September is perhaps one of my favourite months of the year. It marks the steady transition from summer to fall, when the heat subsides, but the sun still shines for most of the day. When the season shifts, so do gallery spaces, from their summer displays to their long-awaited fall exhibits, which are often some of the most-anticipated shows. These showcases often set the tone for the year, shedding insight into all there is to come and reflecting on all that came before.
As someone who loves New York purely because of its walkability, I took advantage of the diminishing humidity and spent most of my free time this month leisurely perusing sights along the streets before the cold weather fully kicks in. This also meant stopping by galleries familiar and unfamiliar to me.
As I ventured into an array of shows during these strolls, I noticed that I was confronted with a return to figurations of the self and the collective as a mode of expression and critique. There was a special attention placed on one’s connection to the world and to history at large, to the forces that form identity and the influences that transform it. For me, the following shows left a particularly lasting impression.
Arshile Gorky at Hauser & Wirth
Arshile Gorky’s spotlight at Hauser & Wirth’s Soho location runs from September 4 to November 2, 2024 and features a riveting selection of paintings and works on paper that exemplifies his career’s development in New York City and the diversity of styles and mastery he absorbed along the way. Indeed, remnants of Cubism and Impressionism can all be aesthetically traced across Gorky’s compositions, yet all are deliberately adapted into a distinctly personal language.
There was something deeply moving about the Armenian painter’s colourful and shaded forms. The gradient ebb and flow of lines created by each intermeshed pen stroke or brushstroke reflects an undeniable degree of care, resonance, and intention, the same kind one passionately pours into a personal diary normally protected in the privacy of a bedroom drawer. In this sense, I feel honoured to have been granted entry into Gorky’s cherished world.
"Flags: A Group Show" at Paula Cooper Gallery
Flags: A Group Show takes place at Chelsea’s Paula Cooper from September 7 to October 26, 2024. I will admit that I went into the show with certain reservations about what I was about to see, but, nevertheless, my curiosity got the best of me. While a show about nationalism and patriotism feels undeniably relevant in today’s political climate, especially given the upcoming election, how could it not be overly on the nose and flatten all the social and racial complexities imbued within America’s history?
Somehow, Flags manages to evade this risk altogether whilst still maintaining its curatorial through-thread. Littered among iconic works by Jasper Johns and Roy Lichtenstein are more abstracted, yet just as striking, interpretations of what identity means. In Elliot Erwin’s photographs of Jackie Kennedy at her husband’s funeral, one sees grief and all its intricacies personified. Instead of the polarizing political binary reinforced throughout the American status quo, Paula Cooper’s group show highlights the good, bad, and ugly bits and pieces of patriotism. Where there is nostalgia, there is also weariness; where there is globalization, there is also commercialization; where there is glory, there is, ultimately, ambivalence.
"Friends of Friends" at DC Moore
DC Moore’s recent group show at its Chelsea gallery, titled Friends of Friends, showed from September 5 to 28, 2024. Featuring works from 20th-century artists like Emma Amos, Jack Levine, Augusta Savage, James Van Der Zee, and Philip Evergood, the exhibition reimagined their creative practice through a lens of personal connection and, ultimately, friendship.
Their shared devotion to social justice and the civil rights movement sheds light on not only the lineages traced between each personal oeuvre but also the greater forces at play in their collective milieu. Seeing the works, which range in materiality from photographs to works on paper, allowed one to dwell in their subtle similarities and appreciate their sustained differences. What shone through was a timeless expression of solidarity: a demonstrated willingness to not only converse with and support each other in their respective pursuits but also jointly raise questions in response to the shifting political landscape.
"Naudline Pierre: The Mythic Age" at James Cohan
The mesmerizing illustrations of Naudline Pierre have been ingrained in my mind ever since I saw her work at the Drawing Center a while back. In The Mythic Age, an exhibition of new paintings and sculptural works on view at James Cohan in Tribeca from September 6 through October 19, 2024, metamorphosis of and escapism from the self are core tenets.
While the beings in Pierre’s fantastical, larger-than-life portraits are undoubtedly, as the name of the show suggests, mythical in both configuration and orientation, there is a paradoxical feeling of familiarity in their wayward figuration, in the way their bodies both blend in and stand out from all that surrounds them, completely vulnerable to gazing eyes and yet held with a quiet, liberated confidence that transcends the canvas.
Looking back on this autumnal exploration of New York City art, I feel a residual sense of gratitude for the thought-provoking exhibitions I was able to encounter. The focus on both personal and collective narrative, on weaving oneself within a greater tapestry of historical and contemporary influences, feels like a prominent theme in both the world of artmaking and beyond. There seems to be sustained attention to gestures and conversations of this nature, and I am personally excited to see where these exchanges take us in the shows of the coming months and years.
