Chelsea may be the New York art neighborhood that many people love to disdain. It also may be approaching a tipping point, where new apartment towers outnumber galleries. But the place is not monolithic. Its scores of galleries come in all shapes, sizes and annual budgets, and as usual they offer a ton of art to be seen. Here is but a small sample.
GARTH GREENAN through May 19; 545 West 20th Street, garthgreenan.com. Jaune Quick-to-See Smith’s robust combination of the painterly, the political and much else has only gotten stronger, especially in the Trade Canoe series dating to the early 1990s. Three additions to it dominate her first show in New York since 2013. In them the big canoes are piled with symbols of conflict between American Indians and settlers, including skulls, schematic buffalo heads (which conjure arrowheads), the names of extinct animals and other texts, and portraits of Geronimo and George Armstrong Custer. Denser is better, as in Trade Canoe: Ghost Canoe, but everything exudes multiple passions: for art history, color, oil paint, endangered cultures and setting the record straight.