Newly reviewed this week, Travis Diehl covers Kianja Strobert's silver bench, Anna Bellapap's elegant clay slabs, and playful watercolors from Amanda Rodriguez.
Noho
Kianja Strobert
Until April 5th. Marinaro, 678 Broadway. 212-989-7700, Marinaro. Biz.
The gallery has an aura of an urban park, with comparable parts being kind and estranged. That feeling comes from the sculptures of Kianja Strobert's benches placed in rows and alcoves, inferring the social structures you intuitively understand and want to respect. The benches, wood and papier-mats in the core are painted in a group of lead silver, but are not attractively skilled.
Piles of garbage are scattered across your seats, including blankets, fresh clothing, pearls and barbell-like trinkets, and votive candles. Colorful pages from home decoration magazines and retro 2024 flower calendar pops in uniform gray. The paper shopping bag labeled with a Bloomingdale-like brown bag, wrapped in clear plastic, sitting on the edge of one bench as if someone had forgotten it.
And, like many surface public urban spaces, there is tension. One bench, “Untitled #10,” is woven with sawtooth strips that resemble hostile architectural interventions to keep the gathered masses moving. Next to them are long, elongated photographs of women's legs. The benches are deployed with the generosity that is qualified to throw pearls in front of pigs. This is a contradiction complexed in the gallery by the fact that you cannot sit on them.
The triple line of draped pewter-colored flags of “Bunting” is a work of the papier-mache mache wall set above. After all, it's like a city: a tough buffet. The bench benefits from cross-references of its placement, possible plots. Overall, the scene is Twee Apocalypse. It's difficult to imagine a single sculpture with the same resonance.
Lower East Side
Anna Bella Papp
Until April 13th. Dracula's Revenge, 105 Henry Street. 203-517-8385, draculasRevenge.net.
This elegant show by Romanian artist Anna Bella Papp features four clay slabs, each with about 13 inches x 10 inches thick and 1 inch thick, placed on blonde Wood IKEA shelves. They are installed precisely inseparably from the four frames of the movie. Each has a high contrast image of a wrought iron fence. From left to right, the view begins with flowers and gradually pulls back to show more of the ironwork.
When information comes up, distance also appears. If you imagine the story, it might be as simple as this: Metal Bloom catches the artist's eyes, and the artist notices that the entire fence is made of these bouncy curves.
PAP works almost exclusively on such clay slabs and is always flat. In this group, the image is forced into a thin layer of powdered blue clay on a gray base, then the relief is filled smoothly with milky white. The powder blue white reminds me of the classic Wedgwood Chinese pattern. Here, the effect is faint and waxy, and the sculpture feels almost animated.
The show rests on the tension created by small decisions, like an appetizing proximity to the walls of the slab. However, the slab feels fragile, bound by incredibly sharp edges due to all the naive weights. You may also notice a clue that the color variations, two outer panels are baked with ceramic, but the middle two are ineffective. The idea of moving them seems dangerous. PAPP shows are inexplicable and avoid them in ways that don't require resolution.
Lower East Side
Amanda Rodriguez
Until April 26th. Entrance Gallery, 48 Radlow Street. 646-838-5188, Entrant.nyc.
A playful new watercolor painting in Amanda Rodriguez's debut solo show depicts the unlikely error between animals, humans, and inanimate objects that loop backwards and form a creepy space wheel.
In the gallery on the second floor, 16 square paintings run around the shelf wall. Between every pair of easy-to-read illustrations there are two strange blends. The stunned deer in the headlights transforms into a lobster in the process of three panels. The blue eyes attacked by the deer star become rubber bands that tie the lobster's claws. After two panels there is a lobster dinner. Stagewise through a host of toilet women, insects, fish on hooks, gothic angels. And finally, a red car that beats a deer – it brings us a perfect circle.
Downstairs, the arched paintings function with the quasi-Christian sense of the story's stained glass windows and altarpieces in the layout of the pinball machine. For one, the central figure depicts a can and a bag of bottles as a colorful daub. Yellow pinball bumpers are decorated with handguns or subway cars closed doors. It is a rather romantic picture of life in New York City, with percussive shots and screams portrayed as a cliché of Gusmer.
Another watercolor reflects the transformation of the second floor of the central rosette, showing the baby that grew up, transforming into a fish man, married, having his own human baby. The details seem random and stirring, but the larger image has a satisfying circular shape.
Click here for the March gallery.
