Lower East Side Art Galleries

Updated 05/31/2023 by: Ryan Lutz

Discover top Lower East Side Art Galleries art galleries using our 0-100% scale which quantifies cultural influence. Tribeca and Lower East Side LES art districts are home to emergent art galleries which are rivaling the excitement of blue chip art in Chelsea art district. LES gallery nights takes place on the 2nd Sunday and 3rd Thursday of each month in the Lower East Side.

Top Rated LES Art Galleries

PERROTIN-94%
INTL CNTR of Photography Museum-87%
Hashimoto Contemporary-85%
François Ghebaly-77%
No Gallery-76%
Rachel Uffner-76%
Van Der Plas Gallery-74%
Richard Taittinger-73%
Magenta Plains-72%
Hannah Traore-72%
SHIN GALLERY-72%
Krause Gallery-72%
King's Leap-71%
Sargent's Daughters-71%
SHRINE Gallery-71%
Foley Gallery-70%
Klaus von Nichtssagend-70%

Lyles & King 70%
Fragment Gallery 69%
56 HENRY 69%
Essex Street Gallery 69%
Bureau Gallery 69%
Equity Gallery 68%
Kapp Kapp 68%
Reena Spaulings 67%
Mathew Gallery 67%
Thierry Goldberg 67%
Bodega Gallery 66%
McKenzie Fine Art 66%
Spencer Brownstone 66%
Kai Matsumiya 65%
Laurel Gitlen 65%
Lubov 65%
Tramps Gallery 65%
LatchKey Gallery 64%
Harkawik 64%

Shelter 64%
Morgan Presents 64%
Someday 64%
FIERMAN Gallery 64%
RAMIKEN gallery 63%
TOTAH 63%
ARTIFACT NYC 63%
PROXYCO 63%
Ulterior Gallery 63%
Space 776 Gallery 61%
signs and symbols 61%
Rubber Factory 61%
Cindy Rucker 60%
SITUATIONS Gallery 60%
Entrance 60%
ATMgalleryNYC 60%
L'INCONNUE 59%
We Buy Gold 59%
Lichtundfire 58%
Elizabeth Houston 57%

HOUSING 57%
FIFI projects 57%
My Pet Ram 57%
DUPLEX Gallery 56%
Below Grand 54%
Mark Miller Gallery 54%
Brennan & Griffin 53%
ROOM EAST 53%
Assembly Room NYC 53%
A.D. 53%
Rawson Projects 50%
Proto Gomez 49%
Trotter&Sholer 44%
Olfactory Art Keller 41%
Mizuma & Kips 40%
Aurelie's Gallery, inc. 37%
Mark Gallery 37%

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Lower East Side art exhibitions

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signs and symbols | Zander Blom | 6/18/22-7/30/22 | LES'

Rubber Factory | Erica Mao | 11/6/21-9/1/22 | LES'

Peninsula Art Space | Kevin Darmanie | 6/18/22-7/29/22 | LES'

Lubov | Connor Marie Stankard | 6/4/22-7/17/22 | LES'

Kroll | Laurence de Valmy | 4/11/22-12/31/22 | LES'

Japan Society Gallery | Kazuko Miyamoto | 4/29/22-7/10/22 | LES'

International Center of Photography | William Klein | 6/3/22-9/12/22 | LES'

Heroes Gallery | Benny Merris | 6/16/22-7/30/22 | LES'

Hashimoto Contemporary NYC | So Youn Lee | 6/18/22-7/9/22 | LES'

Frosch Co | Robert Yoder | 5/26/22-7/3/22 | LES'

Fortnight Institute | | 6/16/22-7/31/22 | LES'

Cuchifritos Gallery | Ani Liu | 5/27/22-7/30/22 | LES'

OOR PEOPLE'S ART- A (SHORT) VISUAL HISTORY OF POVERTY IN THE UNITED STATES
OOR PEOPLE'S ART: A (SHORT) VISUAL HISTORY OF POVERTY IN THE UNITED STATES

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Rubber Factory | 11/06/21 - 09/01/22 | Erica Mao Born from earth | Erica Mao | Lower East Side'

Cuchifritos Gallery Project Space | 03/25/22 - 05/21/22 | Lounge of A Prophet | Mo Kong | Lower East Side'

signs and symbols | 03/31/22 - 05/07/22 | You allowed the object of your love to become abstracted... | Sarah Entwistle | Lower East Side'

International Center of Photography | 01/28/22 - 05/02/22 | Photography at Life Scale | Actual Size! | Lower East Side'

L'INCONNUE | 02/24/22 - 04/30/22 | Orbs & Awe | Marianne Vlaschits | Lower East Side'

Bortolami | 03/03/22 - 04/30/22 | Barbara Kasten. SHIFT | Barbara Kasten | Lower East Side'

Lyles and King | 05/13/22 - 06/25/22 | | Paulina Stasik Mercedes Llanos Juliana Cerqueria Leite | Chinatown Art Gallery'
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King's Leap | 04/08/22 - 05/15/22 | | Kira Scerbin | Chinatown Art Gallery'
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No | 03/24/22 - 05/08/22 | Bless This Life | Valentina Vaccarella | Chinatown Art Gallery'
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Someday | 03/31/22 - 05/07/22 | WHERE THE PEBBLE HITS THE WATER | YI TO | Chinatown Art Gallery'

FIERMAN | 04/01/22 - 04/30/22 | Good Friends | AMIR GUBERSTEIN PRZEMEK PYSZCZEK | Chinatown Art Gallery'

Fragment | 04/01/22 - 04/30/22 | If You Gotta Hurt Somebody Please Hurt Me | Pacifico Silano | Chinatown Art Gallery'

Tramps | 04/01/22 - 04/30/22 | new work | Behrang Karimi | Chinatown Art Gallery'

20220416 - 20220305 | Perrotin New York | Lower East Side | Kara Joslyn-This Is Hardcore
Perrotin New York a Lower East Side is showing the works of Kara Joslyn starting 3/5/2022 and ending 3/5/22. This body of work from Kara Joslyn is titled This Is Hardcore.Visit for more details: And please phone ahead to confirm the gallery hours and availabilityKara Joslyn’s paintings negotiate gaps between the material world and dream-like impressions mapping the slippages between earnest storytelling and elusive trickery that constitute our sense of self. Uncanny humanoid figures imbue voids of black space with a rich allegorical weight projecting a sense of symbolic fantasy onto the illusion of real-life objects and scenes. Joslyn’s characters possess the theatrical mutability of a one- person play: the jester bard prophet and traitor are unified in sparse unfussy gestures. Trickery redeems the tension staged between symbolism and reality slipping past the trap of binary thinking propelling the story forward. In this sense Jolsyn’s paintings echo a certain narrative sensibility captured by the writer Dodie Bellamy: “in the contest of ‘imagination versus reality’ I am drawn to ‘versus.’” Each canvas is an appropriation of sorts animated by re-modeled and re-made source images. Joslyn does not paint from a place of subjective interiority but rather projects psychodrama onto mythic symbols and tropes readapting them to the cultural consciousness of our moment. At heart Joslyn’s paintings hack traditional mythology reworking old- standards into surreal future-oriented webs of subconscious feeling. In This Is Hardcore Joslyn gives the figure of the muse a facelift. The muses appear to have been somewhat relegated to the dustbin of art history but they also personify the spirit that possesses us to lose ourselves to dance sing rave or run into a mosh pit. Oft depicted in Renaissance painting as a group of women with harps and lyres the muses are also powerful dieties. Performing “the cosmic dance of creation and destruction” the Shiva Nataraja whose monumental statue lives in the entryway of the CERN particle collider unifies pagan mythology art and modern physics. In this new series of works Joslyn imbues the muse with the kinetic energy of American underground subcultures blending the sheen of rave culture and the impulse of hardcore punk into a system of timeless or out of time iconography. Each painting exudes a type of sonic ambiance casting out dark pop-tinged energy. Joslyn sources her imagery from mid-century paper craft books. Taken out of the context of their time these paper figurines seem absurd – removed from their social function as window-dressings advertisements and craft projects for nuclear family home decor. They appear to become strange relics echoing our reality. Joslyn’s paintings mimic the form of these paper figurines: both begin as white rectangles and are then manipulated by human hands given conditional lighting shape and recognizable features. How is it she seems to ask that certain figures manage to take on an allegorical intensity that is at once in and above their time? Working with car-paint pigments and airbrushes Joslyn approaches paint as a type of metallic material not an arrangement of color. Her unconventional process lends each canvas a holographic feeling suspending each figure in a middle ground which is not quite of this world yet not purely an extension of individual imagination. Illusion is collapsed onto illusion creating a dense field of sincerity and visual deception. With This Is Hardcore Joslyn neither affirms nor denies reality and the myths we construct to make sense of it. Rather she simply renders slices of cultural unconscious without judgment as if to say “it is what it is.” Working in the vein of American absurdism subcultural drama and dream- state archetypes Joslyn takes a trickster’s swipe at popular mythology lending it a sense of redemptive forward motion. – Ryan MangioneView of Kara Joslyn’s exhibition This Is Hardcore; at Perrotin New York 2022. Photo: Guillaume Ziccarelli. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin

