Finding versions of men and women in love is my theme for this year’s Armory week shows. Let’s dismiss the piles of melting or collapsing sculpture and the aisles of works pushing forward the usual body parts and agendas. What did you like? Many know that in D. H. Lawrence’s classic novel Women in Love, the working-class sisters Ursula and Gundrun, live in England’s industrial midlands before World War I. They search for love with Rupert and Gerald respectively; this quartet endures severe psycho-sexual dilemmas (seen, too, in Ken Russell’s Women in Love 1969 film). Have things improved today?
Samantha Yun Wall
Samantha Yun Wall explores her own Black/Korean hybridity and lost and folk narratives that demonize multiracial women. Her exquisite, affordable ink on clayboard drawings positively address stereotypes some women face. In A Shadow to Live In, 2024, 30 x 24 inches, the black ink is painstakingly scratched away to reveal a darker body embracing a tan-toned nude female body. The diagonal curves of the arms and body parts, a hint of light behind the couple, and the close-up feeling invites the viewer to share their true intimacy. Wall, born in South Korea in 1977 and living in Portland, Oregon for almost three decades, recently won the Betty Bowen Seattle Museum Award and will have a solo show there in 2026 as well as a 2027 solo show at Miami’s Ringling Museum of Art. She is represented by the L.A. Timothy Hawkinson Gallery (www.timothyhawkinsongallery.com)
Anne Samat’s Mysterious Beauty series updates myths and family tales to empower viewers. Born in 1973 in Malaysia, Samat works in Kuala Lumpur and Cold Springs, New York and has three international upcoming shows in 2025-7 (see https://marcstraus.com). Samat applies her traditional artist/weaver training to build gendered totems that interconnect trinkets and treasures from Malaysia, supply store parts from nails to gaskets, and personal memorabilia into fierce, empathic larger-than-life spirit beings.
Dyani White Hawk, screen print
Dyani White Hawk’s screen prints place Lakota symbols in the foreground to honor the historic importance of Indigenous cultures in the world. To See With Intention, 2024 (Tandem Press, Edition of 24, 58 x 28 ½ inches) (www.tandempress.wisc.edu) is sold out, but this mixed-heritage artist’s Lakota hourglass form, called kapemni, also appears in other print works and in ceramic work on one wall at the Whitney Museum. White Hawk often includes beadwork or quillwork in her paintings and mixed media works. As an artist of Lakota, German, and Welsh heritages, she draws on Euro-American and Lakota traditions. Her philosophical titles, such as To See With Intention and Intersections, and her symbols unite all genders and heritages. White Hawk was born in 1976 in Madison, Wisconsin (www.dyaniwhitehawk.com)
Patricia Cronin and Deborah Kass
Patricia Cronin, Aphrodite Reimagined, Modelled 2018, Cast 2022, Bronze and resin, 28 x 7 1/2 x 8 1/2 in, 76.2 x 19.1 x 21.6 cm, Edition of 6 + 2 APs
Patricia Cronin Aphrodite Reimagined, Modelled 2018, Cast 2023, Resin and bronze, 28 x 7 1/2 x 8 1/2 in, 76.2 x 19.1 x 21.6 cm, Edition of 6 + 2 APs
Army of Love, Pattie Cronin’s solo show at Manhattan’s Chart Gallery, was inspired by archeologist Iris Love’s discovery of Aphrodite’s temple in Knidos, Turkey. Cronin celebrates the queer, mythic, historic, and feminist aspects of this ancient goddess. Her unstretched paintings, as well as sculptures and watercolors, invoke the sea, site of Aphrodite’s birth, and earth. Cronin was born in 1963 in Beverly, Massachusetts and was among the first gay artists to legally marry her artist partner Deb Kass in New York City. Her Rome Prize, honors, and exhibitions are at https://www.patriciacronin.net and https://chart-gallery.com. The Army of Love exhibition title says it all.
Doowon Lee
The men in and around the Armory Show have numerous takes on love, including painful reminders of loveless lives. Doowon Lee’s Birds on a Stormy Night (mixed media on wool, 80 x 63 inches, courtesy ACA Galleries, NYC) shows a range of individually shaped and colored birds trying to fly as helicopters and war planes clog the air space; in one corner, a three-piece male band stands on a prone turtle’s back as a frog and a bird look on. The colors, lines, and movement in this work make it the one I would buy! The (all male?) birds and band are metaphors for upbeat, individualized spirits trying to survive threatening times. This is one of several exquisite, affordable paintings and tapestries by Doowon Lee, a self-taught Korean artist born in 1982 and based in Seoul (https://acagalleries.com).
Tim Youd
Bright Lights, Big City follows an unnamed 24-year-old Manhattan fact-checker who unravels after his wife leaves him. Artist Tim Youd, using the same style typewriter as Jay McInerney’s original Smith-Carona classic 12, greeted the author as he was re-typing the novel at Cristin Tierney’s Gallery in Manhattan (photo credit: Bob Krasner @bobkrasner). Nearby guests drank champagne, but Youd will be typing until September 13; he’ll switch to an IBM Selectric II at the end as did the author for his final draft. Youd, at https://timyoud.com, has 1600 followers on Instagram; collectors buy his typed pages as art. Youd’s manual typewriter collection at home in California may be art, too. As his typed art takes him all over the world, Youd seems happy enough yet he often types books by men who are not.
Tim Youd re-types Bright Lights, Big City as part of Fifteen, a group exhibition currently on view at Cristin Tierney Gallery’s new Tribeca location through October 4.
Author Nicholas Boggs
James Baldwin: A Love Story is being featured on PBS News and all over town, including at The Drawing Center, where author Nicholas Boggs discussed his hefty tome with poet Terrence Hayes on September 6th. Boggs researched the platonic and romantic loves in Baldwin’s life and the love theme that unites his hard-hitting writings. The Drawing Center also features art by Beauford Delaney (through September 14), Baldwin’s first love (I have yet to read the book and don’t know any specifics). In Baldwin’s novels, his Black, working-class characters search for love even as they are targeted by White cops and by prejudiced parties. For Baldwin, love is the antidote to hate. See https://nicholasboggs.com and read James Baldwin’s books!
Installation view, Hank Willis Thomas, I AM MANY, 2025Jack Shainman Gallery, 46 Lafayette Street, New York, NY© Hank Willis Thomas. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. Photo: Dan Bradica Studio
Hank Willis Thomas
The author with famed choreographer Bill T. Jones
Modernizing the love theme, Hank Willis Thomas fills the palatial, high-ceilinged, marble columned galleries at Jack Shainman’s landmarked building with I AM MANY, an overflow of neon, bronze, acrylic, and mixed media work. LOVE OVER RULES, a 2020 54 x 48 inch neon alternately lights each word. America is a mixed media 2025 maze that includes decommissioned US prison uniforms (68 x 159 x 1 ¼ inches). RGB, 2023 is a large red, green, and blue work from decommissioned US flags and prison uniforms. Looking for America, 2018 (bronze and steel, 61 x 97 7/8 x67 1/8 inches overall) is a 970-pound sculpture of a figure balancing on one hand on a platform. Thomas advocates for the dignity of the Black race and for the love that America could offer all. See https://www.hankwillisthomas.com and https://jackshainman.com.
I ran out of time to write about more artists at The Armory and related shows. The artists discussed above aim to replace global stereotypes and age-old discriminations with love! Happy art viewing! WM
