Author: Lisa Yin Zhang

“For me painting is a very spiritual thing,” Ching Ho Cheng told the Soho Weekly News in 1977. “It is the most spiritual thing I do.” Curated by Simon Wu, “More Life” is one of a series of solo exhibitions across David Zwirner’s New York and London locations. Organized on the 40th anniversary of the first 5… Continue reading Ching Ho Cheng, “More Life” @ David Zwirner (Sep 17th 2021 — Oct 23rd 2021)

At a time when the German Democratic Republic privileged Socialist Realism as a civic and artistic duty, the late Kurt Streubel was, as the title of this exhibition suggests, a devout formalist stubbornly painting Constructivist abstractions. His insubordination didn’t stop there. At the ripe age of 31, Streubel demanded—and amazingly, received—a “formalist pension” of 200… Continue reading Susanne Sachsse with Xiu Xiu, “I WAS A FORMALIST PENSIONER. AN ANTIOPERA” @ Participant (Sep 10th 2021 — Oct 17th 2021)

At nearly seven feet across, Life Boat (2021) is the largest painting in “Uncle,” Julia Rommel’s fifth solo exhibition at Bureau. A peach and red strip across the bottom left echoes a red and peach strip across the top right, as if the canvas were an unfolded triangle. Textured patches on the lateral sides of the work… Continue reading Julia Rommel, “Uncle” @ Bureau (Jan 29th 2022 — Mar 5th 2022)

Opera emanates from a speaker hidden in a silver-sheathed stool; double helixes climb up laddered railings; and a burst of gray matter, like a leaking brain, blooms from the corner of the gallery. The whole exhibition has a makeshift feeling, like a children’s science fair without the pedagogical wall texts, or the set of some… Continue reading Sahra Motalebi “This Phenomenal Overlay” @ Brief Histories (Jan 28th 2022 — Mar 12th 2022)

Color and composition are Matt Connors’s chief tools of the trade. In his new exhibition of abstract paintings at Canada, “Body Forth,” tweaking of largely just those two properties produces canvases dissimilar in size, palette, movement, density, and feeling. The show’s press release, which meditates on the 1971 film Minnie & Moskowitz, describes Connors’s “agonizing” process… Continue reading Matt Connors, “Body Forth” @Canada (Jan 27th 2022 — Mar 5th 2022)

Nick Relph works like a lonely cartographer, embarking on solo peregrinations around the city to chart a landscape that mutates faster than it can be perceived—a city that operates outside of  human time. Armed with a shoddy handheld digital scanner, he documents scaffolds, construction sites, building facades and advertisements. It is a world in motion,… Continue reading Nick Relph @ “TOTAL PLASTIC GRAVITY” @ Gordon Robichaux (Jan 16th 2022 — Feb 27th 2022)

The endless glass towers refract the sunlight off their myriad surfaces, though their interiors are dim save for the guards wielding flashlights. This is a city of optical illusions, a city of memory, a city sitting still for its future. Perspective is off-kilter; the architecture is skidding off its foundations, the cladding slippery. It is… Continue reading Tomasz Kowalski, “Psy-Trans” @ 15 Orient (Jan 15th 2022 — Feb 18th 2022)

This one’s for the connoisseurs. At John Seal’s “Picture in Picture,” you’ll find references to Claude Monet’s The Manneporte (Étretat) (1883), Henri Rousseau’s Exotic Landscape (1910) and René Magritte’s The Human Condition (1933–35). Magritte, of “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” infamy, might be the forefather of this exhibition; “the treachery of images” is certainly a fitting thesis here. Pictures of pictures have… Continue reading John Seal, “Picture in Picture” @ Harkawik (Jan 13th 2022 — Feb 20th 2022)