Once again, ARTINFO has sent its intrepid staff out into the art world, charged with reviewing the shows they saw in a single (sometimes run-on) sentence. (To see our One-Line Reviews as an illustrated slideshow, click here.)
“Brancusi in New York 1913-2013,” at Paul Kasmin Gallery. Closing January 11, 2014.
Kasmin’s 100-year Constantin Brancusi show, an attempt to keep up with the big boys’ historical shows, not only falls flat, but comes off as exceedingly corny with the artist’s Modernist quotes adorning the walls (“what is real is not the external form, but the essence of things”). — Ashton Cooper (Watch video HERE)
Marc Dennis, “An Artist, A Curator, and A Rabbi Walk Into a Bar...” at Hasted Kraeutler. Closing January 4, 2014.
Trompe l’oeil painting gets a decidedly modern twist in Marc Dennis’s masterfully executed, frequently hilarious, hyperreal mashups of art historical references ladden with issues of voyeurism and art world navel-gazing, including a very correctly costumed Dallas Cowboys cheerleader (with pom poms) contemplating Picasso’s “Demoiselles d’Avignon” and uberdealer Larry Gagosian depicted in an Old Master-style portrait with a “vanitas” theme — dressed in all black with a ruffled white collar and holding a skull. — Eileen Kinsella
“The Encyclopedic Palace,” at the 55th Venice Biennale. Closing November 24.
Rich with outsider artists and delightfully obsessive weirdos but dragged down in places by the inclusion of way too many off-theme gallery stars — including what, in a just world, would be a career-ending calamity of an installation by Paweł Althamer — the main show of this year’s Venice Biennale is nevertheless an incredible curatorial achievement, and if it were a nations-based competition its grand champions would be the Japanese artists. — Benjamin Sutton
Julie Evans, “Mylar Constructions,” at Winkleman Gallery. Closing November 27.
Julie Evans’s stunningly executed and delicate constructions of bleeding, brilliant green, pink, brown, grey, and orange paints on mylar and paper, cut-up and pieced together to mimic the forms of ancient or alien vegetation, may seem simplistic at first glance, but will mesmerize and seduce you if you give them the chance — particularly the series mounted directly to the gallery wall. — Alanna Martinez
