By Amy Zion
Ana Mendieta, Sweating Blood,1973, super-8mm film. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Lelong
In an ongoing series, frieze asks a critic to select the best shows currently on view in their city. A new show will be posted each day this week.
Ana Mendieta ‘Experimental and Interactive Films’
Galerie Lelong
5 Feb – 26 March
This exhibition runs concurrent with ‘Covered in Time and History: The Films of Ana Mendieta’ at the NSU Art Museum in Fort Lauderale, with both shows presenting works recently discovered by the gallery and the artist’s estate. As the first gallery exhibition of the late artist’s films in New York, it features 15 films as well as sound works and archival material dating back to 1971, when the artist was just 22.
Politically inflected from the beginning, the works testify to the range of Mendieta’s technical experimentation, but although only one of the 15 films that are shown side-by-side has sound, her work begs for a more intimate installation. Truthfully, I wish I could have been perched on a small bench, watching the films in succession, instead of standing and darting from one to another, as many works consist of long shots in which movement or change is barely perceptible. That said, this is undeniably a rare opportunity to experience such a wealth of previously unseen footage and gain a deeper insight into this important artist’s work.
Nasreen Mohamedi, Untitled, ca.1980, ink and graphite on paper, 27 × 34 cm. Collection of Dossal Family (Mariam Panjwani, Zeenat Sadikot, Laila Khalid)
Nasreen Mohamedi
The Met Breuer
18 March – 5 June
One of two inaugural exhibitions at the Met Breuer, this retrospective of the late Indian Modernist Nasreen Mohamedi, who passed away in 1990 at the age of 53, follows a smaller presentation of drawings and photographs at the nearby Drawing Center in 2005.
The show traces the chronological development of Mohamedi’s drawings as they transform from vaguely figurative ink and graphite compositions to highly abstract, grid-like compositions. Presented alongside are countless photographs and notebooks littered with concrete poetry and small abstract compositions, both keys to understanding the drawings and works in their own right.
While offering the obligatory biographical notes about the artist’s travels and her shifting influences, the accompanying wall text also makes reference to Mohamedi’s battle with Huntington’s disease. The condition increasingly affected her motor control towards the end of her career, in inverse proportion to how controlled and deftly precise her works eventually became.
David Hammons, Orange Is The New Black, 2014, glass, wood, nails, acrylic, 64 × 41 × 33 cm. Courtesy Mnuchin Gallery
David Hammons, ‘Five Decades’
Mnuchin Gallery
15 March – 27 May
Formerly L&M Arts, the Upper East Side Mnuchin Gallery staged several solo exhibitions with the notoriously illusive and selective David Hammons before deciding to present this relatively small yet powerful retrospective – the first of its kind since MoMA PS1 mounted ‘Rousing the Rubble’ in 1990.
The exhibition positions more recognizable works like In The Hood (1993), Smoke Screen (1990-5) and Spade (Power for the Spade) (1969), alongside photographs from the artist’s personal collection, shown publicly here for the first time and set to a soundtrack of traditional Japanese court music. The poignant selections are installed in an eccentric manner that doesn’t aim to totalize or over-define Hammons, whose Untitled paintings and sculptures from the last three years are evidence that, almost half a century after the likes of Spade were realized, there is no sign of waning creativity.