Spring Arts Review: Galleries Spring Galleries Now. What to see in New York this spring. Kashya Hildebrand Gallery Tianbing Li: New Hybrids March 4 - April 17th 531 W. 25th St. #:212/366.5757 e: infony@kasyahilebrand.org http://www.kashyahildebrand.org Tianbing Li's deal in the kind of surreal hyperrealism usually reserved for David Cronenberg films. His New Hybrids deal directly with the interlocking of Chinese and American Culture, but rather than portraying it as a cultural war, sees mutation as the result. The paintings are done in an intense pallette that betrays Li's attempts at painting in a style "based on ancestral techniques". Metis 2, shows a series of bizzare creatures, including a lizard-dragon with Louis Vuitton logos instead of scales, on a flat cerulean background with Chinese text alongside, reminiscent of the illustrated menu boards used for foriegners in China; a sly suggestion that both cultures will be feasting on the freaks that result from our genetic swapping. Self Portrait V shows the artist as a bulbous organic plume of smoking, facets of the face arising from flesh. Most prominent is a set of bared teeth, but to the left another plume of flesh has burst, a failed experiment of recreation. Tianbling Lee's work is not only masterful, but disturbing. Gallery Henoch Eric Zener: Recent Paintings 555 W. 25th St. #:917/305.0003 e: ghenoch@earthlink.net http://www.galleryhenoch.com Eric Zener's painting, Releasing, is the first painting I've ever viscerally needed to own. Maybe it's because she reminds me of my mother's way of swimming in the ocean, but this woman staring up at an uncoming wave seems fraught with the crackling energy that comes when any two opposites attract. It is the binary of Life/Death that concerns Eric Zener's latest paintings, nearly all of which deal with swimmers in underwater scenes. Though Zener rarely gives us a face to view, these bodies, gliding beneath the current or curled up into a suspended fetal ball in the water become pockets of life in death. There's a real tension that undergirds what are essentially bucolic scenes. Even in his non-water-related-work, Zener seems caught up in the danger and drama of suspended animation. In Journey, a bather stands on a small green platform off of a tall metal ladder that continues beyond both the top and bottom edges of the canvas. He's high up, as the clouds below attest to, but we don't know whether he is terrified or confident as he looks away from us- and down at the Earth below. Evocative and subtle, these are paintings to be lingered over and God, Almighty, do I ever want to own one. Sandra Gering Gallery Leo Villareal: Chasing Rainbows 534 W. 22nd St. #:646/336.7183 e: sandra@geringgallery.com http://www.geringgallery.com Chasing Rainbows is an apt title for Leo Villareal's LED installation at Gering Gallery: It is too exuberent to be Minimalism and too fanciful to be Light Art, though, I suppose, technically it is both. A series of three panels made up of plastic tubes filled with LEDs, they shimmer and undulate according to cellular automata inspired software. The software running it looks like it's no more complicated than the game Life that used to come bundled with Windows 95, but it's entertaining to watch. The piece captures the sometimes organic qualities of technology in what is really, at it's heart, a fun way. The piece does not require much of the viewer other than someone who can enjoy looking at a really cool Lite-Brite, but sometimes that's all you need. Ziehersmith Wes Lang: Home at Last Karin Weiner: Shades of White Chiem & Read Lynda Benglis: A Sculpture Survey (1969-2004) Mary Boone Gallery Barbara Kruger: Twelve 303 Gallery Thomas Demand: New Work LFL Gallery Jim Meyerson: "More than you want, less than you need" Yossi Milo Gallery Alec Soth: Sleeping by the Mississippi Andrea Rosen Gallery Sean Landers: New Paintings and Sculptures PaceWildenstein Sol Le Witt: Structures 1962-2003 Sonnabend Andrea Robbins & Max Becher: Where Do You Think You Are?, France in America, America in France Candice Breitz: Becoming Haim Steinbach: Selected Works from the Late 80's Max Protetch Brian Alfred: Overload Museum of the American Indian George Longfish: Continuum 12 Nora Naranjo-Morse: Continuum 12 Matthew Marks Gallery Martin Honert: Selected Works

posted by Japhy at 3/22/2004 12:54:00 PM || #