As we close out another year, December hails as the month of holy celebrations, reflection, and acts of gifting. Frankly speaking, this year calls to mind the maudlin tone of Elvis Presley’s famed ballad “Blue Christmas” (1957) as we aspire to rejoice amid the approaching reality of the January inauguration and a bitter winter. Nevertheless, “art as saving sorceress,” as the mighty Friedrich Nietzsche puts it, swoops in with the potential to bolster our spirits and entertain our souls. In Upstate New York, a round of shows offers happy holiday sentiments all month long. Paintings by Melanie Luna at Gallery 495 in Catskill conjure ethereal realms, while Chie Fueki at Kino Saito in Verplanck presents colorful mixed-media works. William Abranowicz and David Graham present alluring photos at Hawk + Hive, and Kimber and Sam Truitt collaborate on text-based works at Green Kill in Kingston. Caroline Burdett takes us on a walk-about through mystical lands at Pinkwater Gallery in Kingston, while Stephen Towns depicts Black Americans in moments of shared repose and revelry at the Rockwell Museum in Corning. May we take a clue from Elvis, and indulge in saccharine joy despite bluesy realities. Let great art be the wonderous gift of this December season!
Melanie Luna: As Above, So Below
Gallery 495, 495 Main Street, Catskill, New York
Through December 14
Featuring a series of recent works by Dominican Republic-born Melanie Luna, As Above, So Below at Gallery 495 in Catskill reflects the intensity of an unbalanced world through poignant visions, each a stand-alone chronicle of our times. Taking inspiration from nature and the theoretical writings of Carl Jung, Luna explores the human and the cosmic, setting the stage for us to fill in the blanks with our own experiences. “Andromeda’s Epic” (2024), for example, features a naked nymph-like woman at the edge of raging water. She raises herself upward while a shadow puppet mirroring her posture hangs from her fingertips in a dreamlike scene that suggests the fantasy of escape. In “Tank” (2024), a crimson and ochre-toned tank is ready for action, a chilling reminder of forces of subjugation. “Pale Blue Dot” (2023), which features a sandy, cratered landscape that could be either a far-flung moon or a beach at midnight illuminated by a camera flash, reinforces the curiously disorienting nature of this show. Jung was a pioneer of analytic psychology, and Luna’s work is equally compelling in its journey through conscious and unconscious realms.
Chie Fueki: Petal Storm Memory
Kino Saito, 115 7th Street, Verplanck, New York
Through December 15
Chie Fueki takes us into a sacred realm of her unique design, where disembodied eyes full of longing peek at us from abstract lands laced with familiar objects made supernatural. In “Artemis” (2022), for instance, a shelf of plants and isolated flowers gives way to a star-strewn ocean above which more sets of eyes peer forth. In “Sunrise Sunset” (2023), a spread of cozy houseplants in the foreground sets a perfect stage for the surrealist scene in the background, where enormous eyes in a mountain gaze at us as a red sun blazes forth. “Painting” (2023) is one of my favorites: It features an androgynous-looking cool kid sporting Nike sneakers and a backpack with long hair flowing and paintbrush in hand. In addition to her paintings, a series of mixed media works on paper provide a colorful footnote, including “Yozakura (Minamiota)” (2023), a symphony in blue, and “Yozakura (Gumyoji)” (2023), which beams with pink tones.
Jesse Aran Greenberg: Counterpart
Turley Gallery, 609 Warren Street, 2nd floor, Hudson, New York
Through December 22
Jesse Aran Greenberg explores and explodes form through a series of colorfully chaotic drawings and eccentric sculptures in his solo show Counterpart at Turley Gallery in Hudson. On the one hand, his drawings are environments teeming with musical motion and play; on the other, his sculptural objects are motionless (though still playful). First, the oil pastel drawings: His “Climax 3” (all 2024) bursts forth from a nebulous black shape at the upper right side of the work, setting the stage for “Climax 4,” a jumble of colorful shapes dominated by a blue patch at the center, which eventually gives way to “Climax 5,” where a splash of sprawling forms in the upper left topples to the lower right of the drawing. Then, the sculpture: His pale lime green “Column Survey,” made of urethane plastic and looking something like a cross between a municipal helmet and a kitchen appliance, made me giggle at first sight.
