The large-scale arrival of new and veteran dealers has given the neighborhood its first unifying theme in 60 years. Here are three walks with our critics, a springboard to explore.
Ruby Sky Stiler at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, 7 Franklin Place
In the ultra-stylized portraits of this Brooklyn-based painter, flesh resolves into Euclidean shapes and decorative patterning: eyes and breasts appear as little half-moons, foreheads and shoulders as perfect semicircles of pink and powder blue. They may seem easily digestible at first, but come closer. These paintings are actually wall reliefs: The models’ wavy hair consists of incised resin blocks, and the backgrounds are tessellated tiles overlaid with pasted paper. Stiler knows her art history, and steeps these portraits in an omnivorous collection of ornamental motifs: Roman friezes, Victorian wallpaper, Matisse’s stripes and squiggles, the ceramic tiles of Gio Ponti or Roberto Burle Marx. But in two self-portraits, featuring the artist cradling an old-time painter’s palette, you also sense a sourer side. Those millennial pinks, those curves, those Insta-ready backgrounds: It’s as if the annals of art history fed directly into the Wing. JASON FARAGO
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