1.

Sessa Englund at Hunter Shaw Fine Art

At Hunter Shaw Fine Art in mid-city, Sessa Englund has set up a kind of hollowed out interior space. Bare wooden shelving (which the artist calls “skeletons”) anchor the gallery while filigreed sheets of amber-hued latex splay across the structures. One drapes from a hanger like freshly made pasta hung up to dry.

Englund’s skin-like proximities are made more fleshy via the addition of carefully applied bodily adornments like stick-and-poke tattoos and piercings. Glass “hearts” are embedded into a series of shelf sculptures using edible marzipan to fuse them into place—a material that surely will degrade over time. Elsewhere, enlarged ball-bearing piercings act as ad-hoc hooks from which oversized charm necklaces drape down to the floor.

The artist’s penchant for ‘90s ephemera subtly infuses this moody exhibition—hearts, butterflies, and Troll Dolls are added onto Englund’s personified structures like patron saints or good luck charms, further eliciting the passage of time. As a whole, Englund’s delicate structures and adorned, flaking skins are a ghostly musing on the ephemerality of the human form.

On view: May 16 – July 4, 2021 | Open map

2.

Ring Down the Curtain at Ochi Projects

A group show at Ochi Projects calls forth an optimistic spirit as our city begins to reopen (“ring down the curtain” is a phrase borrowed from theatre, meaning “show’s over”). The six female artists featured exude a tangled and exuberant sensuality.

A large, soft sculpture by Isabel Yellin, painted in camouflage green, seems to be hugging itself with long, plushy tendrils that wrap around its center. Sarah Zapata’s colorful textile works are similarly lush, like a joyful celebration of form, craft, and tradition. Bari Ziperstein’s ceramic works borrow motifs from various architectural adornments: plaids, checkerboards, and ionic columns swirl together across her vessel.

The exhibition culminates with Trulee Hall’s “Oral Shapes,” a room-sized video installation equipped with spinning props and black light-activated wallpaper. In the central film, a woman (who oscillates between live-action and claymation and wears nothing but a white apron) interacts with various hovering shapes that mirror the ones rotating nearby. The exhibition is a joyous ode to a post-COVID summer filled with hugs and dance parties—still in part a fantasy, but inching closer every day.

On view: May 22 – June 19, 2021 | Open map

3.

David Altmejd at David Kordansky Gallery

Heads and busts feature prominently in "The Enlightenment of the Witch," a solo show by David Altmejd at David Kordansky Gallery. Spread across four rooms, Altmejd presents a cast of sculptural characters that includes trolls, Smurfs, unicorns, and witches. The figures progress with various states of transmutation—what the press release calls "primal states of unknowing."

The angelic figure who peers inquisitively at her hands in the first room soon makes way for a Smurf-man who is split down his center as if in some kind of stage of doubling. In another, a troll's face is triangulated (as if looking through a kaleidoscope), his long braid in triplicate flowing down his back. These bodies continue to split and multiply, culminating with the witch figure in the last room: fully splayed open, legs spread, and birthing a crowning baby. Here, the fantastical and comedic (in one work, a severed neck smokes a cigarette) meet the psychological as Altmejd's figures expose the inner essence of humanness: birth, death, expansion, and a communion with something larger than ourselves.

On view: May 15 – July 2, 2021 | Open map

The Tenderness of Tattoos

I asked Sessa Englund about the personification of their objects, actions like piercing and tattooing that give her sculptures skin-like illusion. “I think at the core of it my ideas around sculpture is a drive to create a physical reaction from the viewer, and for that to be reflected in the object,” Englund explained. “This comes out in material choices and through scale but also treating these materials with processes usually reserved for living tissue or even specifically human living tissue. By tattooing and piercing and treating these objects in this way it builds that familiarity and I think leads the mind into connecting with these inanimate objects… I think there's also a sense of tenderness in piercing and tattooing that also holds this cliche pop-culture space of rebellion or aversion. I think there is something very tender about the drive and the decision of piercing or tattooing or engaging with our largest organ (the skin), and claiming that space and making it your own.”