Ding Yi, a Chinese artist of the “85 new wave” generation who has work in the Guggenheim’s current exhibition, Art and China After 1989: Theater of the World, shows another side of his work in a solo exhibition at the Timothy Taylor gallery (until 28 October ). The show’s title, Appearance of Crosses, refers to the “x” motif Ding has consistently used since 1988 as a nod to markers for the printing process (he is also a graphic designer) and as a break from traditional Chinese art in its rational grid structure, he says. This “small, intimate work is a daily retreat from my large studio work”, he says of the show’s 16 acrylic-and-pencil on paper works, made last year at home in the evenings. Ding also has an exhibition at his friend Sean Scully’s studio in Chelsea (until 17 November).
Proof: Francisco Goya, Sergei Eisenstein, Robert Longo at the Brooklyn Museum (until 7 January 2018), co-organised by Longo and first shown at the Garage Museum in Moscow, unites the work of three artists who have all chronicled the politics of their times. Goya’s Disasters of War print series, Eisenstein’s Soviet films and Longo’s large-scale, photorealist charcoal on paper works (including a portrait of President Obama from 2012) are shown in separate, adjacent spaces. Seven films by Eisenstein, including Battleship Potemkin (1925), are played simultaneously on a massive scale in a cylindrical space. Slowed to a pace of one frame per five seconds, you “lose montage, but see each shot masterfully”, says Sara Softness, who organised the Brooklyn presentation of the show. It would take a week to see the whole of Ivan the Terrible, Part II!
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has returned to the question that drove its 1944 show of fashion and design with the current exhibition Items: Is Fashion Modern? (until 28 January 2018). MoMA has gone all in for the reprise, giving its entire sixth floor to the presentation—or “investigation”, as MoMA calls it— of 111 pieces of clothing and accessories from the past century, all presented thematically. One especially on-trend section, given the rise of “athleisure” wear, looks at the intersection of fashion and sport. The show is thoughtful and intellectually engaging, but it is also just a pleasure to see this mix of diverse pieces from popular and high-end fashion, including a Wonderbra, an Yves Saint Laurent “smoking” jacket, a fur coat (on loan, interestingly, from Peta) and a little black dress by Chanel.