Author: Lisa Yin Zhang

The sight-lines that criss-cross Mary Manning’s work are reminiscent of, well, ambient music—the apt title of the exhibition. In the titular photograph, a pair of foreshortened forearms reach out to photograph a flower garden so sveltely pretty that it almost looks like a picture itself. Wait, is it? The picture planes don’t entirely cohere. Another work, titled Rubric,… Continue reading Mary Manning, “Ambient Music” @ Canada (Apr 14th — May 21st, 2022) [TheGuide.art]

Before Renee Cox turned toward fine art, she spent years in fashion photography, modeling and design—a background that’s immediately relevant to the graphic, bold and charismatic works on view in “Soul Culture” at the newly opened Hannah Traore Gallery. Cox combines both analog and photographic techniques to create many-limbed portraits set against matte-black or shimmering… Continue reading Renee Cox, “Soul Culture” @ Hannah Traore Gallery (Apr 14th — May 28th, 2022) [TheGuide.art]

The painter, printmaker and sculpture Oliver Lee Jackson was also an educator, activist and member of the Black Artists Group (BAG) in St. Louis, Missouri. It’s a testament to his achievements that his works on view at Andrew Kreps, which span from the 1970s to today, are utterly confident abstractions. This isn’t to say that… Continue reading Oliver Lee Jackson @ Andrew Kreps Gallery (Mar 25th — May 7th, 2022) [TheGuide.art]

Zak Kitnick’s “The Weather” is centered around a series of industrial-material sculptures that resemble, at once, works by Donald Judd and Lego bricks: metal cylinders of different heights are set on warm wood bases. Despite their trued edges and well-tuned aluminum knobs, the works seem to operate through free association—including with titles like Winter, Spring, Summer,… Continue reading Zak Kitnick, “The Weather” @ C L E A R I N G (Mar 24th — May 8th, 2022) [TheGuide.art]

If Sam Bornstein’s dreamy and soft-spoken paintings have a subject, it’s the mystery of proximate unknowability in a city like New York. “Variety Lofts,” which inaugurates Charles Moffett’s new space in Tribeca, nods to the city’s architecture and artistic history. The title, inspired by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, evokes a sense of life in close vicinity: a… Continue reading Sam Bornstein, “Variety Lofts” @ Charles Moffett (Mar 12th — May 7th, 2022) [TheGuide.art]

The universal, according to Leidy Churchman, begins with the specific. “New You,” an exhibition of new paintings and monotypes at Matthew Marks, is as good a beginning as any. We have reproductions of course workbooks, paintings of animals, branches of cherry blossoms and purely abstract works with a talismanic quality to them. I initially read… Continue reading Leidy Churchman, “New You” @ Matthew Marks Gallery (Mar 11th — Apr 23rd, 2022) [TheGuide.art]

You’ll leave Elaine Reichek’s second solo exhibition at Marinaro, “MATERIAL GIRL,” with a slapdash bachelor’s in art history. An artists’ artist, Reichek has thrown a little bit of everything in this prolific show, which includes 50 works made only in the last few years, and spans both floors of the gallery with painting, embroidery, text,… Continue reading Elaine Reichek, “MATERIAL GIRL” @ Marinaro (Mar 5th — Apr 9th, 2022) [TheGuide.art]

In “The Hands of Strange Children,” his first solo show with James Cohan Gallery in New York, Christopher Myers treats the subject of six 19th-century revolutionaries: Wovoka, Nongqawuse, Nat Turner, Hong Xiuquan, Te Ua Haumene and Alice Lawkena. He uses the linear and color-saturated vernacular of children’s books (the artist is the son of young-adult… Continue reading Christopher Myers, “The Hands of Strange Children” @ James Cohan (Mar 4th — Apr 2nd, 2022) [TheGuide.art]