Right now, the galleries in Tribeca are opening up fast, and the current exhibitions feature work that is small in size but huge in narrative scope. Whether you’re drawn to dreamlike paintings or funeral weaving from Vietnam, there’s a lot on view this fall — assuming you don’t mind paying the $10 latte price at Rigor Hill.
The Purple Planet of Dunham
Matthew Brown Gallery is hosting Carroll Dunham’s return to New York following his departure from Gladstone Gallery, which represented him for 20 years. The exhibition features paintings where a White male artist is surrounded by purple people, crows, and cute brown dogs. Dunham has traded his well-known pink wrestlers for purple figures who dance, sing, and tug at the sculptor in all directions. On the 12-foot canvas “Finished”, figures pull at each limb of the painter like a vision of anxiety come to life, with the work spanning from 2019 to 25.
Goldstein Packages Art
Journal Gallery has a different approach from other shows, and Mia Goldstein, who was born in 2001, embodies it. Her practice follows the ethos of “paint what you know,” which she interprets through shipping and handling. In most of her paintings, artworks appear wrapped, crated, or resting on a dolly. One piece, based on a true story, shows a Magritte laid bare in the back of an SUV — a collector wanted to see the work as-is, so the gallery sent it over in a car trunk. The insurance headache if they were rear-ended is hard to imagine.
Safa’s Calm Palette
The paintings at Bortolami by Christine Safa are small in size but large in effect. Her color choices are limited to blues, oranges, and greens, and she uses these to create gentle meditations on peace. The tiny pictures of rainbows, oceans, and sunflowers could be mistaken for mere trifles, but when placed beside the larger, more figurative works, they take on a monumental quality, opening up into explorations of motion, emotion, and open-ended narrative. One simple image of a woman hugging her loyal brown dog stands out as one of the show’s most relatable and calming moments.
Francalanza’s Cringe Sculptures
Chapter NY’s current exhibition features Giuseppe Francalanza, whose work includes cringe air conditioner sculptures covered in graffiti with phrases like “k.” and “baby”, placed in the front gallery. However, beyond that space, five paintings are worth your time. The press release credits a musical tuner as inspiration, but the reviewer detects influences from Da Vinci, Botticelli, and Raphael instead. Francalanza applies pigment only to remove it again, leaving figures that appear physically present even as their minds wander elsewhere.
Funeral Weaving in Vietnam
The apexart exhibition centers on the funeral weaving customs of a small village in northern Vietnam. After a N’ng An people weave different patterns each day, creating scraps of fabric that become funerary garments after an elder’ dies, the family enters a period of mourning during which a daughter of the deceased takes the garment and puts it back into service, wearing it as an act of remembrance for her mother and a sign of the ongoing cycle of life. The show presents three distinct bodies of work: a series of moving images documenting one family, a video piece featuring the village’s loom, and a reconstruction of the textile itself.
The Big Picture
What stands out across these shows is how story-driven they are. Francalanza’s paintings reference the High Renaissance, Goldstein’s work captures the absurdity of shipping art, and Safa’s palette holds the passage of time. The shows are small in scale, but they pack real ideas into tight spaces.
What to See First
If you are heading to Tribeca, start with Dunham at Matthew Brown Gallery. His wrestlers are gone, replaced by purple people who tug at the sculptor’s limbs. Then move to Goldstein at Journal Gallery for the paintings of artworks in transit — the Magritte in the SUV is a must-see. After that, Francalanza’s cringe sculptures are worth getting past, because the five paintings behind them are genuinely worth your time.
Key Facts Box
- Carroll Dunham: Matthew Brown Gallery, 390 Broadway, through October 24
- Christine Safa: Bortolami, 39 Walker Street, through October 24
- Mia Goldstein: Journal Gallery, 45 White Street, through October 3
- Giuseppe Francalanza: Chapter NY, 60 Walker Street, through October 17
- Funeral Weaving: apexart, 291 Church Street, through October 24
This fall, the art in Tribeca is well worth seeing, despite the high price of lattes there. The exhibitions are the reason to make the journey.
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