Thursday, January 15, 6-9pm: Anita Kunz | Evolution at Philippe Labaune

Philippe Evolution, a solo exhibition by Canadian artist and longtime AI contributor, Anita Kunz, brings together decades of work that explores evolution as a living system, one shaped by continual change, expansion, and recalibration. Kunz is internationally recognized for her editorial illustrations for such magazines as: The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and Time, alongside a deeply personal studio practice.

The exhibition presents  two interconnected sections: a survey of her iconic editorial imagery and a selection of personal paintings in which mammals and humans meet in surreal, often intimate encounters. Together, these works frame evolution not as a linear progression, but as an ongoing biological, emotional, and conceptual process. Above: Anita Kunz, Cover for NUVO Magazine: The Panther, 2002; below: Darwin, Art Book Cover: Portraits, 2009

In her personal work, Kunz approaches evolution by dissolving the perceived divide between human and animal. Figures appear suspended in states of metamorphosis, inhabiting a shared space between instinct and intellect, physicality and emotion. Themes of nurturing, vulnerability, and survival recur throughout the paintings, presented not as uniquely human conditions but as shared realities across species. 

This view of evolution extends into Kunz’s editorial and commercial work, where adaptation takes the form of stylistic reinvention. Drawing from art history and cultural memory, Kunz recontextualizes public figures to comment on human behavior and societal change. Evolution reveals Anita Kunz’s work as an ever-adapting organism: responsive, expansive, and driven by continual reinvention. In this realm, progress does not erase instinct or emotion, but exposes how deeply they remain intertwined with who we are becoming. A beautifully produced catalogue is available at the gallery.

Philippe Labaune Gallery, 5s34 West 24^th Street, New York, NY info

Thursday, January 15, 6-8pm: Odili Donald Odita | Shadowland at Kordansky

Shadowland considers three distinct bodies of work that not only reveal the evolution of Odita’s formal interests, but also connects his practice as a Nigerian American artist to familial and geopolitical legacies. This presentation of current and earlier works by the Nigerian American artist makes clear his longstanding engagement with some of our most insoluble contemporary questions regarding power: how it manifests, how we perceive it, and how it can be confronted, reclaimed, or created from nothing. Odita concurrently looks to painting itself as a site of infinite potential across time and space by including works by his father,  Dr. Emmanuel Okechukwu Odita (b. 1936, d. 2025).. Above: Odili Donald Odita, Camouflage, 2025

Framing this exhibition is the notion of the shadowland, evoking a time and place thrown into darkness. Throughout the exhibition, shadows appear where singular hues, values and forms meet, Elsewhere, Odita’s compositions capture division and collision as readily as they encourage the quieter power of reflection. In suggesting what exists behind or before, the shadowland also points backward, toward origin stories. 

The four paintings on view by the artist’s father galvanize an important link between Odita’s syncretic approach to abstraction and his closely held proposition that artmaking is an inherently political act. Born in 1936, Dr. Emmanuel Okechukwu Odita was a Nigerian artist, art historian, and academician who —prior to becoming the first Black Africanist to teach African art history in the United States—was a student activist during Nigeria’s struggle for independence in the late 1950s.

David Kordansky Gallery, 520 West 20^th Street, New York, NY Info

Thursday, January 15, 6-8pm: William Kent: Trust the Peeple! At Roccp/Maresca

William Kent’s unique slate prints, created in the 1960s, look as if they were made for today’s political climate as much as for their own time. Their fluorescent palettes, blunt slogans, and weaponized presidents stage a loud argument about image, power, and consent—who speaks, who is spoken for, and whose silence keeps the whole spectacle running. 

Working at the height of Pop, Kent shared the movement’s appetite for mass-media icons and commercial graphics, but he side-stepped its cool detachment. His prints do not simply recycle advertising imagery; they bite. Washington, Kennedy, Johnson, and other power brokers appear not as neutral symbols of leadership but as leering mascots for a militarized, profit-driven state. The stars and stripes, campaign bunting, and greeting-card flourishes that frame them feel simultaneously festive and funereal, as if democracy were being sold back to its citizens as a novelty product whose warranty has quietly expired. Set against commercial patterned fabrics, these works twist the cheerful surfaces of mid-century domestic life into a caustic theater of American empire, masculinity, and mass persuasion.

Ricco/Maresca Gallery, 529 West 20^th Street, New York, NY Info

Last chance: Divine Egypt, closing Moday, January 19 at The Met

In ancient Egypt, images of gods weren’t just images—they brought the gods to life. Egyptians believed that it was through their depictions in tombs, temples, and shrines that the deities could enter sacred spaces and become active participants in rituals, offering a vital connection between the human and divine worlds. Over Egypt’s long history, its belief system grew to include more than 1,500 gods with many overlapping forms and traits. Subtle visual cues like what a figure wore, how they posed, or the symbols they carried helped identify them and their roles.

Divine Egypt brings together almost 250 works of art and objects, many of them on loan from institutions such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Musée du Louvre, Paris, and the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, to examine the imagery associated with the most important deities in ancient Egypt’s massive body of gods. Depictions of the stately falcon-headed Horus, the lion-headed Sakhmet, and the serene, shrouded Osiris reveal the striking ways the kings and people of ancient Egypt recognized and interacted with their gods.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY Info

Last chance: Faith Ringgold closing January 24 at Jack Shainman

Ringgold’s experimentation with textiles began with what she referred to as ‘tankas.’ Inspired by the religious and spiritually significant Tibetan thangkas she first encountered when visiting the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Ringgold’s version manifested as paintings on unstretched canvas adorned with sewn fabric borders. It was the potential of these objects to explore the intersection of the craft and fashion traditions she inherited from her family with the history and techniques of European painting that inspired Ringgold and formally initiated her investigation into the medium that would become an integral part of her practice. 

Drawing from African sculptural traditions and her own background in theater and education, these soft sculptural works transformed fabric into a medium for storytelling and political expression. The Atlanta Children (1981) created in response to the murders of twenty-eight Black children in Atlanta, exemplify this shift. Combining sewn and painted fabric, these haunting figures memorialize the victims while confronting the violence of systemic racism—effectively turning textile into a medium of mourning, resistance and care. This fusing of personal and historically derived narratives challenged the conception of the Underground Railroad as being a linear story towards freedom and underscored the ongoing obstacles that persist at the end of a journey and alongside a new beginning.  

Jack Shainman Gallery, 46 Lafayette Street, New York, NY Info