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See This
Three Decades of Linda Stark’s Oil Paintings, on View in New York
Artists have been working with oil paint for more than a millennium, but few have explored its sculptural possibilities as deftly as the Los Angeles-based Linda Stark. In a process that can take years, Stark drips, layers and shapes oil paint until it rises an inch or more beyond the canvas, creating three-dimensional images that look like surreal, metaphysical clip art. In her first New York show in more than 20 years, “Ethereal Material” at Ortuzar in TriBeCa, Stark’s wide-ranging oeuvre will be on full display in pieces spanning over 30 years. “My work is broadly autobiographical and confessional,” she says. Sometimes a dream or meditation inspires a painting. After her cat Samantha died, she appeared to Stark during a moment of reflection, surrounded by what the artist describes as a flower of light. “I painted the image [“Samantha” (2005)] and found that afterward a healing had occurred,” she says. Other times, personal objects spark ideas. Her eldest sister’s senior picture prompted “Silver That Girl” (1998), Stark’s simple, shiny version of the actress Marlo Thomas’s classic 1960s flip hairdo. It became a tribute to “a generation of graying feminists,” says Stark. “It’s a statement about the beauty of a silver-haired woman.” “Ethereal Material” will be on view through Dec. 7 at Ortuzar, New York, ortuzarprojects.com.
Covet This
Century-Old Swedish Designs Get a Revival
When the Swedish foundry Nafveqvarn debuted its collection of artisanal cast-iron home objects — ranging from shell-shaped urns to scroll-capped stools — at the 1925 World’s Fair in Paris, the Swedish Grace movement — a short-lived yet significant chapter in design history known for its refined restraint and neo-Classical details — found a place on the international stage. Now, nearly a century later, a handful of those seminal creations are in production once again, thanks to Eva Anegrund, who took over Nafveqvarn from her father in 2018 after stumbling upon the 400-year-old company’s original molds in a warehouse. Available through the Montana-based antiques shop Emerson Bailey, the growing collection of re-editions — which is handcrafted from recycled scrap at a foundry powered by wind and water — includes intricate, multipurpose vessels conceived by the 20th-century sculptors Carl Elmberg, Ivar Johnsson and Anna Petrus. A console table designed by the architect Folke Bensow, meanwhile, features a surface made of a green-grained marble unique to Sweden’s Kolmarden countryside. From $800, emersonbailey.com.
Gift This
The Artists Putting Their Own Spin on the Tarot Deck
Tarot cards have been around since at least the 1400s, when Milanese nobility commissioned specialty tarocchi for parlor games, long before 18th-century French occultists began tying the practice to murky supernatural meanings. Regardless of psychic abilities, these decks offer artists the opportunity to create worlds around recognizable archetypes (The Fool, Justice, Death, etc.). Last month the former theater publicist Emily McGill released the Hirschfeld Broadway Tarot, a deck that assigns these roles to on- and offstage characters using archival illustrations by the caricaturist Al Hirschfeld. Tony and Maria from “West Side Story” become The Lovers, while the Nine of Swords, a card linked to delusion, is represented by Norma Desmond from “Sunset Boulevard.” McGill also highlights lesser-known historical figures, such as Eva Le Gallienne, a pioneer of regional and Off Broadway theater who shows up as The Empress. Other artists drawn to tarot include Salvador Dalí who published a set in 1984 that soon went out of print — until Taschen revived it in 2019. The Spanish artist Ricardo Cavolo lent his cartoonishly mystical style to a deck for the historic Fournier manufacturer in 2021, with a similarly colorful look as his collaborations with the musician Kaytranada. And in a cheeky return to the deck’s Italian roots, the Pasta Tarot, created by a New York drag queen and a games producer for The New York Times, puts both a queer and culinary spin on the cards.
Visit This
In Kyoto, a Zen Buddhist Temple Hosts Works by a Brazilian Painter
The Zen Buddhist temple Daitoku-ji in northern Kyoto is a sprawling complex of structures and gardens. Erected in 1319 by Zen master Shūhō Myōchō, the temple houses one of Japan’s oldest meditation halls and its smallest rock garden. This month Daitoku-ji unveils another benchmark: the first art exhibition in its centuries-long history. Nine paintings by the Brazilian artist Lucas Arruda will appear throughout the site, including in tearooms and shrine niches; they will “trace the intentionality of the architecture,” says Arruda. The painter is known for muted, enigmatic landscapes: murky sea scenes, forests and graduating fields of color bisected by blurred horizon lines. “My practice has always been deeply contemplative,” says Arruda. Through painting, he achieves “a meditative state that aligns with Zen Buddhism.” On the show’s opening day, a traditional tea ceremony will be performed by one of Kyoto’s tea masters, Reijirō Izumi. Lucas Arruda at Daitoku-ji is on view from Oct. 30 through Nov. 7.
View This
A New York Retrospective of Young-Jae Lee’s Spinach Bowls and Spindle Vases
Though the 73-year-old Seoul-born artist Young-Jae Lee grew up surrounded by traditional Korean pottery, she didn’t appreciate the beauty of their unadorned, utilitarian shapes until, at 21, she emigrated to Germany, where she began her own journey as a potter. “If you’re standing in a dense forest, you can’t see the mountains — only the distance allows you to see the picture in its entirety,” says Lee, who has been the director of Keramische Werkstatt Margaretenhöhe, a Weimar-era ceramic workshop in Essen, since 1987. In “Forms From the Earth,” an upcoming retrospective at New York’s David Nolan Gallery, her now signature spinach bowls and spindle vases, to which she’s devoted the better part of her career, carry echoes of both the ancient art of dal-hang-ari (moon jars) and the form-meets-function legacy intrinsic to the 20th-century Bauhaus movement. With their subtle variations in contour and color, the deceptively simple yet technically complex geometric clay vessels stand as testaments to the infinite potential that can be found through the humble act of repetition. As she puts it, “My work is always a process, and an exhibition is not a conclusion but only a part of the whole.” “Forms From the Earth” will be on view from Nov. 1 through Dec. 21, davidnolangallery.com.
Consider This
A French Designer’s Bronze-Accented Furniture
The gallerist and designer Ralph Pucci began his career working in his family’s Mount Vernon, N.Y.-based mannequin repair business, where he eventually designed his own custom models for luxury showrooms and boutiques. In the late 1980s, he started selling furniture. Ralph Pucci International is now in its seventh decade under family ownership, still selling mannequins alongside in-house furniture designs, as well as pieces by designers like India Mahdavi, Eric Schmitt and Hervé van der Straeten. This year, van der Straeten is celebrating 20 years with the gallery, a relationship that had a serendipitous beginning. In 2004 the French designer showed up unannounced at Pucci’s gallery and presented his portfolio; Pucci signed him to the gallery on the spot. Now, to mark the anniversary, Ralph Pucci is presenting an exhibition of van der Straeten’s works at its New York gallery in Manhattan’s Flatiron district. Among the new pieces presented are a pair of firsts: A guéridon has a bronze base topped by a circular slab of Green Forest marble, van der Straeten’s first use of the richly hued stone. A sideboard titled Buffet Eva features a diagonal patchwork of bronze and lacquered slabs in swamp oak, another new material for the designer. On view from Oct. 29 through February 2025 (exact date to be announced), ralphpucci.com.
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The post Tarot Cards for Lovers of Broadway, Art and Pasta appeared first on New York Times.
