Once again, our staff has set out around our New York offices tasked with reviewing the shows they say in a single (often run-on) sentence. Here is what they found (to see our One-Line Reviews in illustrated slide show format, click here)
* “Détournement: Signs of the Times,” at Jonathan LeVine Gallery, 529 West 20th Street, 9E, August 8-25
A wide range of emerging and established artists are brought together for Carlo McCormick's “Détournement,” a show of works, including Dan Witz’s transformed street signs and David Wojnarowicz’s silkscreened supermarket posters, that employ bright colors, bold fonts, and brash humor in their subversion and transgression of our capitalist, consumption-based culture. —Sara Roffino
* “First Year in New York,” at Galerie Richard, 514 West 24th Street, July 26 - September 1
While “First Year in New York” is a summer group show that randomly places artists who’ve had solo shows this year together, there is indeed something in common between pieces like Dionisio Gonåzlez’s “Favelas,” a photo series that challenges the objectivity of the medium by creating futuristic landscapes out of photos of poverty-stricken towns, and Christophe Avella-Bagur’s disrupted drawings of faces placed on manikin-like figures, commenting on our unrealistic expectations of mass-produced perfection. — Terri Ciccone
* “Summer Group Exhibition,” at Joshua Liner, 548 West 28th Street, 3rd Floor, August 2-25
Despite its matter-of-factly themeless title, distinct motifs emerge from Joshua Liner's stable-surveying show, chief among them the collage-like assembly of images from smaller figurative elements practiced most impressively by steampunk miniaturist Kuksi Kuksi, painter of neon-hued superflat creatures Tomokazu Matsuyama, and watercolorist Alfred Steiner, whose Mr. Burns, Chief Wiggum, and SpongeBob SquarePants made up of donuts, penises, butts, and various hyperrealistically rendered objects are at once evocative, repulsive, and irresistible. — Benjamin Sutton
* “Viva la Raspberries,” at Harris Lieberman, 508 West 26th Street, Ground Floor, June 28-August 17
Suzan Pitt's 1979 erotic animation wonder, “Asparagus,” is the main attraction of “Viva la Raspberries,” though it is supported perfectly by the bright palettes and surreal artworks of a colorful ensemble of West Coast-based artists' creations, like Evan Holloway's precarious bronze-cast “Rearranged Branch” and abstract ceramicist Ron Nagle's neon biomorphic sculpture “Golden Shag” – as well as pretty much everything else in this show. — Alanna Martinez
* “Weather,” at Ricco/Maresca, 529 West 20th Street, June 21 – August 17
While this group exhibition claims to be on weather “in all of its infinite variations,” it is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the specific subject matter of the storm that commands the most attention, via two oil paintings from the 19th century — one a North Illinois tornado by an unknown artist and the other a chaotic Biblical flood by the equally unknown T. Bellerby — though an ominous gelatin silver print of clouds by Michael Flomen, who specializes in exposing his homemade film by moonlight out in the elements, is also a breath of fresh air. — Allison Meier