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“The Music Room” by Aiza Ahmed
Where: Sargent’s Daughters
When: Through December 6
Why It’s Worth a Look: In her debut New York solo show, Aiza Ahmed draws upon Satyajit Ray’s landmark 1958 film, Jalsaghar (The Music Room). Set in the final years of British colonial rule in Bengal, India, a feudal lord clings to his power and opulent lifestyle from within a crumbling mansion; at his soirées, he establishes control through curation. In her exhibition, Ahmed presents her own music room, turning the gaze on colonial and patriarchal power.
Know Before You Go: The show features paintings, sculpture, and a new musical composition from guitarist Ria Modak. The first painting in the series is monochromatic (echoing Jalsaghar‘s black and white) before slowly layering pink, umber, and finally blue, reanimating the film’s legacy.
“B. Wurtz: 13 Works”
Where: Garth Greenan
When: Through December 13
Why It’s Worth a Look: Some of the most polarizing art is the kind that evokes, from the untrained viewer, the common refrain: “I could’ve done that.” The assemblages of B. Wurtz are simple, banal objects placed carefully in relationship to each other, but that makes them all the more persuasive. For those with an appreciation for the beauty of the everyday, a Wurtz sculpture can be a revelation.
Know Before You Go: The unifying factor of Wurtz’s bricolage are humans’ basic needs: food, clothing, and a warm place to sleep. Each element, from plastic produce netting to a shoelace to a used cardboard box, implicates Americans’ habits of consumption and waste.
“Noble/Savage” by Ali Banisadr
Where: Olney Gleason
When: Through December 20
Why It’s Worth a Look: In this day and age all of us, artists and admirers alike, are bombarded with an overwhelming onslaught of imagery across the internet. Banisadr’s work, a vortex of human and nonhuman figures, is a response to this overwhelming visual culture and dissolution of coherence.
Know Before You Go: With this new crop of paintings, bronze sculptures, and works on paper, Banisadr’s tastes are omnivorous and wide-reaching. One recursive painting is inspired by the infinity looped ‘O’ design of the Meta AI logo. Another borrows the mythic vocabulary of Milton’s Paradise Lost and the Epic of Gilgamesh. Hear the artist discuss his disparate reference points with CULTURED‘s Co-Chief Art Critic John Vincler on Nov. 20 at 6:30 pm.
“I AM SO PRETTY” by Brock Enright
Where: Club Rhubarb
When: Through December 21
Why It’s Worth a Look: Brock Enright’s latest show emerges from his diverse and sometimes eccentric collecting habit. Expect a wide variety of mediums: a polyester sculpture of a hand studded like a punk jacket, assemblages hanging from the ceiling, a landscape of witch hats, and vast panels spiked with push pins.
Know Before You Go: Club Rhubarb, the brainchild of Tony Cox, has shed its Chinatown skin and hopped over to a townhouse on the Bowery across from the New Museum. Plan ahead in order to attend—the exhibition is by appointment only through the attached link above.
“Garnets on the Boulder: Jay DeFeo Paintings of the 1980s”
Where: Paula Cooper
When: Through December 13
Why It’s Worth a Look: Jay DeFeo was a lifelong resident of the Bay Area, and this show reflects the rich artistic traditions and landscapes of Northern California during her lifetime. DeFeo’s abstract expressionist oil paintings take a sweeping approach to form, while a collection of small paintings in the gallery’s front room constrain the rolling hills of central California to a limited canvas.
Know Before You Go: DeFeo worked on her physically and metaphorically monumental painting, The Rose, for eight years; this show is all about what happened after. The survey reflects her renewed energy and commitment to oil painting during that period before her untimely death in 1989.
“Radiance” by Mariko Mori
Where: Sean Kelly
When: Through December 20
Why It’s Worth a Look: Japan is a country often characterized by the collision of tradition and futuristic vision. Mariko Mori’s iridescent acrylic sculptural works embody this tension, at once referencing the material culture of prehistoric Japan and a sense of post-human perfection.
Know Before You Go: This exhibition comes in anticipation of a major career retrospective at the Mori Art Museum, spanning more than three decades of the artist’s practice across media. It was inspired by site visits to Japan’s ancient sacred sites including the shrines at Izumo and Awaji as well as Okinoshima, an entire island that is viewed as a spirit.
“A Harvest.” by LaKela Brown
Where: 56 Henry
When: Through December 21
Why It’s Worth a Look: If LaKela Brown’s new exhibition, A Harvest, were a garden, it would be a distinctly American one. Tobacco and marijuana leaves—two plants whose industries and legacies of pleasure, addiction, and criminalization have shaped Black American history—are cast in plaster and acrylic. There are symbols of Black innovation like collard greens and pigs’ feet, and there are the curves of apples, recalling Eve.
Know Before You Go: The garden metaphor doesn’t just suit Brown’s subject matter and medium: She also worked and studied botany at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. The experience also inspired her 2024 exhibition From Scratch: Seeding Adornment.
