Season Preview 2022: Art Shows
The settings for these art exhibitions—from small galleries to museum blockbusters to outdoor installations at historic home and garden properties—are as inspirational as the artworks themselves.
1. Black Melancholia, CCS Bard Galleries
Search images for “melancholy” and “art history,” and up pops a page full of white women, nearly all holding their heads in despair. Fast forward to Black Melancholia, curated by Nana Adusei-Poku, a show which gives voice to 28 artists of African descent. It ranges from 19th century to contemporary, and comprises a wide variety of media—painting, sculpture, sound, film, photography, and more, plus new commissions. The show aims to transcend the typical imagery of melancholy in art history, and refract traditionally racialized content which has often depicted radical emotional states—despair, loss, longing—through a primarily white, female lens. Included are artists from the 19th and 20th centuries whose work never achieved full recognition due to systemic exclusion, such as Augusta Savage, William Artis, and Rose Piper, alongside recognized contemporary creators such as Lorna Simpson, Roy DeCarava, and Lyle Ashton Harris. June 25 - Oct 16.
2. Rodin in the United States: Confronting the Modern, Clark Art Institute
Auguste Rodin’s bronze sculptures are widely revered around the world now, but this French artist didn’t always enjoy a burnished reputation here (apparently it ebbed mid-20th century in the United States). This potential blockbuster show includes roughly 50 sculptures and 25 drawings, and charts the forces which can influence the course of an artist’s reputation. Renowned masterpieces as well as fine examples of less-known works will be on view at the Clark, which organized the exhibition, curated by independent scholar Antoinette Le Normand-Romain. June 18 - September 18.
3. Susan English, Weather, Kenise Barnes Fine Art
Cold Spring, New York painter Susan English takes weather as inspiration. She delves into the subtly shifting perceptions of light on the environs in her exhibition at Kenise Barnes—refracted light on the wave-ruffled Hudson, shadows playing over a building façade. Besides abstracting familiar shapes and forms, English’s technique of pouring and layering hued polymers onto wood panels echoes nature’s phenomena, where paint accretes like ice or mud, and the line blurs between control and accident. July 9- September 4.
4. A Spirit of Gift, a Place of Sharing, Hancock Shaker Village
A Spirit of Gift seeks to find common ground between disparate cultures. It juxtaposes the American Shaker movement with new work by three contemporary Asian artists: Yusuke Asai of Japan, Kimsooja of Korea, and Pinaree Sanpitak of Thailand. Hancock Shaker Village encouraged the creators to make site-specific or site-responsive works, with the potential to involve elements of the Village and even its staff. They will seek shared ground in fascinating and divergent ways—literally (making pigments from the earth) to metaphorically. The show is guest-curated by Dr. Miwako Tezuka in collaboration with Dr. Linda Johnson, curator at Hancock Shaker Village. May 30-November 14.
5. George Rickey: ViewEscapes, Naumkeag
Twelve of George Rickey’s kinetic sculptures have been installed on the grounds of Naumkeag, an estate overseen by The Trustees, along with a selection of tabletop/hanging works and archival pieces inside the cottage. The designed landscape is ideal—as a breeze-catching setting for the installation of Rickey’s hypnotically kinetic metal pieces, as well as for viewers, offering strategic observation areas. Associated talks and and events are offered throughout the exhibition. April 22-November 1.
6. Lincoln Memorial Illustrated, Norman Rockwell Museum
In pop culture, has any other monument stood in to symbolize America’s decent moral standing more than the Lincoln Memorial? A far-ranging exhibition at the Norman Rockwell Museum shows the extensive cultural significance of this memorial by Daniel Chester French, now celebrating its centennial. Paintings, works on paper, sculptures, ephemera, and a film montage will be on display, as well as a selection of work by Norman Rockwell, who captured the president’s likeness in numerous artworks. The show is organized by the Rockwell Museum with Chesterwood, the studio and summer home of French, and includes several ancillary events and talks. May 7-September 5.
7. Choreopolitics: Brendan Fernandes and nibia pastrana santiago, Mass MoCA
These two multidisciplinary artists are both trained in ballet. While they don’t collaborate, their work shares the form’s common ground, taking its discipline and structure and using it to explore and subvert action and its possibilities. Fernandes challenges the dominance of the art through its traditional technique and experimental movement. pastrana santiago examines labor practices and training structures through the prism of exhaustion and laziness. The artwork on view includes video, sculpture, photography, and works on paper. Choreopolitics is curated by McClain Groff, a graduate curatorial fellow in the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art. Scholar André Lepecki has termed their work as “choreopolitics—or planned and persistent movements of freedom.” On view through November.
T. Klacksmann, Sonata in Gray—Owl and Water Bottle (at Hudson Hall)
8. Alan Coon / T. Klacsmann, Hudson Hall
Alan Coon has taken journaling to a whole new level by creating one drawing/painting a day, every day, over the course of two decades, finding inspiration in myriad sources. These mural/matrices are fascinating documents of observation—internal, external, universal—and the passage of time. Also on view are works by T. Klacsmann, who, on marbled paper, has passionately rendered intricate images of wildlife, but in context with human detritus. We are reminded of nature’s beauty and ferocity, but also our arrogant disregard and destruction. June 25-August 28.
9. Mountain High, Valley Low, LABspace
Casting a large net far, wide, high, and low, this survey will feature artists of the greater Hudson Valley. More than 50 artists from the region will be included, working in an array of media including installation, video, fiber, ceramic, sculpture, and painting among them. The exhibition will be on view during Upstate Art Weekend from July 22 to 24. While the final roster of artists is still in formation (and includes featured work by Audrey Francis), expect some surprises and pleasures from this compact gallery, whose co-directors, Julie Torres and Ellen Letcher, take great care with installations to make each work sing. June 18-July 31.
10. Jack Solomon, Further Notice, Carrie Chen Gallery
Each of Jack Solomon’s paintings offers a hermetic visual microcosm to decipher. Inspired by music, he deploys color, geometry, line, and pattern to build compositions, which in turn resonate. He draws on techniques from mid-20th century abstraction, combining them with a curiosity about the “organization and orchestration in musical composition.” Witty titles compound the sense that the paintings are puzzles to be solved by the viewer. July 2-31.
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