Chelsea, a trendy neighborhood on the west side of Manhattan, is a hub for art enthusiasts and gallery-hoppers. 1. With its cluster of world-renowned galleries, Chelsea offers a wealth of things to do in Chelsea NYC for those seeking an immersive cultural experience 1.
From the High Line’s elevated park to the iconic Whitney Museum, this vibrant area boasts an array of exciting attractions and galleries in Chelsea 1. In July 2024, several must-visit exhibitions promise to captivate art lovers, showcasing diverse artistic expressions across renowned venues 1.
The Swimmer at FLAG Art Foundation
Exhibition Overview
“The Swimmer,” curated by Jonathan Rider at the FLAG Art Foundation, explores the intricacies and decline of the American Dream throughout the two gallery floors, drawing on John Cheever’s iconic short story 2 3. Published in The New Yorker (July 18, 1964), post-Kennedy assassination, Cheever’s narrative reveals mid-century America’s evolving perspectives on class, idealism, and failure—issues that still resonate today 4. The protagonist, Neddy Merrill, journeys through his affluent neighbors’ pools. What begins as a carefree midsummer Sunday deteriorates as Neddy’s life and grip on reality unravel pool by pool, distorting time and space 2.
The exhibition immerses visitors in this disorienting aquatic excursion with works depicting bodies of water—pools, lakes, oceans—probing themes of loss, privilege, selective memory, and sexuality 2. It underscores the American Dream’s collapse against a backdrop of swimming pools 2. The ninth floor features evocative paintings, photographs, and sculptures that disorient, positioning viewers as the ‘swimmer.’ The art implies the body without explicitly depicting it, aligning with Cheever’s narrative 2. The tenth-floor shifts focus to the human figure in the water, exploring night swimming and the pool as a site for mystery and experimentation 2. This layered approach echoes Cheever’s exploration of the American Dream’s disintegration and resonates within the gallery’s walls 2.
The Swimmer Featured Artists
The exhibition features works by powerhouse artists such as Henni Alftan, Harold Ancart, Leonard Baby, Conrad Bakker, Burt Barr, Dike Blair, Martin Boyce, Katherine Bradford, Vija Celmins, Zoe Crosher, Nancy Diamond, Elmgreen & Dragset, Tony Feher, Elizabeth Glaessner, Robert Gober, Wayne Gonzales, Jim Hodges, Reggie Burrows Hodges, Roni Horn, Ludovic Nkoth, Amy Park, Jack Pierson, Alessandro Raho, Calida Rawles, Ed Ruscha, Melanie Schiff, Cindy Sherman, Cynthia Talmadge, Deanna Templeton, Paul Thek, and Stephen Truax 4 4.
The Swimmer Themes and Concepts
The exhibition navigates themes inherent in “The Swimmer” and Cheever’s broader oeuvre, including alcoholism, grandiosity, loss of innocence, selective memory, privilege, sexuality, etc., training an eye to the crumbling of an American dream, set against the glittering backdrop of a string of swimming pools 4 4. It confuses time and unfolds through a series of disappearances in bodies of water—in pools, lakes, and oceans—through serial works that concern loss and losing oneself 4.
Crossings at Kasmin Gallery
Exhibition Overview
“Crossings” at Kasmin Gallery brings together an international and intergenerational group of artists exploring the enduring resonance of weaving, textiles, and embroidery in contemporary art 5 6 5 6 3. The exhibition examines diverse practices that engage the poetics of fabric—its languages, genres, forms, and modes of composition 5 6. It investigates the ability of woven material to expand, transform, and complicate artistic disciplines, incorporating works spanning textile, painting, sculpture, installation, and conceptual art 5 6 6 3.
Featuring new pieces created specifically for this show alongside influential wool and tapestry works from the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, “Crossings” probes the expressive possibilities of fiber, fabric, and interwoven material 5 6 6. The exhibition explores the foundational dialectic of warp and weft, humanity’s earliest binary language and original information technology 5 6 3. This structural rhythm, imparted by crossing threads, becomes a salient agent for spatial, material, and metaphorical complexity 5 6.
Crossings Featured Artists
The exhibition showcases works by a diverse array of artists, including Claudia Alarcón, Olga de Amaral, Hellen Ascoli, Teresa Baker, Vamba Bility, Julia Bland, Vivian Caccuri, Dee Clements, Kenturah Davis, Jacques Douchez, Ximena Garrido-Lecca, Sonia Gomes, Suchitra Mattai, Maria Nepomuceno, Norberto Nicola, Madalena Santos Reinbolt, Judith Scott, Tyrrell Tapaha, T. Vinoja, and Sarah Zapata 5 6 5 6 3.
