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Looking ahead at the rest of the month, Something Curated highlights six of the most interesting art exhibitions taking place in New York this June.

 

Charles Ray: three rooms and the repair annex, Matthew Marks Gallery || Charles Ray (Until 16 Jun)

Sculptor Charles Ray has divided Matthew Marks gallery into three rooms and installed a single sculpture in each one. Reclining Woman (2018), in the centre of the main room, is machined from solid stainless steel. The scale shifts in the room at the back, where Mountain Lion Attacking a Dog (2018) is on view. This hypothetical scene from the hills around the artist’s home in Los Angeles is cast in sterling silver and is three and a half feet long and less than two feet high.

 

TAILBONE, 47 Canal || Tenaya Izu & Henry Murphy (Until 29 June)

Curated by Tenaya Izu and Henry Murphy, TAILBONE explores the concept of semantic satiation, the repetition of a word to the point that both its meaning and origins melt. This group show asks viewers to rest in a place of instability, to think apart from the orthodoxy of languages and their logic systems. Perhaps in this state of dissolution is where the most potential for these symbols exists. The works interrogate points along the paths in, out from, and within this state.

 

New “SCULPTURE/CONFIGURATIONS”, Pace Gallery || Robert Irwin (Until 17 Aug)

In his 90th year, Robert Irwin, who pioneered the Southern California-based Light and Space movement, continues to present radical new ideas of how space is perceived. Irwin’s work across different media is conditional and responsive to specific environments. His current exhibition – the artist’s eighteenth at Pace since joining the gallery in 1966 – includes nine column sculptures comprised of coloured acrylic panels that defy the viewer’s certainty of the space being perceived.

 

Today, Betty Cuningham Gallery || Philip Pearlstein (Until 17 Jun)

In 1971, Philip Pearlstein clearly stated his position on realism in an article, “Why I Paint the Way I Do”, which appeared in the New York Times on August 22 of that year. The article, which is reproduced in full in the exhibition catalogue, is as strikingly relevant to Pearlstein’s painting today as it was in 1971. As seen in the paintings on view, Pearlstein remains sustained by a voracious hunger to paint exactly what is in front of him.

 

Monica Majoli & Ruth Novaczek, Queer Thoughts || Monica Majoli & Ruth Novaczek (Until 15 June 2018)

Queer Thoughts presents an exhibition featuring the work of Los Angeles based painter Monica Majoli, and London based filmmaker Ruth Novaczek. The exhibition includes a new film by Novaczek, Footnote (2017), and a previously unexhibited collection of preliminary photographs taken by Majoli for her series Black Mirror (2009-2012). In both artists’ work, instances of absence and loss are foregrounded as a primary site through which experience gains meaning.

 

Sōtatsu, Gagosian || Urs Fischer (Until 23 June) 

Gagosian presents Sōtatsu, a new painting in nine parts by Urs Fischer. In this work, which is installed in successive panels along the walls of a single room, Fischer explores the ways that space can be divided, stretched, opened, and closed, creating a panorama that is as continuous as it is fragmented. Inspired by the hand scrolls and painted screens of early seventeenth-century Japanese artist Tawaraya Sōtatsu, Fischer’s interior landscape uses negative space, light, and repetition to evoke time and movement.

 

Feature image: Philip Pearlstein, Today at Betty Cuningham Gallery (via Betty Cuningham Gallery)

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