Ryan McGinley: Bestiality (Not That There's Anything Wrong With That)

Among all contemporary artists, Ryan McGinley has the best eye for--and access to--hot, frisky youths. His photographs of nude beauties of both sexes frolicking in nature and with each other may not be great art--but they certainly make you envious of the artist, who clearly is having a damn good time with his camera. Classic McGinley: "Holding Hands" (2003) He currently has exhibitions (through...

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Pick of the Week: Sheila Hicks

This pick of the week is easy: Sheila Hicks' exhibition at Sikkema Jenkins, on view through June 2. The artist, born in 1934, has been making work for more than five decades; this is her first show at the gallery with perhaps the best taste in Chelsea. Sheila Hicks "Androise" (mono filament, linen slate) 2005 Using interesting materials with great intelligence to make objects of unusual beauty...

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Whitney Biennial 2012: One Room Only

This year's Whitney Biennial was the worst I've seen in my 20-plus years of attending, which I guess makes 10 versions. At least part of the blame belongs to Jay Sanders, the show's co-curator and a director at a commercial gallery, Greene Naftali, through November 2010.Two the Biennial artists are in the Greene Naftali stable (Richard Hawkins, John Knight) --and neither are big-time-biennial worthy. Another...

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Flip-Flop Feelings: Brice Marden, Dana Schutz, Marlborough Gallery

Three shows now on view at Chelsea galleries have upended some of my longstanding aesthetic assumptions. I've loved Dana Schutz's figurative work from her first exhibition at Zach Feuer in 2004. Her bold, brushy, overscaled canvases typically have featured genuinely & wonderfully disturbing compositions: self-eating cannibals, grotesquely twisted and deformed bodies, operating rooms...

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