Here are the artists we have our eye on this month:
ALEXANDER HARRISON
Fisher Parrish, November 1 - December 15, 2019
Brooklyn, NY
Alexander
Harrison in studio via Fisher Parrish Gallery
Harrison’s subtle, active acrylics convey a low-humming longing for idylls that may or may not exist, using the leitmotif of windows, portals, or frames to invoke the viewer’s own unmoored nostalgia. Harrison deploys luscious swathes of paint and clandestine visual coding to ruminate on race and its intersection with personal and popular notions of home; the title of his current solo exhibition at New York’s Fisher Parrish, “Sundown Town,” refers to the post-Reconstruction practice of terrorizing black visitors to predominantly white districts, thereby ensuring off-the-record segregation. His discomfiting subject matter (a dark, fleshy watermelon, a veiled policeman) is belied by a distinctive pictorial relationship with time; his hazy horizon-lines and technicolor skies connote the movie backdrops of old, but also speak to slow-creeping twilight, the threat of an unjust darkness. Harrison, who is based in New York and will be featured in a solo booth at NADA Miami with Fisher Parrish, originally hails from South Carolina and locates much of his content in the legacy of those roots. He received his BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2017, and has shown his work in New York, California, and throughout the Southeast.
KYUNG-ME
& HARRY GOULD HARVEY IV
Bureau, November 15 - January 19th, 2020
New York, New York
Harvey's work installed at Bureau, Inc.
Artists Kyung-Me and Harry Gould Harvey are currently featured side-by-side in a two-person show at Bureau Inc. Gallery in the Lower East Side. The exhibition, "Coniunctio," unites both artists' shared interest in the communicative potentiality of drawing, a linear landscape they navigate in distinct but correlated ways. Yale graduate Kyung-Me's devotional, meticulous pen pieces map fantasy interiors rendered with Italiante one-point perspective and dedicated to a phantasmagoric, distinctly Modernist view of selfhood through accural; her tableauxs often include Rothkos, Bellmers, or references to Frank Lloyd Wright. Her works are paeans not just to the fetish of design, but also the externalized curation of taste—furtive figures linger in the wings, begging the question, are we responsible for our own aesthetic entrapment? Harvey's gothic ruminations build on the contrast between the architectural opulence and economic blight of his his native Fall River, MA, sourcing the scaffolding for his works from felled oak trees on Prudence Island. Venerative, spooky, and distinctly reminiscent of the 20th century Occultist fad, Harvey's work entices through affectual ambiguity, beckoning the viewer forth while holding transparency at arm's length. Kyung-Me has worked both as an illustrator and fine artist; her pieces have been featured by the New York Times and Bomb Magazine, and she's exhibited her work throughout the east coast, including 17 Essex Gallery in New York and Hotel Art Pavilion in Brooklyn. Harvey, who lives and works in Trenton, RI, is the co-founder of the curatorial project Pretty Days, and has shown at a variety of prestigious venues like Atlanta Contemporary and Hunter Shaw Fine Art, Los Angeles.
FIN SIMONETTI
Cooper Cole, October 25 - December 7 2019
New York, NY
S
imonetti via ArtNews
Simonetti's strange and beautiful stained glass creations locate the decorative in savagery, oscillating between artisanal elegance and cruel futility. Her current solo turn at Cooper Cole, entitled Head Gussett , pushes that dichotomy to the forefront, as her clever, plaintive bear-traps, wrought in a material that's delicacy precludes its horrifying purpose. Hers is a cycling lexis of anxiety and anxiety prevention, urging viewers to consider the biases inherent in their aesthetic and philosophical allegiances. Canadian-born Simonetti received her BFA from the Ontario College of Art and Design University, and has exhibited internationally at Doris McCarthy Gallery in Toronto, Helena Anrather in New York, Lock Up International in Mexico City, and Galerie Pact in Brussels, Belgium. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
ANDRE FILIPEK MAGANA
NADA Miami Beach December 5-8, 2019
Magana
via Twitter
Brooklyn-based artist Magana utilizes digital fabrication and traditional ceramic techniques to create totems to day-to-day Mexican and Mexican-American experience, animating consumables with the spiritual energy of reliquaries or rosaries. These contemplative sculptural vessels bear not only the weight of history, but personal narrative, calcifying into elegant, rounded monuments to love, loss, and community. California-born Magana, who is currently presenting work at NADA Miami Beach with Magenta Plains, has shown internationally, including Sorbus Gallery in Helsinki, Finland, Amor Tlalpan in Mexico City, and American Medium in New York.
JEFFREY JOYAL
David Lewis Gallery, November 8 - December 22, 2019
New York, NY
Joyal via Cultured Mag
Joyal's throwback, self-effacing inquiries towards masculinity and its attendant cultural signifiers feel at once anarchic and introspective as they trace the aesthetic legacy of protest in limp, waning neoliberal hegemony. Consisting of found and bought objects charged by spare spatial intervention, Joyal's installations search for resolution and beauty with a touching earnestness, eschewing cynicism for a more tender exploration of what is and is not truly transgressive. Joyal, who was recently profiled by Cultured Mag for their 30 under 35 2020 issue, hails from Boston, and received his BFA from Bard College in 2011. His work is currently on view at David Lewis Gallery in his solo exhibition "Deepfake," and he has shown at numerous other high-profile venues, like the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Perez Art Museum in Miami.
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