20220507 - 20220402 | James Cohan 48 Walker St | Lower East Side | Jordan Nassar-To Light The Sky
James Cohan 48 Walker St a Lower East Side is showing the works of Jordan Nassar starting 4/2/2022 and ending 4/2/22. This body of work from Jordan Nassar is titled To Light The Sky.Visit for more details: And please phone ahead to confirm the gallery hours and availabilityJordan Nassar’s multivalent art practice engages with a variety of crafts to explore ideas centered on heritage and homeland. To Light The Sky showcases six new hand-embroidered multipanel works and five wall-hanging glass sculptures each examining issues of identity diaspora and cultural participation. Nassar employs “the landscape” as a thread throughout these two mediums carefully mapping out patterns and often interrupting them using fields of color to define rolling hills and expansive skies. In his recent monumental embroideries Nassar has extended their scale upwards connecting multiple richly patterned panels and interspersed landscapes to create a complete image. The composition Beyond the Boundaries 2022 is activated at its center. Twinned central panels are each framed by negative space leading into panels of more highly abstracted decorative motifs that recall diamonds and florals flanked by cyprus tree patterning in alternating light and dark blue. Nassar approaches each embroidery as if he was piecing together panels in a puzzle fitting them together harmoniously to create a unified composition from disparate parts. Nassar brings into play both the interior and exterior in these collaborative works creating fictive spaces upon which our imaginations can be projected. In Brick Walls and Closed Windows 2022 there is a direct interplay between what is obscured and revealed; stacked densely detailed red-hued panels create an expansive sense of domestic architectural space and a window offers a glimpse of the mountainscape beyond it. Color is the building block for Nassar’s own hand-embroidered rolling hills in addition to that of his long-time collaborators; craftswomen living and working in Bethlehem Ramallah and Hebron in the West Bank. The five hand-flamed glass bead sculptural works in the exhibition represent a deepening of Nassar’s engagement with the medium. While Nassar’s early glass works drew upon the specific forms of traditional decorative items from Hebron these new works are freer and more experimental. Nassar relies on intuition to give form to the patterns and plays of color that he builds; working not within the grid structure of the stitch but rather a honeycomb of wired beads woven around a steel frame. This difference allows him to explore the possibilities of building an invented cannon of decorative motifs. Abstraction and representation are condensed in the singular composition of The Serene Land 2022 in which scrims of blue and yellow glass beads are arranged in a vertical diamond pattern bookending an undulating landscape of blue-hued mountains. Other works are hinged into multipanel diptychs and triptychs the steel joinery connecting them are modeled on gate hinges seen around New York City. For Nassar this specificity allows him to locate the sculptures where he lives and works as well as in the diasporic Palestine of his imagination. Language continues to serve as a generative source for Nassar who turned to the work of Lebanese-American poets Etel Adnan and Khalil Gibran to title his artworks. The exhibition’s title is drawn from Adnan’s line: “Prometheus gave us fire not for burning everything that’s alive but to light the sky…” (1) Much like Adnan Nassar projects his personal ruminations outwards bringing them into dialogue with larger ideas about diaspora and global uncertainty. Jordan Nassar (b.1985 New York NY) earned his BA at Middlebury College in 2007. His work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions globally at institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art New York NY; Asia Society New York NY; Princeton University Art Museum Princeton NJ; Museum of Arts and Design New York NY; Katonah Museum of Art Katonah NY; KMAC Museum Louisville KY; Center for Contemporary Art (CCA) Tel Aviv; Anat Ebgi Los Angeles CA; James Cohan New York and The Third Line Dubai UAE. Jordan Nassar is the recipient of the 2021 Unbound United States Artists Fellowship in craft and will be the subject of an upcoming solo exhibition at the ICA Boston opening August 11 2022.all images © the gallery and the artist(s)

20220507 - 20220331 | Petzel | Upper East Side | Pieter Schoolwerth-Rigged
Petzel a Upper East Side is showing the works of Pieter Schoolwerth starting 3/31/2022 and ending 3/31/22. This body of work from Pieter Schoolwerth is titled Rigged.Visit for more details: And please phone ahead to confirm the gallery hours and availabilityThe word rigged is a vivid monosyllable during an age of discontents. Used equally in the US by the alt-right and far left the term is tossed promiscuously at any system that seems unfair and fraudulent (which is to say a lot of them). “Rigged” captures a slurry of disempowerment and frustration a fear that we’re not the protagonists of our own stories but rather playthings for shadowy tech billionaires who tug our strings and make us dance. Pieter Schoolwerth’s latest painting series Rigged gives form to this collective delirium in a two-part exhibition at Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler and Petzel Gallery New York. At stake is how we see the world and ourselves in an age of hyper-mediation in which subjectivity is a constant visual exercise in construction and manipulation. Schoolwerth presents tableaux of figures whose exteriors collapse away from blank mannequin-like husks: in one painting a couple liquefies into wavy noodles inside a Vegas love suite. In another a man’s face stretches tautly across the hide of a unicorn. Schoolwerth employs computer-generated imagery (CGI) to literally detach a person’s outside from their inside a splitting of public presentation from private interiority. These animations produce the support onto which Schoolwerth layers a digital rendering of a relief modelling the painting’s space and finally impasto paint. Faces are given dramatic gestural painting treatment exaggerating their countenances in size and affect: Modern painting and social media share a preoccupation with the face as a stand-in for an expressive gestalt. Exuberant and artificial programmatic yet barely regulated CGI promises an expressive free-for-all governed by endless reproduction. In short: This is deepfakes gone wild. Every discrete aspect in these paintings from a burnt-out Soviet factory to an ascot-wearing yachter were purchased by Schoolwerth on sites like Turbosquid and CGTrader global marketplaces where animation artists from Ukraine to Brazil sell their CGI wares. Purchasing more than 200 lower-end figures and set dressings Schoolwerth’s casual encounters with globalized capitalism—at once anonymous and direct—mirror the transactional tenor of other less explicit marketplaces like Tindr and LinkedIn. Schoolwerth collects characters whose expertly generic names (“Caucasian man naked” “Alexandra pro bundle pack”) avail them equally to discourse on appropriation and authorship—and to the facile meditation of one-click shopping. To animate these characters’ jelly-like constitutions Schoolwerth intervened by breaking the “rig” a hinge system that prescribes a character’s movement not unlike a skeleton. Breaking the rig requires disconnecting a character’s surface known as the “mesh” from the underlying infrastructure to which it is mapped. This process releases the image of the body to slide around on the rig like a cloth stretched over a bowling ball a process Schoolwerth calls “UV map shifts.” The formal possibilities are as endless as the binary digits that subtend the system: producing a portrait in the style of Picasso’s Cubism (a pathology unto itself) is achieved in Blender and other free internet software used by 12-year-olds across the world. This technology is easily obtained but that does not imply democracy or liberation. Schoolwerth presents with psychedelic clarity how online platforms are not stable places to be a person. The violent lexicon of CGI animation—the system that mediates most images we see in each day—dissects people like an anatomical chop shop. The flexing of animated muscles are called “deformations”; the surface of a character is a “texture file” attaching the texture file to its underlying polygonal mesh is called “binding the skin.” Schoolwerth mines these linguistic excesses and other irruptions of meaning that the “rig” lets loose. The heterotopias in Rigged pull back the curtain on the visual logic of 3D-modeling which is largely agnostic to bygone value judgments like taste and beauty (quantity not quality is the rule). Instead hyper-mediation has turned images—for Schoolwerth and Turbosquid vendors alike—into a de-facto runoff grate for a torrent of anxieties: Who gets to be a person to be alive to be animated to be on display? This unease around who counts and who doesn’t is endemic to the word “rigged.” And in breaking the rig Schoolwerth binds these constituent tensions to the intersubjective pandemonium they unleash. –Lucy Hunter About Pieter Schoolwerth Pieter Schoolwerth was born in St. Louis Missouri in 1970. He lives and works in New York. Since graduating from the California Institute of the Arts in 1994 he has exhibited internationally with notable solo shows at Thread Waxing Space Greene Naftali American Fine Arts Co. and Miguel Abreu Gallery New York; Gallery SKE New Delhi What Pipeline Detroit and Capitain Petzel and Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler Berlin. His work has been included in group exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art New York Th e Whitney Museum of American Art New York Centre Pompidou Paris The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art Ridgefield CT the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston Sadie Coles London and 303 Gallery Gavin Brown’s enterprise and Petzel New York. His work is in the permanent collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles The Pinault Collection the Aïshti Foundation Beirut Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig Denver Art Museum and the Phoenix Art Museum. Schoolwerth was most recently the subject of a solo exhibition at the Kunstverein Hannover in 2021 curated by Kathleen Rahn. An accompanying monograph is forthcoming.Pieter Schoolwerth Testicular Momentum (Rigged #7) 2021. Oil acrylic inkjet on canvas 72 x 86 inches; 182.9 x 218.4 cm

