Shahzia Sikander’s first New York solo exhibition in more than a decade showcases an astonishing range of work: paintings, mosaics, animations, and her inaugural foray into freestanding sculpture, Promiscuous Intimacies, a stunning monument to desire that depicts both a Greco-Roman goddess and an Indian devata. Sikander is an artist whose talents and ambitions threaten to outstrip the materials available to her; the works featured here confront the climate crisis, religion, migration, war, memory, and much more. But despite the daunting abundance of ideas and mediums, careful attention reveals that the show itself is a sort of mosaic, the pieces all slotting into place to form a portrait of the artist over the past few years of her practice. The works on paper inform the animations; the animations inform the individual mosaics (in part, Sikander credits her experiments with the latter form to “the dynamism of the pixel that emerged in my mind as a parallel to the unit of a mosaic”). “Weeping Willows, Liquid Tongues” will be on view at Sean Kelly Gallery through December 19, 2020. A selection of images from the show appears below.

Shahzia Sikander, Double Sight, 2018, glass mosaic with patinated brass frame, 63 1/4 x 44 1/4″. © Shahzia Sikander Photo: Jason Wyche. Courtesy of Sean Kelly, New York

Shahzia Sikander, Arose, 2019–2020, ink and gouache on paper, 76 x 51″. © Shahzia Sikander. Photo: Adam Reich. Courtesy of Sean Kelly, New York.

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“I’ve always had a thing with birds,” said the artist Ida Applebroog in a 2016 interview. A few years ago, inspired by John James Audubon’s ornithological paintings, she began a series of works that foreground her longtime fascination with all things feathered. Unlike Audubon’s birds, which were brought beautifully to life on paper after being shot, eviscerated, and splinted into position by the naturalist himself, Applebroog’s birds don’t hide their mortality. A bluebird lies belly up, its ruddy breast exposed. An owl sprawls out with its eyes closed. A pair of gray woodpeckers dip their heads back, beaks pointed toward a sky to which they’ll never return. “Applebroog Birds,” a new show devoted to the artist’s avian works, will be on view at Hauser & Wirth’s Twenty-Second Street location through December 19, 2020. A selection of images appears below.

Ida Applebroog, Cardinal, 2018, ultrachrome ink on mylar, 52 1/2 x 40″. © Ida Applebroog. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Emily Poole.

Ida Applebroog, Bluebird, 2018, ultrachrome ink and gel on mylar, 22 5/8 x 42 1/2″. © Ida Applebroog. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Emily Poole.

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An afternoon practice under the West Texas sun. Photo: Robert Clark.

My introduction to Texas came well before I ever set foot in the state itself. I found H. G. Bissinger’s book Friday Night Lights at a used bookstore when I was a teenager in the early aughts, drifting in the dog days of summer between my junior and senior years of high school. I had just gotten my first car, a brown Nissan Maxima with a faulty alarm and inconsistent shades of window tint. Despite the ways that an engine and four wheels can expand a geographical radius, there are only so many places you can go when you are sixteen years old. And so I spent many of my days simply driving around Columbus, Ohio, popping into stores I couldn’t afford until I worked my way down to the stores I could.

On the cover of that edition of Friday Night Lights was the now iconic black-and-white photo taken by Robert Clark: Odessa Permian football players Brian Chavez, Mike Winchell, and Ivory Christian linking hands together and walking along the sideline of a football field. I was drawn to the book because of this image first. I was a high school athlete, preparing to become a college athlete. I was still young and eager enough to buy into all of the mythologies about brotherhood and family that sports sold me. The captains on my own soccer team would walk out to the middle of the pitch before the game in this same manner: hands clasped together, forming a single chain of movement. Read More

Maxwell Alexandre’s sprawling, colorful paintings sing odes to Rocinha, the Rio de Janeiro favela where he was raised and currently lives. His work has a sort of Where’s Waldo? quality to it, presenting rich fields of figures huddling, sweating, texting, fighting, living alongside one another. In Close a door to open a window, a person reclining in a luxurious plane cabin sits directly across from two masked men clutching firearms. In Pisando no céu, a girl stands before a wall of Barbie dolls. Dalila retocando meus dreads depicts a barbershop run by police officers, the state holding a literal razor to citizens’ necks. Alexandre’s first show in the United Kingdom, “Pardo é Papel: close a door to open a window,” will open at David Zwirner’s London gallery on November 12 and remain on view through December 19, 2020. A selection of images from the exhibition appears below.

Maxwell Alexandre, Pisando no céu, 2020. © Maxwell Alexandre. Photo: Gabi Carerra. Courtesy the artist, A Gentil Carioca, and David Zwirner.

Maxwell Alexandre, If you could die and come back to life, up for air from the swimming pool (detail), 2020. © Maxwell Alexandre. Photo: Gabi Carerra. Courtesy the artist, A Gentil Carioca, and David Zwirner.

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