Elaine Reichek: A Precis 1972 – 1995 at Zach Feuer
Reichek was born in 1943, attended Yale, likes yarn, cultural anthropology and feminism and this is her first exhibition with Zach Feuer.
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Rosemarie Trockel at Gladstone Gallery
Rosemarie Trockel lives in Germany and also likes yarn and feminism. But here, that sounds jerkily simplistic. This show totally blew me away, even though I’d already peeped at the install photos on the gallery’s website.
There is something simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying about the aesthetic possibilities of simple, repetitive processes, straightforward materials and a no-nonsense presentation. Namely, it seems so easy, it willingly gives away almost all of its secrets, suggesting that anyone with eyes and hands could conceivably make something this starkly beautiful. But the longer you examine the works in the gallery, the more your confidence wanes and the more brilliant and completely perfect each detail becomes.(Gladstone Gallery Website.)
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Jay Heikes: Walkabout at Marianne Boesky (the Chelsea location)
This is an excellent show, but a little hard to document with an iphone. Heikes’s work is multidisciplinary – the press release describes it as a transformative endeavor. One of my favorite descriptions of Heikes’s work came from the catalog for the Walker Art Center’s Painter Painter exhibition that took place this past summer. He was described as an artist with a “restless relationship with materials,” which is definitely exemplified in this sparse grouping of works, which includes a framed work on paper, a table-top sculpture, a large fabric work, two collaged paintings on irregular stretchers, and a series of small wall-mounted sculptural works. The gallery’s images are gorgeous, please view them here: http://www.marianneboeskygallery.com/exhibitions/jay-heikes-walkabout/works
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* Author and Photographer Alex Ebstein is an artist, curator and writer based in Baltimore, MD. She is ok.
