6 MUST-SEE GALLERY SHOWS IN NEW YORK THIS FALL

Here, Artsy’s editors share their favorite fall shows that recently opened in New York galleries.

Roe Ethridge and Alex Prager

Last season, the most exciting photography on view in New York was challenging, heady, and subversive: Curran Hatleberg’s cross-country road trip pictures of bees, cars, and stoop sitters; Elle Pérez’s intimate portraits of their queer community; and Paul Mpagi Sepuya’s tricky shots of friends in his studio. Two of this season’s best photo shows swing the other direction: They’re (mostly) fun and games.

Just try not to smile upon seeing Roe Ethridge’s show, “Sanctuary 2,” at Andrew Kreps. His pictures vary in subject and format, with a humorous thread weaving throughout. White Asparagus and Ketchup (2019) features the titular foodstuffs, resting on a refrigerator shelf. Light glints off the Heinz bottle, turning the prosaic condiment into a spotlit star. Another photograph,Susan Lucci and Derek Chadwick (2018), depicts the famous soap actress plunging a fake, bloody knife into (actor and model) Chadwick’s chest. Lucci smiles battily, amplifying the campiness of the entire red-lit vision.

Alex Prager

Taking aesthetic cues from film, fashion photography, pulp fiction, and her native city of Los Angeles, Alex Prager produces Technicolor photographs with dark, unsettling undercurrents. “I find my inspiration in the city of Los Angeles,” she explains. “It’s a strange picture of perfection—but there is an eerie monotony that creeps in. It can slowly drive a person crazy, that sense of unease under the surface of all this beauty and promise.” Populated by seductively stylized women, Prager’s photographs resemble vintage Hollywood movie stills. She constructs ambiguous scenes weighted with the uneasy expectation of impending danger. References to the films of Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch and the photographs of Cindy Sherman and Gregory Crewdson abound in her work.

’s show at Lehmann Maupin, titled “Play the Wind,” brings more Tinseltown delight to Manhattan. A new film, with the same name as the exhibition, features everything you could want from an artwork about Los Angeles: a saturated palette, jokes about traffic, incredible costumes, and a freaky love story that ends on a stage. Sure, there are dark undertones to both exhibitions—the title “Sanctuary” hints at refugee crises worldwide, while Prager wryly undermines the superficiality of her home—but the lessons go down like candy………….

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