20220108 - 20210910 | galerie gmurzynska | Upper East Side | Christo-Environments
galerie gmurzynska a Upper East Side is showing the works of Christo starting 9/10/2021 and ending 9/10/21. This body of work from Christo is titled Environments.Visit for more details: And please phone ahead to confirm the gallery hours and availabilityThis exhibition runs in conjunction with Nature | Environments at Galerie Gmurzynska Zurich which showcases Christo’s European works. These exhibitions are an homage to the late masters upcoming L’Arc de Triomphe Wrapped to be shown in Paris September 18 – October 3 2021. It was Christo’s wish that this remarkable project originally devised in 1961 be carried out posthumously. The exhibition at Galerie Gmurzynska US features a series of preparatory collages for The Gates (Project for Central Park NYC). Originally written off by New York officials and eventually approved and installed twenty-six years later in 2005 the project soon became iconic and beloved imagery of the city. On display for only sixteen days the project remains a strong and well-known example of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s large scale site-specific transient work. The ephemeral nature of the work according to the artist duo serves to create a sense of urgency to be seen but also to instill a feeling of nostalgia once it is gone. When viewing the collages those who experienced The Gates cannot help but long to see them again and those who didn’t have the pleasure of seeing them in person cannot help but wish they had. These detailed plans for the larger-than-life project prompt a different way of thinking about the installation. It is an opportunity to see the inner workings of Christo’s mind over the course of decades while this project progressed and came to fruition. While many elements of the outside world changed over those twenty-six years Christo’s vision of the saffron gates and fabric panels lining the walkways of Central Park persisted. Biscayne Bay was also lucky enough to be the site of one of Christo’s colossal projects; the works from Surrounded Islands (Project for Biscayne Bay Greater Miami Florida) depict plans for eleven manmade islands in the bay to be encircled with 6.5 million square feet of bright pink floating polypropylene fabric. First conceived in 1980 and constructed only a few years later in 1983 the work was finalized quite quickly compared to The Gates but the effort remained huge as with all of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s projects. The work needed to physically prepare and clean up the islands was intensive the mechanisms to secure the fabric were extensive and the maintenance was constant during the two week duration of the project. The vivid pink against the lush green islands blue water and Miami sky could be seen from causeways land water and air. One can imagine from the preparatory works exhibited just how striking the effect was in person. In 2018 the Pérez Art Museum Miami mounted an exhibition to commemorate this profound work on the 35th anniversary of its installation. Whereas The Gates and Surrounded Islands represent a material achievements of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s concept many of their projects went unrealized in their physical form. Among these are Lower Manhattan Wrapped Building (Project for 2 Broadway and 20 Exchange Place New York) and Packed Building (Project for 1 Times Sqaure Allied Chemical Tower New York). Christo and Jeanne-Claude had imagined wrapped buildings in Europe prior to their arrival in New York in 1964 but these were among the first they had logistically attempted to transform into reality. Both projects were ultimately denied if not by the owners by the insurance companies. One can imagine the frustration as Christo and Jeanne-Claude strived to have their projects realized constantly navigating red tape and raising money; each and every one of their projects entirely funded at their personal expense any sale made being poured right back into the next installation. It is apparent from the detailed plans that these seemingly simple ideas have complicated monumental and expensive executions. Those that materialize produce deliberate and unforgettable works that encourage the viewer to consider how he or she relates to the landscape and to the built world. Whether realized or not this selection of preparatory drawings and collages represents works that are at their core accessible immersive fleeting and of course fueled by the artists’ tenacity of purpose. This show offers a unique insight into Christo’s designs and the evolution of each of these US-based projects all unique and site-specific yet grounded in the same ideas. Nature | Environments marks Galerie Gmurzynska’s third solo exhibition of Christo’s work over the years. In 2016 Galerie Gmurzynska published “Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Works in Progress” in concurrence with the exhibition of the same name mounted in St. Moritz.all images © the gallery and the artist(s)

