Chelsea Shows for the Thanksgiving Table

NEW YORK—Need some conversation starters to avoid that awkward Thanksgiving-dinner silence? There’s nothing like contemporary art to spark a robust conversation with those cousins you haven't seen in 364 days. So why not bone up on the latest exhibitions in Chelsea and surprise the fam with your impossibly avant-garde, in-the-know status? Besides, it’s a great time to see art in Chelsea anyway, with a feast of galleries and museums serving up everything from the luminous to the macabre, to the luminously macabre. Here are five current exhibitions on ARTINFO’s must-see list. You can thank us later.

1. Jason Rhoades, “Black Pussy” at David Zwirner, 519 W. 19th Street, through January 25, 2008

The word pussy is not typically a part of polite dinner-party chit-chat. But no one said Jason Rhoades’s “Black Pussy” soirees were polite. The artist staged the series of fetes—which also included live performances and photography to immortalize each occasion—in his Los Angles studio over a period of six months, expressly for the purpose of creating Black Pussy. Each guest was required to submit a synonym for the female genitalia, which Rhoades added to his ever-growing "encyclopedia" of "personal pussy words." Vestiges of that project are 185 neon signs glowing with Rhoades's synonyms in this sprawling, 3,000-square-foot installation, the last of a trilogy. The work is a lot to take in—a jumble of what can only be referred to as “stuff”: hookahs, dream catchers, beaver-felt cowboy hats, glass vegetables, and a homemade aluminum copy of Jeff Koons’s bunny, not to mention a giant macramé work covering one wall and a small, empty stage bearing the words “Live in the Black Pussy.” Plus, it’s set to a soundtrack of voices recorded during the dinners. Rhoades died unexpectedly at age 41 last year, not long after the installation was finished, so the exhibition has an eerie quality, too: part memorial, part cultural anthropology, and part chaos. Perhaps eeriest of all is Rhoades’s white suit that hangs serenely in the middle of it all. According to the gallery, the artist placed the suit there, in place of a signature, just days before he died.

2. “The Incomplete” at the Chelsea Art Museum, 556 W. 22nd Street, through January 12, 2008

“The Incomplete” examines how we define closure—or the lack thereof—through contemporary art. The real treat here, however, is the rare opportunity to see multiple pieces from each of more than 30 artists spanning four generations, from the emerging, such as Aya Uekawa and Kelli Williams, to art-world veterans and blue-chip superstars including Ashley Bickerton, Karen Kilimnik, and Jeff Koons. The works are all over the board in terms of quality and subject matter, but our favorites include Bickerton’s digital print on canvas Hula Girl (2006), Kilimnik’s mixed media the bossy sparrows or hey this one’s mine, move over buster! (2005), Koons’s Cape Codder Troll (1986), and Chris Johanson’s acrylic-on-panel Untitled (glad you are here now) (2000).

3. Folkert De Jong, “Les Saltimbanques,” at James Cohan Gallery, 533 W. 26th Street, through November 24

Folkert De Jong’s sculptures from years past were creepy—life-size, gruesome human figures, some missing limbs or skin and others wielding weapons—but the recent works in the Amsterdam-based artist’s first solo exhibition in New York are even scarier, though most have all their arms and legs and are unarmed. The Styrofoam-and-polyurethane harlequin sculptures inspired by characters from Picasso’s Rose Period are slowly rotting caricatures commenting on human folly, emotions, and familial roles. There’s nothing else like this in Chelsea at the moment, so see it now, if you dare.

4. Chen Wenguang, at Dillon Gallery, 555 W. 25th Street, through December 15

Chen Wenguang’s paintings literally glow from the inside out. The Chinese artist, in his second solo exhibition at Dillon Gallery, uses a mixture of oxidized mineral pigments and silver and gold leaf that harkens back to the ancient “Nihonga” technique popular during the Tang Dynasty from 618 A.D. to 907 A.D. Wenguang, who is well known in China and Japan, is just making headway in the United States. His jewel-like works bridge the ages and pay homage to nature and process, but they are worth seeing for their beauty alone.

5. Melanie Willhide, “The Belt of Venus,” at Bellwether, 134 Tenth Avenue, through December 22

Showing in Bellwether’s Project Room, Melanie Willhide also employs gold leaf in her works, using it to nearly obscure the images in her deliberately faded photographs. Accompanying these is the Los Angeles-based artist's silver-plated sculpture of words drawn from text on the back of vintage 1920s photographs she has collected. The result is a mysterious little series hinting at love, death, and delicate, fleeting memories. See it before it disappears.