Two concurrent exhibitions at LABspace in Hillsdale current a dynamic juxtaposition of personhood and location: The group present “Body High” gives a fantastical viewpoint of the human form in an energetic blowout of colorful chaos, even though “Dee Shapiro: Peripheral Visions” transports us to gritty avenue corners and stoic cityscapes devoid of any figures at all. Curated by artists and co-directors of LABspace, Ellen Letcher and Julie Torres, aspect by facet, these shows are a visible feast of various proportions: The imaginative gymnastics of human embodiment as witnessed in “Body High” are well balanced by the solitary scenes of Shapiro’s architectural isolation.
With “Body High” dwelling up to its buoyant title, nine artists check out the multidimensional realms of mortal realities via paintings and functions on paper that occupy the full gallery house from ground to ceiling in an all-out celebration of radical compositions and various models. Zohar Lazar’s dense, cartoon-like, psychedelic illustrations of delightfully strange figures and Michael Van Winkle’s motley troupe of frolicking fellows with outsized fingers and noses, for example, are contrasted with Lois Dickson’s abstracted female at a dance course and Julia Schwartz’s simple gouache sequence of a lone woman in numerous states of repose with her kitten.
The variety of the “Body High” panorama is additional fleshed-out by way of sacred scenes of male intimacy by Jacob Fossum richly hued contorted bodies by Olivia Tawzer ashen ghostlike figures by Pauline Decarmo and sweet, foolish, and kinky paintings by Kelsey Renko and Rebecca Litt. A single lap by this show does in truth generate a perception of euphoria, and a next spherical reveals but an additional layer of satisfying jubilation.
The transition from “Body High” and its enunciated journey of the corporeal into the adjacent gallery and the exquisite atmosphere of Shapiro’s city and pastoral landscapes is a remarkable shift in scale and target. All uniformly measuring 2 by 10 inches and painted in between 2000 and 2010, this sequence of horizontal operates are stunningly perfect in their reverence and reflection. Ranging from common visions of compact city thoroughfares from her travels close to the world to the muted geometry of rural existence, every one of Shapiro’s paintings is a mini masterpiece. When my eyes landed on Cardenas (2003), this petite illustration of fading afternoon gentle at an intersection someplace in Cuba moved me to tears with its purity and pause. Among these painted treasures by Shapiro, operates this kind of as East 94th Road (2002), Crimson Hook (2007), and Cruising the Hudson (2009) seize the dignity of the New York area and its different geographies.
Shapiro’s Peripheral Visions is a poetic encapsulation of a periphery that exists someplace amongst time and timelessness, and these will work also attest to a 10 years gone-by for the artist. “Every 10 several years I attempt some thing else,” Shapiro suggests. Hence, the actual physical-metaphysical face to be had at LABspace this month—from gracefully silent metropolitan moments to the wild miscellany of bodily eccentricity—invites us to contemplate the carnal and the industrial as parallel spheres of human revelry and realization.
