Guides  -   -  Share

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


Corporealités, at Perrotin New York || Jesper Just (14 Jan – 15 Feb 2020)

Perrotin New York presents a new large-scale sculptural installation by Danish artist Jesper Just. The work is composed of a series of LED sculptures programmed with a multi-channel video work alongside a spatial intervention into the gallery’s first floor. Loneliness, suspense and yearning are impactful yet familiar devices of Hollywood cinema, often employed by Just to upend the film-watching experience. In this new installation, Just explores ideas of agency, performativity, and interpassivity, frequently using the formal language of ballet to discuss the body in both its idealised and fractured forms.


What Eats Around Itself, at New Museum || Daiga Grantina (21 Jan – 10 May 2020)

The New Museum presents What Eats Around Itself, the first institutional solo exhibition in the US by Daiga Grantina. For her New Museum presentation, Grantina will premiere a new, site-specific sculptural installation that interweaves cast silicone with paint and fabric. Suspended from industrial fixtures in the ceiling and clinging to the gallery walls and floor, this work mimics the growth of lichen, which typically develops into a crusty, leaf-like, or branching formation on rocks, trees, and other surfaces. The work’s flexible, amorphous structures appear to be undergoing either construction or decomposition, much as lichen reproduces and consumes its own biological matter.


Doug Wheeler, at David Zwirner || Doug Wheeler (24 Jan – 21 Mar 2020)

David Zwirner will show a new light installation by American artist Doug Wheeler at the gallery’s 519 West 19th Street location in New York this month. Over the past five decades, Wheeler has become known for his innovative constructions and installations that engage with the perception and experience of light, space, and sound. On view will be an immersive environment by the artist that further expands on his groundbreaking investigations of the possibilities of luminous space. This is Wheeler’s fourth solo exhibition at the gallery and coincides with the release of the first major monograph devoted to his work.


Salvo, at Gladstone Gallery || Salvo (11 Jan – 29 Feb 2020)

Salvo, whose given name was Salvatore Mangione, was born in Leonforte, Sicily, in 1947. After permanently relocating to his adoptive city of Turin in 1968, he quickly became involved in the blossoming Arte Povera movement, which was born as a response to the social and political unrest in Italy throughout the 1960s. Gladstone Gallery hosts an exhibition of paintings by Salvo, focusing on the artist’s compositions of landscapes and cities. This show surveys more than 30 years of Salvo’s artistic practice and highlights his early conceptual art and his astounding aptitude for portraying the complexities of light and the passage of time.


daughterproof, at JTT || Issy Wood (8 Jan – 9 Feb 2020)

American artist and writer Issy Woods lives and works in London. Wood’s works are reminiscent of inadvertent sketches in which one can discern the outlines of people, animals and objects. Painting with oils, and occasionally on velvet rather than canvas, there is a seductive artificiality to the work. The impulsive and yet rigid brush strokes on her paintings correspond to a nearly impossibly full representation of person, object and feeling. Born in North Carolina, Wood moved to the UK to study at the University of London. She graduated in 2015 with a BA in Fine Art and Art History before undertaking her postgraduate studies at the Royal Academy Schools.


Collages, at Kasmin || Max Ernst (23 Jan – 29 Feb 2020)

Later this month, Kasmin will exhibit a number of paper collages by German surrealist Max Ernst. Staged in collaboration with the Destina Foundation, Collages features approximately thirty works on paper, ranging in both scale and subject matter, and spanning 1920 to 1975. The uniquely illusionistic quality and contextual depth of Ernst’s collages speak to his ability to seamlessly create new realities formed upon the Dada and Surrealist tenets of poetry, imagination, and dream. Using source materials that include illustrations, periodicals, catalogues, newspapers, and scientific journals, these collages are often further altered using painting and drawing.



Feature image: Doug Wheeler’s installation DW 68 VEN MCASD 11, 1968-2011, shown as part of Phenomenal: California Light, Space, Surface, 2011 at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (via Pinterest)

Stay up to date with Something Curated