Paul Fägerskiöld, Flatland, 2019, oil on linen, 98 3/8 x 120 1/8 inches (250 x 305 cm), Photo: Etienne Frossard
Over 40 Art Shows to See Right Now
By Will Heinrich
April 26, 2019
SoHo
It’s been decades since the great powers of the New York City art world decamped for Chelsea, but SoHo remains dotted with galleries of long standing like Ronald Feldman; numerous newer arrivals; small museums like the Drawing Center, the Donald Judd Foundation and the Center for Italian Modern Art; and the magisterial Dia Art Foundation, with its permanent installations of Walter De Maria’s “Earth Room” and “The Broken Kilometer.” Here are five of the most notable gallery shows up right now or opening soon. WILL HEINRICH
1. Peter Blum, ‘Paul Fägerskiöld: Flatlands’
Oil paint can be sculptural, especially if you use as much as Paul Fägerskiöld does on “Flatland.” The young Swedish-born painter lays so much blackish-purple paint on this enormous canvas that the finished surface of its figure, a monochrome rectangle with a bowed bottom edge, has the definition of hammered bronze. Each ridgy brush stroke is an eddy, and the whole is a view of the ocean — but it’s a restless one that won’t subside into the easy diffidence of most two-dimensional images. Not for nothing did Mr. Fägerskiöld name the painting, and the show it appears in, after Edward Abbot’s 19th-century novella of mind-bending sci-fi geometry. Through May 11 at 176 Grand Street; 212-244-6055, peterblumgallery.com.