Armchair Traveler: From Berlin to New York and Back Again

The art world too global for you? Each month, Interview highlights in pictures the shows you’d want to see—if you could jet-set from one international hub to the next. Bon voyage!

———

Alvin Baltrop

Galerie Buchholz, Berlin

April 30 – June 19, 2021

Buchholz is showing a group of photographs by Alvin Baltrop, who was virtually unknown during his lifetime. The largest group of photographs he left behind depict New York’s derelict West Side Piers and the surrounding area from 1975 to 1986. During that period, the piers were a site of excitement and risk for men seeking sex, sunbathing, or just taking in the splendor of the industrial ruins. Baltrop’s work poetically documents the pleasure and peril of underground gay culture.

———

Hana Miletić: Patterns of Thrift

The Approach, London

May 7 – June 19, 2021

Brussels and Zagreb-based artist Hana Miletić is presenting new works from her ongoing series “Materials” in her debut exhibition, Patterns of Thrift, at The Approach. The abstract-looking textile works from “Materials” find their scale, form, and color from acts of ‘care and repair’ that Miletić has noticed in urban spaces. She takes photographs of makeshift repairs of vehicles and architectural elements, emulating these DIY repairs through a process of hand-weaving textiles. Later this month, Miletić will have a solo show at the Bergen Kunsthall in Norway, where a large work with knitted elements will cover one of the walls, almost as if it were a piece of architecture itself.

———

Emo Verkerk: Why Not?

Luhring Augustine, New York

May 1 – June 12, 2021

This is Dutch artist Emo Verkerk’s first solo show in New York since 1982. Verkerk makes “portrait studies” of distinguished cultural figures such as John Coltrane, Ivan Turgenev, Frank Zappa, and Aby Warburg, among others. Verkerk’s range of portraits paints a picture of his interests and reflects his world of ideas. The portraits themselves eschew traditional true-to-life representation for Verkerk’s unique, whimsical interpretations of his subjects. 

———

Louise Lawler: One Show on Top of the Other

Metro Pictures, New York

May 4 – June 5, 2021

Louise Lawler presents two exhibitions simultaneously at Metro Pictures, one on top of the other. Lawler’s photographs of artworks in museums, private collections, and auction houses are used in her ever-evolving consideration of art and objects in their contexts. The first show, Distorted for the Times, presents works that have been digitally altered to render a sense of unease, as they have been abstracted into something nearly illegible. The second show, A Given (Red, Yellow, Blue), presents works in which Lawler has painted small sections of print versions of her traced works—black-and-white images created from tracings of her iconic photographs.