Six Must-See Exhibitions in Chelsea This Spring

“Home Life” at Matthew Marks Gallery

Through Mar. 20

Nayland Blake, Alex Da Corte, Thomas Demand, Lucian Freud, Robert Gober, Nan Goldin, Ken Price, Charles Ray, and Peter Fischli/David Weiss

Domesticity is the theme of the group exhibition “Home Life,” conceived during the ongoing pandemic. Taking its title from a drawing of the same title that Lucian Freud made during the first winter of World War II, this show reflects the many forms the domestic has taken. Highlights include Charles Ray’s sculpture Clothes pile (2020), Alex Da Corte’s painting Helter Shelter (2020), and Robert Gober’s wall-mounted vitrines Window, Curtain, Matches (2020).

Honor Titus at Timothy Taylor

Through Mar. 27

“For Heaven’s Sake”

Honor Titus’s dark, jewel-toned canvases romanticize current and former pastimes such as a sock hop, tennis matches, a waltz, a game of cards, kissing, and lounging on the grass. Observational in approach, these flat, fragmented street views imbued with nostalgia capture fleeting feelings of loneliness, as figures appear isolated, just beyond the viewer’s reach.

David Goldblatt at Pace Gallery

Through Mar. 28

“Strange Instrument”

South African photographer David Goldblatt, who died in 2018, captured arresting images of apartheid and the subsequent social conditions that still prevail in his home country. Curated by South African artist and activist Zanele Muholi and held in collaboration with Yancey Richardson Gallery, the exhibition includes more than 60 prints dating from the early 1960s to 1990, divided into groupings to reflect Muholi’s connection with Goldblatt as teacher, mentor, and friend.

Jeffrey Gibson at Sikkema Jenkins & Co.

Through Apr. 17

“All Good Fires”

Jeffrey Gibson obscures the lyrics from iconic American pop and dance music of the 1980s and ’90s with dizzyingly colorful geometric patterns. Testing the boundary between form and typography, the Mississippi Choctaw-Cherokee artist’s densely compact hand-beaded works allude to the struggles faced by marginalized communities. While the show centers on Gibson’s paintings, it also features dolls, a video, and two new punching bags.

Boyle Family at Luhring Augustine

Through Apr. 24

“Nothing is more radical than the facts”

Making virtually anything a subject of their multimedium practice, the late Mark Boyle, Joan Hills, and their children, Sebastian and Georgia—known collaboratively as the Boyle Family—viewed art as a limitless, open-ended exploration. This show marks the family’s first New York–based solo presentation in more than 40 years. Highlights include a selection of earthworks, or “earthprobes,” made between 1969 and 1990, which, at 6 feet square, serve as studies of select areas of the earth’s surface.

Susan Weil at Sundaram Tagore Gallery

Through May 29

“Now, Then, and Always”

An artist who came of age in the New York School in the 1950s, among Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Cy Twombly, and then husband Robert Rauschenberg, Susan Weil stood out for her exploration of movement and space through figurative painting. This exhibition features more than 70 years’ worth of work including a selection of 1950s landscape paintings, pieces from the “Blueprint” series (1949–2020), and related archival images.