John Zorn: Hermetic Cartography at The Drawing Center

Hermetic Cartography is a show at The Drawing Center showcasing seven decades of work by John Zorn. Known predominantly for his avant-garde music practice, the exhibition presents Zorn’s lesser-known visual art from across his expansive career. For those familiar with his audio work, the chaotic and expressive musicality is echoed in his striking colors, patterns, and hybridized visual language. Even to the uninitiated, the more recent abstract pieces present graphical landscapes that, through radiating dashed lines or smoky curves, evoke explosive or serene feelings.

The formality of the museum setting, accompanied by three concerts held as part of the show, marks a shift from Zorn’s typical place outside the mainstream. Yet a small room tucked behind a curtain recalls the underground atmosphere of his musical legacy. Devoted to his 1970s Theatre of Musical Optics project, the dark, intimate space gathers an array of manipulated objects used in silent performances. It acts as a core, binding the show’s energies to Zorn’s broader practice.

The overwhelming array of notebooks, scores, drawings, and objects defines a personal visual language of mark-making by an already groundbreaking artist. Stepping into the exhibition feels like stepping into one of Zorn’s scores - jumbled and frenetic, yet somehow intuitive and whole.

Tyler Ballon's "Flying High"

  Tyler Ballon's solo exhibition tackles issues of identity in painting of Black bodies and makes historical references to traditions of monumental painting traditionally done for presidents and kings, through pastiche mending them to classical figurative painting in order to reflect the past, present, and future of black youth in America today. Announcing the glory and struggle of Black youth in sports and music but also deeper ties of community ambition and the annals of history. The subject matter of the painting is black high school students on the football field in their marching band and football uniforms. A simple concept that is handled well, being clear right off the bat about what it is and wants to accomplish, as well as having the added depth of a homage to Manet and the choosing of the specific schools named after leaders of the community at large. The schools are Abraham Lincoln High School for the footballers and Malcolm X Shabazz High School for the marching band players. 

      "I realised there is an interesting dichotomy between sports being a tool for success and having Black bodies being used to advance America’s ambition," Ballon remarks in a statement accompanying the exhibition online.

    Bellow are the paintings The Execution of Emperor Maximillian (1867) with Ballon's work Bear Arms/Second Amendment (2024-25), Ballon chooses to show the young men in the marching band protecting cheerleaders rather than Manet's violent depiction of the death of the Habsburg royal via firing squad. Showing the desire for a change in perception of Black youth bearing arms. Ballon had this to say also on the press release:"perceptions of Black men bearing arms, reclaiming their image as patriots and protectors" This mending and correcting of a style of painting normally done to appease the royal and upper classes and making it serve the people is effective and easy to understand. Depicting everyday people and giving them the same respect as monarchs and a careful consideration and care which shines through in subject matter and the paintings lifelike touch and attention to detail.

 revised: GREY ART GALLERY: ANONYMOUS WAS A WOMAN

The Grey Art Museum's, Anonymous Was a Woman: The First 25 Years showcases works made by 41 women artists over the age of 40, each a recipient of the AWAW grant, which now consists of $50,000 awarded annually to 15 women. The exhibition features an array of media including sculpture, video, photography, and painting. A centerpiece in the second room of the show, Rona Pondicks Magenta Swimming in Yellow (2015-17), features a resin cast translucent magenta head, halfway submerged in a block of translucent yellow resin. This piece acts as a conceptual anchor for the exhibition as it evokes a feeling of being stuck, which goes hand in hand with the mission of the foundation Anonymous Was a Woman, as it allows women to emerge from this obscurity by providing a means for them to create work. Other works include Petah Coyne’s Untitled #1242 (Black Snowflake) (2007–12), a large black chandelier composed of materials such as wax, glass, steel, ribbons, tassels, and a taxidermy peacock, which was made in reference to the bombing of Hiroshima. Jennifer Wen Ma’s Paradise Interrupted: Disintegration (2014) consists of three large hanging mirrored acrylic panels, adorned with intricate black paper forms, the mirrored surfaces making viewers confront themselves as they view the artwork. While the exhibition successfully demonstrates diverse material range, the amount of work often overwhelms the space, diluting the power of individual pieces.

REVISED: The End Time! by Fia Huston

THE END TIME!

By: Fia Huston

     The End Time! by Sin Wai Kin at Canal Projects was groundbreaking and timely given today’s climate. The exhibit’s themes regarding toxic masculinity and the pressures of gender roles in society are not only relevant in today’s climate but also essential for both introspection and mental health awareness. Shown through the artist’s faux reality sitcom, The Time of Our Lives (2024), gender stereotypes are represented in a way that allows viewers to question gender’s relationship with societal standards. The portrayals of these roles enable the audience to reflect on how deeply ingrained these expectations are and how they affect individuals.

