Sylvia Maier
Through Nov. 1. Malin Gallery, 515 West 29th Street, Manhattan; 646-918-7696,
Sylvia Maier’s beautifully crafted canvases in “About Sangomas and Soothsayers and Mischief” at Malin Gallery, which you can visit in person or view online, are ideal for this moment in New York. Coinciding with the reigniting of the Black Lives Matter movement, and recalling the 2018 exhibition “Posing Modernity: The Black Model From Manet and Matisse to Today,” which opened in New York at Columbia University and later moved to the Musée d’Orsay in Paris,
Ms. Maier’s paintings portray activists, dancers, musicians and denizens of Brooklyn with a cool and masterly approach drawn primarily in classical European painting.
“Activist Row/Reclaiming Her Time” (2018) shows a young woman taking a break from insurgency (presumably) with posters and fliers in the background depicting earlier civil rights and radical movements. “The Festival” (2018) captures people at the Afropunk Festival in Brooklyn, while “Drummer’s Grove” (2017) focuses on a vibrant group of percussionists in Prospect Park. A young man with a Maori-style tattoo on his face appears in many paintings, adding a contemporary element to her work that is countered by works like “The Beheading” (2020), an update of Renaissance and Baroque compositions drawn from biblical stories like Judith beheading Holofernes and referencing the 18th-century Haitian revolution that overthrew the French colonial regime. Here, it is women of color beheading a white man.
Ms. Maier’s work is bold in its narratives and deft in its execution. Yet it could depart more from historical models like those of Caravaggio, Manet or Puvis de Chavannes. Her subjects are inspiring, disruptive and sublime. It would be nice to see Ms. Maier’s compositions, brush stroke, palette or general approach emulate some of that same vital energy and revolt. MARTHA SCHWENDENER.