Crossings Artistic Techniques
Each artist approaches fabric, whether social, material, or historical, as a repository for encoded meaning, memory, and narrative 5 6. Inspired by the etymological connection between “text” and “textile,” the exhibition spotlights singular practices that reconfigure the limits of artistic possibility, borrowing elements of abstraction, critical theory, and autobiography 5 6 3.
The artists employ innovative techniques, blurring boundaries between painting, sculpture, and installation 6. Some incorporate unconventional materials like copper, as seen in Ximena Garrido-Lecca’s work referencing contemporary and ancient uses 6. Others explore weight and tension through rope, beads, wood, or wool, activating the gallery’s architecture, as demonstrated by Hellen Ascoli and Maria Nepomuceno 6.
Certain artists examine humanity’s relationship with natural ecosystems, evident in Vivian Caccuri’s manipulation of mosquito nets or Tyrrell Tapaha’s use of plant dyes 6. T. Vinoja’s work gestures toward textiles’ ability to act as a force of recovery and an index of past experience 6. Meanwhile, artists like Sonia Gomes, Suchitra Mattai, and Vamba Bility give new life to repurposed materials, reclaiming and weaving new modes of expression 6.
Malcolm Morley: Painting as Model at Petzel
Malcolm Morley Exhibition Overview
Petzel is pleased to present “Painting as Model”, an exhibition of multidisciplinary works by British-American artist Malcolm Morley (1931–2018). On view at the gallery’s Chelsea location at 520 W 25th Street from June 20 to August 2, 2024, the exhibition spans over 50 years of the artist’s oeuvre in 32 works created from 1959 to 2014 7 8. Organized in close partnership with the artist’s estate, “Malcolm Morley: Painting as Model” will be the first comprehensive survey of Morley’s work in over two decades 7 8.
Comprised of paintings and sculpture, “Painting as Model” features loans of seminal works from important institutions, prominent private collections, as well as the artist’s estate. The exhibition includes landmark paintings lent by the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., The Broad Art Museum in Los Angeles, and the CCS Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York 7 8.
Malcolm Morley’s Artistic Journey
Morley is acknowledged as one of the earliest innovators of Superrealism, which developed as a counterpoint to Pop Art in the 1960s. Over the course of his distinguished career, Morley defied stylistic characterization, moving by turns through so-called abstract, realist, Neo-romantic, and Neo-expressionist painterly modes, while being attentive to his own biographical experiences 9.
Important works on loan include “Coronation and Beach Scene” (1968) from the Hirshhorn, the only double image “super-realist” painting Morley ever made. Starting in the mid-60s, Morley created his “super-realist” works using a technique in which a small source image, such as a photograph, is overlaid with a grid and translated to a large canvas in segments, an uncommon practice among New York artists at the time 7 8.
Morley’s relationship with the grid, and indeed models, is further synthesized in the 1977 painting “The Day of the Locust”, on loan from the Museum of Modern Art. Titled after Nathanael West’s 1939 novel, whose hero wanted to paint “The Burning of Los Angeles”, Morley uses his first catastrophe painting, “Los Angeles Yellow Pages” (1971) as the base from which he superimposes numerous boats, helicopters, and figures, suspended, in a flurry of combustion and chaos, atop the Los Angeles skyline 7 8.
Malcolm Morley’s Signature Techniques
Leaping off the grid and into the third dimension in the 90s and 2000s, Morley retained his hallucinatory, uncanny activation of the real, as his oeuvre edged toward abstraction. However, such delineations between the abstract and figurative are ultimately unstable when assigned to Morley’s exhaustive corpus. When asked about his later work, Morley noted: “figurative—the word itself pisses me off, as if anything is not a figure” 7 8.
Morley was committed to a ferocious formal rigor, a desire to ever-evolve: as he states in 2006, “each painting is the first painting I ever made” 8. His painterly lexicon, transmutations of the vocabularies of advertising, capitalism, commodification, consumerism, corruption, modification, leisure, power, surveillance, transport, war, and weapons, continue to expand into gestural, focused fanfare for the retina, each painting containing many pictures 7 8.
Summer Group Show at Pace Gallery
Pace Gallery is presenting “STUFF”, an expansive group exhibition curated by sculptor Arlene Shechet at its 540 West 25th Street gallery in New York 10. The show assembles works by over 50 artists within and beyond Pace’s program, fostering new associations and connections across time and place 10.
