Otis Jones at STRAUS, Xu Zhen® at COHAN, Nathlie Provosty at KARG

James Kalm captures views of three exhibitions on a Sunday afternoon on the Lower East Side. With Otis Jones at the Marc Straus Gallery, we’ll experience this Texas artist’s debut. Formal yet brusque, precise yet crude, these paintings seem to flit from one aesthetic extreme to another, their balanced geometric forms are rendered with an immediacy of a craft shop hot shot. John Yau’s review here: https://hyperallergic.com/432481/otis-jones-marc-straus-2018/ Xu Zhen® presents an installation “Movement Fields” at James Cohan. This exhibition is an amalgam of works initiated in 2013 that explores protest and popular expressions, by contrasting art historical objects, comic texts and paths and sod maps, visitors are induced to question where and if peoples can come together for “change”. Lastly, “My Pupil is an Anvil” at Nathalie Karg Gallery is Nathlie Provosty’s second show with the gallery. Provosty gave viewers an insightful tour of her first show, featuring her ambitious paintings about a year ago, and this brief walk through exposes her continuing developments, which includes a new investigation into brilliant color. Nathalie’s first Kalm Report is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndC2PZtqSpU&t=2s