20220416 - 20220305 | Perrotin New York | Lower East Side | Dwellers-Exhibition
Perrotin New York a Lower East Side is showing the works of Dwellers starting 3/5/2022 and ending 3/5/22. This body of work from Dwellers is titled Exhibition.Visit for more details: And please phone ahead to confirm the gallery hours and availabilityIn the ontological sense to dwell in a house is not merely to be inside it spatially rather it is to belong there to have a familiar place. Participating artists — Liam Allan Jean-Philippe Delhomme Leslie Hewitt Denise Kupferschmidt Fared Manzur Joseph Montgomery Ann Pibal Julia von Eichel and Carrie Yamaoka — each explore the notion of dwelling through three distinct practices: work created in the studio through digital space and on site. In the Studio The title of the show stems from an artwork by Fared Manzur a Miami based artist who will make his New York debut in Dwellers. Manzur’s studio is located in the Rice Hotel a historically significant structure built in 1905 in downtown Miami that was left vacant for decades. The clean minimalist lines of Manzur’s paintings and sculptures are in direct contrast with the hotel. The exhibition’s namesake work Dweller is a horizontal monochromatic yellow painting that lies flat on the floor adorned with a clay sculpture of an insect resting on its surface symbolizing a species endemic to the space. Ann Pibal working from Vermont and Brooklyn will contribute a new series of near-monochrome paintings which over the span of the group evoke an evolving fading depiction of glowing light. The use of metallic and iridescent paint (silvers golds and bronzes) adds a sensual element which directly interacts with the exhibition space reflecting both the ambient light of the gallery and the movement of viewers through the evolution of color across the panels. The central motif of these works is a rectangle which in its proportion echoes the format of the painting overall. Diagrammatic representations of books or volumes in each image extend the reference to time – allowing an apparently neutral shape to evoke not just the phenomenon of fleeting transitory light but the mutability of understanding. Working from a residential home in Brooklyn Julia von Eichel crafts large-scale organic forms that evoke the studio space itself. Stained with splashes of acidic colors Eichel’s works on view in New York stretch beyond the canvas spilling out into the surrounding space. Constructed from a variety of materials — including a complex armature with wood dowels wiffle balls string and thread covered in silk — each wall relief is a controlled force imbued with a sense of struggle and imbalance. The pastels on paper and mylar exhibited in Paris evoke a similar vital growth with repeated gestures and layering filling the surface. Emphasizing the high ceilings of Perrotin New York’s gallery spaces Carrie Yamaoka will present disarmingly obtuse reflective surfaces. Yamaoka is interested in the tactility of that which is barely visible as well as the very real chain of incidents that determine an object. Her process consists of rubbing the wall with mylar and pouring resin which creates a mirror surface that records the artwork’s journey from an industrial loft in New York to its final gallery space. The viewer’s blurred reflection becomes part of the work. In Paris she will present a series of five wall works consisting of cast flexible urethane resin. Denise Kupfeschmidt will present a series of new paintings that include repeated figures or graphic architectural motifs created from her Brooklyn studio. The motif of the sun seen in Day Night Repeat as well as other works reference the comfort of a repeated daily routine and the stability of a normalized existence — offering a counterpoint to our ongoing collective feeling of sadness and loss. As the artist says her paintings “watch the earthly elements of home morph into something that feels remote while we stay put.” Digital spaces Scottish born Brooklyn based Liam Allan will debut his practice for the first time in the United States presenting work that moves between digital and physical environments. His drawings carefully rendered in pencil on paper begin with digitally reconstructed contemporary artifacts which he then edits and distorts in an attempt to subvert the authenticity of the depicted object. Their forensic acuity suggest an exploration of the real mediated by the digital. Using a simple unit wood shim as a form of ready-made material New York-based Joseph Montgomery generates wall paintings that are at once rhythmic and architectural. His abstract digital sceneries are occupied by schematic dolls acting both as animation and physical sculptures that create anthropomorphic compositions. The artist will concurrently present a new video and several large-scale doll sculptures that will revert the grand scale of the exhibition space into an architectural model. On site As a painter of the real Paris and New York-based Jean-Philippe Delhomme’s practice revolves around being present in a place working directly from his eye and never from photography. In New York the artist will introduce landscapes recently painted in Greece. Central to the landscapes are vernacular dwellings: simple houses by the sea centuries old that convey a sense of perennial continuity. Concurrently in Paris Delhomme will debut a new series of paintings that depict the interior of a large studio he occupied in Asnieres for a period of time. Scattered around the empty space pedestals speakers a motorbike and other objects evoke a sculptural installation. Leslie Hewitt will introduce in New York a new series of diptych photo- sculptures. Realized in Marfa Texas the works take the sky and light reflections emitted from Dan Flavin’s untitled (Marfa project) a permanent installation at the Chinati Foundation executed by Flavin in 1996. This presentation of works offers a prelude to a project Leslie Hewitt is developing for Dia Art Foundation next summer at Dia Bridgehampton which also houses the Dan Flavin Art Institute. Both lyrical and controlled they extend as Hewitt says her work’s “relationship to the entanglements of optics physical space and light.” In Paris one of her signature leaning photographs will be presented along other wall works.Fared Manzur. dweller (detail) 2021. Courtesy the artist and Perrotin

