Dan Hernandez @ Kim Foster

A battle rages between the Master Chief, Blanka, Scorpion, Krang, bearded dudes, monk dudes, and… Jesus? Sounds epic, looks epic. But it’s just not the reality of war.

-HGO

Today: Claudette Schreuders @ Jack Shainman

South African artist, Claudette Schreuders’ new show titled Close, Close is about the unique emotions that emerge between members of a family. The unconditional love is unmistakable. The inability to express that love properly, also omnipresent.

-HGO

Today: Andy Kehoe @ Jonathan LeVine

Andy Kehoe’s latest show “Strange Wanderings” makes me feel like a little dude, listening to another little dude telling me a fantastic story about monsters, adventure and beautiful things. All off the cuff, never to be told again but never forgotten. Just like childhood.

-HGO

Today: Richard Butler @ Freight and Volume

After a little bit of a hiatus, I’m finally back to visiting galleries and posting in GoingCrayon. Thank goodness! Here are some images from Richard Butler’s show at Freight and Volume called hypochondriacatthegramercyparkhotel. Showing an obvious insecurity with trust, the artist’s anxiety and subsequent loneliness is evident in this series of paintings. Using people closest to him as his subjects and obscuring their faces with masks and barriers, Butler illuminates his lack of faith and certainty with even those he loves the most.

-HGO

Today: Marc Seguin @ Mike Weiss

You’ve probably heard that before he was the incarnation of the devil himself, Hitler was an aspiring artist- not a very good one. And another well-known fact is that Adolf hated abstract art with a fury on the Führer could muster. So, in a group exhibit at the Mike Weiss Gallery, Marc Seguin decides to give old Adolf the finger by drawing his image using human ashes and then smearing paint on his face, abstract expressionist style. Bravo.

-HGO

Today: Halim Al Karim @ Stux

On exhibition at the Stux Gallery is “Barakat: The Gift” featuring eight artists from the Middle East. Included is Iraqi artist Halim Al Karim who explores the interwoven relationships between those who perpetrate violence, those who experience it, and the witnesses to these events. Coming from a point of view influenced by his own experience opposing Sadaam’s regime in the first Gulf War, Halim allows his audience to experience the fear caused by the perpetrators, the alienation felt by the opposition, and the inability (or unwillingness) of the witnesses to make a lasting change.

Today: Janet Cardiff and Georges Bures Miller @ Luhring Augustine

Many artists have transcended the two and three dimensional spaces that constitute the norm of art making, and attempted to tackle the elusive fourth dimension of time. Janet Cardiff and Georges Bures Miller’s show at Luhring Augustine not only tackles that idea, but launches an all out multimedia assault on the concept of nostalgia and the longing feelings associated with memories of the past. A macabre carousel that lurches itself to start, like an old man getting out of his chair, abruptly stops and allows the audience to see past its disguise. An antique wooden card catalog, lures us in with promises of beautiful music, almost a pathetic attempt to become relevant once again. And rotary telephones emitting voices and conversations seemingly recorded from people long gone; a prophecy of their own fate.

-HGO

Today: Marlene Dumas @ David Zwirner

Marlene Dumas is a painter’s painter. Her strokes are confident and decisive, her themes are direct and unmistakable.

-HGO

Today: Michael Stevenson (Cape Town) @ The Armory Show

Wim Botha’s portraits carved out of books at the Michael Stevenson booth. Dissecting the importance of status objects and their power to create artificial men.

-HGO

Today: Mizuma Art Gallery (Tokyo) @ The Armory Show

Miyanaga Aiko demonstrates the violence of time and the beauty of change at the Mizuma booth. Using Naphthalene (the same chemical used for moth balls), Miyanaga creates sculptures that rapidly deteriorate and disintegrate as soon as they are formed, never knowing the end until it comes, or the path it takes to get there.

-HGO