Malia Jensen: Nearer Nature
Until 3 April at Cristin Tierney, 219 Bowery Floor #2, Manhattan
This show represents the culmination of a multi-year project for the artist, whose work often probes into the gray area between the human world and the natural one, pointing to the poetic symmetry between the two. The work began in early 2019, when Jensen carved sculptures from livestock salt licks and installed them in the wilderness throughout Oregon state. The salt licks were carved into a number of forms, some, such as a plate of donuts, recall the domestic and mundane, while others shaped as a hand or a breast invoke tender, life-nurturing figures. When placed in this context, one salt lick carved in the shape of Brancusi’s
Guadalupe Maravilla, Ancestral Stomach (2021) PPOW
Guadalupe Maravilla: Seven Ancestral Stomachs
Until 27 March at PPOW, 392 Broadway, Manhattan
The Brooklyn-based Salvadoran artist Guadalupe Maravilla recalls how a chemotherapy appointment in New York left him nearly unable to walk, and how a sound bath he encountered on the way home led to a years-long sound therapy treatment that he credits for his successful recovery from colon cancer in 2013. In this exhibition for the gallery’s newly inaugurated space in Tribeca, Maravilla has produced a series of esoteric and deeply personal retablos, sculptural “stomaches” and free-standing sculptures rich with spiritual symbolism. Some works generate vibrational sounds and are made from materials collected throughout Central America, simultaneously referencing the artist’s personal history of crossing the US border and his solidarity with the pain and trauma experienced by undocumented immigrants. The show fo