Editor’s Picks: New York, October 9-October 16, 2020

Captivating portraits, vibrant painting, and a long awaited launch.

Constance Tenvik: Artichoke Hearts – Last chance, closes October 11.

In the interview that serves as a press release the Norwegian Berlin-based multi-media artist Constance Tenvik speaks about her obsession with mind maps with her interviewer, Chris Kraus, the celebrated American author who wrote I Love Dick (1997) and Aliens & Anorexia (200). The latter which Tenvik had transformed into a mind-map and given the the author when they first met. Like the interview, mapping, recording, and highlighting with familiarity and ease, the colorful large scale portraits in Tenvik’s solo show Artichoke Hearts capture the people and things around her; close friends and acquaintances, some that she mets at Berghain, populate her canvasses. Elongated limbs and prominent jewellery, clothes, make-up, food stuffs, and the stuff of dreams breath life into the works of art. Reminiscent of fellow Scandinavian artist, a genius of color, Sigrid Hjertén‘s (1885-1948) vibrant night, city, and everyday life portrait, Tenvik’s works delight, full of captivating details.

56 Henry
Wed – Sun, 12-6pm.
Exhibition runs through October 11th, 2020
56 Henry Street Street, New York, NY 10002.

Jack Mernin: Future Novel – Literary precedents. 

In Jack Mernin’s new body of work, shapes, smudges, and planes interact with each other busily. Mernin painted the works while quarantining in his home in Pennsylvania; the works are inspired by chaos and tensions, with abstract references to past literary works delving into crises through deconstructed symbols – like a quotation mark, as if anticipating future narratives. Mernin’s frequently works in collage, som which are on view, the process of layering is also present in his painting practice. The pink, purple, and yellow hues trigger imagery of 80’s fashion, a decade of exuberance with little inkling to what was to come. Literary sources he cites are Frank O’Hara, Meditations in an Emergency, Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way, Jean Genet, The Thiefs, and, my personal favorite, culled from The Diary of Anaïs Nin: “When you live closely to individual dramas you marvel that we do not have continuous war, knowing what nightmares human beings conceal, what secret obsessions and hidden cruelties.” Mernin’s work proves that visual art holds equal value to literary works in commenting on how the COVID-crisis has affected the world.

PS. To meet the needs of every collector art advisory turned gallery Trotter and Sholer ask their exhibiting artists to create a small number of works, or objects, to sell at a low-price point. Mernin painted more than 20 small paintings on sale at the gallery for $40 each.

Trotter and Sholer
168 Suffolk Street, NY, New York, .

The Immigrant Artist Biennial Virtual Exhibitions 2020 – Virtual opening reception on October 16

The Immigrant Artist Biennial launched in March, days before the city lockdown, at Brooklyn Museum and has since moved most of its programming online – a rich programming of studio visits and panels were broadcasted during the summer. EFA is host to TIAB’s central exhibition Here, Together!, however, most of the biennial’s 65+ participating artists will be on view in TIAB’s virtual exhibitions Mother Tonque, Imminent Arrival, and Home Land that opening to the public on October 16th, 2020.

Featuring artists born outside of the U.S. but working here, who tackle issues of language, translation, migration, immigration, assimilation, belonging, oppression, heritage, longing, loss, and shaping new identity The Immigrant Artist Biennial presents a multitude of immigrant experiences as global movement is increasingly being limited and U.S. visa processes have been delayed and upended and many immigrants are under duress, a time when we need insight the most

The Immigrant Artist Biennial Virtual Exhibitions 2020
Opening Reception, Zoom: October 16 at 6-8PM. Register here.
Access Virtual Exhibitions here.