Pace Gallery Summer Show Overview
“STUFF” offers a dynamic patchwork of exchanges and meanings, with Shechet’s intuitive installation cultivating unexpected dialogues between the diverse artworks on view 10. Spanning various art historical periods, the exhibition does not aim to be a comprehensive survey but rather a spirited gathering of works that resonate with the curator 10.
Pace Gallery Featured Artists
The exhibition features works by renowned artists such as Lynda Benglis, Huma Bhabha, Nicole Eisenman, Peter Hujar, Wifredo Lam, Arthur Jafa, Donald Judd, Louise Nevelson, Isamu Noguchi, Tony Smith, Mickalene Thomas, Lawrence Weiner, and Stanley Whitney 10.
Pace Gallery Curatorial Approach
Shechet’s curatorial approach mirrors her artistic practice, taking an improvisatory and intuitive path 10. Developing the exhibition over time through a non-linear progression of ideas and impulses, she relates artworks by an internal logic, creating installations as vital as their contents 10. “STUFF” draws new resonances among the works, presenting them in unconventional ways that the curator finds compelling 10.
The vibrant art scene in Chelsea, NYC, promises an unforgettable July in 2024. From thought-provoking exhibitions like “The Swimmer” at FLAG Art Foundation, which explores the complexities of the American Dream, to “Crossings” at Kasmin Gallery, celebrating the expressive possibilities of woven materials, the neighborhood offers a diverse array of artistic experiences. Additionally, Petzel’s “Malcolm Morley: Painting as Model” retrospective showcases the influential artist’s multidisciplinary works, while Pace Gallery’s “STUFF” curated by Arlene Shechet fosters unexpected dialogues between artworks across various periods.
These remarkable shows not only captivate the senses but also provoke contemplation on themes such as identity, memory, and societal narratives. Chelsea’s galleries continue to push boundaries, inviting viewers to immerse themselves in the ever-evolving discourse of contemporary art. As the summer unfolds, these exhibitions serve as a testament to the neighborhood’s enduring role as a cultural epicenter, offering a rich tapestry of artistic expressions for visitors to explore and engage with.
FAQs
What are some notable events to attend in NYC in July 2024? In July 2024, NYC will offer a variety of exciting events including celebrating Bastille Day with French flair, cooling off at the “Ice Cold” exhibition, enjoying performances at The Brooklyn Poetry Slam, watching the Coney Island Fireworks, tasting diverse dishes at JAPAN Fes, engaging in free activities at West Side Fest, catching the unique Manhattanhenge phenomenon, and viewing outdoor movies at Bryant Park.
How can one spend a day in Chelsea, NYC? A day in Chelsea, NYC can be rich and varied. Start with some relaxation at sundays studio, then explore the retail and dining options at The Shops at Hudson Yards. Don’t miss experiencing The Shed, visiting the architectural wonder Vessel, and taking in the views from The Edge Observation Deck. A stroll along the High Line and a visit to Chelsea Piers offer great outdoor activities, capped off with a wander through the vibrant Chelsea Market.
Why is Chelsea in NYC a popular destination? Chelsea in NYC is renowned for being Manhattan’s art district, attracting visitors with its extensive array of galleries featuring both established and emerging artists. The High Line, an innovative park created on a disused elevated railway, adds to the area’s charm, alongside stylish shops that make Chelsea a culturally rich and fashionable neighborhood.
How many galleries are in Chelsea, NYC? Chelsea, NYC is a cultural hub with about 350 galleries. This neighborhood is also known for the High Line, the Rubin Museum, and acclaimed performance venues like The Joyce Theater and The Kitchen. Additionally, it houses Printed Matter, a leading destination for art books, enhancing its reputation as a center of artistic and cultural activity.
References
[1] – https://www.theemptynestexplorers.com/blog/what-to-see-and-do-in-chelsea-new-york-city
[2] – https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attractions-g60763-Activities-zfn7102343-New_York_City_New_York.html
[3] – https://artspiel.org/art-spiel-picks-chelsea-exhibitions-for-july-2024/
[4] – https://www.flagartfoundation.org/theswimmer
[5] – https://www.kasmingallery.com/exhibitions/365-crossings/
[6] – https://www.kasmingallery.com/exhibitions/358-crossings/
[7] – https://www.petzel.com/exhibitions/malcolm-morley
[8] – https://www.artrabbit.com/events/malcolm-morley-painting-as-model
[9] – https://www.petzel.com/artists/malcolm-morley
[10] – https://www.pacegallery.com/exhibitions/stuff-arlene-shechet/
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