Before you go: Doowon Lee
Today, a review from Andrew Truong on a show of playful paintings and tapestries closing soon in Chelsea. Plus, five shows on view this week (if you’re on iOS, use our map to track them). Follow us on Instagram for more updates, and go see something.
what’s on:
✨ Opening Reception Today 6:00-8:00PM ✨ How To Escape A Whirlpool, at Kravets Wehby Gallery. Through July 17.
✨ Opening Reception Today 6:00-8:00PM ✨ time is a flat circle, at Bitforms. Through August 1.
Antonia Lucy Gehnrich, Das Parfum, at Alex Berns. Through June 20. No exhibition website. Address is 354 Broadway.
Josiane M.H. Pozi, In Pursuit of Feeling, at American Academy of Arts and Letters. Through July 3.
Bruce Nauman, No Mistakes, at Okey Dokey Konrad Fischer. Through June 27.
Doowon Arrives in New York with Too Many Animals is the artist’s second solo presentation with ACA Galleries (173 10th Ave, New York, NY 10011). Last day is this Saturday.
Before you go: Doowon Lee
A review from Andrew Truong
I encountered this show by accident. I was on my way to Peruvian artist Macarena Rojas Osterling’s exhibition when a leopard with piercing blue eyes caught my attention in the window of a nearby gallery. It was painted on a rug in the style of Korean folk art with a smiling frog perched whimsically on its rump.
The artist is Doowon Lee, and his exhibition is aptly titled “Doowon Arrives in New York with Too Many Animals.” Among them: a trio of frogs in a kabocha patch, big cats lounging in moonlight. Lee’s charm is palpable and stems from being self-taught. (As a semi-professional critic and cook whose training topped out at one college lit course and three months at Wendy’s, I have a fondness for autodidacts.) It’s not exactly outsider art: he’s exhibited worldwide and comes from a creative family. But he diverged from his father, who studied Namjonghwa—a style of painting descended from Chinese tradition and practiced by Joseon Korea’s aristocratic scholar-officials—by taking up Minhwa, a folk art of the same period but made by anonymous commoners.
The resulting whimsy is delightful but worth unpacking. In a recent essay on the economic factors imperiling New York’s art scene, the artist Josh Kline argues that soaring rents have pushed galleries toward risk aversion. With buyers now investors rather than patrons, what remains is “speculative investment and luxury décor,” instead of work “relevant for society and our time.” Humanitarian catastrophes have only accelerated this trend. Kline asked a dealer what was selling in the wake of October 7th. The answer: “whimsy.” The gallerist at this show mentioned it sold well.
That doesn’t surprise me. While I’m not remotely in a position to buy one of Lee’s paintings, I, too, like the cute frogs and would welcome them in my home. They are also not mindless kitsch: the jungle animals remind me of Henri Rousseau, but they are fused with the folk art of Lee’s home country and brought to life with a humorous approach to materials. (From a distance one work appeared to have googly eyes pasted on; up close, they were glossy orbs of paint.) But it’s odd to stand in a show you enjoy while understanding it to be an emblem of New York art’s current malaise.
Can you lament the conditions that prioritize one type of art over another while having a good time? Perhaps the escapism collectors covet has broader appeal than it’s fashionable to admit. After all, us commoners, who still have to live in this world (and sweat through a New York summer), might also like a little reprieve. I found some here in Chelsea, delivered with flair by a self-taught artist offering googly eyes made of paint and a leopard untroubled by the frog sitting on its back.
Andrew Truong
is a critic and pop-up chef whose newsletter, Buttered Popcorn, is about film, food, and their occasional overlap. His writing has also appeared in Reverse Shot and Guts Magazine. You can follow him on Instagram at andrewtriestocook.
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Great review!