William Abranowicz & David Graham: Fictions from the Real World
Hawk + Hive, 61 Main Street, Andes, New York
Through December 22
Two seasoned photographers come together with a series of atmospheric artworks in Fictions from the Real World at Hawk + Hive in Andes. William Abranowicz and David Graham take turns in ambiguous documentary-style photographs that suggest the opening lines of either a poetic narrative or a murder mystery. In Graham’s “Clifton’s Cafe, Los Angeles, CA” (2016), for instance, we are transported into a restaurant scene full of folks eating, but the protagonist is a lone man who sits to the left of the scene, sipping coffee with a smudged cross across his wrinkled forehead, most likely from an Ash Wednesday visit to church. His slightly eerie “Private Plane, Teterboro Airport” (2014) features a woman’s foot in a black flat as she sits cross-legged in a leather-heavy section of a posh airplane, offering a peek into someone’s VIP life from afar, as well as a glance into his professional life as a location scout. Abranowicz’s meticulous photos also reflect his life adventures in real-time — works such as “Louis XV, Hotel de Paris, Monte Carlo” (1995) and “Dining Room Station, Czech Republic” (1994) illustrate his globe-trotting as a 25-year contributing photographer to Condé Nast Traveler magazine.
Kimber Truitt and Sam Truitt: Dicte: A Triptych & 26 Salvages
Green Kill, 229 Greenkill Avenue, Kingston, New York
Through December 28
After a year-long daily practice of interacting with 144-word blocks of text, artists and husband-wife team Kimber and Sam Truitt (working collaboratively as T&T art/works) present Dicte: A Triptych and 26 Salvages at Green Kill in Kingston. Truitt and Truitt transposed texts — which include Morse code, stage directions, and prose — to various mediums such as sounds, music, recordings, symbols, photos, movies, and others via their own interpretations. Kimber Truitt’s abstract mixed-media collage paintings “The State (Salvages 11)” (2018) and “Empire (Salvages 15)” (2019) embody the hands-on messiness of art-making as one aspect of this show, while Sam Truitt’s three-screen, audio-visual work “Dicte” (2012–13) and text-heavy works on paper with slightly illegible titles such as “Water (Shatshfatee 1, white)” (2024) and “Stick Stick (Shatshfatee)” (2024) utilize language as a metaphor for the deluge of information in today’s digital world.
By Moonlight: The Magical Landscapes of Caroline Burdett
Pinkwater Gallery, 237 Front Street, Kingston, New York
Through January 7, 2025
The title of this show embodies its dreamy ambiance: By Moonlight: The Magical Landscapes of Caroline Burdett at Pinkwater Gallery in Kingston offers a warm and welcoming path of escape through painting. Working in rich tones reminiscent of the Fauvists, Burdett orchestrates a vibrant vista in each of her works, often transforming natural locales into quasi-abstract environments that border on surrealist. “The Cave” (all works 2024), for instance, features milky waterfalls that land at different points within a deep green and purple landscape as a hazy sun (or moon) fades away from a pink horizon line, leaving a sumptuous glow. Perhaps it is that same sun-moon and mystical flow of water that passes through “The First Time” and finally arrives as a pinkish patch of shadow in the background of “California.” Burdett keeps us searching, inviting us to swim further into the liquid energy of works such as “Hush,” where the distant moon commands the sky with its graceful gleam as a teeny turquoise coyote looks out onto a lost yet lovely world.
Erica Hauser: No Ordinary Blue
Robin Rice Gallery, 234 Warren Street, Hudson, New York
Through January 15, 2025
Taking inspiration from artists such as Ellsworth Kelly and designers such as Sonia Delaunay and bolstered by her experience as a seasonal wood stacker for her father’s firewood business, Erica Hauser’s paintings are an exquisite exercise in pattern and placement. No Ordinary Blue at Robin Rice Gallery in Hudson presents a series of recent hard-edged works that extol the moodiness of blue. Employing universal shapes as her main characters and referencing song lyrics for titles, Hauser teases out a dramatic storyline. In “Rivertown Blue II” (all works 2024), several plump circles in shades of white, gray, and blue stack up one on top of the other against a cobalt backdrop. “No Ordinary Blue II” features two white forms that gracefully connect while a rich Yves Klein-inspired blue surrounds their moment of meeting. Her vibrant “Jukebox Blues” features a symphony of forms that vibrate with excitement, as if boogying to a beat that lifts us along as it goes.
