Steve Alexander

Roundway Hill, Wiltshire, July 23rd, 2011 via Steve Alexander

Steve Alexander is one of the world’s foremost crop circle documentarians. This month he joins Skink Ink Fine Art in Williamsburg for Rural Graffiti, an exhibition of his photographic prints. Alexander shows his striking aerial photographs of crop circles from the past three summers in the UK, where a majority of these formations have occurred since the 1970s. He reveals the massive scale and flawless geometric shapes that are undetectable from the ground, providing professional records of a temporary artform to media, researchers, and the public. The gallery exhibits thirty of them, many of which are blown up past poster size.

See Rural Graffiti at Skink Ink Fine Art in Williamsburg through November 27^th.

Nicole Handel

"Symphony no. 9" via Nicole Handel

Nine year Bed-Stuy resident Nicole Handel draws form her community and whimsical imagination to create dreamy mindscapes with gouache, watercolor, and sharpie in her latest exhibition at Yes Gallery, Concrete Garden. Handel contrasts fantasy with reality, and nature with city when rainbow trout and blooming lilies float among high-rise housing projects and cars. Her fertile, volatile scenes are so saturated with color and form both abstract and figurative that it takes patience to fully absorb each painting. Pastel splatters of watercolor cover the majority of the canvas, where she also captures the delicate architectural details of city blocks. It’s difficult to discern her process when indications of technical and spontaneous techniques seem to devolve into each other. To construct such a precise vision from a precarious medium is Handel’s mysterious dance between improvisation and careful planning.

Concrete Garden is now on view at Yes Gallery in Greenpoint until November 13th.