The Must-See Gallery Shows Opening During Armory Week

New York’s hectic autumn art season is just about to kick off, and galleries across the five boroughs are preparing to open their September shows to coincide with the Armory Show, Independent 20th Century, NADA House at Governors Island and all the other satellite art fairs. Interestingly, several of those galleries have moved their openings to the second week of the month—possibly to put a buffer between those shows and the early September art fairs or so as not to overlap with Frieze Seoul, Kiaf SEOUL and the openings of Seoul Art Week. Observer’s art team pored over the city gallery calendar to find the best new shows to see during Armory Week and beyond.

Leon Golub curated by Rashid Johnson at Hauser & Wirth

Rashid Johnson, in consultation with Hauser & Wirth curatorial senior director Kate Fowle (previously director of MoMA PS1), conceived this show, which pairs the work of acclaimed American artist Leon Golub with other artists who explored and expressed the horrors and anxieties of contemporary society. Titled “Et in Arcadia Ego,” the exhibition will include the work of Wilfredo Lam, Philip Guston, David Hammons, Teresa Margolles, Sharon Lockhart, Robert Longo, Tiona Nekkia McClodden and Taryn Simon, who have similarly worked on the idea of human traces and cultural remains of collective traumas to explore the individual psychological dimension in confrontation with broader societal and political turmoil. The title comes from Golub’s 1997 painting Time’s Up. In it, the archaic Latin phrase is inscribed over an upturned skull, evoking the unavoidable human destiny of death. The show is one of the rare occasions to see works by Golub from the early 1950s to the late 1990s, as they primarily reside in museums or private collections. Substantial loans for this show came from The Broad and the Ulrich Meyer and Harriet Horwitz Meyer Collection.

“Et In Arcadia Ego,” curated by Rashid Johnson, opens on September 5 and is on view through October 19.

Monica Bonvicini at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

Monica Bonvicini is arguably one of the most influential artists of her generation.">

This September, Berlin-based Italian artist Monica Bonvicini will have her first exhibition with the visionary art dealer Tanya Bonakdar in New York. Among the most influential artists of her generation, Bonvicini has long explored the relationship between architecture, gender and physical and psychological violence. Often uncanny and thought-provoking, her works engage with a feminist and institutional critique of power dynamics and social norms in public and private spaces. Depicting weapons, threatening torture machines or dangerous tools, her hardcore sculptures and installations explore physical and psychological boundaries that establish dynamics of subjection, dominance and obedience in interrelational exchange. Most of the time, the artist encourages the viewer to engage with the artworks to confront their presence and their social contexts, transforming observers into active participants. Expect some impressive installations in this show.

“Put All Heaven in a Rage,” the gallery’s first solo exhibition of the work of Monica Bonvicini, opens on September 4 and is on view through October 12. 

Gina Beavers at Marianne Boesky Gallery

Exploring social media-derived visual landscapes since the early 2000s and translating them into hyperrealistic relief paintings, artist Gina Beavers has deeply examined how those contribute to selfhood and the construction of identity. In this new body of work, “Comfortcore Paintings,” the artist focused on the seductive promise of conformity offered by retail showcases of blankets, towels and other “cozy” domestic decors on different online platforms. Scrolling through the endless flux of images Beavers has pulled out from the internet, and as “Divine Consumer,” she has intuitively reworked those in digital collages to remediate them on panels with a laborious process of “materialization” with foam, paper pulp and paint. The resulting uncanny 3D blowups emphasize their seductive tactile qualities that encourage compulsive purchases on the promise of “comfort.” Eventually, as the artist observes, those ads become comforting, as they don’t ask us to do more than buy, and they offer respite from the polarized and often subtle political messages hidden in many digital images we encounter in our scrolling. “There’s this idea of divine inspiration when you’re collating, as you’re putting things together,” she told Observer. “I’m creating something independently from this chaos.”

Gina Beaver’s “Divine Consumer” opens on September 5 and runs through October 5. 

