Discover Art

GALLERY WALK: Lower East Side, NYC

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER, 2019

From Ryan Foerster’s photograms to paintings by Matthew Wong, here’s the best art to see on New York’s Lower East Side this Saturday, and what to eat and drink along the way.

A.

BAXTER ST AT THE CAMERA CLUB OF NEW YORK
126 and 128 Baxter St, 10013 (between Hester & Canal)
Tel: 212-260-9927
Tues – Sat: 12 – 6
https://www.baxterst.org/
Thru Dec. 20: Ryan Foerster, “Got Post Bench.”  These pieces, dating from 2011–14, were made when Foerster was working at the Camera Club as a lab technician. Taking discarded test sheets of photo paper home with him, the artist would leave them outdoors under flowerpots and rocks. Eventually, these objects would chemically interact with the paper’s emulsion, producing the works, abloom with bursts of color, on view in this show.

B.

BRIDGET DONAHUE
99 Bowery, 2nd Fl, 10002 (between Grand & Hester)
(Stair access only)
Tel: 646-896-1368
Wed – Sun 12 – 6
https://www.bridgetdonahue.nyc/
Thru Jan. 26, 2020: Ragen Moss, “8 Animals.” The LA-based artist’s partially transparent polyethylene sculptures offer intriguing glimpses of smaller sculptures suspended within. For her first show at Bridget Donahue, the Moss has created eight new torso-shaped works that, despite the show’s title, broadcast a lively humanity.

C.

SPICY VILLAGE
68B Forsyth St, 10002 (between Grand & Hester)
Tel: 212-625-8299 | 917-689-1882
Mon – Sat 10:30 AM – 11:00 PM (closed Sundays)
http://www.spicyvillageny.com/
“Chinese cafe serving Henan fare (hand-pulled noodles, pork pancakes & spicy chicken) in simple digs.” The description on their website says it all. This tiny, fluorescent-lit restaurant dishes up reliably delicious, amazingly inexpensive food. Get the Big Plate Chicken with a side of noodles if you’re sharing, or a crispy beef or pork pancake or two if you’re looking for lighter fare. Be prepared to wait for a table.

D.

47 CANAL
Wednesday – Sunday // 11a – 6p
291 Grand, 2nd floor, 10002 (between Eldridge & Allen)
Tel: 646-415-7712
Wed – Sun 11 –6
https://47canal.us/
Through Dec. 20: “Miffed Blue Return.” Three moving image installations reflect on historical events and their reverberations as embodied in specific places. Yason Banal’s multimedia presentation takes as its starting point an ill-fated film center commissioned by Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his wife Imelda in 1981; Sky Hopinka’s two-channel video offers a history of Fort Marion in St. Augustine, Florida, used as a prison during the Indian Wars of the late 1880s; and Cici Wu’s film revisits the mystery of Yu Man Hon, an autistic boy from Hong Kong who disappeared in 2000 after crossing into China.

E.

MAGENTA PLAINS
94 Allen St, 10002 (between Delancey and Broome)
Tel: 917-388-2464
Wed – Sun 11 – 6
http://www.magentaplains.com/
Thru Dec. 18: Ebecho Muslimova, “TRAPS!” New paintings and drawings featuring Muslimova’s heroine, the supremely self-confident but accident-prone Fatibe.

F.

MITCHELL ALGUS GALLERY
132 Delancey St, 2nd Fl, 10002 (entrance on Norfolk)
(Stair access only)
Tel: 516-639-4918
Fri – Sun 12 – 6
http://mitchellalgusgallery.com/landing.html
Extended thru Dec. 22: Robert Mallary, “The Human Condition (Work from 1938–1965).” The iconoclastic dealer Mitchell Algus, whose gallery recently celebrated its 25th year, has dedicated his career to presenting the work of underknown artists. This month he’s showing 1960s abstract sculptures, made from resin-impregnated tuxedos, by Robert Mallary (1917–1997).

G.

CHAPTER NY
249 E. Houston St, 10002 (between Norfolk & Suffolk)
Tel: 646-850-7486
Wed – Sun 11 – 6
https://chapter-ny.com/
Thru Dec. 20: Ann Greene Kelly, “Eyelids Are Our Thinnest Skin.” In Ann Greene Kelly’s sculptures, everyday objects such as bricks, metal folding chairs, and mattresses play host to curious additions. On view here, for example, is a car door inset with two tiny brick tunnels made of painted plaster.

H.

KARMA
188 E. 2nd St, 10009 (between Aves A & B)
Tel: 212-390-8290
Wed – Sun 10 – 6
https://karmakarma.org/
Thru Dec. 22: Matthew Wong, “Blue.” Organized before his death by suicide last month, this show presents the self-taught painter’s last body of work—a group of dreamlike nocturnal scenes rendered in shades of blue.

I.

RAMEN ISHIDA
122 Ludlow St, 10002 (between Rivington & Delancey)
Tel: 646-590-3276
Mon – Sat 12 – 4; 5:30 – 10
https://www.ramenishida.com/
It’s cold outside. Snag a stool at Ramen Ishida and warm yourself up with a bowl of proprietor Yohei Ishida’s savory New Tokyo-style ramen or, for the vegetarians among you, his spicy mushroom-tofu ramen. (Closed between 4 and 5:30 PM every day.)

Betye Saar’s work, which often takes the form of assemblage (she is a key figure in that medium’s rich history in LA), is marked by a dreamlike allusiveness that combines sharp critiques of race and gender issues with a sense of spirituality and wonderment. Arriving in conjunction with “Betye Saar: The Legends of Black Girl’s Window” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, this exhibition juxtaposes finished works with preliminary sketches and notebooks from Saar’s six-decade career.

Romantic poet, painter, and printmaker William Blake (1757–1827) was little known in his own day, but has since proved culturally prescient. His art can be seen, for instance, as a precursor to movements like Symbolism and Surrealism, as well as a direct influence on subsequent pop cultural forms, including graphic novels and psychedelia. This show assembles some three hundred of the British visionary’s paintings, prints, and illuminated books, arguing that his concerns, such as fighting social, political, and sexual oppression, continue to resonate. Blake’s only exhibition during his lifetime—a failed affair he staged above his brother’s hosiery shop in 1809—is re-created in an immersive installation.

In Malaysia-born, London-based artist Mandy El-Sayegh’s many-layered paintings, room-size installations, and table vitrine sculptures, fragments of visual and textual information—including objects from the artist’s personal collection, skin-like rectangles of painted latex, samples of her father’s calligraphy exercises, and printed advertisements—are arranged to convey new meanings. Along with repeated references to the body, her pieces often feature pages from newspapers like London’s Financial Times and Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post—a reminder of the political, social, and economic structures to which bodies are subject and that these works challenge and disrupt. This exhibition presents new works commissioned in conjunction with Chisenhale Gallery in London.