A modest room of small pictures, Mira Schor’s project space exhibition, The Red Tie Paintings, pulsates with lyrical fury. These Goyaesque allegories exude shamanic urgency, as if painted for purposes of exorcism. The artist does indeed describe a cathartic functionality for these works: “A day in the studio begins with the instantaneity of response to that day’s repellent news, which I can articulate very freely in ink and gouache on paper.” Red and black are at once symbolically charged and formally potent chromatic choices. The dramatis personae in this fiery suite include limp dicks, a melting swastika, eyes that are also vaginas and bleed, the Owl of Minerva (she who rises only at dusk) and the eponymous, synechdochal necktie that comes to menacing, serpentine life, a device that recalls anthropomorphized props in a William Kentridge animation. Artistic sisters channeled include Charlotte Salomon, Nancy Spero and Sue Coe. At once deeply personal and fiercely political, this is poetry meets therapy meets agit prop meets magic.
On view through January 7, 2018, 106 Forsyth Street at Broome Street, lylesandking.com