At Kim Foster Gallery in Chelsea, NY, Susan Wides displays nine panoramic photographs in an exhibition entitled All the Worlds. By honing in on everyday scenes and giving them added light, Wides adds a theatrical nature to the ordinary. The artist captures images from above and conveys abstraction in her scenes, distorting the studied environment enough to bring re-imagined energy, light, and vivacious color into view. In Brooklyn Botanic Gardens [June 10, 2012], we imagine the artist taking her photograph from a hidden location, creating distance between the viewer and the garden path. The garden becomes a fantasy in which the viewer can imagine himself or herself amongst the wandering figures, which seem to be taken out of a dream sequence. Highlighting New York landmarks like Bryant Park, Times Square, and Coney Island, we find a city rediscovered in Wides’s striking photographs.

All the Worlds will be on view from March 21 to April 27, 2013, at 529 W. 20th Street, New York, NY 10011.

Susan Wides, Brooklyn Bridge Garden [June 10, 2012], Kim Foster Gallery, New York, NY

At Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe, artist Michael Reafsnyder presents Abstract paintings and ceramics in his solo exhibition We Ate the House. Using clay, engobe, glaze, and layers of paint, the artist creates gooey forms that twist and turn in churning rainbow designs. When describing the texture of his work, the artist said:

“The liquidity of paint and clay allow for ‘Indiana Jones’-type adventures, a sort of immediate experience in which every turn or twist presents a new pleasure and a new concern. The trick is to make sure that the works do not end up solely as a record of those decisions, but take on a new life.”¹

These sculptural creatures allow for endless invention, engaging the viewer to follow his or her own path through the detailed crevices. The works serve to represent Reafnesky’s idea of whimsical expression, and, conversely to Wides’s photographs, act as a new form of discovery, distant from everyday scenes.

Michael Reafsnyder, Dusty, 2011, Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe, New York, NY

We Ate the House will be on view from March 21 to April 20, 2013, at 525 W. 22nd Street, New York, NY 10001.