1. Dale Chihuly: Chihuly at Marlborough is open at Marlborough Gallery until April 11, 2015.
A 50-year journey exploring color and light crescendos with Chihuly at Marlborough, which displays a new series of work titled Rotolo from glass artist Dale Chihuly. In these works, glass is handled in an aggressively physical manner resulting in the most technically challenging pieces that the artist has produced. “Working on my new series, Rotolo, rekindled my excitement for working with clear glass. I was really amazed by the complexity and brilliance of the form, which started from a simple coil, ” the artist said. With a background in architecture, Chihuly has always been interested in space and light. Working within the architecture of the gallery, Chihuly presents smaller sculptural works from his established series along with large-scale installations.
2. Matthew Darbyshire: Suite is open at Lisa Cooley until March 29, 2015.
British artist Matthew Darbyshire’s Suite is comprised of eight polycarbonate sculptures of consumer objects, domestic animals, designer furniture, standard utilities and classical art. Working from stock digital models, Darbyshire constructs the sculptures by layering 16mm sheets of semi–transparent, corrugated thermoplastic (a material that is primarily used in place of glass in architectural facades and skylights), which have been individually cut, colored and assembled by hand. They also share a color palate, which is derived from the standard Photoshop eight-color hue/saturation scale. Along with this consistent color scheme, the sculptures’ material structure, which resembles something closer to a scaffold than a solid mass, distances them from the reality of the surrounding space. The objects come in and out of focus as their physical relationship with the viewer changes.
3. Paul Chan: Nonprojections for New Lovers is open at Guggenheim until May 13, 2015.
Paul Chan is the winner of the 2014 Hugo Boss Prize. Over the past fifteen years, Chan’s wide-ranging projects have taken the shape of documentary videos, animated projections, charcoal drawings, conceptual typefaces, and public performances. In 2010 he founded Badlands Unlimited, an experimental publishing enterprise that has become an integral element of his work. Conceived to “make books in an expanded field,” Badlands has produced titles as GIFs, PDFs, and even a stone tablet, in addition to print and e-book formats. In a similar spirit, the works in this exhibition consider what it might mean to make images in an expanded field, probing the notion of visual projection. Tetra Gummi Phone (2014–15) presents a moving image in material form. Described by the artist as a sculptural animation, this composition of white nylon fabric set in motion by industrial fans evokes an otherworldly apparition and draws on the ancient Greek concept of pneuma, meaning “breath” or “spirit.” An installation of works from Chan’s series Nonprojections (2013– ) features video projectors that are linked to jury-rigged, power-conducting shoes.
4. Ericka Beckman: You the Better is open at Mary Boone until April 25, 2015.
Ericka Beckman’s You The Better features an early film work of the same name. Created in 1983, the film was premiered at the New York Film Festival and shown at The Kitchen in 1984, but never exhibited in New york as a fully developed installation. For this exhibition, Beckman installs the film alongside its props. Choreographed lighting cues highlight the props and then dim in conjunction with the specific points of film to extend its gameplay into space. The film follows a team of uniformed players as they navigate a gaming world. The team performs a series of plays in a game controlled by a mysterious betting entity “the house”. While seemingly a game of skills, rules are altered (could this be an inspiration for the hunger Games?) and competitors exchanged, and the film reveals itself as based on mathematics of chance.
5. Shozo Kitadai: Forms of Experiment & Imagination is open at Taka Ishii until June 27, 2015.
A core member of the avant-garde collaborative Jikken Kōbō (Experimental Workshop) founded in Tokyo immediately after World War II, Shozo Kitadai was a noted Japanese photographer, painter and sculptor. Composed of fourteen visual artists—performers, choreographers, light designers, sound engineers and composers—Jikken Kōbō is well known for its inter-media and cross-disciplinary works and notable role in fostering the rebirth of the Japanese cultural avant-garde. These rarely exhibited works exemplify Kitadai’s acute sense of aesthetics and experimental thought and illuminate his singular philosophy on art, form and avant – garde activities. The elegantly executed photographs and sculptures reveal his unique vantage point and rather unorthodox approach. Evocative of a bold experimentation with form, the photographs enlist the landscape of a changing post-war Tokyo and its architecture in the seminal period of the late 1950s and early 1960s, a time when Japan began its transformation from a war devastated country to a modern society, replete with social convulsions, intense economic shifts and changing view points.