Wednesday, May 8, 6-8 pm: Stanley Whitney | By the Love of Those Unloved at Gagosian

By the Love of Those Unloved, the gallery’s first exhibition of work by Stanley Whitney in New York, features new paintings and works on paper. A master colorist, Whitney takes an exploratory and lyrical approach to painting in his canvases, which are structured as loose grids of rectilinear blocks in three or four rows.

Laying down one vivid color at a time, the artist establishes relationships between each area, its neighbors, and the composition as a whole, employing gestural brushwork to juxtapose hues applied with varied degrees of opacity. Between each row are linear bands that ground the composition and sometimes extend the tones of individual blocks. Inspired by jazz, Whitney defines a space within which to improvise, each painting setting a unique group of chromatic and spatial harmonies in motion.

Gagosian, 980 Madison Avenue, New York, NY Info

Wednesday, May 8, 6-8 pm: Frank Webster | Earthed Lightning at iS-G

Earthed Lightning: Northern Landscapes marks the first occasion where a careful selection of Frank Webster’s paintings and works on paper featuring diverse environs of the North will be displayed together. Forming a topographical and temporal symphony, the exhibition will explore Webster’s travels and artist residencies in the West of Ireland, on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard and in Iceland. Above: Spákonufell, 2017; Acrylic on canvas

In its title, the exhibition references an evocative phrase from Seamus Heaney’s poem "Postscript", in which he reflected on an afternoon trip down the West Coast of Ireland describing the nature he bore witness to as a “glorious exultation of air and sea and swans”. Webster’s work gives painterly expression to the exalting qualities of nature, and through their color and line, introduce sentiments of spiritual gravitas, bewilderment and pathos. To stand before them is to be engulfed in a sensory experience that illuminates the vastness of time, its preciousness and the precarity of our place within. Below: Slieve Rua, 2023; watercolor and grapnite on paper

The land and seascapes in the exhibition bear nearly inconceivable continuums. As the years turned over, there the glaciers, stone and volcanic rock stood – collecting, witnessing and absorbing centuries of winds, storms and seasons. Their formation and formations quite literally attest to temporality and continuous states of transformation and alchemic processes. Stone and ice become keepers of memory, and their surfaces turn into images bearing the markings of time. Webster’s paintings imprint on the viewers' consciousness, and propel us towards an awakening, and a recognition of the enduring truth that we are all rooted in the soil. 

Isabel Sullivan—Gallery, 39 Lispenard Street, New York, NY Info 

Wednesday, May 8, 5-8 pm: Upper East Side Artwalk

In conjunction with TEFAFNew York Art Fair, at the Park Avenue this weekend, many UES galleries will be open late tonight.

From Jill Newhouse Gallery: Size Doesn’t Matter | Small Works with Big Impact, includes works by J.B.C. Corot, Albert Marquet, Piet Mondrian, Eugene Delacroix, the writer Georges Sand, George Seurat, and the contemporary artist Rachel Rikert. Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, View in Fontainebleau, c. 1823-2

Jill Newhouse Gallery, 4 East 81^st Street, New York, NY Info From the New York times, four more.

Bringing together 89 international art dealers hailing from 15 countries, TEFAF New York returns to the Park Avenue Armory from May 10 through 14. Showcasing an intriguing range of fine art and design, jewelry and antiques, the fair will also present curated spaces set against the backdrop of the Armory’s period rooms, offering visitors and immersive experience marked by exploration and discovery. This year, there will be an extremely strong presence of women artists, including exhibitor presentations dedicated to women artists or solo artist exhibitions.

Among these is Sprüth Mager’s booth, which is devoted to some of the gallery’s most well-known women artists, including Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, and Rosemarie Trockel. All three of these artists have been with the gallery since the 1980s and have maintained practices that have become synonymous with the pioneering of artistic cultural commentary.

Also at TEFAFNY, David Zwirner presents work by Giorgio Morandi (1890–1964), who is best known for his paintings depicting arrangements of quotidian objects. Remaining dedicated to the repertoire of subjects that had occupied him since the early 1910s, including tabletop still lifes of bottles, boxes, vases, and flowers, as well as occasional landscapes, his variations on a given compositional motif became more persistent, nuanced, and abstract in the later half of his life. Above: Nature Morte (Still Life), 1942

Park Avenue Armory, at 67^th Street, New York, NY Info

Thursday, May 9-Sunday, May 12: Independent New York

The 15^th edition of Independent opens tomorrow at Spring Studios in Tribeca, New York.  The 2024 edition of the fair will feature works by more than 130 artists presented by more than 85 galleries and nonprofits, nominated by Independent’s founding curatorial advisor Matthew Higgs.
Solo, duo and group exhibitions commissioned especially for Independent will showcase artists from multiple generations and diverse cultural backgrounds across four floors.

As a special anniversary initiative, Independent founders Elizabeth Dee and Matthew Higgs are co-curating the focused presentation 15 x15: Independent 2010-2024, featuring artists and galleries who have made a significant impact on Independent’s history.  Above: BOFFO, a nonprofit organization devoted to innovative and experimental art and design, presents Sunbathing, a new edition of 30 monoprints in collaboration with the artist Doron Langberg. Info

Since Independent’s inception in 2010, the invitation-only fair has focused on inspiring relevant encounters with contemporary art for a well-informed audience. This year’s commissioned presentations will spotlight a wide range of emerging artists making their exhibition debuts in New York City, established figures whose careers are due for critical and market reassessment, and multidisciplinary practices engaging with timely political and social themes.

Independent Art Fair, Spring Studios, 50 Varick Street, New York, NY Info

For further considerations: Barry Schwabsky’s Picture Library in Border Crossings

Border Crossings is a tri-annual arts magazine published in Winnipeg. Edited by Meeka Walsh, the magazine investigates contemporary art and culture through a mix of articles, reviews, interviews and portfolios of drawings and photographs. Border Crossings occupies a vital place in the geographic centre of the North American continent and looks out from there. “Outstanding” is the word readers, artists, curators and gallerists have come to associate with the magazine. Above: From Steven Seidenberg, The Architecture of Silence: Abandoned Lives of the Italian South, published by Contrasto, Rome, 2023.

Each issue includes Meeka Walsh’s unique essay meditations, Robert Enright’s film column, and a new column called “Picture Library”, where Barry Schwabsky turns his discriminating eye on the most interesting recently published photobooks. His column opens up a whole new world of pictures.

Each issue also contains Border Crossings’s wide-ranging review section called Crossovers, which does exactly what its name suggests: looks at exhibitions and books from around the world and addresses them in the clear and informed language that has become the hallmark of the magazine.