Alejandro García Contreras and LeAndra Sur at Pioneer Works

Visionary Mexican artist Alejandro García Contreras is having his first institutional show in the U.S. at Pioneer Works, which recently reopened after a major renovation. Mixing contemporary pop culture with Mexican folklore, ancient myths, occultism and religion, Contreras stages a syncretic continuum of cultures and traditions across time and space as part of his quest to grasp the mystery of the genesis of the Universe. In this solo presentation at Pioneer Works, the artist has created an immersive mystical environment made of concrete: cultural symbols from our time, mostly from cartoons and pop culture, are displayed as relics of our civilization on columns, giving them a totemic presence, as they stand in a sand desert and confront a portal connecting us to another time and space. In front is a ceramic skeleton of a human already inhabited by several other entities, suggesting the idea of new life cycles beyond our physical presence. While the entire show was inspired by the notion of an archeological site left behind by an unknown, ancient civilization, ultimately, the artist’s presentation turns into a sort of contemporary archeology that tries to envision the destiny of our society and all the impermanence of the cultural and symbolic products we will leave behind. Also on view is a new video installation, Monument Eternal, by Le’Andra LeSeur that dissects the way that monuments erected to commemorate racist legacies have altered the mental psyche of Black communities. With this new work, the artist has embarked on a video and poetic exploration of how this alteration manifests in the physical body, especially when presented with and situated in the sonic rhythms that reverberate across sites of violence.

Alejandro García Contreras’s “Quien no ha intentado convertir una piedra en un recuerdo? (Who hasn’t tried to turn a stone into a memory?)” and Le’Andra LeSeur’s Monument Eternal open on September 6.

Aki Sasamoto at Bortolami Gallery

Following the presentation at Para Site in Hong Kong, the New York-based Japanese artist Aki Sasamoto will reiterate the immersive exhibition “Sounding Lines” at Bortolami’s upper-floor gallery this September. As in Hong Kong, the immersive exhibition, between installation and sculpture, will stage a series of waves that will activate different reactions and effects in the space. Sent via a system of metal strings suspended throughout the gallery’s space, the waves will activate catalytic movements between the lines and the fish-shaped baits. The result is a complex and mesmerizing experience at multiple sensory levels, which encourages visitors to explore the relation between their body, perception, thoughts and space through a stream-of-consciousness interaction with all that happens around them. 

Aki Sasamoto’s “Sounding Lines” opens on September 6 and is on view through October 19. 

“Japan In/Out Brazil” at Nara Rosler

This group exhibition at Brazilian power dealer Nara Rosler traces the aesthetic and cultural connection between the gallery’s home country and Japan. Bringing together the work of three artists from different generations who share Japanese origins and were born in or have close ties to Brazil, the show will present the work of Tomie Ohtake (1913-2015), Lydia Okumura and Asuka Anastacia Ogawa. This intergenerational exploration of the connections between countries proves the creative contributions and mutually fruitful cultural exchanges created by the Japanese diaspora, resulting in a unique cultural identity that blends Japanese traditions with Brazilian influence. Notably, the Japanese community in Brazil is today one of the largest in the country, and it is the result of a process of migrants that started in the early 20th Century, with the first group arriving in 1908 on the ship “Kasato Maru” seeking better economic opportunities and escaping difficult conditions in Japan. The work of artist Ohtake is representative of this first generation, moving from her initially figurative style to geometric abstraction in line with the country’s aesthetic in the ’70s and becoming one of the pioneer figures of informal abstractionism in Brazil. As one of the important representatives of Brazilian conceptual art, which became popular in the ’60s, Okumura applied her Japanese philosophical and spiritual sensibility instead, triggering the viewers in a sensory way with ephemeral and nearly invisible sculptural geometries. Last but not least, as part of a new generation of painters, Anastacia Ogawa solidifies the creative potential of the ongoing exchange of cultural elements between the two countries with paintings fluidly integrating and mixing materials, techniques, and subject matter from the two countries’ rich traditions.

“japan in/out brazil” opens on September 4 and is on view through October 5. 

