Three mid-February Chelsea picks from my Wednesday ramblings:
Bruce Yonemoto @ Alexander Gray Associates
Through March 15
Yonemoto’s latest work consists of photos of Asian Americans in Civil War costumes taken from Hollywood costume suppliers. The images, shot in a palette that resembles early Technicolor film, inhabit a dream space between Civil War cartes de visite, race theory, and the constructed scenarios so prevalent in contemporary photography.
Ana Mendieta and Hans Breder @ Galerie Lelong
Through March 1
Galerie Lelong has mixed a large number of documentary photographs of Mendieta’s performances and siluetas with Mendieta’s video work, displayed on walls and TVs interspersed throughout the space. The photographs are a great entry point into Mendieta’s work about the body, which, in its video form, can be slow for a new viewer. Images of Mendieta forcing her body into abstract forms by clutching large mirrors read like an eloquent visual critique of macho modernists like Edward Weston.
New Photo @ Carolina Nitsch Project Gallery
Through March 16
This set of photographs taken from New Photo, the underground magazine that helped launch contemporary Chinese art photography, manages to be diverse and appealing to a wide variety of viewers. There are traditional, Walker Evans-like photographs here, like a black-and-white image of two umbrellas hanging on a stained wall. But there’s also edgier fare, like an image of dolls in formal wear tossed into the sky above a large city–an amusing and succinct satire of high-brow cosmopolitan culture.
Image © Bruce Yonemoto.
