6 great exhibits featuring work by Brooklyn artists to check out this summer

By Vittoria Benzine

Finding yourself stuck in New York City during July can feel a bit like a losing game of hot potato. Fortunately, most galleries are air conditioned!  And although so many people have absconded upstate — or to the Hamptons, or further — you’d be mistaken to consider summertime a dead zone for the city’s gallery scene. In addition to the usual annual group shows this time of year, a number of galleries are also taking risks by presenting particularly experimental installations. Art made in the playful creative foundry that is Brooklyn abounds.

We scoured exhibitions — and their guest books — to bring you six gallery shows by local artists to keep you cool this summer. Looking for something to look at? Look no further. Here are six must-see shows featuring Kings County artists to check out now.

‘Squeeze’ by Catharine Czudej

Meredith Rosen Gallery
11 E 80th Street

Courtesy Meredith Rosen Gallery

Catharine Czudej works in the colorful and mesmerizing heavy metal bismuth. A few of her pieces are on view in a group show curated by Lola Kramer and Loup Sarion at the gallery Management on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. But on the Upper East Side, the textured, reflective facades of her work take on new dimensions as part of “Squeeze,” a dizzying site-specific installation at Meredith Rosen Gallery.

As a gallerist, Rosen is a known risk-taker. Last December she recreated Guillaume Bijl’s “Casino” (1984) at Art Basel Miami Beach, transforming her booth into an immersive gambling house replete with staff and card tables. Here, uptown, Czudej has blanketed Rosen’s subterranean gallery with primary color parachutes that evoke childhood — and wink at both late-stage capitalism’s obsession with nostalgia as well as the early childhood roots of our collective socialization (and its byproduct, Groupthink). Several sculptures resembling balloon flowers complete the scene alongside half-emptied bottles of Welch’s and Evian bottles full of Juul pods. On view through August 12

‘Flamin’ Hot New Works’ group show, with work by Swoon

Allouche Gallery7
7 Mercer Street

‘Neenee’ by Swoon (Photo by Vittoria Benzine)

Caledonia Curry, also known as Swoon, is one of Brooklyn’s most renowned artists. Part of that is because Swoon made her name making art for the public, surreptitiously installing it on the streets. Another part lies in the sheer beauty of her delicate linework, an amalgamation of block print, acrylic gouache and hand-cut paper on found objects. The emotional scenes she creates range from tender to complicated.

Here, Swoon debuts a suite of recent works alongside the likes of Ron English and Michael Reeder at Allouche Gallery’s summertime group show, just unveiled in SoHo. Many of her works are shards of old doors that have been assembled into star shapes, sometimes decorated with celestial abstractions, other times with people etched onto them, engaged in creating their own work. Through September 11

‘In An Effort to Keep’ by Kevin Beasley

Casey Kaplan
121 W 27th Street

Photo by Vittoria Benzine

Long Island City-based conceptual artist Kevin Beasley invited five performers (Taja Cheek, Paul Hamilton, Ralph Lemon, Okwui Okpokwasili and Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste) to an apartment he rented in Crown Heights to document a two-day-long performance. There, the group recorded their hang from start to finish. Making phone calls, frying eggs, sleeping and playing chess were all fodder. Beasley’s latest solo show features that 38-channel soundscape in a back gallery room outfitted with high-tech audio equipment and arranged with furniture that places the viewer in their lived experience. The immersion illustrates how sound can map memories. But before you even get there, visitors navigate three galleries that feature a stunning series of Beasley’s signature sculptures of resin and found objects, usually abstract but sometimes with forests Sharpie transferred atop them. Here, Beasley combines furniture and fine art, complimenting abstract objects inspired by sound dispersion technology. Through July 28

‘In The Nosebleeds’ by Henry Swanson

Ross + Kramer Gallery
515 W 27th Street

Photo by Vittoria Benzine

If it’s good enough for Bobby Shmurda to visit, it’s probably good enough for you. (Sometimes people sign potentially fake names like ‘Michelle Obama’ in gallery guest books, so we verified the rapper’s attendance with an associate at the front desk.) Henry Swanson’s third New York City solo show in Chelsea is a spectacle, with a little something for everybody — ice hockey mascots, Muppets, and a lethally armed Crash Bandicoot. Some pieces have precise fault lines down the center that, in some instances, mark an asymmetrical disconnect between the subject’s two halves, demarcating the difference between a one’s public and private personae. Elsewhere, those dividers delineate entirely different scenes. Costumes provide the common thread, symbolizing identity, fear of the unknown and losing ourselves. The dreamy application of paint atop these surreal works make Swanson an MVP. Through July 27

‘EVERYTHINGBETWEENTHESUNANDTHEDIRT’ by Markus Linnenbrink 

Miles McEnery Gallery
511 W 22nd Street

Courtesy of the Mile McEnery Gallery

While taking in the hypnotic patterns of German-born Markus Linnenbrink’s sixth solo show with Miles McEnery Gallery in Chelsea, I overheard a couple say this is precisely the type of work one would expect to come out of Brooklyn. Maybe so. Linnenbrink’s style is quirky, and requires space — the likes of which an artist is more likely to find among Brooklyn’s spacious industrial studios. He’s worked with epoxy resin for over 30 years, the gallery says, “and his intimate familiarity with the medium is evident in his deft manipulation of it.” The artist has carved circles and stripes into layers of saturated resin, working backwards in a way to reveal patterns. The artist switches gears from negative to positive space with an iridescent, sculptural resin sphere filled with treasures that greets viewers upon arrival, followed by a paint splattered chair at the room’s center, with similar walls all around. Through July 22

‘The Fantasticals’ group show

DIMIN
406 Broadway, 2nd Floor

Courtesy DIMIN

Several Brooklyn-based artists — including LaKela Brown, Rose Nestler, and Nick Doyle — appear alongside peers from all boroughs in the latest group show to grace DIMIN, art dealer Robert Dimin’s noteworthy new space in TriBeCa, which opened earlier this year. Centered around imagination, whimsy, and magic in the spirit of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” the exhibition includes dimensional paintings, sculptures that blend still lives with cinema, embroidered quilts and more. Nestler’s soft, clean and semi-realistic sculptures of iris flowers and a Birkin bag (RIP) are true standouts, positioned atop mirrored plinths straight from a luxury boutique. Through August 18