Sunday, January 14: Timothy Cummings at Hoffman

These dream-like fantasy figures filled with myriad detail and discovery often address the issue of youthful turmoil, of that awkward moment between childhood and adulthood, of identity, and of gender. The artist often paints portraits as a child might conjure them in his/her mind, giving an almost hallucinatory quality to a grown-up persona. 

Mostly intimate in scale on wooden panels Cummings’s acrylic paintings, carefully and meticulously created, suggest a fascination Renaissance patronage and primitive art, but with imagery that could only be contemporary. Inspired by Renaissance painting as well as by primitive art, Cummings’s new works transport the viewer into a world of transformation where anything is possible.

The artist’s love of clothes that adorn his characters in plaids, lace, striped socks and magic hats continues to this day, as does his love of flowers based on real, yet imagined specimens.

Nancy Hoffman Gallery, 52 West 27^th Street, New York, NY Info

Saturday, January 13, 4-7pm: Nickola Pottinger | ike ya neva lef at Mrs

Pottinger’s sculptures contain objects and memory: her work explores themes of legacy, regeneration and reincarnation informed by her family’s origins in Jamaica. Calling many of her sculptural forms ‘duppies,’ the Jamaican Patois word for ghosts, Pottinger’s works shapeshift between figure, animal and furniture. They contain references to family lore while haunting the present. A tool central to her practice is the hand mixer, co-opted from her mother’s kitchen, which she uses to whip family archives into paper pulp. The shredded paper is upcycled into a new malleable state and serves as a type of clay to be molded into body shapes. 

This new body of work emerged following a trip back to Kingston, which coincided with months-long drought and subsequent water rationing. The residue of these events, as well as her awareness of the changing landscape–familiar forests and beaches now eroded due to the colonizing force of resort culture–gets channeled into the artist’s work, as does the joy of reuniting with family members and seeing again her grandfather’s home he built with his hands. The hybridity of these works and their meanings–suggesting characters both powerful and ordinary, symbols of life mixed with collected objects allows Pottinger to shift seamlessly between material and memory, to recall her family stories and regenerate them anew. Info

Mrs. Gallery, 60-40 56^th Drive, Maspeth, NY Directions

Thursday, January 18: 50th Anniversary Members Exhibition at Book Arts

Please join me on Thursday, January 18 from 6 to 8pm for the opening of Hello Thank You Come In: 50th Anniversary Members Exhibition at the Center for Book Arts. I am thrilled to be joining this stellar group of book makers including Rosaire Appel, Biruta Auna, Roni Gross, Barbara Mauriello, and Buzz Spector, to name a few. Above: @peggy.roalf,  Stryker, 2023 

The interior pages of this book, “Stryker” are done with Sumi ink on fine newsprint. The covers are Sumi ink on double layers of Japanese rice paper, glued together and ironed. See a video of the entire book here

Center for Book Arts, 28 West 27^th Street, New York, NY Info

Continuing: Derrick Adams Billboards on the Highline

This week the High Line announced that two vibrant works by Derrick Adams are on view on the High Line – Moynihan Connector Billboard, which overlooks the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel from its location on Dyer Avenue between 30th and 31st Streets. 

Sitting Pretty(2016) and Sing It Like You Mean It (2016) both hail from the artist’s Live and In Color series, which focuses on the pivotal moment between the 1970s and 1990s as national television attempted to more realistically reflect the diversity of its audience. Endemic in this shift in representation, however, was a portrayal of Black personalities as overly dramatized, larger-than-life, and exaggerated. Both Sitting Pretty and Sing It Like You Mean It are framed by vintage wood-grain finish TVs, complete with the classic VHF (Very High Frequency) and UHF (Ultra High Frequency) knobs found in color televisions of the 70s and 80s. Consistent with this theme, Adams has backgrounded both works with bars of color from the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) test pattern, used to calibrate the color balance on TV screens. The artist also borrows this palette to delineate the angular faces of both works' central figures, which are laid out in cubist geometry. 

The unique double-sided vertical billboard features two commanding depictions of Black people, broadcasting the figures’ warm self-assurance to the park visitors and passersby below. Each side’s figure is set against the Technicolor backdrop of a TV test pattern, suggesting the reset of cultural conventions on television and popular culture at large that took place as Black culture gained greater mainstream representation in the latter 20th century.

Continuing: 2024 Members Invitational at Artists Equity

This year’s long-running annual features works by Cecilia Andre, Liz Atlas, Sue Collier, Jaynie Crimmins, Larry Dobens, Carol Fabricatore, Anki King, David Genest, JoAnne Lobotsky, Leslie Marcus, Kim Sloane, Victoria Smith, Barbara Laube, Natalie Stiegman, George Towne, Brenda Zlamany. Above: Overlook 2 by longtime DART subscriber Carol Fabricatore

Artists Equity Gallery, 245 Broome Street, New York, NY Info

Continuing: Jill Weinstock, Unwanted Collaborator: Fractured Landscapes at Wachter

For these new works, Jill Weinstock begins with photographs from her personal archive. Reworking subjects such as landscape elements, waterfalls or rainbows multiplying then so the images seem more manufactured than simply foud. Other photographs depict architectural rock formations and footprints in the earth, her commentary on the impact travelers nature and  gardens are pressed, and submerged in rubber, a material that both preserves and binds the plants.

The resulting amalgamations are preserved in time, just as the photographs freeze specic moments. Embroidered elements appear in many of the works, their articially bright colors standing in contrast to the earthy tones of the poured rubber. Each end of the embroidered shapes hangs with loosely dangling threads, which fall and flow organically.

Winston Wachter Gallery, 530 West 25^th Street, New York, NY Info