You can find New York City Art in museums. But you can also find it by going into galleries.

Gagosian Gallery

The Gagosian Gallery was fully devoted to “Never Remember during our 2019 visit. This exhibition by Nate Lowman contained over a dozen, large U.S. maps, each of which consisted of hand-cut versions of each state. While he put each together in the correct design, they were stretched, sewed and painted differently (with a couple hung upside down). Although state borders remain the same through the country’s history, the map is intended to represent dramatic changes in their relative role in the national economy and especially politics, and the ways in which political groupings of states change over time.

A previous visit it had an exhibit of Picasso and one of his colleagues/muses, Francoise Gilot. While it was enough of a treat to see the dozens of Picassos pulled together for the exhibit, it was interesting to see the evolution of her work (from significant similarities to Picasso’s style to one that is wholly her own) and the ways in which her image and some of her features showed up in so many of his works.

Chelsea Galleries

We always try to stroll down Chelsea Street galleries. Unfortunately, our timing was poor this trip. Roughly half the galleries were in the process of installing their autumn exhibitions. Many of these galleries were closed and some of those that were open had only small exhibits in place. Even so, we did find a number of artists and works that we found to be of interest. Among these were:

• Berry Campbell Gallery’s exhibit of Susan Vesey’s lovely, stylized, impressionist paintings of various horizons, all portrayed in gauzy, muted colors;

• Tina Kim Gallery’s partially installed sculptures by Gimhongsok titled Dwarf, Dust and Doubt. Although we could only see those of his works in the front gallery, we were amused by the fanciful ways in which the artist used granite slabs to portray a dwarf in many different poses, from serious to playful;

• Joanne Artman’s Gallery’s “HalfNaked”, was an exhibit of hauntingly portraits by Ray Turner;

• Marlborough Contemporary Gallery’s exhibit of  Red Groom’s wide range of fun, humorous, vividly painted images, sculptures, dioramas, videos, and room-sized installations that portray the hidden, and sometimes not-so-hidden absurdities of life that the artist conceived over his 60+-year career;

• Gallery Henoch’s “Daydream Believer” paintings in which Gary Ruddell portrays the type of idyllic scenes in which people are balanced or semi-levitated in ways that are only possible in dreams;

• Miles McEnery Gallery’s exhibit of paintings by Annie Lapin which uses a generally random technique to apply color and images to a canvas as a means of exploring the intersection of accident and intention to ultimate meaning;

• Lyons Wier Gallery’s display of New England landscapes by Cobi Moules, who intersperses multiple images of himself, all identically attired, in different parts of the image to reveal a narrative of exploring nature;

• Danese Corey Gallery’s, vibrantly-colored, quasi-abstract figurative self-portraits by Elisabeth Osborne in which she portrays people in the places in which they are most comfortable.