The art world is poised to kick off the start of the 2023 winter season. This week alone includes a number of art world heavy hitters with exhibitions debuting, including Diane Arbus, Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Andrea Fraser. With so many new exhibits opening at galleries and museums, deciding what to view first can sometimes be overwhelming. Here are our top six shows to go see.
1. Diane Arbus: Untitled at Cheim & Read
The iconic photographer Diane Arbus gained notoriety in the 1960s with her arresting photographs of socially marginalized individuals, sex workers, children and even the American middle class. In recent years, her work has had a revitalization. On the heels of David Zwirner’s 2022 re-staging of her 1972 blockbuster retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art entitled Cataclysm (one year after the artist’s death), her work gets reconsidered again this month at Cheim & Read.
Opening on January 12, Diane Arbus: Untitled will explore the artist’s work exclusively in the four years leading up to her death in 1971. Arbus, who is arguably one of the best photographers of her generation, helped to make invisible members of society more visible. Untitled, which is one of Arbus’s most well known and explosive series, explores a group of developmentally disabled people who lived in New Jersey.
Diane Arbus: Untitled will be on view until March 11.
2. Andrea Fraser at Marian Goodman
Andrea Fraser has been pushing the bounds of performance and institutional critique over the last forty years. Drawing on the larger parameters of performance art, video, conceptual art and other influences, her first show at Marian Goodman will serve as a small survey of the artist’s work. Opening on January 12, Andrea Fraser will consist of six specific works, including a new video installation. This exhibit, which has been broken up chronologically, speaks to the larger bodies of work she has created since the 1980s which seek to further interrogate systems of power that exist within society, politics, gender, and institutions more broadly. Drawing on an academic framework which borrows from gender studies, psychoanalysis and other elements, Fraser has made work that has challenged and created new parameters for art.
The show will be open to the public through February 25.
3. Felix Gonzalez-Torres at David Zwirner
Opening this week across all three David Zwirner galleries in Chelsea is the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres. This cross gallery show will include four installations in total, two of which were not fully realized while the artist was alive. This also marks the first show of Gonzalez-Torres’s work at Zwirner since the gallery began co-representing his estate along with Andrea Rosen Gallery.
Gonzalez-Torres, who worked across a range of mediums including sculpture, installation, video and more also helped to further conversations around the AIDS crisis and larger issues within the LBGTQ+ community. Drawing on his larger activist model, Gonzalez-Torres was also a member of the artist collective Group Material, which sought to create larger social awareness through their exhibits and actions. Much of the work that Gonzalez-Torres is known for consists of his large scale installations that often feature mass produced items such as colorful piles of candy, fortune cookies, light bulbs and other items. One of the most exciting elements of this show is the opportunity it gives viewers to experience a new side to his work, while also exposing the artist to a wider audience.
The show is on view until February 25.
4. Tara Donovan at Pace
In this latest exhibit at Pace, which opens on January 13, Tara Donovan explores the materiality of drawings made with aluminum insect screens. The screen drawings, which came out of Donovan’s work during the pandemic, represents a larger, playful aspect with a utilitarian material that has been changed through the artist’s hands. The result is a wide range of 3D drawings which vary greatly in size from one to four feet. These works are also in conversation with many elements of Donovan’s studio practice that use a minimalist language but also are seeking to expand what and how people experience and encounter objects and materiality.
The exhibit is on view until February 25.
5. A Mind of Winter at Gladstone Gallery
Opening on January 13, A Mind of Winter is a group exhibit featuring the work of Jim Hodges, Arthur Jafa, Robert Mapplethorpe, Philippe Parreno, Rachel Rose, Salvo, Vivian Suter and Rosemarie Trockel. Borrowing its name from the Wallace Stevens poem “The Snow Man,” this exhibit is putting together a diverse group of artists in conversation with one another to explore larger themes around what is often considered the darkest and harshest time of year—winter. The show also plays with larger elements of unpredictability and chance, which can often be seen within nature itself, especially this time of year.
The exhibit is on view until March 4.
6. Sean Donovan at M 2 3
With his second solo exhibit at the Chinatown space M 2 3, Sean Donovan is quickly establishing himself in the downtown scene. Opening on January 13, Praxis of Matter builds off of Donovan’s larger investigation into objects that have had a previous life, and takes on new meaning by exploring the larger aspect of firearms. Considering the larger topic of gun culture from varied perspectives, Donovan has created a new body of work that transforms purchased bullets that have been melted down to create new objects that the artist dubbs urns. This latest show, which comes out of a recent residency Donovan completed in Texas, is also helping to add to a larger conversation around gun violence in the US today.
The exhibit is on view until February 26.
