Tucked between 10th and 11th Avenue lies the Chelsea Gallery District, a span of roughly ten city blocks packed with art galleries. Chelsea once housed hundreds of garages and warehouses that are now transformed into galleries. These spaces provide high ceilings and spacious floor plans, which are conducive to art viewing, and are iconic to the Chelsea gallery landscape. While wandering these blocks, you can be sure to uncover a plethora of both free or ticketed exhibitions. Here are a few shows you don’t want to miss this month:
Edward Hopper at the Whitney Museum of American Art
99 Gansevoort Street, $18 Students $25 Adults
While the Whitney is not within the confines of the gallery blocks, it is the only true museum in Chelsea. Nestled under the Highline park on Gansevoort Street, The Whitney is a collection of both modern and contemporary American art. On view until March 5, “Edward Hopper’s New York” is a vast and incredibly impressive collection of over 200 paintings, prints, drawings, and watercolors that span Hopper’s career. Hopper, an American artist from Nyack, New York, grew up frequenting the city with his parents and moved here permanently in 1908 according to Kim Conaty, Steven and Ann Ames, the exhibit curators in their essay accompanying the show, “Approaching a City: Hopper and New York”. In 1913 he moved to an apartment off of Washington Square Park right by The New School which he called home for six decades.
The exhibition, and Hopper’s work as a whole, is a meditation on New York City, “the American city that I know best and like most,” as Hopper reflected late in life. NYC allows its inhabitants to create their own personalized worlds within a sprawling metropolis through the places they frequent, the people they engage with, and the sights they take in. Hopper muses on his own private New York through his art. His subject matter is rife with city themes like train lines, bridges, red brick buildings, and apartment windows. Hopper often captures this imagery on a horizontal plane, leaving out skyscrapers, traffic and the bustle of city life from his paintings. This produces a body of work that acts as an ode to the everyday life experienced by New Yorker’s and the visions they witness.
In Night Windows, Hopper displays his marked style of exploring suburban life through a voyeuristic look at a woman through her apartment window. The subject, whose back is turned to the frame, is unaware she’s being watched by the viewer as she goes about her routine within the confines of her domicile. The contrast of the colors between the darkness of the outdoors and the light within the apartment suggest the intimate and diverging lives that exist amongst every individual that lives within these metropolitan centers.
While much of the art in the New York cannon spotlights the glamor and grandiosity of the city, Hopper’s work captures the city and its inhabitants in their quiet moments; empty street corners, people in the solitude of their apartments, and quiet sky lines.
Cy Gavin at Gagosian Gallery
522 W 21st Street, Free
Cy Gavin’s first time showing with Gagosian is happening until March 18. His landscape paintings draw inspiration from the wildlife he finds within the vicinity of his studio in the Hudson Valley of New York. His pieces are painted on large format canvases that portray the experiences he draws his visions from. Gavin’s paints fluid scenes that captivate the audience through the motion of each brushstroke. His use of striking natural colors like fiery orange, hot pink, and bright yellow bear similarities to that of a sunset while his use of midnight blues and blacks recall the depth of a night sky. Gavin’s oeuvre’s enduring motif of flora and fauna was carried through to his subject matter as well as his color palette, creating a cohesive collection of works that all worked in conversation with each other.
Alex Prager at Lehmann Maupin
501 W 24th Street, Free
Alex Prager’s Part Two: Run! multifaceted exhibition includes a short film, photography, and sculpture that all work together to tell a story of human persistence. The exhibit’s name is derived from Prager’s short film, Run, which is named after a song by Ellen Reid featuring Phillip Glass soundtrack of the film. The film begins on an ordinary day in an idyllic, suburban town, with a group of people rolling a large, mirrored sphere down the street. Things take a turn when a citizen inserts a coin into a machine, catapulting the ball into action in a pinball motion through the streets causing the scene to erupt into an absurdist satire of sorts as the ball begins to collide with people’s reflections in its metal surface. The viewer watches as bodies are thrown into the street, which Prager suggests is symbolic of “a curative, collective reckoning with those forces outside of our control,” in her press release to the gallery.
Beyond the short film, the exhibit is completed by a series of photographs and sculptures that successfully blend Prager’s sinister sense of humor and mastery of bold colors. On view until March 4, the world Prager has created is one worth bearing witness to.
In Claire and Frances, two characters that exist in Prager’s film, Run!, are captured in a still photograph. Using a lower camera angle, the women are shown with solemn faces with a bird of prey above giving the photo a looming aura. There is a sense of intensity represented through the bold colors in the photograph. Although the viewer doesn’t necessarily know the context of the photo without seeing Prager’s film, the blue of the background, the girl’s clothes, and the red of the fountain beverage and acrylic nails all work together to paint a dramatic irony that is incredibly successful in telling her story for her.
The Chelsea gallery blocks pack a punch with a hundred or so gallery spaces within the confines of the neighborhood. The benefit of having so much to choose from is that no matter what exhibition you see, it’s sure to be something worthwhile and absorbing. This March, start out with the Whitney, Gagosian, and Lehmann Maupin, and then the world is your oyster.
Very well written thank you!