New Exhibits of Hiroshi Sugimoto & Richard Aldrich
Art shows you can’t miss this week in New York City. We pick only 3.
1. Hiroshi Sugimoto @ Pace Gallery
February 5 — March 5
Pace’s new showcase of Hiroshi Sugimoto’s photography focuses on his “Sea of Buddha” series, forty-eight photos that the artist worked on from 1988 until 1995. The photographs continue Sugimoto’s ongoing investigation into light, history and time — which the artist specifically views as “one of the most abstract concepts human beings have created.” However, the series distinguishes itself from Sugimoto’s oeuvre for its meditation on the purpose and effect of repetition, which, among many implications in his works, often refers to the Buddhist practice of replicating manifestations of a deity in order to achieve spiritual merit. Furthermore, the act of repeating achieves a sort of transcendence as Sugimoto repeats the very act of its examination.
On view at 510 West 25th Street, New York, NY.
2. Richard Aldrich @ Gladstone Gallery
January 29 — March 5
In his new solo exhibition, Richard Aldrich showcases his artistic range with a variety of painted and sculpted works. Through the many media with which he engages, Aldrich aims to examine not a singular system or stylistic progression, but rather how art allows multiple processes to combine and harmonize. Aldrich allows the time and ambiance surrounding the work to seep into this milieu, keeping extra paint or marks that a piece picks up in his studio to stay upon it or allowing a work to stretch under its own weight over time.
On view at 515 24th Street, New York, NY
3. “The Lamp Show” @ 99¢ Plus Gallery
January 29 — April 10
Featuring work from more than 30 contemporary artists and designers, 99¢ Plus Gallery’s new group show includes a range of objects united by their capacity to illuminate. The pieces test the boundaries of “functionality,” its flexibility and fixity, and “light” itself, for while this objects provide lighting one may refrain from classifying them necessarily as lights. The objects posit whether such qualifications exist naturally within an object or if we ascribe them to a work, as it fits into a larger social schema.
On view at 238 Wilson Avenue, Brooklyn, NY.
