It’ll officially be spring this week, finally. Nick Cave’s clearly in the spirit already
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New York • March 18, 2025

It’ll officially be spring this week, finally. Nick Cave’s clearly in the spirit already — in a review of his show at Jack Shainman Gallery, Editor-in-Chief Hrag Vartanian traces the artist’s arc from his extravagant soundsuits to an even fuller maximalism, from sheathing himself within his work to offering himself up to the audience, full-bloom. 

But this time of year can also be a little chaotic. The clocks are turning forward, the weather’s all confused, plus New York never quits it with its constant cacophony: overheard conversation, podcasts and lyrics, subway ads, street signage, not to mention the endless scroll of our screens. At the Hill Art Foundation, a show on language curated by Hilton Als attempts to modulate a melody out of that discord, and even offer a little silence. It made me think of the other ways we might parse through the deluge. 

Here’s one: At Pioneer Works, American Artist pens a love letter to Octavia E. Butler, drawing upon books like Parable of the Sower to create architectural, archival, and screen-based installations that manifest her “blueprint to surviving catastrophe.” I see a similar impulse in a show at the Asia Society reviewed by Associate Editor Lakshmi Rivera, in which contemporary artists Rina Banerjee, Howardena Pindell, and Byron Kim plunge into the maelstrom of art history, crystallizing new narratives. 

But as Amin writes of the attempt to weave those many threads together into a coherent thesis, “unfinished edges are the point, and fraying is an invitation to continue braiding, weaving, and creating.” Flux can be generative — they don’t call it “creative chaos” for nothing.

 

— Lisa Yin Zhang, Associate Editor

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Five Shows to See in New York City Right Now

Nick Cave leaves behind his Soundsuits, Ericka Beckman reimagines a fairy tale, American Artist explores the sci-fi world of Octavia E. Butler, and more. | Natalie Haddad, Hrag Vartanian, Lisa Yin Zhang, Alexandra M. Thomas, and Jasmine Weber

SPONSORED

IFPDA Print Fair Showcases Over 500 Years of Printmaking at the Park Avenue Armory

The largest art fair for prints and editions will bring together an international group of galleries and publishers to New York City, March 27–30.

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FROM OUR CRITICS

Hrag Vartanian

Nick Cave: Amalgams and Graphts at Jack Shainman Gallery

“Cave has transformed his love of maximalism into verdant objects that freeze time with their undecaying organic forms while infusing each piece with an air of anxiety represented by layers upon layers of dense patterning that are dizzying to parse.”

 

Natalie Haddad

Ericka Beckman: Power of the Spin at the Drawing Center

“[Ericka Beckman] shares the New York group’s fascination with mediated images, but shifts focus … to the archetypes and stories through which we absorb images … in other words, from the commodity to the human.” 

 

Jasmine Weber

Acts of Art in Greenwich Village at the Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Gallery at Hunter College

“Acts of Art captured a zeitgeist and aggregated the varied chorus of a worthy artist community.”


SPONSORED

Get Closer to Art This Spring at Affordable Art Fair NYC

Affordable Art Fair offers something for everyone and a place to find confidence in your taste.

Learn more

Lakshmi Rivera Amin

(Re)Generations: Rina Banerjee, Byron Kim, and Howardena Pindell amid the Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection at the Asia Society and Museum

“Selfishly, [Howardena Pindell’s] 1984 collage ‘Autobiography: India (Lakshmi)’ caught my eye, transforming my namesake — whose mainstream iconography drips with thinly veiled colorism and casteism — into a prism through which to refract the myth of a single, fixed South Asian art history.”

Alexandra M. Thomas

American Artist: Shaper of God at Pioneer Works through April 13

“[American] Artist’s phenomenal work carries us toward Butler’s forever urgent blueprint to surviving catastrophe.”

Lisa Yin Zhang 

The Writing’s on the Wall: Language and Silence in the Visual Arts at the Hill Art Foundation

“In its dizzying pastiche of references severed from context, [artist Ina Archer] creates an overload that results in the kind of silence Hilton Als defines as a state where ‘everything and nothing speaks to you.’”

CLOSING SOON

John Yau

Draw Them In, Paint Them Out: Trenton Doyle Hancock Confronts Philip Guston at the Jewish Museum through March 30

“Guston teaches us a hard lesson: We must embrace our inescapable solitariness wherever it takes us. Hancock has also always followed his own trajectory with grace and humor, proving that one need not join any club.”

WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING?

  • A book of polaroids documenting a 1970s Houston throuple is just one of the treasures at the upcoming Antiquarian Book Fair

  • A new proposal for renovating Penn Station follows Trump’s push for classical federal architecture

  • Almost 50 NYC high school students are showing their work at a midtown gallery!

  • Around 3,000 people, including artists, cultural workers, and historians, marched from Manhattan’s federal courthouse to Union Square to protest the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil.  

  • Editor-in-chief Hrag Vartanian will be joining Eunsong Kim, Jessica Lynne, and Kameelah Janan Rasheed in a conversation celebrating Kim’s latest book at The Skylight Room at CUNY Graduate Center. (Mon Mar 24) [centerforthehumanities.org]

  • Victoria Lomasko, author of The Last Soviet Artist, will be in conversation with n+1’s publisher. (Tue Mar 18) [nplusonemag.com]

  • Voices of Resistance and Kurdish Heritage: An Evening of Film and Music is happening tonight. (Tue Mar 18) [eventbrite.com]

  • Woodbine in Ridgewood is holding a screening of the documentary Fell In Love With Fire, about an uprising in Chile from 2019–20. (Wed Mar 19) [instagram.com]

  • Artists Pablo Helguera and Noah Fischer will be reading/activating their new political newspaper. (Thurs Mar 20) [veralistcenter.org]

    • Plus, the New School’s hosting the Spitting Image Art Book Fair this weekend (Fri Mar 21–Sat Mar 22) [event.newschool.edu]

  • CCNY writers will be reading poetry and prose at P&T Knitwear. (Fri Mar 21) [eventbrite.com]

  • Carrie May Weems will host a convening about monuments and public memory at MoMA. (Fri Mar 21) [moma.org]

  • Macklemore, organizers from the People’s Forum and Palestinian Youth Movement, and Mahmoud Khalil’s legal team are just some of the participants of an event this weekend. (Sat Mar 22) [eventbrite.com]

  • There’ll be a mayoral forum at BRIC this weekend, featuring candidates. (Sat Mar 22) [thenation.com]

  • Don’t miss the print fair extravaganza next weekend! Hyperallergic Members get free tickets to the IFPDA Print Fair and the very first Brooklyn Fine Art Print Fair. (Mar 27–30)

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