The suburban settings of Crewdson’s magical realist photographs could easily be movie sets caught between takes. Stagy lighting, dramatic poses and lush but banal décors suggest lives unfolding like a series of scripted scenarios. Crewdson’s isolated characters seem invariable uncomfortable in their surroundings, yearning to move on but unsure where to go next. Closes 5/3.
Tue-Sat
This series of two- and three-dimensional variations on a kind of tool shed-dog house-shanty structure exploits our tendency to see dwellings as reflections of the person inhabiting them. A looming tar-covered contraption titled “Boogeyman,” for example, evokes a terror inside and teases our desire to let it loose. Closes 5/10.
Tue-Sat
Dennis Quaid, Sarah Jessica Parker
The insecurities and coded aggressions of academia turned this middle-class home into a house of horrors. Quaid’s miserable professor-father has raised a monstrous daughter (Ellen Page), who performs her deceased mother’s tasks between devastating put-downs and obsessive studies. Murro and novelist-screenwriter Mark Poirier nail the banter of an academic household wonderfully, but stay couched in the quirks of character types (though Parker’s romantic interest is initially spirited). Complexity (see The Squid and the Whale) is eschewed for campus-film conventions.
Richard Jenkins, Haaz Sleiman
As a widowing professor, Jenkins (Six Feet Under’s passed-on patriarch) first appears looking through a window, a visual expression of detachment that recurs throughout the film. Befriending an immigrant couple living in his
Yvon Lambert
In the first of four works, night falls quickly while a woman moves extremely slowly. Neat trick, and questions raised about narrative time recur throughout the show. Two projections show brief events from innumerable angles. Aesthetically, each image could stand alone, but together they reveal a story. While bridging still and moving images, Claerbout adopts techniques from both. Closes 4/26.
Tue-Sat 10am-6pm. 550 W 21st St, between Tenth Ave and West St 212-242-3611, yvon-lambert.com
This review will appear in the April 16 issue of The L Magazine.Gagosian Gallery
The installation’s massive scale (including sculpture, painting, photography and readymades) suggests parody. If so the object of criticism is patriotism, with Uklański investigating Polish nationalist iconography, including recent communist experience. Alternately, these multiple rooms convey an anxious new Poland unsure how to integrate its recent history into a new national identity. Closes 5/17.
Tue-Sat 10am-6pm. 522 W 21st St, between Tenth Ave and West St 212-741-1717, gagosian.com
This review will appear in the April 16 issue of The L Magazine.Cueto Project
The Berlin-based collective relentlessly undermines expectations with alternately dark and playful results. Paintings in negative colors are photographed and shown with their (double-nagative?) reproductions. Mythic figures and deities stand with pop culture characters, clusters of media imagery overwhelm abstract compositions. Room-sized installations awkwardly support two-dimensional paintings. A seductive spirit of defiance runs throughout. Closes 4/26.
Tue-Sat 10am-6pm. 551 W 21st St, between Tenth Ave and West St 212-229-2221, cuetoproject.com
Like two great rappers recording a song together, friendly competition permeates these six paintings by the successive kings of New York’s art scene. There’s violence in the imagery of Warhol’s recuperated symbols and Basquiat’s aggressive scrawling, as if they’re vying for our attention, competing to set the agenda. But the longtime friends’ styles also achieve undeniable synergy. Closes 5/3.
Tue-Sat 10am-6pm. 521 W 23rd St, between Tenth and Eleventh Aves 212-929-6633, vdwny.com
This review will appear in the April 16 issue of The L Magazine.David Zwirner
In five large canvases (and sixteen accompanying studies), Richter’s disjointed universe features mundane architecture, scattered icons and humanlike figures. The works, typically, evade complete understanding. Maybe they’re a cynic’s allegorized present: radioactive zombies hunting through crumbling cities while neon-colored narcissists dance silently. But even that interpretation seems limiting given Richter’s works’ saturation of meanings. Closes 5/3.
Tue-Sat 10am-6pm. 533 W 19th St, between Tenth Ave and West St 212-727-2070, davidzwirner.com
This review will appear in the April 16 issue of The L Magazine.
Butzer commemorates child-like imaginations with crudely-drawn characters set against colorful abstracted backgrounds. Perhaps a media-indoctrinated imaginary: many figures resemble deformed Disney characters (Butzer cites Disney as an influence). Or, maybe a precocious art-loving kid’s imagination: a recurring face quotes Munch’s The Scream. Throughout, thick paint gobs and dramatic brushstrokes convey the immediacy of images fighting for expression. Closes 5/3.
Tue-Sat 10am-6pm. 519 W 24th St, between Tenth and Eleventh Aves 212-206-7100, metropictures.com
