GREGORY GILLESPIE Forum Gallery CHAIM GROSS: REINVENTING FORM Forum Gallery WILLIAM KENTRIDGE: THE MAGIC FLUTE, DRAWINGS AND PROJECTIONS Marian Goodman Gallery Not many contemporary artists came as close as Gregory Gillespie (1936-2000) to the virtuosic rendering of early Renaissance painting, and none took these talents in so unsettling a direction. The thirty-odd paintings at Forum … Continued

Andre Zarre Gallery 529 West 20th St., 7th Floor New York, NY 10011 212.255.0202 January 17 – February 25, 2006 A version of this review first appeared in Gay City News, February 9-15, 2006 Recent polychrome wood relief panels by Barbara Schwartz convey a quietly magisterial beauty by means of playful colors and shapes. They … Continued

Von Lintel  Gallery 555 W.25th Street New York NY 10001 212-242-0599 January 12 – February 11, 2006 The cryptic phrase SURYA TECHNO presides over the scene as two dolls raise their perfect eyebrows and scream ghostly laughter through the blue and orange architecture of a Paris storefront. Signage to the left urges ACHAT (buy); signage … Continued

Robert Mann Gallery 210 Eleventh Avenue New York NY 10001 January 5 to February 25, 2006 Mary Mattingly’s photography explores many themes and concepts: home, travel, cartography, human relationships, human interaction with the organic world, the corporate entities that have influenced and shaped so much of our lives, language, the privatization of natural resources such … Continued

The Museum of Modern Art, New York 11 West 53rd Street February 19—May 8, 2006 The first Edvard Munch retrospective in America in the past thirty years is a big disappointment.  But it’s not the artist’s fault. There is an obligation to provide a narrative shape that highlights the genuine achievements of an important artist’s … Continued

Hirschhorn until February 11 515 W. 24th Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues, 212-206-9300 Paine until February 25 533 W. 26th Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues, 212-714-9500 Thomas Hirschhorn and Roxy Paine, two sculptors with ambitious installations in Chelsea right now, might seem diametrically opposed in terms of sensibility, representing Dionysian and Apollonian extremes … Continued

Edelman Arts at Salander-O’Reilly 20 East 79th Street New York 212-879-6606 January 7-31, 2006 This review first appeared in The New York Sun, January 12, 2006. SALANDER-O’REILLY IS SHOWCASING CHRISTOPHER WINTER’S Bavarian kinder kitsch as a courtesy to Asher Edelman, mega-collector. Described by the Wall Street Journal in 1998 as “one of the most notorious … Continued

This 2005 review is re-posted to mark Simonian’s current show, at Edward Thorpe Gallery, through February 19.

Until January 21 530 West 22nd Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues, 212.929.2262 Merlin James’s painting, “Flower Piece” (2001), is almost a manifesto of a will to evade categorization.  It hangs in a show spanning twenty years of his work at Sikkema Jenkins, his fourth with these dealers.  At first it looks like a dashed-off, … Continued

STEPHEN HARVEY: FLIGHTS Gallery Schlesinger until December 17 (24 E. 73rd Street, Second Floor, between Fifth and Madison Avenues, 212-734-3600). GWEN HARDIE: FACE PAINTINGS 2005 Dinter Fine Art until December 23 (547 W. 27th Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues, 212-947-2818). RICHARD WALKER: BEACON ROAD PAINTINGS Alexandre Gallery until December 30 (41 E. 57th Street, … Continued