November 2-January 11, 2025: Lorna Simpson. | Earth & Sky at Hauser + Wirth

Born in Brooklyn, Lorna Simpson came to prominence in the 1990s with her pioneering approach to conceptual photography. Simpson’s early work—particularly her striking juxtapositions of text and staged images—raised questions about the nature of representation, identity, gender, race and history that continue to drive the artist’s expanding and multi-disciplinary practice today.

Studying on the West Coast in the mid-1980s, Simpson was part of a generation of artists who utilized conceptual approaches to undermine the credibility and apparent neutrality of language and images. Her most iconic works from this period depict African-American figures as seen only from behind or in fragments. The incredibly powerful works entangle viewers into an equivocal web of meaning, with what is unseen and left unsaid as important as that which the artist does disclose. Seemingly straightforward, these works are in fact near-enigmas, as complex as the subject matter they take on.

Over the past 30 years, Simpson has continued to probe these questions while expanding her practice to encompass various media including film and video, painting, drawing and sculpture. Her recent works incorporate appropriated imagery from vintage Jet and Ebony magazines, found photo booth images, and discarded Associated Press photos of natural elements. The new work continues to immerse viewers in layers of bewitching paradoxes, threading dichotomies of figuration and abstraction, past and present, destruction and creation, and male and female. Read the recent NYTimes interview here

Hauser & Wirth, 542 West 22nd Street, New York, NY Info

Alteronce Gumby | Prince of the Far Rainbow at Nicola Vassell

“Color connects us with the world around us in ways we often overlook," says Gumby in his recent interview with designboom, as he describes the culmination of two years of research and travel around the world, which informed these new works. Here, materials like shattered glass, gemstones, and acrylic-colored mirrors become the building blocks of color.

His ‘moonwalker’ paintings, which incorporate reflective surfaces, shimmer and shift as viewers move around them, evoking ever-changing landscapes. ‘” wanted to capture that sense of motion and transformation,” Gumby says. ‘These paintings are alive in a sense, constantly reacting to their surroundings and to the people who engage with them.’ His use of mirrors, initially inspired by NASA’s cosmic photography, creates an interactive experience where the audience sees both the artwork and themselves, a reflection of the evolving nature of perception.

Nicola Vassell Gallery, 138 Tenth Avenue, New York, NY Info

Saturdays, November 6 and 23, 11am: Downtown Artists Neighborhood Tour

Although the New Museum is closed during its expansion, it is still offering art programs IRL. This week continues the guided walks exploring the artistic history of NoHo, NoLita and SoHo. This month a teaching artist will lead a tour of the homes, stuidos and hangouts of artists John Giorno (above), Lynda Benglis, Adrian Piper, Lorraine O’Grady, Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Your smartphone will link to the live narrative. Meet at The New Museum, 235 Bowery, New York. NY Tickets 

Thursday, November 14, 7 - 11pm: The Party at Angel Orensanz Foundation

The year's most anticipated networking schmooze-fest celebrating the American Photography 40 and American Illustration 43 winners is just 20 days away—get your tickets her 

Once again AI-AP brings the art, photo and design communities together in a one-of-a-kind, trifecta gathering of photographers / illustrators / and creatives to launch the new AP40 and AI43 hardcover award books. American Illustration and American Photography (AI-AP) offer an expansive view with hundreds of images selected by an outstanding jury from thousands of entries submitted to our two annual competitions. 

American Illustration 43 designed by Paul Buckley with Brianna Harden [above]. The Jury: Michael Houtz, GQ; Chuck Kerr, Entertainment Weekly; Jia Knetzer, Garden and Gun; Lisa Larsen-Walker, ProPublica; Taylor Le, Los Angeles Times; Kelly Lynch, Workman Publishing; Chris Mihal, Southern Poverty Law Center; Anjali Nair, WIRED; Marci Senders, Disney/Hyperion; Minh Uong, The New York Times; Alexandra Zsigmond, The New Yorker]

American Photography 40 designed by Thomas Alberty; cover photo by Lindsay Kreighbaum [above]. The Jury: Thomas Alberty, New York Magazine; Michael Baca, BASIC Agency @ Google; Lydia Chebbine, The 19th News; Donna Cohen, Bloomberg; Amy Feitelberg, Freelance Director of Photography; Natalie Gialluca, Vanity Fair; Julie Hau, National Geographic; Stephanie Heimann, The New Republic; Gabriel Sanchez, TheNew York Times; Christine Walsh, South James; Alison Wild, Entertainment Weekly

Angel Orensanz Foundation, 172 Norfolk Street New York, NY

Here at DART, we celebrate four AI multi-award winners with exhibitions opening soon and continuing: 

Saturday, Novemer 9, 11am-5pm: Sarajo Friden | the earth laughs in flowers

In conjunction with The Dome Open Studios, where 13 artists will open their doors for a day of exploration, Sarajo presents a new series of large-scale mixed media works in which plant forms mingle with their mythic surroundings. She includes a link to the history of the building, which the legendary ceramics artist Peter Voulkos purchased in 1976 to make space for his signature, large-scale ceramic and bronze sculptures, as well as to nurture an affordable live/work space for Bay Area artists. The creative community encapsulated within the hundred-year-old walls continues to thrive today.

