(image via Lesley Heller Gallery / Facebook)
Phantom Paradise
Opening Wednesday, April 17 at Lesley Heller Gallery, 6 pm to 8 pm. On view through May 19.
Delano Dunn’s work is colorful and busy; it draws you in and demands you stay a while, in order to soak up all the shades and shapes and details on view. The LA-based artist’s collages, paintings, and mixed-media creations aren’t just nice to look at, they also pack an emotional punch—each piece of art is one part of a patchwork quilt of memories Dunn recounts from experiencing the 1992 LA riots, which occurred in the midst of his childhood. Birds, protestors, flames, cops, and streaks of neon colors help tell a story of chaos that’s abstract and visceral.
(image via Miles McEnery Gallery / Facebook)
John Sonsini
Opening Thursday, April 18 at Miles McEnery Gallery, 6 pm to 8 pm. On view through May 24.
Another distinctly Los Angeles artist bringing their work and sensibilities to NYC this week is John Sonsini. A painter who splits his time between LA and Mexico, Sonsini uses brushes to capture moments and figures within LA’s Latino community that are both everyday and remarkable. Two men in soccer uniforms holding a green ball; pastel-colored button-up shirts hanging in someone’s home; someone in the midst of (or returning from) a long day at work, tossing aside his work shirt and settling into a chair without fully relaxing. Sonsini does this in a way that’s simultaneously cartoonlike and realistic, taking the best parts of both genres to create something alive and dynamic.
Retrograde
Opening Friday, April 19 at Deli Gallery, 7 pm to 10 pm. On view through May 12.
The newest exhibition at East Williamsburg’s Deli Gallery features four artists who all have quite a bit to say about the body, whether that be theirs, someone else’s, or the broader notion of the physical form in a more general sense. And while the body is capable of a great deal, these artists are more focused on the things it can’t accomplish, and how to make do with those limitations anyway. Lewis Hammond renders dark creatures out of paint; Raque Ford makes colorful sculptures peppered with personal confessions; Alexandria Tarver’s minimal oil paintings make the most out of spindly lines; Cudelice Brazelton brings forth dark collages accented with subtle slices of body parts as well as bat wings, razors, and metal.