Gallery Goer is a weekly column featuring not-to-be-missed gallery shows on the LES. Have a fun, art-inspired week!
Opening May 19 at Dodge Gallery is Twisted Sisters, a highly eclectic show that includes painting, sculpture, video, installation, prints, mixed media and performance art. Curated by Kristen Dodge and Janet Phelps, the show features works by women artists whose subjects are women.
The body becomes a canvas for the artist to project whatever she experiences—from fury to whimsy, fantasy, repulsion, frustration, pride and any other state you might imagine. Xaviera Simmons’ Index One-Composition Two presents an assemblage representing a woman we can only imagine–a totem of sorts. It’s up to the viewer to decide who “she” is or if “she” even exists.
The works in this show deftly depict the intrinsic variety of various emotional states and experiences as seen through the artist’s eyes. Through June 24.
Over at Lisa Cooley, the German artist Michael Bauer presents his first solo show in New York, a group of paintings that reveal a complex mix of figurative and abstract elements. Bauer says his work portrays gangs, families, music bands and mobs—he doesn’t appear to have taken inspiration from Occupy Wall Street.
This Dali-esque work features subjects that wear lop-sided grins, sport deflated genitalia and loosely defined limbs. They are submerged within the paintings, and the viewer is challenged to draw them out. It’s a challenge worth taking. A large foot or foot-like shape appears in each painting.
Bauer is known to have spent time experimenting with collage and drawing, which have added a lightness to the work in this show vs. previous work. According to the Saatchi Gallery, “Bauer uses the qualities of abstract painting as a deviation of representational portraiture, allowing the media to replicate the characteristics of physical matter.”
The H.S.O.P. is a reference to the Hudson River School of painting—nothing could be farther from the truth here and one wonders what Bauer means by it. The work is fun, dark and chaotic at once, all of which makes for the perfect reason to see it. Through June 17.
Upcoming and noteworthy: Hendershot Gallery’s (Re)(Print), a show featuring the works of some amazing street artists opening May 23. Dacia Gallery debuts the works of painter Barbara L. Bachner with a reception on May 17 from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. Bachner’s show “Circle of Life” features basic shapes and colors that are transformed into dynamic abstractions–through June 1.
Featured gallery picks:
Lisa Cooley/ 107 Norfolk St./ 212.680.0564
Wed.-Sun. 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Dodge Gallery/ 15 Rivington St./ 212-228-5122
Wed.-Sat. 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., SUN 12 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Tues. by appointment.
TLD contributor Tobi Elkin is a writer, editor and interviewer and former resident of the Lower East Side who delights in the neighborhood’s eclectic pleasures. A regular reader of The Lo-Down, her diverse interests include arts and entertainment, film, food and cultural critique. Visit her website at tobielkin.com.