20220416 - 20220305 | Perrotin New York | Lower East Side | Jesús Rafael Soto-Materia y Vibración 1956-1974
Perrotin New York a Lower East Side is showing the works of Jesús Rafael Soto starting 3/5/2022 and ending 3/5/22. This body of work from Jesús Rafael Soto is titled Materia y Vibración 1956-1974.Visit for more details: And please phone ahead to confirm the gallery hours and availabilityThe following essay is an excerpt from Soto’s Multidimensionality: From Dematerialization to Relationality written by curator Jesús Fuenmayor for a catalogue published alongside Materia y Vibración 1956 – 1974 … Times change and notions of time and space change with them. In the notion of space-time we experience today we speak not only of the fourth dimension but also of multidimensionality—that is the legacy we will leave the future. — Jesús Soto (1) In some experimental contemporary art practices a path can be traced from the dematerialization of the 1960s to the relationality or “relational aesthetics” of the turn of the twenty-first century. Following that path both illustrates the centrality of kinetic artist Jesús Rafael Soto’s work to the international art scene and attests to its currentness as it has regained the historical weight it is due. On the basis of the works exhibited here—works produced by Soto during the years he was at the heart of the art scene in Europe and in the Americas (1956–1974)—that path between the term dematerialization and the term relationality offers in my view a way for us to begin to grapple with why we need not only to revisit Soto’s work today but also to do so moving forward. In this brief introduction I will provide a concise overview of how those terms developed and their intersections with Soto’s work in order to better understand some of his most important achievements. Each term has its specific history. Dematerialization is generally used to refer to the intangible aspects of a work of art or materiality’s (relative) loss of importance to it. The term always operates on a symbolic level: absolute dematerialization is impossible. Although in the United States the point of reference for dematerialization as understood in contemporary art is Lucy Lippard’s Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972 published in 1973 the term was widely used as early as the 1960s. One striking example is the text “After Pop We Dematerialize” written by Argentine artist Oscar Masotta in 1967 the same year that some eminent critics among them Frank Popper and Jean Clay used it in relation to Soto’s work. (2)Exhibition view of the Venezuela Pavilion at the 32nd Venice Biennale Venice Italy 1964 featuring Jesús Rafael Soto’s “Venise” 1964. © André MorainAlready in the 1950s Yves Klein used dematerialization to explain his work The Specialization of Sensibility in the Raw Material State into Stabilized Pictorial Sensibility “The Void.” And of course Lászlo Moholy-Nagy—a major influence on Soto—envisioned a future of ever greater dematerialization. (3) Though he sometimes employed the term immateriality instead of dematerialization Soto himself used it in interviews texts and even in titles to shows including the 2005 retrospective held at the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil Rio de Janeiro: Soto – A Construção da Immaterialidade. (4) What matters here is that from his first experiments with vibration Soto’s aim was “the methodical destruction of all stable form the molecular fragmentation of solids the dilution of volumes.” (5)Jesús Rafael Soto & Yves Klein Opening at Iris Clert’s Gallery 1959. ©Archives Soto/DRThe concept of relationality in art produced at the turn of this century was developed by Nicolas Bourriaud in his book Relational Aesthetics published in French in 1998 and in English in 2002. The concept has been seen as a means to underscore the importance of viewer participation in the works of certain artists associated with the second avant-gardes among them those like kinetic artists interested in bringing movement into their work. Art historian and critic Claire Bishop who has studied the participative in art extensively holds that the art that meets Bourriaud’s definition of relational aesthetics is “open-ended interactive and resistant to closure often appearing to be ‘work-in-progress’ rather than a completed object.” (6) There is unquestionably an affinity between that definition and the concept of the open work introduced by Umberto Eco on the basis of his readings of kinetic art (7). As he explains in his book Bourriaud seeks to politicize that definition claiming that relational artists operate in “the realm of human interactions and its social context rather than the assertion of an independent and private symbolic space.” (8) Bourriaud’s analysis is like Guy Debord’s critique of kinetic artists; (9) to the latter Soto replied that the political uprising of the time in reference to May 1968 “did not represent anything decisive for my work because like others I had been toying for some time with the idea of taking my art into the street of making it more popular. (10) Soto’s formula was nearly infallible: first destroy form and with it composition by means of seriality; next dematerialize the art object and turn it into vibration; finally leave viewers open space in which to reinvent themselves. Of course that formula can only be postulated in retrospect; the artist had to spend many years experimenting facing challenges regarding both what he had already done and where he was going before he was able to articulate what now seems like the impeccable indeed almost mathematical development of an art that was at the forefront of the avant-garde in Europe for a full two decades. To look at Soto through the lens of our times I wanted to begin with a description of what was at play in those first works in which he was able to create the “illusion” of shattering form through analysis and dissection of perception. Consider how today Alexander Alberro describes Espiral one of Soto’s fundamental works from that time: Materiality and immateriality are in tension but in a purely visual manner. Soto has no evident interest in the inherent physical properties of the materials. Moreover the fragile and dematerialized optical effects that challenge the eye’s power to control what it sees intensify and decrease depending on the spectator’s position. As the spectator ambulates laterally across the work the lines of the spirals seen against the luminous white ground join and separate and the two layers alternately contract and expand. The incessant rippling effect of this work differs significantly from the optical effects obtained by the mere repetition of elements on a flat surface in Soto’s art of the previous two or three years.. (11)Jesús Rafael Soto’s hands 1963. Photo: Denise Colomb ©RMNThat work ushered in a series to which Soto’s interest in dematerialization and relationality would be central. In the words of the always-eloquent artist: I am not interested in the connections between things only in their relationships. I am not interested in how colors or lines are connected. Relationships are worth more than connections. … My work is essentially relationship. Not between two elements of the work itself but between the principle that governs the work—for instance dematerialization—and a general law of the universe that determines everything. (12) This was one of the most ambitious programs of the period. It encompassed “fundamental concepts like fugacity dematerialization instability the invisible the environment permutation undulation ubiquity and randomness” (13) concepts paradigmatic to Soto’s research as a whole and reflected in a work from 1956 featured in this exhibition a work from the series called Estructuras Cinéticas de Elementos Geométricos.Exhibition view: «Soto. Estructuras cinéticas» Museo de Bellas Artes Caracas Venezuela 1957 ©Archives Soto/A. BrandlerProduced after his first kinetic structures from the late 1950s the Vibraciones series is unquestionably a milestone in Soto’s research. No piece could better represent it than Vibración pura a work from 1960 featured in this exhibition. In this work the feverish activity of the extremely irregular support in the background becomes something like a camouflage for the twisted metal rods suspended in front of it. In the unique vibration produced the rods seem to emerge from the support as if they had been dug out of it rather than floating in front of it. Soto spoke of these pieces in terms different from the culmination connotations used by legions of his followers and experts in his work. It is perhaps because of their greater affinity with works by major figures in the French New Realism and the Informalist movements led by artists very close to Soto (Yves Klein Jean Tinguely and Lucio Fontana among others) that this series of early vibrations has been particularly coveted by collectors and museums alike. In an interview with the most important art magazine of the time in the country of his birth Soto spoke of those artists also known as Neorealists: The destruction of form imposed by the Informalists was of great interest to me in a way but I realized that what they were proposing was the destruction of form as a solid body by liquefying it. I on the other hand was attempting to destroy matter in order to transform it into energy. I did not wish to extol natural elements like branches or nets and ropes but to prove that their matter could be transformed into energy. Energy not in the scientific sense but as I conceived it: a state of sensibility. (14)View of the exhibition “Soto A Retrospective Exhibition” at The Solomon R. Guggenheim New York (USA) 1974.View of the exhibition “Soto A Retrospective Exhibition” at The Solomon R. Guggenheim New York (USA) 1974.View of the exhibition “Soto A Retrospective Exhibition” at The Solomon R. Guggenheim New York (USA) 1974.Soto thus distanced himself from these artists and explained that his concerns differed from those of the Informalists. Throughout his career Soto was able to put into practice this idea of the transformation of matter into energy thanks fundamentally to the groundbreaking discovery of vibration that makes his work unmistakable. Vibration was his identifying stamp to such an extent that Soto himself considered this phase a singular period in all his work. “All I cared about [at that time]” Soto said “was to show to myself that my idea did not depend on a certain way of doing things. … I felt the need to prove to myself that I could make use of anything at all in my work. The idea was to incorporate things very mundane but also highly formal (scraps of wood pieces of wire needles bars and tubes) to disintegrate them entirely through pure vibration.” (15) In short his mastery his virtuosity was such by this phase that he could make anything vibrate. The dematerialization of the object and the relativization of perception are among the radical advances embraced by the contemporary art agenda to which Soto left an invaluable legacy. He unquestionably contributed to the constant reinvention and transformation of accepted notions of how to experience a work of art an enormous challenge to the different visions of the world and our relationships with what’s most entrenched in that world. Perhaps it is best in closing to put it as the artist did: “The immaterial is the sensible reality of the universe. Art is the sensible knowledge of the immaterial. Becoming aware of the immaterial at the state of pure structure is to make the final step towards the absolute.” (16)Jesús Rafael Soto in 1969 at 68 rue de Turenne Paris France with (Volume suspendu avec tiges métalliques) 1969 100 x 100 x 28 cm. ©Jesús Rafael Soto / ADAGP Paris 2022 Courtesy Atelier Soto – Paris Photo by MinkoldVenezuelan-born artist Jesús Rafael Soto trained at an art school in Caracas. In 1950 he moved to Paris which remained his base until his death in 2005. In 1955 Soto participated in Le Mouvement (The Movement) at Galerie Denise René the exhibition that effectively launched kinetic art. During the same decade he began making linear kinetic constructions using industrial and synthetic materials such as nylon Perspex steel and industrial paint. Major exhibitions of Soto’s work have taken place at Signals London (1965); the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (1971); the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum New York (1974); and Musée National d’Art Moderne Paris (1979).(1) Rafael Pereira and Jesús Soto “La experiencia del viejo matador: entrevista a Jesús Soto por Rafael Pereira” Kalathos no. 4 (October–November 2000). (2) In this article Masotta makes reference to El Lissitsky’s 1926 essay “The Future of the Book” which uses the term dematerialization as we do today. See Oscar Masotta “After Pop We Dematerialize” in Listen Here Now! Argentine Art of the 1960s: Writings of the Avant-Garde ed. Inés Katzenstein (New York: The Museum of Modern Art 2004) p. 216. See as well Frank Popper Introduction to Lumière et Mouvement (exh. cat. Paris: Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris 1967) and Jean Clay “Le cinétisme est-il un académisme ?” Robho no. 2 (November–December 1967). (3) According to Antonio Somaini “This idea [that light is the fundamental artistic ‘medium’] led Moholy-Nagy to formulate the thesis according to which all art forms—painting sculpture photography cinema design stage design or architecture—develop according to a teleologically oriented tendency that leads from stasis to motion from opaqueness to transparency and from different concrete materials towards a state of progressive dematerialization.”“The Surface Becomes a Part of the Atmosphere”: Light as Medium in László Moholy-Nagy’s Aesthetics of Dematerialization” Screen 61 issue 2 (Summer 2020): p. 289 (4) Everything will be painted white to receive the pictorial climate of the sensibility of dematerialized blue” (my emphasis). Excerpt from “Preparation and Presentation of the Exhibition on April 28 1958 at the Iris Clert Gallery 3 rue des Beaux-Arts Paris” in Overcoming the Problematics of Art: The Writings of Yves Klein trans. Klaus Ottmann (Thompson CT: Spring Publications 2007) p. 47. Soto speaks of immateriality in Soto (exh. cat. Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum 1969) and of dematerialization in “Statements by Kinetic Artists” Studio International 173 no. 886 (February 1967): p. 60. (5) Jean Clay “Soto de l’art optique à l’art cinétique” Soto (exh. cat. Paris: Galerie Denise René 1967) quoted in Arnauld Pierre “Chronology” in Jesús Rafael Soto trans. Martin Back and Thierry Noujaim (exh. cat. Perrotin: Paris 2014) p. 156. (6) Claire Bishop “Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics” October 110 (Fall 2004): p. 52. (7) Ibid. p. 62. (8) Nicolas Bourriaud Relational Aesthetics trans. Simon Pleasance and Fronza Woods (Dijon: Les presses du réel 2002) p. 14. (9) See Mónica Amor “La beauté est dans la rue ! Jesús Rafael Soto’s 1969 Public and Exceptional Foray” in Soto. The Fourth Dimension (exh. cat. Bilbao: Guggenheim Museum 2020) pp. 39–43. (10) Soto quoted by Miyó Vestrini in “Jesús Soto: Venezuela es Uno de los Raros Paises de America Latina Donde Existe la Necesidad de Crear un Arte Nuevo” El Nacional July 24 1971 p. 8 quoted in Pierre “Chronology” in Jesús Rafael Soto p. 166. (11) Alexander Alberro Abstraction in Reverse: The Reconfigured Spectator in Mid-Twentieth-Century Latin American Art (Chicago IL: The University of Chicago Press 2017) p. 118. (12) Soto “Statements by Kinetic Artists” p. 60. (13) Clay “Le cinétisme est-il un académisme ?” quoted in Pierre “Chronology” in Jesús Rafael Soto p. 165. (14) Soto interview with Iván González “Soto: liberar el material hasta que se vuelva tan libre como la música” Imagen no. 32 (September 1–15 1968) p. 10 quoted in Pierre “Chronology” in Jesús Rafael Soto p. 159. (15) Ariel Jiménez Conversaciones con Jesús Soto (Caracas: Fundación Cisneros 2001) p. 62. (16) Soto in Soto 1969 p. 56 quoted in Pierre “Chronology” in Jesús Rafael Soto p. 166.Views of the exhibition MATERIA Y VIBRACIÓN 1956 – 1974 at Perrotin New York 2022. Photo: Guillaume Ziccarelli © SOTO / ADAGP Paris 2022. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin

