“Afuya,” by Atta Kwami.
They dare to address deeper and more intimate questions of the female psyche. This is a daring show that warrants serious attention. [Melissa Stern] Through Dec. 4, Barbara Gladstone Gallery, 515 W. 24th St., 212-206-9300.
Erwin Wurm: Gulp
The Austrian artist Erwin Wurm has been making people laugh for some time. In the 1980s, he inaugurated the series “One Minute Sculptures,” in which he or his models posed in unexpected relationships with everyday objects, hoping viewers would question the very definition of sculpture. For instance, one person did pushups on teacups and another stuck asparagus up his nose. He has also mounted 26 pickles on white pedestals. While such antics might seem to preclude acceptance by the establishment, he is collected by the Guggenheim, the Walker Art Center, Museum Ludwig, Musèe d’Art Contemporain de Lyon and Centre Pompidou, and has exhibited successfully all over the world. It may very well be because one senses the seriousness of his intent. In this amusing exhibit, he uses simple materials and mundane objects to convey his ideas. There’s the “Telekinetischer Masturbator,” a sculpture of a man without arms, wearing a real shirt, looking hopeless, his dilemma clear, and the bright and funny “Me Under LSD,” which consists of one hand supporting a large yellow-
and-white foamy-looking cloud. But as one walks around the gallery smiling at all these lost and strange figures, a theme emerges of frustration and occasionally dangerous incongruity, like the video of a car upended and perched against a wall. And poor “Gulp,” a headless aluminum shape, stretched out on the floor, somehow entrapped by fabric. Everything and everyone are out of their element, overcome or ill-equipped to handle their circumstances. It’s kind of him to provide us with a good time, but we also walk away chilled by the consequences of so much in contemporary life. [Valerie Gladstone] Through Dec. 4, Lehmann Maupin Gallery, 540 W. 26th St., 212-255-2923.
Brushed free hand, his forms show less exactitude of design than a flair for accumulating rhythms. Surfaces range from the brushily opaque to transparent veilings, but it’s Kwami’s jostling hues that animate the depths of his canvases; as tapestries of color, they are full of subtle climaxes and ebbings of rhythm. The 6-foot-tall painting “Tikpo,” for instance, draws one’s eye to its center through a series of concentric zones. At the canvas edges, a rim of transparent yellows— vibrant over darker greens—surrounds two stolid horizontals of nearly opaque white, which turn sandwich a core of deep, washy blue-greens. Across these climb ethereal verticals of transparent ultramarine, while a dense, opaque patch of cerulean blue holds below. Each of these movements, while freely drawn, is weighted by color. The artist has mentioned the influence on his work of jazz and West African weavings, and both are apparent in his paintings’ fanciful designs. A subtle mischief is evident, too. Many paintings here have contrarian moments: a small white square pinched between columns of darker hues; a singularly thin line passing just halfway across a field of white. Most contemporary abstract painters, ranging from the late Agnes Martin to Robert Ryman to Sean Scully, have honed a more sophisticated attack, focusing on a particular conceptual approach or material aspect of paint. Kwami appears to enjoy, innocently and intensely, the sheer personalities of color and shapes—an interest he shares, with appealing lack of ceremony. [John Goodrich] Through Nov. 27, Howard Scott Gallery, 529 W. 20th St., 646-486-7004.
Thomas Nozkowski: Recent Work
In an interview included in the catalog accompanying an exhibition of his recent paintings and drawings at Pace Gallery, Thomas Nozkowski talks about the whys and wherefores of the work, about the mutability of perception, the mysterious dynamic between artist and viewer, and how smoking pot helps in tolerating aesthetic blind-alleys. Mentioning his “systematic, formalistic” canvases from the 1960s and ’70s, Nozkowski describes them as bringing “trouble [to] no one’s eyes.” For those of us who have followed this artist’s droll brand of abstraction over the last 30 years or so, it’s difficult to imagine a Nozkowski painting that isn’t trouble. Trouble is, after all, why we’re drawn to the work. Nozkowski’s images never stop pulling at our eyes, at our capability to pin down the very real sensations embodied within their quizzical arrays of errant geometry and furtive biomorphs. Each painting is based on a tangible thing or event, embodying (as Nozkowski has it) the “great mystery of individuality.” Forget for a moment that, say, the eight mischievous triangles ensconced in “Untitled (8-137)” or the lurching diagrammatic monolith in “Untitled (8122)” are impossible to decipher as literal signifiers of this-or-that object or narrative. What matters is the unprecedented level of specificity in which they’ve been concentrated as pictures. Embedded within their crystalline structures and abraded surfaces is an encompassing and contradictory range of lived experience. A Nozkowski is, in its own deadpan way, as maddeningly enigmatic as a prime Vermeer. Not that Nozkowski is on that level—
Atta Kwami: Fufofo (Coming Together)
Atta Kwami is a painter and a native of Ghana. He also has a doctorate in art history, which begs the question: Are his canvases—which are vibrantly colored, geometric abstractions—spontaneous impressions of the sights and textures of his homeland? Or are they a bit more premeditated, perhaps the conscious updating of cultural indicators? No matter; the 13 paintings in his second show at Howard Scott teem with their own kind of raw, authentic energy. Built up of multiple bars and occasional triangles of exotic color, Kwami’s canvases boast a full palette, with primary colors predominating against milder greens, browns and ochres.
“Untitled (8-122),” by Thomas Nozkowski. November 10, 2010 | City Arts
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