Wael Shawky at Lisson Gallery
504 West 24th Street
The Gulf Project Camp
The Egyptian artist Wael Shawky combine a serie of monumental scale wood relief work sculptures with a elaborated and detailed handcrafted in each part of his work.
Wael Shawky’s work were influenced by national, religious and myth from Egypt .
I was very impressed by the wood engraving that he did and the sizes of the art work. I don’t like very much the subject matter but the way he spread his culture through art and all the myths involved in the compositions were striking. He did a lot of wood Machetari with mother of pearl and different colors and used different types of wood dated between 400 and 2000 years old.
Shawky presented also a series of large scale highly cast glass sculptures produced in Venice some mounted with colored mirror to create a visual effect The subject matter is about the Arab Peninsula in the 17th century. It was difficult to see where the history stopped and where was his fantasy
Five poems by Nizami
Oil on carved wood
200X200X 40 cm
Detail of the piece
Nightlife of the Palace
Bas-relief, glass, mirror
210X120 cm
Panoramic view of Mecca
Oil on carved wood 250x 400×15 cm
Detail of the piece
Seven thrones by Jami 1556-1565
Oil on carved wood
Birth in a Palace
Bas-relief, glass
140×190 cm
Anni Albers at David Zwirner Gallery
537 West 20th Street
Usually people related Anni Albers with her husband Josef Albers but for me her work speaks for itself. It’s very precise work with a new concept, at that time, to express art and the use of color and shapes. She studied at the Bauhaus school in the weaving workshop because was the only one open for women With the weaving technique she created abstract pieces of art to hang on the wall.
She became one of the most important abstract artists of the twentieth century using form and color in a intuitive process
I read that Paul Klee influence her work but we saw on the second floor of the same gallery Paul Klee exhibition but I couldn’t find the relation between both works
Alberts change her carrier from weaving to graphic media and started working on paper and her work ranges from lithographs and screenprints to pencil sketches, ink and felt-pen drawings, and colorful gouaches.
I saw some work on paper that reminds a lot about her weaving work “Caminho Real “ and it seems a path to active a higher piece.
Camino Real 1968
Exhibition of Paul Chan
Greene Naftali Gallery
508 West 26th Street
Ground Floor & 8th Floor
New York, NY 10001
T (212) 463-7770
Paul Chan’s solo exhibition entitled The Bathers dilemma. He look back to some artist who had explored the theme Bather before like Cezanne and Matisse and he made few canvas expressing the Matisse’s colors in a Paul’s Chan way.
Each installation has one history and characters. At the beginning I didn’t like it because it reminds me a lot of the advertising at the gas stations in Brazil but after thinking and reading more about his work I also related it to his curation at the Guggenheim museum where he took several artist to describe an experience with water on the blue carpet and now he is describing an experience with air using art, colors and shapes.
Amy Sherald at Hauser & Wirth Gallery
548 West 22nd Street
The Heart of the matter …..
Amy Sherald was presented to me as the artist who did President Obama’s portrait and actually that work as the ones above, are very different and represent her way of showing art. The size of the pieces as well the vibrant colors caught my eye. The subject matter is African-American people with a gray tone of skin in a brightly colored background, ambiguous environment, then meticulous expression with patterns to emphasize a sense of universality and connection. She painted them in a large scale bigger then the human size and the bright background pop out.
In the upper level I saw at Paul Klee exhibition.
Paul Klee