20220502 - 20220128 | International Center of Photography | Lower East Side | Actual Size!-Photography at Life Scale
International Center of Photography a Lower East Side is showing the works of Actual Size! starting 1/28/2022 and ending 1/28/22. This body of work from Actual Size! is titled Photography at Life Scale.Visit for more details: And please phone ahead to confirm the gallery hours and availabilityHow big can a photograph be? From postcards to giant billboards they are almost any dimension but what happens when they are the very same scale as their subject matter? A photo of a bus the size of a bus? An actual-size image of Muhammad Ali’s fist? Actual Size! Photography at Life Scale is a playful yet philosophical exhibition that offers viewers a diverse group of images that all share the same dimension as life itself. Conceived especially for ICP’s unique double-height gallery it is a rethinking of the fundamental qualities of this perplexing and elastic medium. Image makers of every kind from fine artists to advertisers have explored the strange magic that happens when the photograph becomes an uncanny double for the world it depicts. Works by Jeff Wall Ace Lehner Laura Letinsky Kija Lucas Aspen Mays Tanya Marcuse and others share the walls with anonymous posters magazine spreads and book covers. In 1946 the renowned writer Jorge Luis Borges described a society that wanted a map of its land so detailed that it eventually covered the land itself. Of course the map was useless and the inhabitants took to living on it as it disintegrated. Actual Size! is an homage to Borges’s wild but serious idea showing us new ways to consider what a photograph is and what it can be. About the Curator David Campany is a curator writer and managing director of programs at the International Center of Photography New York. His books include On Photographs (2020) A Handful of Dust (2015) Art and Photography (2003) Jeff Wall: Picture for Women (2011) Walker Evans: The Magazine Work (2014) and Photography and Cinema (2008).Tanya Marcuse Woven Nº 30 2018 62 x 160 inches. © Tanya Marcuse

20220422 - 20220318 | Eva Presenhuber | Lower East Side | Valentin Carron-And So America Opened Up
Eva Presenhuber a Lower East Side is showing the works of Valentin Carron starting 3/18/2022 and ending 3/18/22. This body of work from Valentin Carron is titled And So America Opened Up.Visit for more details: And please phone ahead to confirm the gallery hours and availabilityFor this exhibition in New York Valentin Carron has brought together a series of works created since 2009. The works on view include reconstructions of modernist reliefs sculptures stained glass pieces a vast ensemble of brass instruments that have been brutally reduced to decorative elements wrought iron gates two videos and a Giacometti-style iconic provocative hand. All works are gathered together under the title And So America Opened Up. At a very special moment in his artistic career and in a context whose future no one yet dares to predict Carron has allowed himself a courageous and uncompromising retrospective vision toward his oeuvre. Carron’s work is defined by a fascination for modernity and its decay. To him there is no doubt that a formal vocabulary was developed in the 20th century and that this infuses all areas of our everyday life particularly the vernacular. The elements that catch Carron’s eye he finds in his immediate vicinity—in the squares of small towns in front of administrative buildings of little importance or rundown public places. These fragments are all replete with potential modernist references. Far from any center they represent many testimonies of a modern dream left in tatters. An artist studying them reproducing them in different materials (but to scale) and above all inserting them into exhibition spaces —just as one would do with plants that cannot withstand winter—are gestures that are both benevolent and disillusioned. As he browses the tarmacked areas of our public parks Carron laughs at nothing corrects nothing values nothing and keeps a slightly hopeless feeling of loss alive in us. While modernity may be crumbling endlessly the very definition of our commitment to the world is withering. Carron— like other artists of his generation—knows that our sense of déjà-vu is not accidental. He is not fooled by the power play that figures into the dissemination of an image on a large scale and its haunting of everyday life. If one can say that he lives on the outskirts then he knows that this world no longer has a center which is probably fortunate. It is from there— or anywhere—that the metallic taste emanates from a reduced intensity to an oscillation. But there remains a taste for strangeness deep inside each of us—such is the know-how of craftsmen and the sense of community that gives rise to art. Therefore the modernist grid may liquefy into an ornamental twist the music crashing against the walls of the bar. Behind heroes—with interstices reduced to the decorative—hides the pleasure of a kind of will that we know is useless. These are the areas that occupy Carron’s mind with no naivety. With an apparently irreverent kind of nonchalance he reminds us that it is always possible to board the Titanic but more than anything else it is a question of being there together. Samuel Gross Valentin Carron was born in 1977 in Martigny CH where he lives and works. Carron has been the subject of recent solo exhibitions at institutions including Museum im Bellpark Kriens CH (2021–2022); Le Consortium Dijon FR (2020); Galerie Art & Essai Rennes FR (2018) Centre d’edition contemporaine Geneva CH (2016); Kunsthalle Bern Bern CH (2014); Palais de Tokyo Paris FR (2010); La Conservera Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Ceuti/Murcia ES (2009); and Kunsthalle Zürich Zurich CH (2007). In 2013 Carron represented Switzerland at the 55th Venice Biennale. Recent institutional group exhibitions include Konkrete Gegenwart Jetzt ist immer auch ein bisschen gestern und morgen Haus Konstruktiv Zurich CH (2019); Spring Sale Time Centre d’Edition Contemporaine Geneva CH (2019); SI ONSITE Swiss Institute Contemporary Art New York US (2018); Coup de Foudre Maison van Doesburg Meudon FR (2017); On half a tank of gas Swiss Institute Contemporary Art New York US (2017); La velocità delle immagini Istituto Svizzero di Rome Rome IT (2016); and Work Hard: Selections by Valentin Carron a group exhibition curated by Valentin Carron Swiss Institute Contemporary Art New York US (2015).Installation view Valentin Carron And So America Opened Up Eva Presenhuber New York 2022 © Valentin Carron. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Eva Presenhuber

20220417 - 20220319 | FiveMyLower East Side | Brooklyn-Central | Emily Feinstein-In These Times
In These Times is an eight-foot-long wooden structure on stilts mainly sourced from the cut-offs of local cabinetmakers or recycled pieces of older projects. It is the artist’s ode to these past few years and to the dining sheds that have become one of the emblems of the Covid pandemic. Feinstein influenced by the Bauhaus and its merging of art architecture and everyday life appreciated these odd and makeshift structures springing up on the streets of New York. The interiors and exteriors were interchangeable transforming the citiscape. Feinstein was fascinated by their raw materials immediacy and transparent construction. Built to sustain commerce and protect diners from contagion the sheds exposed our vulnerability as well as our resilience and determination to gather share and to create.

