Contemporary Art: Best Of New York`s Gallery Shows 2016

(Drivebycuriosity) - 2016 was a good year in the world of contemporary art. New York City, which has hundreds of art galleries, presented a flood of impressive art shows. It was so much fun to discover different styles and ideas and I was impressed by the variety of concepts, styles and techniques. Many exhibitions happened of course in the classy galleries of the Chelsea district, but the rapidly gentrifying Lower East Side is getting more and more a strong contender. I display here  my favorites from New York´s gallery shows 2015, as usual a very subjective selection.





                                                The Sheer Beauty Of Raw Power

The two girls on top of this post are inspecting an installation made of salt by new work by Meg Webster  ("Mother Mound Salt"), part of an exhibition at Paula Cooper Gallery (paulacooper). I also was fascinated by Richard Serra`s new works  @  Gagosian (gagosian). They displayed these monumental steel constructions at 2 locations in New York`s district Chelsea, where you could see see the sheer beauty of raw power.

The Gladstone Gallery (gladstone) showed works by another outstanding artist: Anish Kapor (wikipedia). The show was called "Today You Will Be In Paradise". The girl above is inspecting his monumental earth and resin sculpture on a marble pedestal.

There was at least another amazing show @ Gagosian. On 21st Street they displayed works by the German artist Georg Baseltiz (wikipedia).

David Zwirner presented a Sigmar Polke retrospective, named "Eine Winter Reise/ A Winter Journey". The German artist, who lived from 1941–2010, was one of the most voraciously experimental artists of the 20th century (here my post about the Polke show @ New York´s MoMa  driveby).



                                                               Discovery Of The Year

The discovery of the year were works by Nicole Eisenman which I spotted @ Anton Kern Gallery (antonkern).

I also fell for some modern expressionist paintings @ gallery Artifact in New York´s Lower East Side (artifact). The art dealer presented works by Sarah Mitchell Munro ( facebook).The artist from New Zealand spealizes on figurative paintings with an abstract touch (sarahmitchellmunro  .contemporaryartcurator). Her works remind me of the "Bay Area Figuartive Movement"and painters like Richard Diebenkorn & Elmer Bischoff  (wikipedia). This style is also called "Abstract Expressionism". There also might be influences by surrealism and psychedelic art.

I spotted some fine photorealist paintings @ gallery Stricoff Fine Art (stricoff). Above works by Debra Goertz .

Stricoff Fine Art also had some nice surrealist work by Ryan Reynold.

The midtown gallery Nahmad Contemporary (nahmad) exhibited elegant abstracts by some super stars of the genre: On top of this paragraph you can see Andy Warhol`s "Knives" followed by Wade Guyton´s "Untitled #(X)"; another "Untitled" by Christopher Wool & Warhol`s "Shadow Red".

I saw more fancy abstracts of course. The CRG Gallery exhibited new works by Los Angeles-based artist Tom LaDuke which reminded of some spectacular science fiction movies (artnet).

Parasols Project Gallery, a pop-up gallery space in New York´s trendy Lower East Side showed works by Fabricio Suarez (fabriciosuarez). The exhibition was called "Nuevo Mundo: Colonozation of the Americas Through Abstract Landscapes".

Causey Contemporary had an exhibition with works by Hyunju Park, called "Ethereal/Real". The Korean artist uses "Sumi ink, hair, nails on panel" (causey).

Gallery Artifact showed abstracts by Kim Percy - image on top of this paragraph (kimpercy). The Australian artists describes herself as " a visual a artist working mainly in photographic based artwork". They also displayed paintings by Michael Lam. I indulged into his elegant compositions. According to this website (agora-gallery) the artist was influenced by a hand-illustrated Chines herbal medicine book he saw as a child.

Galerie Richard, the American branch of a Parisian (galerierichard), paintings by the Japanese artist Kiyoshi Nakagami.

Another French art dealer, Richard Taittinger, heir of the same named French champagne empire (richardtaittinger), had a show called "Ballett Me Canique". "D-11 Scale Model 2.0" by Wim Delvoye (2008. Laser-cut stainless steel).


Enjoy!