“Hannah Beerman and Olivia Reavey: New Works”
Where: Thomas Erben
When: Through December 20
Why It’s Worth a Look: This double-artist exhibition from photographer Olivia Reavey and painter Hannah Beerman offers two expressive and playful takes on the body. On the one hand, Reavey’s black and white photographs contrast the photographer’s own body with industrial machinery, abstracting both in the tension. Meanwhile, Beerman uses her hands, fingers, and arms in addition to more traditional tools to bring paint to canvas, opening up room for a childlike experimentation with form.
Know Before You Go: Hannah Beerman was included on CULTURED‘s 2024 Young Artist list.
“Paintings From the Orange Room” by Phoebe Helander
Where: PPOW
When: Through December 20
Why It’s Worth a Look: Unlike most still lifes, Phoebe Helander’s oil-on-wood paintings are all about capturing change in real time. She’ll sit for four-to-ten hour sessions, capturing a burning candle as it melts down to the nub. As the candle morphs, Helander continually paints over her preexisting work—after all, she says, loss is a natural part of change.
Know Before You Go: Even as they focus on decay, Helander’s small-scale paintings find expression in the dissolution. She turns her eye to melting ice, wilting flowers, and bowls of milk slowly developing a skin.
“mis-/mé- (squeeze)” by Charisse Pearlina Weston
Where: Jack Shainman
When: Through December 20
Why It’s Worth a Look: Weston’s glass and concrete sculptures—fused, warped, and compressed—reflect the precarious state of Black life in America. Her latest series explores the complex psychological and emotional effects of the country’s systemic racism. A 2023 CULTURED Young Artists alum, Weston plumbs the soul of glass to critique anti-Black violence and push for greater intimacies.
Know Before You Go: With her new pieces, Weston manipulates surveillance glass, the light-sensitive material found in police interrogation rooms that disguises a window into a mirror. The pieces don’t just comment on Big Brother’s eye both from the outside and from within—they render it useless.
“Sunday Without Love” by Ragnar Kjartansson
Where: Luhring Augustine
When: November 1 – December 20
Why It’s Worth a Look: Ragnar Kjartansson’s new video work began in an unlikely place: his refrigerator. An old postcard depicting a gaggle of musicians in the folk costumes of an unknown country hung above the food. Kjartansson and his collaborators, including Davíð Þór Jónsson, recreated the bucolic scene, sardonically adapting the German comedic song “Ohne Liebe Leben Lernen” with heartbroken lyrics.
Know Before You Go: Kjartansson’s works often draw upon Icelandic folk traditions, classical theater, and pastoral landscapes. His video works, joyous and mournful in equal measure, have been heralded as some of the best of the century.
“Shattering and Gathering Our Traces” by Kader Attia
Where: Lehmann Maupin
When: Through December 13
Why It’s Worth a Look: The caged bird has historically been a potent metaphor in political art and writing from Maya Angelou to Marilyn Frye. Here, Kader Attia fills the gallery of Lehmann Maupin with bird cages, each with a small bell inside, dangling from the ceiling. As audience members pass through, the artwork provokes questions about individual political action as well as life in one’s various echo chambers online.
Know Before You Go: Kader Attia will also debut a series of sculptural and film works focused around the image of a suitcase. In Attia’s constructions, the suitcase is a potent symbol for the interplay between past and future, especially in light of the Algerian War and its lasting effects.
“Homeland” by Larry Sultan
Where: Yancey Richardson
When: Through December 20
Why It’s Worth a Look: As undocumented and documented immigrants alike are yanked from their communities by ICE, Sultan’s photographs, which were taken in the early 2000s, have taken on a renewed relevance. Sultan took to lumber yards and hardware store parking lots to hire Latino day laborers model for his photo series. The result is a mediation on labor, placemaking, home, and transition.
Know Before You Go: The late photographer helped define the visual identity of California in the late 20th century with his distinctive, empathetic eye. He turned his lens on everything from middle class homes rented by the porn industry in the San Fernando Valley to surreal billboards to people learning to swim and even Paris Hilton.
“Not All Clues Are Paintings But All Paintings Are Clues” by Lauren Satlowski
Where: Timothy Taylor
When: Through December 13
Why It’s Worth a Look: To Lauren Satlowski, coffee is the heart of the American work ritual, gulped by the gallon from single-use paper cups and souvenir mugs culled from Goodwill. Filtered through her uncanny, near-digital aesthetics, the beverage is both sacred in its bracing energy and grotesque in its excessive corporeality.
Know Before You Go: Satlowski’s paintings may be oil, but they exude a tactile energy inspired by digital and ultramodern textures. The surfaces of her paintings are glossy with an unnatural gleam. Although she is inspired by the work of photorealists, Satlowski uses those same techniques to create something that is decidedly uncanny.
“She-Devils on Wheels” by Sylvie Fleury
Where: Sprüth Magers
When: November 4 – December 20
Why It’s Worth a Look: This exhibition of Sylvie Fleury’s work portrays the imperative language of midcentury advertisements (“Faster! Bigger! Better!”) in its most suitable form: neon. Attention-grabbing and modern, the language of Times Square and roadside attractions, neon art fuses commerce and text in one chemical reaction.
Know Before You Go: The title of Fleury’s show comes from the 1968 motorcycle girl gang exploitation film of the same name. It also happens to be the name of Fleury’s own motorcycle club, founded in the 1990s, and the show does not shy away from the head-on collision of biker culture and gendered representations.
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