(…)Another lively, artist pairing exhibition is on view a block away at Nahmad Contemporary with “SUPERUNKNOWN/Max Ernst and Yves Tanguy with Urs Fischer.”
This time, the Dada infused and Surrealist streaked duo (both European refugees) are represented with paintings executed in the turbulent decade after World War I and through the more cataclysmic years of World War II.
But instead of white walls as a backdrop, the works are hung along the floor to ceiling wallpaper expanse of Urs Fischer’s “GapU toothed City” from 2017U20, a kind of photographic reprise in the negative of New York City’s graffiti bombed fences and downtown shops.
Even if the gritty assemblage strikes some as gimmicky, the individual paintings such as Ernst’s “Bird Cemetery” from 1927 and Tanguy’s “The Sifter of Gold” from 1945, are powerful and moving enough to offset the raffish sturm und drang of Fischer’s cityscape. It is, after all, trying times.
(Through November 5 at 980 Madison).