“(Re)Print: Five Projects” at Prints Center

Here, Print Center New York aims to investigate the dynamic relationship between the tradition of image reproduction and contemporary print practice by bringing into conversation prints of five contemporary artists: Mark Bradford, Cecily Brown, Glenn Brown, Enrique Chagoya and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. In contextualizing the artists’ practices within a broader tradition of printing, the exhibition will also present the printed source material they reference, showcasing the ongoing conversation that those artists have with art historical masters and the importance of appropriation and historical revision for each of these artists, through the process of remediation, juxtaposition and overlaying allowed by the printing medium. For instance, the exhibition will place side by side Yiadom-Boakye’s ten etchings of First Flight (2015) with the engraving by the 17th-century Flemish artist Anthony Van Dyck, proving how her visual vocabulary is fueled by a constant exchange with the portrait tradition, that Yiadom-Boake’s work both critically interprets and pushes towards alternative identity narratives. Similarly, Bradford, in a series of etchings made in 2012, reinterprets mass-produced brightly colored “merchant posters” he salvaged from the streets of South Los Angeles as part of his ongoing practice of manipulating found materials to draw attention to the social and economic systems they embed.

“(Re)Print: Five Projects” opens on September 12 and is on view through December 14. 

Janaina Tschäpe’s “a sky filled with clouds and the smell of blood oranges” at Sean Kelly, New York

During Armory Week, Sean Kelly Gallery will debut a new series of vibrant gestural abstractions by Janaina Tschäpe, proving the level of maturity the artist has reached in her relationship with the painting medium. Experimenting with various mediums over her career, the artist is able now to engage with a fluid mark-making process on canvas, transferring a vast range of chromatic and gestural sensations in a calibrated interplay between accumulation and removal that eventually land on a final aesthetic harmony. While completely detached from reality, her poetic abstract compositions evoke “inner landscapes,” expressing this longing for a primordial nature held in our ancestral memories. Painting for Tschäpe is a profound personal exploration, an emotional and intellectual inquiry that allows us to access another level of awareness of the relationship between our bodies and our minds. The exhibition also features her delicate watercolors and pastel works, creating a dialogue between different media and enhancing the interplay among her works.

Janaina Tschäpe’s “a sky filled with clouds and the smell of blood oranges” opens on September 6 and is on view through October 19. 

Naudline Pierre’s “The Mythic Age” at James Cohan Gallery

At her second solo show with the gallery and following her successful presentation at Frieze last May, Naudline Pierre will present a new suite of mystical and spiritually charged paintings accompanied by highly symbolic sculptural interventions. At the center of her artistic inquiry and of these works, there’s an idea of transformation and metamorphosis of the female form and a desire to transcend this earthly experience and tap into other spiritual and energetic dimensions. Pierre’s paintings are full of historical references, from Baroque religious paintings to French academic paintings of the 1800s, but turning a mostly masculine-energy-based legacy of image-making to a more allegorical and poetical visual narrative while exploring untapped allegorical possibilities of color, light and form to access alternative spiritual realms. Leaving behind the traditional refiguration of Angels and Saints, Pierre’s hybrid characters appear as part of another animistic sensibility that suggests different interconnections between all beings. Floating in a mostly atmospheric world, these mystical and archetypal figures manifest from the past to suggest new ways forward in the present.

Naudline Pierre’s “The Mythic Age” opens on September 6 and is on view through  October 19. 

“Radical Artists of the Late 1960s” at David Nolan Gallery

Amid the backdrop of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement, social change and art became inextricably intertwined in a movement fueled by a handful of artists that will be the subject of a new exhibition opening this September at David Nolan Gallery. “Radical Artists of the Late 1960s: Between Geometry and Gesture” will include works by some pioneering and thought-provoking artists who were active during that era, including stanley brouwn (b. 1935, Suriname), Barry Le Va (b. 1941, Long Beach, CA), Bruce Nauman (b. 1941, Fort Wayne, IN), Richard Serra (b. 1938, San Francisco) and Dorothea Rockburne (b. 1932, Montreal). With their art, those artists reacted, confronted and responded to the uneasy atmosphere of that time, between the political unrest, economic uncertainty, racial tension and anti-war demonstrations. They often pushed the boundaries, bearing witness to this feeling of precarity, and embraced more impermanent actions or intersected their artistic practices with politics and activism to unveil dynamics of power and control within the new mediated history reported by mass media. Capturing the feeling of a historical moment, the exhibition feels quite timely in unveiling alarming parallels with current global conditions.

“Radical Artists of the Late 1960s” opens on September 6 and is on view through October 26.