20220507 - 20220323 | Mrs. | Long Island | Rose Nestler-Rose Nestler | too bad for heaven too good for hell
Wall-bound fabric-clad sculptures loaded with traditionally femme signifiers: flowers broomsticks high heeled shoes soft body parts and ruffled skirts; are displayed above a plush dusty rose colored carpet. The title reads like a badge of honor that each artwork could wear with pride and speaks to the otherworldliness of Nestler’s project. Each work in the exhibition is freighted with personal and cultural allusions all embedded within Nestler’s rich material language. In Three Tongues lush red velvet curtains frame a petite stage a series of lapping stone tongues take the place of the orchestra in the pit. In The Therapist (attributed to Magritte) wooden shutters open onto a window muntin which imprisons a leather clad torso its conical breasts bisected by the grid become toothless mouths one chomping on a soft cigar. A taunt to Freud they goad classification. Spun Out a frenzy of fleeced neoprene tulle foam Ultrasuede wood and cork has all the drama of pioneering modern dancer Loie Fuller. The sculpture resembles a spinning skirt pinned at the center with a cork stopper and ringed by a parade of red high heeled feet. As much as there is joy and inhibition (the dance the uncorked red wine of it) there is also something manic something more sinister. Referencing Hans Christian Andersen’s The Red Shoes it is hard not to see the amputated ever-dancing feet of the original grim fairy tale. The Red Shoes is a warning to girls: don’t be vain don’t indulge in your impulses. Step outside of expectations and be brutally punished. In her newest video Satisfying Slime Storytime we hear this fable told in the sing-song voice of adolescence over footage of Nestler’s hands joyfully exploring slime in its many forms. The video mimics the bizarrely niche TikTok and YouTube videos by the same name produced by women and generally marketed to girls; a craze come and gone from the zeitgeist. In Nestler’s version as the satiating slime makes the wrenching story palatable one might wonder why we are so quick to dismiss popular culture when it lies within women’s realms. In Nestler’s practice she approaches each piece from a place of intuition discomfort and thorough research. “What is it about fairytales we’re drawn to?” she asks “why does this feel trivial or even embarrassing?” In the center of one sculpture we see the familiar maiden/crone visual illusion. This judgmental cousin to the duck-rabbit puzzle is sand blasted onto a mirror and mounted under drawn-up satin skirts at exactly the viewer's crotch level. As we choose to see the figure as an old or young woman we recognize that seeing is a choice. These plays of perception and interpretation are at the heart of Nestler’s deeply feminist sculptures. The miniatures fables and fairies occupy a time outside of our standard 24-hour clock while Slime-time and Surrealist time have an interior pace which feels particularly resonant in this moment. Just as the pandemic upended our conception of time Nestler shows us what it means to be beholden only to our own boundaries. -Andrea Nitsche-Krupp too bad for heaven too good for hell is on view at Mrs. 6040 56th Dr. Maspeth Queens NY 11378 through May 7 2022.

20220409 - 20220219 | Lubov | Lower East Side | Mimi Park-Dawning: dust seeds Coplees

20220430 - 20220303 | Bortolami | Lower East Side | Barbara Kasten-Barbara Kasten. SHIFT
Each artwork is tied to her experimentation with fiberglass window screening a material she began using in the early 1970s and throughout her forty-year career. Initially trained as a painter in the 1960s Kasten shifted to textiles in her graduate years in the 1970s studying with renowned fiber artists Trude Guermonprez and Magdalena Abakanowicz. Window screening a ubiquitous and utilitarian industrially-produced woven material presented myriad possibilities. Taken by its physical nature and optical effects it produces when lit Kasten also used the material as a basis to create not only sculptures but also her ethereal cyanotypes in the 1970s another medium she has revisited intermittently over the last few decades.

20220402 - 20220304 | James Cohan | 52 Walker | Lower East Side | Christopher Myers-Christopher Myers
This is Myers’ first solo show with James Cohan in New York. The gallery will host an opening reception with the artist on Saturday March 5 from 2-6 PM. Masks are required for entry.For The Hands of Strange Children Myers has created a series of narrative tapestries and a suite of stained-glass paintings that excavate the lives and legacies of six revolutionary prophets: Wovoka Nongqawuse Nat Turner Hong Xiuquan Te Ua Haumene and Alice Lawkena. Spanning a wide geography of times and places Myers sees these figures as representatives of a grand tradition of colonized peoples. Each took what was not theirs and made it their own using the very tools of subjugation to build liberatory philosophies and movements. Myers examines the beautiful failures of these prophets filtering them through the “transformative materiality of narrative” to create portraits of icons of resistance that speak powerfully to the present.

20220901 - 20211106 | Rubber Factory | Lower East Side | Erica Mao-Erica Mao Born from earth
Rubber Factory a is showing the works of Erica Mao starting 11/6/2021 and ending 9/1/22. This body of work from Erica Mao is titled Erica Mao Born from earth.Visit for more details: And please phone ahead to confirm the gallery hours and availability

20220430 - 20220224 | L'INCONNUE | Lower East Side | Marianne Vlaschits-Orbs & Awe
L'INCONNUE a is showing the works of Marianne Vlaschits starting 2/24/2022 and ending 4/30/22. This body of work from Marianne Vlaschits is titled Orbs & Awe.Visit for more details: And please phone ahead to confirm the gallery hours and availability

20220416 - 20220226 | Spencer Brownstone Gallery | Lower East Side | Jule Korneffel-Here comes the night
Spencer Brownstone Gallery a is showing the works of Jule Korneffel starting 2/26/2022 and ending 4/16/22. This body of work from Jule Korneffel is titled Here comes the night.Visit for more details: And please phone ahead to confirm the gallery hours and availability

20220417 - 20220306 | PARTICIPANT INC | Lower East Side | Itziar Barrio-THE PERILS OF OBEDIENCE (PREMIERE)
PARTICIPANT INC a is showing the works of Itziar Barrio starting 3/6/2022 and ending 4/17/22. This body of work from Itziar Barrio is titled THE PERILS OF OBEDIENCE (PREMIERE).Visit for more details: And please phone ahead to confirm the gallery hours and availability

20220417 - 20220310 | Olfactory Art Keller | Lower East Side | Luiza Gottschalk-Glade: To Touch Painting
In Luiza Gottschalk's first solo exhibition in New York "Glade: To Touch Painting" the artist presents six paintings scented with four scents that she developed with expert help: "wet night" "dry forest" "citrus" and "pasture". Her paintings of forest scenes are meant to be touched to release the scents embedded in the paint. Upon being touched the paintings overflow the canvas and take the viewer with their whole body. As Wassily Kandinsky said "one does not see a painting only with the eyes but with all five senses".

20220405 - 20220318 | Space 776 | Lower East Side | Rachel Gisela Cohen-Understory
New York NY- Space 776 is pleased to present a solo exhibition by New York City-based mixed-media artist Rachel Gisela Cohen. The exhibition features Cohen’s recent works created from 2019 onwards. The understory is an in-between rainforest layer with a damp and dark environment that rivals the bright outer canopy and foundational forest floor. In Cohen’s work a variety of materials including flashe paint sequined fabric recycled beads and faux crocodile skin come together to create a theatrical and playful world; one that expresses Cohen’s fascination with beauty as well as her criticism of excess in contemporary culture. Cohen draws references from aposematic organisms she observed in the Costa Rican rainforest as well as from drag and theater culture. Her collages of bold colors and decorative materials creates a composition made in response to her personal memories and experiences. As a whole Rachel Gisela Cohen’s sequin-encrusted chromatic abstract paintings become an ecosystem of their own where a metamorphosis of various forms takes place. Relying on the unexpected coupling of paint and fabric Rachel Gisela Cohen creates a hybrid medium that comments on the coexistence of natural and man-made environments. Rachel Gisela Cohen is an artist educator and independent curator based in NYC. She has shown her work nationally and internationally exhibiting at The Spring Break Art Show 2020 Armenia Art Fair Pierogi Gallery’s The Boiler Visual Arts Center of New Jersey and Hunter College Art Galleries. She has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the National Endowment for the Arts the Constance Saltonstall Foundation Vermont Studio Center COPE NYC and the Montclair Art Museum. She received her M.F.A. in Painting and Drawing from Pratt Institute and a B.A. in Art History and Visual Arts from Drew University. Currently she teaches as an Artist Educator at the Museum of Arts and Design and manages the School of Visual Arts Artist Residency Programs in New York City.

