Unbelievable Shows not to be missed in the New York ArtScene this Week!

Unbelievable Shows not to be missed in the New York Art Scene this Week!

June is here with the absolute best weather New Yorkers will experience this year! Time to grab a friend and take to the galleries for some culture and art appreciation. Creativo keeps you in the loop on the best shows that will be sure to impress and bring a fresh perspective to your week.

The "Phenomenal Portraits" show celebrates contemporary masters of portraiture. Shalom Neuman's hyperrealistic oils bring subjects to lifelike presence. Ian Sullivan's large charcoal drawings reveal psychological depth through intricate detail. Matthew James's vibrant pastel portraits exude bold expressionism and individuality. Heide Hatry's intimate oil paintings convey raw vulnerability. The exhibition also features MetroCard art portraits by Jean Carlos Pinto, created using repurposed metro card materials. Pinto's unique works demonstrate his creativity in transforming these ordinary objects into striking artworks full of color and texture.This phenomenal collection showcases diverse styles that elevate the ordinary and capture the human condition through the artists' visions and techniques.

"Following WWII, the art world's center shifted from Paris to New York, ushering in Abstract Expressionism's rise. This exhibit features twenty modern and contemporary artists including pioneering artists, like Elaine de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, and Lee Krasner who drew attention with energetic, physically active abstract paintings but were underrepresented compared to male counterparts. "Gesture & Form: Women in Abstraction" reconsiders these innovators' legacies, situating their key stylistic and technical developments alongside global, multigenerational artists like Heather Day, Sarah Crowner, and Minjung Kim.

The show highlights abstraction's multiplicity, demonstrating how artists explored method, material, and forms referencing nature, identity, and societal issues. From lyrical washes to vibrant gestures and geometric compositions, these bold, processrevealing works embody artists' vigorous spirits while challenging norms within a rich tradition.

Johan Creten's 2023 solo exhibition "Le Coeur qui déborde" poetically referenced the Romanesque Cistercian abbey setting using oceanic metaphors. Sea creatures like mermaids and metamorphosing seahorses populated the nave, while gold bas-reliefs evoking female anatomy lined the cellar walls. Creten exploited wordplay between "la mer/la mère" (the sea/the mother) to explore themes of creation, fertility, and human sexuality.

His bestiary continued with hybrid humanoid-aquatic sculptures referencing sin, temptation, and violence. Strategically placed ceramic "Observation Points" prompted contemplation. Moving from this sacred backdrop to a NYC gallery, Creten's bestiary fulfills his desire to share these dualistic sculptures—sacred/profane, beautiful/grotesque—probing the human condition.

4.Midtown Just Opened! Joel Mesler: Kitchens are good rooms to cry in

Dates: June 6 - July 26, 2024
Venue: Levy Gorvy Dayan, 19 East 64th St, New York, NY
Times: Monday - Friday 10am - 6pm

Joel Mesler's first New York exhibition spans childhood to midlife through immersive installations and vibrant paintings. A room-sized pool evokes innocent play and parental affairs. Banana leaf wallpaper conjures adolescence and the Beverly Hills Hotel. Hand-dyed canvas works feature Mesler's signature styles—vivid patterns, text, and motifs like dripping mountains and deflating metallic word-balloons pondering "Courage" and "Prayer." The balloons represent life's transitions. Mesler vulnerably bares his printmaking techniques, leaving exposed dye stains. Spanning exuberance and reflection, the intimate presentation examines where the personal and cultural converge through Mesler's wry Pop sensibility.

Born in New South Wales, Australia, Belynda Henry is a renowned landscape painter and multiple finalist for prestigious awards like the Wynne and Archibald Prizes. Living in a lush valley north of Sydney, she is immersed in the ever-changing textures, light, and sounds of the landscape. Henry absorbs these impressions into wondrous, imaginative paintings that evoke the land's meditative quality.

Her process involves fieldwork, photography, sketches, and painting, later allowing imagery to form at night like "a dream sequence" fusing abstraction with traditional techniques. Henry's works, acquired by collections worldwide, masterfully capture the internal essence of the Australian landscape through her signature modern colors and textures.