpture Clothes pile (2020), Alex Da Corte’s painting Helter Shelter (2020), and Robert Gober’s wall-mounted vitrines Window, Curtain, Matches (2020).
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Honor Titus at Timothy Taylor
Image Credit: Honor Titus: Brownstone Waltz, 2020, oil on canvas, 60 by 48 inches; at Timothy Taylor. Through Mar. 27
“For Heaven’s Sake”
Honor Titus’s dark, jewel-toned canvases romanticize current and former pastimes such as a sock hop, tennis matches, a waltz, a game of cards, kissing, and lounging on the grass. Observational in approach, these flat, fragmented street views imbued with nostalgia capture fleeting feelings of loneliness, as figures appear isolated, just beyond the viewer’s reach.
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David Goldblatt at Pace Gallery
Image Credit: David Goldblatt: On the corner of Commissioner and Eloff Streets, 1979, vintage gelatin silver hand print, 11 inches square. ©David Goldblatt, courtesy Pace Gallery and Goodman Gallery Through Mar. 28
“Strange Instrument”
South African photographer David Goldblatt, who died in 2018, captured arresting images of apartheid and the subsequent social conditions that still prevail in his home country. Curated by South African artist and activist Zanele Muholi and held in collaboration with Yancey Richardson Gallery, the exhibition includes more than 60 prints dating from the early 1960s to 1990, divided into groupings to reflect Muholi’s connection with Goldblatt as teacher, mentor, and friend.
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Jeffrey Gibson at Sikkema Jenkins & Co.
Image Credit: Jeffrey Gibson: WHAT WE WANT IS FREE, 2021, acrylic on canvas, glass beads, and artificial sinew; at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. Through Apr. 17
“All Good Fires”
Jeffrey Gibson obscures the lyrics from iconic American pop and dance music of the 1980s and ’90s with dizzyingly colorful geometric patterns. Testing the boundary between form and typography, the Mississippi Choctaw-Cherokee artist’s densely compact hand-beaded works allude to the struggles faced by marginalized communities. While the show centers on Gibson’s paintings, it also features dolls, a video, and two new punching bags.
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Boyle Family at Luhring Augustine
Image Credit: Boyle Family: Demolition Fire Study with Lock and Trivet, 1989, mixed media, resin, fiberglass, 48 1/8 inches square; at Luhring Augustine. Through Apr. 24
“Nothing is more radical than the facts”
Making virtually anything a subject of their multimedium practice, the late Mark Boyle, Joan Hills, and their children, Sebastian and Georgia—known collaboratively as the Boyle Family—viewed art as a limitless, open-ended exploration. This show marks the family’s first New York–based solo presentation in more than 40 years. Highlights include a selection of earthworks, or “earthprobes,” made between 1969 and 1990, which, at 6 feet square, serve as studies of select areas of the earth’s surface.
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Susan Weil at Sundaram Tagore Gallery
Image Credit: Susan Weil: Early Landscape, c. 1958, acrylic on canvas, 52 by 52 inches; at Sundaram Tagore Gallery. Courtesy of Sundaram Tagore Gallery. Through May 29
“Now, Then, and Always”
An artist who came of age in the New York School in the 1950s, among Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Cy Twombly, and then husband Robert Rauschenberg, Susan Weil stood out for her exploration of movement and space through figurative painting. This exhibition features more than 70 years’ worth of work including a selection of 1950s landscape paintings, pieces from the “Blueprint” series (1949–2020), and related archival images.