20220521 - 20220325 | Cuchifritos Gallery + Project Space | Lower East Side | Mo Kong-Lounge of A Prophet
Mo Kong’s Lounge of A Prophet at Cuchifritos Gallery will serve as a sequel to Personal Ark®–the artist’s Queens Museum debut. The series of furniture/sculptures reference the overlapping data points of two line graphs–International Trade Rates and Natural Disaster Rates from 2009 to 2020–with each section providing a solution for shelter during ecological collapse and economic isolation. The work is reimagined and transformed into the home of a prophet; home decorations serve as makeshift fortune-telling equipment piled on top of a butt-warming bench food preservation units and bookshelves to create a space of refuge and respite. The odor of the lounge will replicate a “Chinese Smell” as described in Otis Gibson’s 1877 book Chinese in America created only with ingredients bio-pirated from Asia by multinational corporations. Since the 18th century olfaction has been a racializing tool against Asian Americans and has been used to limit the expansion of Chinatowns in major cities throughout the country. Inspired by the plastic-wrapped furniture of Asian moms everywhere Lounge of A Prophet will be encased in shrinkwrap transforming its objects and furniture into containers for the scent ingredients. Mo Kong is a multidisciplinary artist and researcher. They are currently residing in Queens NY. They have been the subject of solo exhibitions at Queens Museum (New York) CUE Art Foundation(New York) Artericambi Gallery(Verona) Gertrude Gallery (Stockbridgeand) Chashama (New York). Their work has been included in RISD Museum SFMOMA Minnesota Street Project Mana Contemporary Noguchi Museum Spring Break ARTISSIMA Make Room Gallery and Rubber Factory Gallery. They also received fellowship/residency from Macdowell Colony Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture Triangle art association Drawing Center Mass Moca Studio Vermont Studio Center Lighthouse Works and Artists Alliance les Studio Program. Their work is mentioned in Hyperallergic Artforum Art in America Cultured magazine Artnews CoBo Social Wall street International SFMoMA Public Knowledge etc.

20220507 - 20220331 | signs and symbols | Lower East Side | Sarah Entwistle-You allowed the object of your love to become abstracted...
signs and symbols is pleased to present Sarah Entwistle’s exhibition titled You allowed the object of your love to become abstracted. And as one gets older the arteries harden. I thought I should let you know. For her second solo exhibition with the gallery Entwistle presents an installation of ceramics textiles and 35mm slide projections. The assembled works hold formal chromatic and material lineage with the paper card celluloid transfer sheets etc. of the artist's continued site of inquiry — her late grandfather’s accumulated effects largely dated to his final decade in New York.* The act of cutting incision and excision with scalpel with ripping with tape with pen runs through this source material and is further taken up by the artist as a strategy for deconstructing and renewing the plastic material itself and therein the biographical and gendered structures embedded within it. This ongoing metabolizing of the inherited matter by Entwistle continues to inform the emergence and articulation of her own visual and biographical schema. “In the act of digesting my grandfather’s vestiges I started to sift out a base material layer trying to identify a territory of biographical neutrality in which I could breathe. I began to strip the raw material away from its contextual pinnings focusing on this tangible resource rather than the thinner narrative gestures inscribed on top. Alongside this came the extraction of a chromatic spectrum of corrosive pinks greens cyans sepias magentas and browns.” From this processing developed a series of coarsely hewn and scored ceramic slabs that were formed through archival envelopes rolled into the wet clay (and then discarded) their indentations and surface ridges impressed as contours into the ceramic reliefs. During firing some large sheets cracked apart but remain included in the installation a structural opportunity identified by the artist as present at large in the archive and its biography(ies); fragmented disordered inarticulate. A series of projected archival color slides have also been materially modified through cutting away celluloid or masking with streaks of acrylic ink. Obscuring the figurative specifics of context and subject the artist turns attention to the interstitial space of the image to dwell in the abstracted planes of gradation tone and texture. These modified 35mm slides are projected onto large-scale printed textiles that hold graphic color-scapes whose compositions arise from used archival A3 Letraset transfer sheets (printed textures applied to architectural drawings). Their cut-up configurations notations of a somatic process in motion result in an accidental formal lyricism. These remnants are the parts that remain outside of and peripheral to the main story of the architectural propositions of the origin archive — cut into and cut away unintentional. Yet here the artist more clearly perceives the spatial the volume of the body the volume of the interior as opposed to a complete rendition of the figure or the façade. In talking of figuration Entwistle writes “The archive holds multiple women whose naked limbs are ever-present in photographs seated and displayed formal foils to enhance design prototypes. I hold these Muses in mind not as set or pictorial device but as felt presence through my own form and gesture pressed into the making. In handling the wet clay my fingers indent too. The hand expresses the force of the body imprinted in the ceramic in the gestural expression of the glaze and the cutting marks on the slides. Embedded. And with that the figure arises in the work it becomes you leave the hand in the work. It doesn’t set apart from the hand then comes to contain the full gesture of the body(ies) the fragment becomes the whole.” *In 2011 the artist inherited the personal effects of her late grandfather and fellow architect Clive Entwistle (1916 London – 1976 New York) whom she never met. Amassed in the collection which had been retained in a Manhattan storage facility are ambitious yet unrealized architectural proposals furniture designs personal photographs and letters. The material reveals a totalizing vision channeled both through his design work as a proponent of European modernism and his charged relationship with women. sarah entwistle (b. 1979) received her BSc from The Bartlett School of Architecture London and her Dip. from the Architectural Association London where she subsequently taught a design unit. In 2011 she inherited the personal effects of her late grandfather and fellow architect Clive Entwistle (1916 – 1976) whom she never met — this material re-emerged from a Manhattan storage room where it had been retained for over thirty years. Entwistle's subsequent solo show In short in theory and with a bit of luck (2012) at the Architectural Association marked the beginning of her engagement with Clive’s archive. Working from within a biographical frame that orientates around the processing and ‘spoliation’ of this archive Entwistle's process of re-working both material and thematic remnants from within the archive offers opportunities to address wider gendered dynamics at an intimate scale. The contents of the archive reveals a charged relationship between Clive’s female lovers relatives and his professional practice as a proponent of architectural modernism. The impulse with this on-going processing of the material is compelled by the gradual re-centering and re-claiming of the female Muse. Entwistle received the 2014 Le Corbusier Foundation Grant for Visual Artists and in 2015 presented a solo exhibition He was my father and I an atom destined to grow into him at the Le Corbusier Foundation in Paris. The exhibition coincided with the publication of her experimental biography Please send this book to my mother Sternberg Press 2015. She was also the recipient of the Graham Foundation for the Advanced Studies in Fine Art Chicago publication and production grant in 2014. In 2017 she received a grant from the Arts Council England Artists' International Development Fund with which she is developing an ambitious site-specific installation for the Zevaco House Casablanca in collaboration with curator Salma Lahlou. In 2019 she was awarded the MOSTYN Open 21 Main Prize in Llandudno Wales. In 2020 she was the subject of a solo exhibition You should remember to do those things done before that have to be done again at Museo Nivola in Sardinia. Her artist's monograph titled Junk. Own in partnership with Museo Nivola Sardinia and Distanz Publishing Berlin was published in March 2022.

Many people include Bowery, Chinatown, and East Village into the Lower East Side. And we have instead, created mutually exclusive art gallery guides.

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This page is our Lower East Side art gallery guide, for the LES arts district in NYC. If you are looking for current art exhibitions, click the exhibition tab in the menu bar above. Below, you will find the top Lower East Side art gallery lists. You can also view LES artworks below. You can also check the Ratings tab, which has quantified the galleries, museums, and exhibition spaces using our proprietary Xs score. | CLICK HERE to see all NYC art links

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Lower East Side Art Galleries
Updated May 31, 2023 by Ryan Lutz

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