This week’s must-see exhibitions

Several very interesting exhibitions have opened in Chelsea this past week and we selected 4 that you should definitely put on your gallery tour schedule this week. Somehow, and maybe we are under the influence of the upcoming AIPAD Photography Fair, most of the recommendations are for photographic exhibitions. At the same time, this is a varied range of visual, techniques and subjects, so it should appeal to a wide range of viewers.

David Maisel’s “History’s Shadow” at Yancey Richardson Gallery

Rarely do you look at a sculpture and wander about its interior spaces. They appear to us in their final states without a hint of the framework that supports some of these magnificent monuments. In his most current body of work Maisel “utilizes x-rays of sculptures as source material to explore the intersection of scientific research and visual art. The exhibitionʼs title comes from a project of the same name, inspired by the artistʼs residency at the Getty Research Institute, during which time he re-photographed x-rays of sculptural antiquities culled from the museumʼs conservation archives. According to Maisel, Historyʼs Shadow refers “both to the literal images that the x-rays create as they are re-photographed, and to the metaphorical content informed by the past from which these objects derive.”

History’s Shadow
April 3 – May 10, 2014
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 10AM-6PM

Lucas Foglia’s “Front Country” at Fredericks & Freiser

This (very) young photographer seems most comfortable in the most remote places, with the most solitary, removed characters. Big, expansive skies of rural Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, and Wyoming, and ordinary people who live “in the midst of a mining boom that is transforming the modern American West.” Many of the images in his exhibition at Fredericks & Frasier Gallery read as if the viewer stepped through a teleportation door and found himself right in the middle of these people’s lives.

“The cowboy might still be the enduring symbol of this rugged landscape, but Foglia’s uneasy relationship with the romanticism of the past is evident in his vivid images of ranching and mining towns today. Capturing both the landscape and the people, Foglia’s photographs are dynamic, heroic, and brutally honest.”

Front Country
March 20 – April 19, 2014 (Extended to May 10)
526 West 24th street

Ancient Evenings: A Retrospective of Edward Dugmore at Loretta Howard Gallery

Those familiar with the works of Clyfford Still will surely make a connection between the two artists’ works. Similar palettes, application and dynamics on the pictorial planes. Dugmore’s works, however are far less known among the wider circle of enthusiasts but that is surely join to change very soon. The artist, who spent several very prolific years painting in Italy employs the very same tools of fellow Abstract Expressionists.

“Major canvasses from each decade trace the trajectory of his life’s work over more than 50 years of painting. Archetypal works from the 1950s and 1960s exemplify the artist’s romantic vision of abstract expressionism.

In these paintings we see the influence of former teacher and lifelong friend Clyfford Still who he studied under at the San Francisco School of Fine Art but also the frenetic energy of the New York School. When the artist moved to Manhattan in 1952 he quickly became a central figure of the downtown art community. He was a regular at the Cedar Bar alongside Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline and enjoyed three solo exhibitions at the seminal Stable Gallery.”

Ancient Evenings: A Retrospective Of Edward Dugmore
April 3 – May 3, 2014
525 – 531 West 26th Street

John Goodman’s Boxers + Ballerinas at Rick Wester Fine Art

I have this mental image of what old New York must have looked like and James Goodman’s photographs illustrate it to the “t”. Grainy, unfocused shapes, shadows in sparsely lit rarely recognizable interiors and exteriors. They move alone, in haste. Nobody looks at each other, they just guard their space in the hustling city.

“Both bodies of work are shadowgraphs: pictures of fleeting figures that confirm our desired voyeurism of talent, our need to witness greatness beyond the everyday, to examine without the distraction of speed, skill or amazement. Boxers rarely reach the level of public recognition (thousands fight, few shine); most ballerinas are merely pawns in a choreographer’s plan for an art that exists for milliseconds. In both cases, Goodman salvages them, rectifies them from their instant demise.”

Boxers + Ballerinas
April 3 – May 31, 2014
526 West 26th Street

This article © galleryIntell. Featured image detail: David Maisel, History’s Shadow AB17

© David Maisel, courtesy of the artist and Yancey Richardson, © Lucas Foglia, courtesy of the artist and Fredericks & Freiser, © Edward Dugmore, courtesy of Loretta Howard Gallery, © John Goodman, courtesy of Rick Wester Fine Art

Images provides courtesy of the galleries. For more information on the featured works and to inquire about availability please contact press@galleryIntell