Spring Art Preview: Kerry James Marshall's Black Whole

Battling art's blind spot

Comments (0) By R.C. Baker Tuesday, Mar 4 2008

'Eminent Domain'
May 2–August 29

A group of contemporary photographers shoot New York at the margins: In Thomas Holton's photo of the Lam family's ramshackle Ludlow Street apartment, detergent bottles, plastic clothes hangers, and a bouquet of roses in a stained bathtub vie for attention; a passenger plane seems ready to land on the shingled roof of a Queens house in Bettina Johae's Meadowmere; and the striped façade and gray warming trays heaped with potatoes and punctuated by naked lightbulbs create a formal smorgasbord in Zoe Leonard's Red and White Restaurant. New York Public Library, Fifth Ave. at 42nd, 212-930-0830

Courtesy Jack Shainmen Gallery

A pointed bucolic: Marshall's Vignette #10, 2007

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Greg Drasler
May 15–June 27

Drasler often depicts the insides of things—rooms, steamer trunks, cars—giving his paintings a vaguely voyeuristic feel. Green Screen (2007) features a bulbous sedan with the passenger door removed and the rear wide open, exposing the broad seats; the roof has been cut away to allow movie studio lights to illuminate the interior. Painted in bright colors, Drasler's empty spaces are unsettling, as if waiting for private encounters that all the world will see. Betty Cuningham, 541 W 25th, 212-242-2772

Anthony Patti
May 15–June 14

When you learn that Patti grew up in Jersey and was trained as a custom car and boat mechanic, a sculpture such as 2005's Born to Run—a six-foot-long fiberglass hot rod with an engine so bloated it obscures any view through the windshield—seems just the ticket. The tumescent curves, high-gloss-orange paint job, and thrusting exhaust pipes embody testosterone rage. Prolonged male adolescence indeed! Virgil de Voldere, 526 W 26th, 212-343-9694