Stephen Towns’ Private Paradise: A Figurative Exploration of Black Rest and Recreation
The Rockwell Museum, 111 Cedar Street, Corning, New York
Through January 19, 2025
Inspired by photographs of Paradise Park — a segregated park in Silver Springs, Florida that operated from 1949 to 1969 — by the late underwater photographer (Robert) Bruce Mozert, Stephen Towns’ Private Paradise: A Figurative Exploration of Black Rest and Recreation at the Rockwell Museum in Corning is a celebration of the individuals “who made the park a magical place to visit,” as the artist put it in a promotional video for the show. Exploring the complexities of Black American history through paintings, fabric collaged works, and quilting, Towns brings to life the stories of people who found refuge and revelry at Paradise Park. Using reflective materials and bright fabrics, quilted works such as “Looking for Lorraine” (2024) and “I Will Follow You My Dear” (2024) feature faceless women in patterned bathing suits relaxing on the beach reading magazines and swimming underwater among fish and fauna, respectively. The painting “Taking Flight” (2022) features three serious-looking boys with kites next to a sublimely turquoise body of water, while “When We Were Young” (2022) includes a pack of smiling children in swimming gear, each one beaming with the prospect of a day of carefree fun. Towns comments that the glittery, radiant material used in his artworks represents his “new idea of God and energy” with the hope that others feel this natural warmth and are inspired to look further into the history of Black communities in America.
Lisbeth Firmin, Patrice Lorenz & Angela Rose Voulgarelis: The Red Thread
1053 Gallery, 1053 Main Street, Fleischmanns, New York
Through January 26, 2025
Addressing complex themes including female archetypes, the divine feminine, and thorny issues around sexism, The Red Thread at 1053 Gallery in Fleischmanns features the work of three women artists based in Upstate New York. Curated by gallery directors Lindsay Comstock and Monte Wilson, the show includes mixed-media paintings, prints, and drawings by Lisbeth Firmin, Patrice Lorenz, and Angela Rose Voulgarelis. Firmin’s “Woman with Child (Madonna)” (2023) embodies the power of motherhood: A woman and her resting child ride the subway, her arm tightly holding her kid close as she dozes off under a pair of oversized sunglasses. In Lorenz’s “Eve” (2024), a lone woman heavily painted in dark tones stares off the canvas; a round orb to her left anchors the composition. Voulgarelis’s “Out of Body II” (2024) is an abstract-expressionist vision of a muscular arm that reaches upward against a strong red background.
SHABOOM: Presumed Ignorant
Art Omi, 1405 County Route 22, Ghent, New York
Through January 26, 2025
Art Omi and Shandaken Projects partnered to co-produce and present SHABOOM: PRESUMED IGNORANT, the collective’s first institutional presentation, at Art Omi in Ghent and surrounding areas. Founded by multi-disciplinary artists Silky Shoemaker, Paul Soileau, and Lex Vaughn, SHAMBOOM draws upon ’90s-era court TV melodramas with a full-scale installation at the gallery, plus a series of commissioned billboards and happenings. Employing the antics of slapstick-meets-cheeky comedy peppered with an in-your-face ethos of “anything goes,” the collective entertains in a low-brow style that embodies the carnivalesque. Curated by Sara O’Keeffe and Guy Weltchek, the haphazard installation — featuring hand-drawn posters, cardboard cutout figures, and numerous other oddities — was activated by SHABOOM’s performance at the opening, which was full of crude antics and cheap thrills. With their faithful two-part motto — “the show must go on!” and “everything must go!” — the collective borders on absurdist catastrophe in the giddiest of ways.
