Lorna Simpson, Detroit (Ode to G.) (2016), via Art Observed

Lorna Simpson’s Salon 94 exhibition speaks volumes with only a few shades and a handful of images on view.  Echoing throughout the gallery space’s small confines, her skeletal, eerie patterns contribute to a cohesive vision throughout the exhibition.  Despite consisting of paintings of a variety of sizes and of a combination of media even across the surface of one piece, the artist displays a unity in terms of her finely tuned, yet free-roving style.  The pieces themselves display an amalgamation of printed photographs, playing against spatters and blots of ink against a gradually altered background, providing a formal and thematic unity despite its disparate visual cues. (more…)

Jimmy DeSana, Shoes (1979), all images via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed

Unexpected at first, Salon 94’s pairing of historic works by Jimmy DeSana and Hanna Liden’s new body of work pushes a refreshing outlook for how photography can operate in terms of manipulating both reality and perception of the body. Culling works from distinctly separate eras and cultures, both DeSana and Liden made their paths to New York to pursue artistic careers. The first from mid-west and the latter from Sweden, they had never had a physical encounter.  Yet aesthetic and thematic parallels in their works are uncanny, tracing similar investigations into the displacement and manipulation of bodily elements in space, creating bizarre, occasionally otherworldly arrangements. (more…)

Alexis Rockman, Cervid Cervacles (Jacob Riis Beach, Queens) (2015), via Salon 94

Alexis Rockman’s work is expressly involved in the correlations between image and ground, material and subject, often pulling from the biological intersections of human and animal, flora and fauna, or land and water, that define the landscapes of modernity.  Shifting this focus to a more microcosmic level, the artist has opened a show of drawings of New York City wildlife, a project that heightens his sense of delicate relations between nature and its inhabitants, on view at Salon 94. (more…)

Tiger Tiger at Salon 94 (Installation View)

Tiger Tiger is the current summer group exhibition at Salon 94 Bowery, on view through August 21, 2015.  The fittingly titled show brings together fifteen artists, whose works explore the ease of tropical landscapes, and the seemingly perfect equilibrium of wild life. Works boasting ample color spectrums speak to simple yet ecstatic rhythms of island life, while elsewhere a distinctive composition of flush tropical wilderness wins out.  Distinctively foreign to New Yorkers, elements from these tropical destinations blossom into depictions of dazzling animals, plants or landscapes, contrasting the city’s heavily industrialized and overpopulated dynamic just outside the gallery space. (more…)

The New York Times has published a profile on Salon 94 owner Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, and her quiet influence on the contemporary art landscape in New York.  “The interesting thing about Jeanne is how involved she is in the ‘becoming’ of an artist’s creations,” says artist Terry Adkins. (more…)

Linda Yablonsky discusses art curation on the set of Richard Gere and Susan Sarandon’s new movie, Arbitrage, in which works by several contemporary artists including Ryan McGinley, Donald Baechler, Marilyn Minter, Adam McEwen and Huma Bhaba, make an appearance.  Gere plays a hedge-fund mogul art collector. The filmmakers focused on believability: in addition to choosing the building which was a former home of Jean-Michel Basquiat, the film borrowed work from Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn of Salon 94 Gallery and others.  (more…)

Jayson Musson is laughing at us.  Since his first three-minute video was recorded over two years ago, Musson has been offering well-founded criticism of artists and the art world through the caricature of Hennessy Youngman on his Youtube channel. In an explanation of “How to be an Artist”, his alter ego Hennessy Youngman explains the fool-proof formula for artistic success: “be white and be ambiguous”.

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All installation views of The Blue Period via Salon 94.

In his installation The Blue Period, artist Jon Kessler creates a space so heavily mediated, under surveillance by almost countless video cameras and televisions arranged, that the act of watching becomes intricately ensnared with the act of participation.  Now, for the first time, the well-known installation artist has brought the piece to Salon 94 Bowery for a one month viewing. Obfuscating the line between real and imagined, The Blue Period alters the nature of the gallery experience. Huge walls soaked with blue paint pair up with the images of various rooms, rarely in conjunction with a perceived camera position, beamed in by closed-caption television, and placed alongside manipulated film footage and other imagery. Frequently in motion, the cameras underline the act of viewing in the piece, while also forcing the gallery-goer to evaluate their position in the overall installation.

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All images courtesy Maccarone Gallery.

Currently on view at Maccarone New York is Hanna Liden‘s “Out of My Mind, Back in 5 Minutes.” The installation includes three photographs and several sculptures made from plastic shopping bags, t-shirts, and garbage bags. These items are stacked and filled with poured plaster or covered with latex, rendering them heavy and useless.

Loaded with references to memento mori and tribal customs, this process-based work transforms markers of the ephemerality and mundaneness of city life. It offers what the exhibition’s press release calls “a meditation on urbanity […] The result is a gallery space turned reliquary, containing the ghosts of an urban tribe now obsolete.”

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Laurie Simmons, Day 8 (Lying on Bed), (2010). via Salon 94

New York-based photographer Laurie Simmon’s show opened on February 15th and will continue through Saturday, March 26th. Simmons, who began photographing doll houses in 1976, has since mainly worked with puppets, ventriloquist’s dummies and various other sorts of dolls. Laurie Simmons  starred in the indie film “Tiny Furniture” directed by her daughter Lena Dunham, which was recently chosen as winner for best feature film at the South by Southwest Media and Music Conference. For her latest exhibition at Salon 94, entitled “The Love Doll: Days 1 – 30” her subject of choice is none other than one “Love Doll”, a surrogate sex partner created out of silicon and other “life-like” materials.

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Photo by Art Observed.

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Hanna Liden, Untitled (Deli Bag Self Portrait), 2010. All images via Salon 94

New York based artists and long-time friends Hanna Liden and Nate Lowman are teaming up for the first time at Salon 94, through January 12.  The pieces made separately, a dialogue is created by the artist-chosen pairings of their work. Both artists leaning toward the morose, Lowman variously depicts gravestones and bodies, while Liden photographs melting candles or masked friends with flames. Lowman’s ongoing investigations of the smiley face–with its hidden layers of meaning and irony–also make an appearance; Liden plays off of it as well, perhaps suffocating beneath the happy (though upside down) iconic plastic bags.

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