Global contemporary art events and news observed from New York City. Suggestion? Email us.

London – Marcin Dudek: “NEOPLAN” at Edel Assanti Through September 1st, 2023

September 1st, 2023

Marcin Dudek, NEOPLAN (2023), via Edel Assanti
Marcin Dudek, NEOPLAN (2023), via Edel Assanti

Artist Marcin Dudek’s work finds particular and complex sites for intervention in the language of the everyday, charging familiar forms and structures with a loose, vibrant energy that underscores cultural tensions, frictive languages, and modes of engagement that underline conflict and collision. This mode of practice finds particular expression in NEOPLAN, the artist’s sixth solo exhibition with Edel Assanti on at the gallery’s London exhibition space. and running concurrently with his solo show at Kunsthal Extra City, Antwerp, and the launch of his new monograph. Read More »

New York – “Ugly Painting” at Nahmad Contemporary Through September 16th, 2023

August 31st, 2023

Ugly Paintings (Installation View), via Nahmad Contemporary
Ugly Paintings (Installation View), via Nahmad Contemporary

This month, writer Dean Kissick and curator Eleanor Cayre have teamed up at Nahmad Contemporary to present a new exhibition titled Ugly Painting. Drawing on works that mine the deliberate use of grotesque, garish, or abject in brushwork, representation, composition, or coloring, the show presents a range of works that run through a range of confrontational and conceptual approaches to the human form, its representation, and its understanding.  Read More »

London – Christina Mackie at Herald Street Through September 16th, 2023

August 30th, 2023

Christina Mackie, Token 31 (2020), via Herald Street
Christina Mackie, Token 31 (2020), via Herald Street

On this month at London’s Herald Street, artist Christina Mackie exhibits a range of ceramic works and watercolors that showcase the artist’s multidisciplinary engagement with color and material. Combining a body of ceramic sculptures called Tokens and paintings titled Seaports, the show uses pigments, earthenware, slips, glazes, and an array of fabrics, to investigates the physical and chemical properties of her mediums, and simultaneously expose their emotional subtexts.

Christina Mackie (Installation View), via Herald Street
Christina Mackie (Installation View), via Herald Street

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New York – “Levity” at Alexander Berggruen Through August 29th, 2023

August 29th, 2023

Susumu Kamijo, Bear Mountain (2023), via Alexander Berggruen
Susumu Kamijo, Bear Mountain (2023), via Alexander Berggruen

On this summer at Alexander Berggruen, the exhibition Levity presents a range of paintings that reflect on the comic and the absurd through a range of styles and techniques. Irony, mirth, the absurd, the evolving image of cartoon, and even darker, but amusing reads of the human condition serve as entry points into the language of the contemporary. Using humor as a mode to elicit a direct reaction from the viewer, the works on view press the viewer to move beyond their comfort zone. Read More »

New York – Carol Bruns at White Columns Through August 26th, 2023

August 28th, 2023

Carol Bruns (Installation View), via White Columns
Carol Bruns (Installation View), via White Columns

Brooklyn-based artist Carol Bruns marks her latest solo exhibition and first in Manhattan in over two decades with a body of recent works on view this summer at White Columns, continuing the artist’s work in a range of materials and forms that negotiate languages and ways of creating and approaching art and its production. Read More »

London – Sarah Cunningham: “The Crystal Forest” at Lisson Through August 26th, 2023

August 25th, 2023

Sarah Cunningham, The Crystal Forest (Installation View), via Lisson
Sarah Cunningham, The Crystal Forest (Installation View), all images via Lisson

Lisson Gallery presents its first solo exhibition by British painter Sarah Cunningham this month, exploring psychological spaces and multifaceted landscapes that the artist composes within her layered and generative canvases. This new body of paintings – including a major triptych and large-scale works, alongside smaller panels – focusses on Cunningham’s abstract forays into kaleidoscopic environments and imagined forest clearings, which she constructs over time through layer after layer of gesture and radiating bursts of light, line and color. Read More »

New York – “Shake the Dust” at Miguel Abreu Through August 25th, 2023

August 24th, 2023

Jean-Luc Moulene, TransBébu (Le Buisson, 2021) (2021), via Miguel Abreu
Jean-Luc Moulene, TransBébu (Le Buisson, 2021) (2021), all images via Miguel Abreu

This summer at Miguel Abreu in downtown New York, the gallery’s artist roster gathers together for a group show that delves into painting, sculpture, works on paper, and other hybridized modes as am exploration of diverse themes and concepts. The cosmos, the monochrome, the representation of nature and the body, as well as the geometric impulse are imaginatively engaged in the paintings, sculptures and drawings included in this dynamic arrangement of works, unified under the title Shake the Dust.

Alex Carver, Temporary Composition (Hand Attached to Broken Leg) (2019)
Alex Carver, Temporary Composition (Hand Attached to Broken Leg) (2019)

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New York – “Worldmaking” at Mitchell-Innes & Nash Through August 25th, 2023

August 23rd, 2023

Al Hassah Issah, Piercing the Air (2022)
Al Hassah Issah, Piercing the Air (2022), all images via Mitchell-Innes & Nash

This month in New York, Mitchell-Innes & Nash present Worldmaking, a group exhibition of ten emerging artists living and working in Ghana, with many showing their work in New York for the first time. Exploring relationships of content and politics, perception and reflection across the works on view, the show, co-curated by Ghanaian artist Gideon Appah and curator and Gallery Director Ylinka Barotto, Worldmaking frames Ghana against a backdrop of Western consumption, architectural influences that derive from years-long domination, colonial impact on ecosystems and economies, and the use of traditions as conduits to preserving the past and understanding the present. Read More »

New York – “Made in the Dark” at Clearing Through August 25th, 2023

August 22nd, 2023

Supawich Weesapen, The Comet, the Soul, and its Reflection (2022), via Clearing
Supawich Weesapen, The Comet, the Soul, and its Reflection (2022), via Clearing

Marking its entry in summer group show season, Clearing Gallery has opened MADE IN THE DARK, a selection of works that unifies five artists along lines of the phenomenological, spiritual and material. Drawing on otherworldly images, surreal interpolations of the human body, and figures that push the familiar into strange new territories, the show makes for a fascinating outing, exploring the thresholds of worldly and otherworldly phenomena through modes of mysticism and skepticism, on through fragmented and material negotiations.

Made in the Dark (Installation View), via Clearing
Made in the Dark (Installation View), via Clearing

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New York – Mauren Doughterty: “Borrowed Time” at Cheim & Read Through September 16th, 2023

August 21st, 2023

Maureen Dougherty, BOXER (2023), via Cheim and REad
Maureen Dougherty, BOXER (2023), via Cheim and Read

On view this summer in New York, Cheim & Read gallery invites artist Maureen Dougherty to present Borrowed Time, a selection of new works by the painter and filmmaker. Continuing the artist’s work in documentary modes that branch both creative practices, the works on view here are direct and unflinching portraiture, stark in color and form in a manner that explores the sitter’s persona in deep, rich nuances.

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