Evan Robarts at the Hole, through April 5 (312 Bowery)Robarts threads lengths of green garden hose through sheets of clear or reflective glass, freezing the rubbery squiggles in space. A second series of paintings made using a mop are less effective (and a bit too reminiscent of James Nares’s swooshing gestures), but another group of works — a combination of hulking construction scaffolding and brightly-colored paint applied inelegantly to the wall using a roller — confirms the artist’s aptitude for making the commonplace compositionally intriguing. Hannah Levy and “Debris” at James Fuentes, through April 5 and 26 (55 Delancey Street)Levy’s back-gallery show is full of drooping, rubbery asparagus stalks, bent metal, and upholstered ladders. There’s also a terrific video that shows two hands massaging and manipulating a flesh-toned cast of iPhone headphones; I promise it’ll be the most disturbingly sexual thing you’ll see all day. Up front, “Debris” brings together Darja Bajagic’s porn-appropriation (including an axe whose head is digitally printed with a still from swordplay fetish materials) with a Haim Steinbach shelf, some paintings by David Wojnarowicz, and a rubber-ducky on a blanket from Lizzi Bougatsos. The stand-out, though, is an imposing floor sculpture by Nevine Mahmoud: a cast aluminum shape resembling the jagged cavity of a monstrous mouth resting on a cherry-red laminated panel. It’s a combination of sleek-surfaced retail fixture and someone's primal nightmare.Andrew Sendor at Sperone Westwater, through April 11 (257 Bowery)These grisaille, photorealist oil paintings on panel present an alternate reality of sorts, populated by characters that include the enigmatic Boris Flumzy and Fenomeno. Sendor’s hilariously specific titlings for the works obfuscate rather than illuminate — nonsensically identifying paintings as being based on stills from imaginary documentaries, for instance. Sendor’s protagonists appear in a short accompanying film, “Fenomeno,” which at times reads like a winking parody of Matthew Barneyian excess, with the title character hefting a dumbbell while wearing a blue dress, or moaning in anguish as he’s burned in effigy during a mysterious riverside ritual.Ross Simonini and Brian Belott at Fredericks & Freiser, through April 25 (536 West 24th Street)In dual exhibition dubbed “Sweather,” the artists entertain a childlike curiosity tempered by genuine chops. Belott presents large-scale abstract paintings — ordered fields of colored dots and the occasional snaking curve of squirted-from-the-tube pigment, arrayed on a ground of simple construction paper. Simonini’s contributions are equally vibrant, hinting more at landscapes and dreamscapes. (Fun fact: Many of them were painted using his feet.) In the back room, works on paper by both artists show a different side: Simonini’s images here are monochromatic and literally ghost-haunted; Belott’s are Dieter Roth-inspired mustard-on-paper sketches of cats, calculators, and other things, sure to bring delight to uptight conservators for years to come. Owen Kydd at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, through April 19 (327 Broome Street)Kydd’s square-format video projections and looping clips can’t help but allude to Instagram, Vine, et. al. But framed in handsome, minimalist boxes, these simple pieces demand a concentrated looking at odds with such cursory perusal. Some of the subject matter is dramatic and advertising-slick — like footage of a flower waving its petals in slow motion, or two sugar cubes slowly falling through the air. Others use a grainier aesthetic to capture simpler things, like the subtle play of light and shadow on an ordinary patch of ground.Folkert de Jong at James Cohan Gallery, through April 25 (533 West 26th Street)The Dutch artist mined the collection of the Royal Armories in Leeds in order to cast suits of armor and a cornucopia of firearms in bronze; he then sprayed the surfaces with a variety of acids, forcing a patina effect (chalky greens, lush purples) that makes the sculptures look like marine artifacts submerged for centuries. De Jong sticks with signature polyurethane foam for other pieces that are encased in vitrines of multi-colored Plexiglas. (He’s as gruesome as ever: in one tableaux, a man’s chest is pierced by the horn of a gramophone.) Other assemblages mix incongruous bronze objects: a jumbled coatrack of firearms supporting a few hats and a cane, with a crumpled soccer ball on the floor beneath. These new pieces are surprisingly slick, but they still retain the rough, raw energy of de Jong’s sculptures using more industrial materials. (FYI: Through April 19 you can also catch The Wooster Group’s “Cry, Trojans!” at St. Ann’s Warehouse, for which de Jong handled set design and costuming.)ALSO WORTH SEEING: Cordy Ryman’s wild woodwork at Zurcher Gallery, through May 5; Matthew Darbyshire’s toilets, chairs, and radiators rendered in thermoplastic, at Lisa Cooley through March 29; Fernando Mastrangelo’s imposing, design-inflected sculptures and paintings made using sand, salt, and concrete, at Mike Weiss Gallery through April 25; and Andrew Kuo’s hilarious cat-wallpaper at Marlborough Broome Street, which you can catch through March 28.
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