“LikeNewLandscapes” at Pablo’s Birthday, through October 19 (57 Orchard Street)
Organized by the curatorial group Front Company, this survey of digital work has some interesting thematic overlaps with the excellent “New Romantics” show at Eyebeam earlier this year. The highlights here use technology to birth whole new environments, like Takeshi Murata’s “Nightmove,” 2012, a kailedoscopic, frenetic nightmare in the artist’s studio. (Sculptures wooze and blur; a chair and a ladder dance and cackle; at times the image shreds itself into fast-moving confetti.) Tabor Robak’s “20XX” is close to perfect: A virtual “camera” floats through an ad-laden cityscape, something like a mad hybrid of Tokyo and Times Square. Rain streaks across the lens, and the whole scene is infused with a purple chemical glow.
Andrea Longacre-White at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, through October 5 (327 Broome Street)
This exhibition is composed of a series of unframed, often mangled archival inkjet prints hung on the walls, as well as two glossy rectangles painted on the floor. Pick up the press release before you fully delve in, since it’s actually helpful as a weird, poetic guide to what’s on view (“the ipad scanned / restraint tape on the print / used restraint tape / hair, skin.…10 layers of ink the paper can’t absorb”). Longacre-White oscillates between the digital and the analog, creating a punk-inflected photographic minimalism that also has a painterly edge.
Ian Tweedy at UNTITLED, through October 19 (30 Orchard Street)
O.K., so Tweedy’s new show is supposedly about Joseph Beuys’s 1944 plane crash, as well as the more recent downing of the Malaysian Air flight. It’s also, apparently, about the artist “constructing his own mythology of reinvention” (Tweedy’s slightly enigmatic bio notes that he was “born in 1982 at Flugplatz, Hahn Air Base in Germany.”). Point is, you don’t need to know much of that to appreciate the doomed-aviation-themed works on view here: Large-scale paintings that frame elusive imagery (engine parts, uniformed men seen from behind) within lush, abstract fields; and a series of amazingly detailed drawings done with graphite on the inside of metal drawers.
Amy Feldman at Blackston, through October 26 (29C Ludlow Street)
So pared down as to be calligraphic, Feldman’s huge paintings have something in common with Joyce Pensato’s, though there’s even less recognizable imagery in these happy swirls and blobs. Working exclusively with a shade of grey against a glossy white background, Feldman imagines spontaneous icons, with drips and drabs of paint suggesting a certain haste and speed. “Spirit Merit,” 2014, is a stand-out, and coincidentally the work that has the most figurative suggestions (three huddled figures trudging against a mountain backdrop? A ghostly bat stretching its wobbly wings?). The back room has two series of smaller canvases, an exercise in serial repetition that finds Feldman working out the kinks and nuances of simple compositions.
Sophie Crumb and Aline Kominsky-Crumb at DCKT, through October 19 (21 Orchard Street)
It’s a family affair! Sophie Crumb (daughter of Robert) and Aline (Robert’s wife and collaborator) showcase illustrative watercolors and drawings that, in their distinct ways, are about keeping up appearances. Sophie’s watercolors veer from the erotic to the romantic — a young girl gazing out a window to the sea, a nude swimmer under water — and the abrasive (“Teeth,” a way-too-close portrait of a pretty girl who becomes almost vampiric). Aline’s colored pencil drawings are bedazzled with glitter and costume jewelry, and are the result of a real-life journey, according to press materials: The artist “underwent a strip-mall beauty parlor transformation at Hair Magic in North Miami Beach, Florida” and then drew portions of that experience. The lovably kitsch results have about as much low-grade glamour and fried hair as you might imagine.
ALSO WORTH SEEING: Jonathan Monk’s winking Conceptualism at Casey Kaplan, through October 18; and an off-beat, barbershop-themed group show at Marlborough Broome— which includes revamped Donald Judd chairs, Tony Matelli mirrors, Leigh Ledare’s photography, and a hilarious colored-pencil-and-baseball installation by Eric Yahnker — through October 12.