    Grappling with the masculine and the feminine sides of one’s self, especially within a male-dominated and binary society, is such a tough reality for the queer community. The other main work of the exhibition, Essence (2024), further explores this by displaying a faux perfume ad, allowing the viewer to look inward at their own biases/experiences, involving themes of self-realization within a society that capitalizes off of these journeys of self-discovery. As film was the medium, the visual storytelling of the exhibit was incredibly impactful, raising both awareness and questions concerning gender and gender roles through a queer perspective.

    Overall, I found the entire exhibit to emulate the idea of constructing one’s reality beyond societal standards and norms for the benefit of queer communities that are underrepresented in today’s culture. It was a powerful and thought-provoking multimedia experience that left a lasting impression on those who engage with its themes.

(First draft) Shim Moon-Seup A Certain Scenery Solo Show

Perrotin Gallery, New York | February 28 – April 12, 2025

In A Certain Scenery, Shim Moon-Seup presents a suite of seascape-inspired paintings that hover between recollection and repetition. The exhibition, composed largely of works from his ongoing series The Presentation and Re-Present, cultivates a space of durational looking, at times compelling, at others perhaps overly subdued.

Each canvas is structured through horizontal bands of acrylic, rendered in restrained palettes of blue, gray, and black. In The Presentation (2022), the delicate tonal gradations mirror the slow rise and fall of ocean swells, while other compositions verge on the monochromatic, evoking nightfall or visual disappearance. Depending on the viewer’s disposition, the repetition can feel contemplative, or verge on monotony.

Shim’s background as a sculptor informs his approach to the surface. There is a density to the brushwork, a sense of paint accumulating like sediment or dragging across resistance. This materiality hints at transformation, though it occasionally feels tethered to the conceptual weight of his medium shift. Without the contextual anchor of his sculptural past, the paintings risk becoming formally elegant but effectively distant.

Ultimately, the exhibition is less concerned with depiction than with presence. Shim offers not an image of the sea, but its rhythm, insistent, measured, and unresolved. It is an atmosphere more felt than defined, one that hovers on the edge of stillness and returns the gaze with quiet persistence.

Exhibition Review: Cy Twombly’s Landscape Abstractions and the Fragility of Nature

  Exhibition Review: Cy Twombly’s Landscape Abstractions and the Fragility of Nature

galleries at 980 Madison Avenue, 

On view in Gagosian’s recent exhibition, Cy Twombly’s Untitled paintings from 1981–1986, created in Bassano in Teverina, Italy, mark a profound shift in his engagement with nature and abstraction. Rendered in lush greens and layered with fluid gestures, these works evoke the sensory immediacy of earth, air, and water—an elemental trinity central to both ecological life and human experience.

The sense of light, speed, moisture change between drawings, people always putting themself connect with nature while painter using landscape as the object. The abstract way of drawing bring viewer’s curiosity and memories out of box. As one moves through the series, the quatrefoil-shaped frames act like portals, subtly altering the viewer’s perspective with each step. The spatial relationship between the paintings mimics a journey through a landscape—not linear, but fluid and ever-changing.

The social resonance lies in the subtle commentary on humanity’s disconnection from nature. These paintings, while abstract, suggest a plea for reconnection—where the liquidity of paint mirrors the ebb and flow of natural forces that sustain life. In this way, Twombly transforms abstraction into a poetic form of environmental reflection, inviting viewers not only to see, but to feel the landscape’s fading presence in our collective consciousness.

(Revised Version) Shim Moon-Seup, A Certain Scenery, Perrotin Gallery, New York | February 28 – April 12, 2025

In A Certain Scenery, Shim Moon-Seup presents a body of paintings that draw on memories of the sea and the quiet persistence of natural rhythms. The exhibition, composed mainly of works from his ongoing series The Presentation and Re-Present, invites extended viewing, offering moments of subtle beauty, though occasionally lapsing into uniformity.

Each canvas features horizontal bands of acrylic, painted in restrained palettes of blue, gray, and black. In The Presentation (2022), shifts in tone across the bands recall the slow undulation of waves. Other works approach full monochrome, invoking the obscurity of night or the sensation of vanishing into horizonless space. This repetition of form and palette may evoke meditative stillness, or, for some, a sense of stagnation.

Shim’s early work as a sculptor remains palpable in his treatment of surfaces. The brushwork accumulates like sediment, as though pulled across textured resistance. This physicality suggests a transformation between material and gesture. However, without the grounding context of his sculptural practice, the paintings occasionally risk becoming aesthetically resolved but emotionally remote.

Rather than aiming for traditional representation, the show engages with sensation and presence. Shim does not depict the sea so much as evoke its pulse, steady, unresolved, and quietly insistent. These paintings do not demand attention but instead reward patience, returning the viewer’s gaze with a kind of hushed persistence.