Works on display range from Ceramics, Collage, Painting, Sculpture, Textiles, Custom Furniture, Jewelry, with Music & Garden/Cactus Tours and music by Mishmash from noon to 2 pm.

The Dome Center for Art, Music and Dance, 951V 62nd Street, Oakland, CA Info

Saturday, November 9, 5-7 pm: Anita Kunz | Original Sisters at Norman Rockwell Museum

Original Sisters is a series of portraits that reveals and honors the contributions of history-making women. To create the series, award-winning illustrator Anita Kunz carefully researched, wrote about, and portrayed each subject, sometimes compiling scant available information to establish a more complete picture. Her portraits present famed and lesser-known women in the fields of art, science, technology and invention, education, history, and politics, offering a needed expansion and revision of the historical record. In the words of author Roxane Gay, Original Sisters offers “possibility and promise …. You will be introduced to many of these women for the first time, because history is rarely kind to women until it is forced to be.”

Kunz’s project began in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic when the artist spent hours in her Toronto studio seeking inspiration by searching the internet for information about notable women in history. Though the subject had always interested her, Kunz realized that her knowledge base was limited, and she became determined to fill in the gaps. She began painting portraits of accomplished women across time, cultures, and geography, accompanied by texts she assembled to tell their stories. These portraits form the ever-growing nucleus of Original Sisters: Portraits of Tenacity and Courage, an exhibition and book that together bring to light hundreds of women trailblazers who made and changed history.

Norman Rockwell Museum, 9 Glendale Road Route 183, Stockbridge, MA Info 

Continuing through December 20: Esther Pearl Watson | Generating Auras at Andrew Edlin

The paintings featured in this exhibition, Esther Pearl Watson’s third with the Andrew Edlin Gallery, were inspired by the artist’s stay in Italy this past summer, caring for her father in his hometown of Ferno. “…my father who is seventy-eight, was in a motorbike accident in Italy. He spent three months in the hospital, and I found myself traveling back and forth [from her home I California] as a long-distance caregiver,” Watson said. “There is a painting in the show, Generates Auras, that features a large stoic donkey. 

“Donkeys are often used as guardians of herds, bonding with them and protecting them from predators, she continued. “I have to be a guardian for my dad. Lately, I’ve thought a lot about comets. The auras they create are spectacular. In his own way, my father is like a comet, generating his own aura, shaped by the changes in his body and mind. Just as a comet emits invisible light, he radiates a presence and energy that is deeply felt but not always seen.”

Andrew Edlin Gallery, 212 Bowery, New York, NY Info

Saturday, November 9, 6-9pm: Satoko Okuno | Eyes on You at Hey There

Hey There Projects, founded by Mark Todd and Aaron Burns, now with Esther Pearl Watson, present Satoko Okuno’s portrayals of animals and mythological creatures, which draw inspiration from various sources such as her two cats, encounters at the zoo, and ancient art forms like Greek pottery and Egyptian sculptures. Her vibrant mixed-media paintings, adorned with impasto textures, and glazed stoneware breathe life into these creatures, establishing them as guardians within her art and inviting viewers into a comforting and safe realm.

This profound exploration of guardianship is rooted in Okuno’s Japanese upbringing, steeped in the cultural richness of Shintoism—the belief that all things, ranging from natural materials, animals, and humans alike, have a spirit. Having grown up with traditional Japanese sculptures of guardian animals, often placed in front of shrines to bring safety and protect inhabitants, she recasts those animals as central characters in her modern-day sanctuaries, providing solace and gentleness in a world often laden with life's traumas.

Hey There Projects, 61675 Twentynine Palms Highway, Joshua Tree, CA Info

Continuing through December 6: Drawing Lessons: Poems by Paul Jaskunas, Art by Warren Linn at MICA

In the shadow of ongoing ecological and political crises, artist Warren Linn and writer Paul Jaskunas have collaborated on a timely, provocative series of images and poems. The project began with a sketchbook created by Linn in 2022-2023. Sketchbook #1 2023 was acquisitioned by the Art Institute of Chicago Print & Drawing Collection November 2023. Inside its pages, Linn fashioned an assortment of contorted seaborn travelers that animate drawings, collages, and paintings infused with the irreverent, manic energy of bebop and the uncanniness of dystopia. At once comic and disquieting, undeniably contemporary yet steeped in tradition, Linn’s images tap into the apocalyptic anxieties of the age.

Over the past year, moved by the artworks’ vitality, Jaskunas has written dozens of ekphrastic poems in dialogue with this sketchbook and other pieces in Linn’s oeuvre. Rather than describing the art, the poems riff off gestures and visual ideas enacted by Linn, crafting poems touched with dark comedy, grief for a fallen world, and the playful tenacity of the blues.

Warren Linn, MICA Professor Emeritus, is a visual artist whose work has garnered numerous awards including AI43, as well as gallery and museum credits. He has exhibited nationally and internationally since the mid 1960s, and for fifty years, his editorial illustrations appeared in major print-media outlets throughout North America.

MICA, Pinkard Gallery, Bunting Center, 1401 W. Mt Royal Ave., Baltimore MD Info