What to See in New York Art Galleries This Week
Noah Loesberg, Four Windows, One Door , 2015-16, Painted wood, 144" x 96" x 8" (3.66m x 2.4m x 20cm), Installation View at Robert Henry Contemporary during Sculpture 56.
Sculpture 56
Through May 27 at Victori & Mo; through May 20 at Soho 20; and through May 25 at Robert Henry Contemporary. All at 56 Bogart Street, Brooklyn; sculpture56.com.
Since 2011, a rotating roster of art galleries has taken up residence in the former warehouse at 56 Bogart Street in Brooklyn. They've had simultaneous openings or late hours before — nights when the building brims with the congeniality of the Bushwick art scene — but now, for the first time, they've coordinated exhibitions. In the project titled "Sculpture 56," 11 galleries are showing contemporary work in this medium at the same time. The group display defines sculpture in the broadest sense, as art in three dimensions. That openness helped make this endeavor happen, but it also means that the work varies widely, as does its quality.
The highlight is Amie Cunat's "Meetinghouse" (2018), at Victori & Mo, a relative newcomer to the building with a strong track record of immersive installations. Ms. Cunat uses simple materials — cardboard, washi paper, a handful of paints and glues — to transform the gallery into a colorful, eye-popping version of a Shaker meeting house. Her hat boxes, candelabra, rocking chair and rugs maintain the sect's spare style but have been stripped of all utility, retooling a functional craft tradition for a realm of pure aesthetics.
By contrast, Laura Bernstein, whose recently closed show at Nurture Art was also part of "Sculpture 56" portrays mythological creatures whose grotesque features have evolutionary purposes. The large ears of the Panotti, for instance, help regulate their body temperature, and the Sciapode's giant foot protects it from the sun. Ms. Bernstein's rough-hewn beasts are both comic and foreboding in their mutations of the human form.
At Soho 20, hands rest atop Lucy Hodgson's miniature structures, which look like architectural models for ancient buildings. Her concrete casts of latex gloves serve as a dual symbol, denoting both the people who shape history and those who suffer through it. Ms. Hodgson has a counterpart in Melissa Vandenberg, whose show in the back room at Robert Henry Contemporary lampoons monuments as displays of masculine power. Her diminutive phallic linen-and-polyester obelisk, "Untitled Gravestone" (2012), seems to sag under the weight of its own self-importance.
JILLIAN STEINHAUER