Exhibition Recommendations for July 28, 2015

Jacob Aue Sobol at Yossi Milo Gallery

Image after image Jacob Aue Sobol manages to obliterate whatever barriers lie between him and his subjects. His portraits, taken along the Trans Siberian railway, read serenely intimate, personal, and somehow, warm to the touch. You find yourself standing in front of each freeze-frame of someone’s life, mesmerized, longing to expand the boundaries of each frame, glean one more hint about the people’s thoughts, their lives, their own realities. From the gallery: “Arrivals and Departures” chronicles Jacob Aue Sobol’s travels across the Asian continent by train during 2012-2014, with stops in Moscow, Russia; Ulan Batar, Mongolia and Beijing, China, and numerous rural communities along the way. During three separate month-long trips, Sobol photographed the changing landscape from his window seat, as well as encounters with inhabitants of the locations where he disembarked.”

The exhibition is on view at Yossi Milo Gallery through August 28th, 2015

A Man Without Words at Doosan Gallery

Jung Uk Yang, A Fatigue Always Comes with a Dream, 2013

Jung Uk Yang’s sculptures at Doosan Gallery in Chelsea appear to be much older than the artist, a 33 –year-old BFA graduate from Seoul. As I looked at each sculpture, I thought of Mad Max and Waterworld, where contraptions like this would have been commonplace. A sense of solitude dominates his work. Meditative solitude, wonder, and abandonment. Not the kind that suffocates with sorrow, yet likewise not the kind that makes sense. Somehow that abandonment almost carries a sense of relief. Perhaps it is the consequence of sound.

The exhibition features works with quirky, unexpected titles, like “A Fatigue Always Comes with a Dream”, “Only the Turtle Does Not Know about Our Weekends”, and “The Hardship is Whispering Hope”. You can’t help but wonder if these titles are the peculiar fruits of Google Translate’s often unfortunate linguistic trials, or indeed the artist’s intention.

Exhibition is on view through August 27^th, 2015

No Vacancies: Miyoko Ito, Phillip King, Robert Morris, Lisa Williamson at Marianne Boesky Gallery

Miyoko Ito Untitled (111), ca 1976-8 Oil on canvas. Image courtesy Marianne Boesky Gallery

Miyoko Ito steals the show at this group exhibition at Marianne Boesky Gallery not in the least because of the clear visual similarities to Richard Diebenkorn’s famed “Ocean park” series, yet somehow the press release doesn’t mention a single word about this connection. Her Untitled (111), ca 1976-8 is probably the most obvious nod to Diebenkorn. From the gallery: “Miyoko Ito was born to Japanese parents in Berkeley, CA in 1918. She studied art at the University of California at Berkeley for a short time until she was imprisoned in a Japanese-American camp after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Ito continued her education in prison and afterwards went to Smith College. After college, she was given a scholarship to attend the Art Institute of Chicago.”

Exhibition is on view through August 7^th, 2015

Bilateral Dissections by Cristina Camacho at Praxis Gallery

Cristina Camacho is a young artist notable for a unique technique she invented. Her canvases show the same sensitivities as Victor Vasarely’s Op Art paintings. There is the familiar illusion of perspective, motion and scale, but in contrast to Vasarely Camacho builds her imagery with the canvas itself. Her vibrant canvases are stacked, painted, drawn upon, sliced and woven (think Olga de Amaral, but in polychrome). Several works from this exhibition have already been sold, but several others, priced under $10,000 are still available and we think they are a wonderful addition to private and corporate collections.

From the gallery: “As she dissects each layer, she creates structural and spatial changes where gravity, shadows, and color reflections evoke a physical and tactile experience. The cut is always precise and intentional, and without being aggressive or disruptive, the pieces appear to be extremely symmetrical. The color pencil lines, always follow a set of geometric rules, and with the cut, these rules are disobeyed allowing the material to take control over the piece and therefore revealing its purity.”

Exhibition is on view through August 29^th, 2015

Joseph Zito, The First Thirty Years 1985 – 2015 at Lennon, Weinberg, Inc

Rounding up our exhibition recommendations is Joseph Zito’s exhibition at Lennon, Weinberg Gallery – a multi-media installation of drawings, paintings, and sculpture. Works in the exhibition range from conceptual to derivative to conventional. Special attention should be awarded to the series of hand-forged sculptures titled Untitled, (for C.W.), 1992 and its “derivative” First Burning (For C.W.) 1992. The “drawing” is a result of the artist scorching the paper with the just-forged alloy of cast copper and aluminium pyramids of Untitled, (for C.W.). From the gallery: “On the surface the work appears to be Minimalist/Conceptual but I see it more in the vein of pure Expressionism. The work is rooted in the primal emotions and not the intellect; more Soutine than Newman.”

Exhibition is on view through September 26^th, 2015

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Images courtesy of the artists and exhibiting galleries.