Once again, ARTINFO has sent its intrepid staff into the streets of New York, charged with reviewing the art they saw in a single (sometimes run-on) sentence. (To see our One-Line Reviews as an illustrated slideshow, click here.)
Alighiero Boetti, “La Forza del Centro” at Gladstone Gallery, 515 West 24th Street, through March 23
The thrill of looking at Boetti's jewel-tone embroidered grids comes from spotting the irregularities — an oddly-shaped letter here, a stretched block of color there — that remind us of the many Afghan women who actually wove them, deftly enabling the Italian artist to remove himself from production and still retain a human touch. — Julia Halperin
Sabine Hornig, “Transparent Things” at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, 521 West 21st Street, through February 23
Like updates of Atget and Man Ray’s classic storefront window photography combined with Bill Bollinger-esque sculptures, Hornig’s photos — some conventionally framed, others printed on polyester and stretched onto freestanding structures made of rudimentary construction materials — blur boundaries between interiors, exteriors, reflections, and actual architectural space, eloquently articulating brick-and-mortar stores’ dissolution into hyperspace. — Benjamin Sutton
Julia Mandle and Gayle Wells Mandle at Leila Heller Gallery, 568 West 25th Street, through February 16
Despite its ironic link to some of the richest plutocrats in the world, this mother-daughter duo (the wife and daughter of former director of and current consultant to the Qatari Museums Authority, Roger Mandle) tackles the overwhelming oppressiveness of inequality by powerfully juxtaposing jumbles of burned chairs with giant, regal thrones using a variety of media. — Shane Ferro
Tom Molloy, “Issue” at Flag Art Foundation, 545 West 25th Street, 9th floor, through May 18
Irish artist Tom Molloy moves between photography and pencil-on-paper drawings to present intentionally incomplete historical anecdotes, playing with ideas of transparency, omission, and chance; the works are strong enough to stand without context, but are infinitely more complex and interesting when Molloy's process and the works' backgrounds are revealed. — Sara Roffino
Trevor Paglen at Metro Pictures, 519 West 24th Street, through March 9
Though not all of the works from last year’s “The Last Pictures” — in which the artist had 200 photos micro-etched onto an archival disc, which was later launched into space aboard a communications satellite — are on view in this exhibition, the key works featured here of astro-images and prints of hidden security outposts and surveillance drones, along with some 182 outtakes spanning moments in 20th-century history, video footage from the satellite feed, and selected notes from earlier research, provide an immersive entry into the “unease and uncertainty” of the present that Paglen hoped to capture from a Benjaminian, “angel of history”-inspired perspective — irresistibly propelled backwards into the future within a storm of wreckage from the past, wondering whether, in the improbable event of the disc being found and interpreted by another civilization, it would be seen as progress. — Lori Fredrickson
Suzanne Treister, “HEXEN 2.0” at P.P.O.W., 535 West 22nd Street, 3rd Floor, through February 23
The amount of obsessive research and conspiracy theories that it took to pull this show together is enough to make your head spin, but, surprisingly enough, the presentation of Treister's incredibly detailed and beautifully colored Tarot Deck, and the muted tones of her mirrored book cover prints, are soothing and make the experience of getting lost in the disturbing subject matter pleasurable. — Alanna Martinez