Rounding up the best gallery exhibitions across the United States each month, Galerie traveled from New York to Los Angeles to discover the top solo shows for December. From Francesco Clemente’s paintings, watercolors, and frescoes exploring the self and longings at Lévy Gorvy Dayan in New York to Sabine Moritz’s abstract canvases capturing moments suspended in time at Gagosian in Beverly Hills, these are the shows that are not to be missed this month.
4. Clementine Keith-Roach at P·P·O·W, New York
A British artist who lives on a rural farm outside of London, Clementine Keith-Roach worked as a set designer before turning to ceramics as her creative medium. Inspired by travels through Greece, Turkey, and the Middle East, she began collecting old terracotta urns, which she transforms by casting her body parts, covering the plaster cats with clay, and attaching them to the aged storage pots. Painting her physical parts to mimic the patina of the distressed vessels, she constructs a dialogue between the past and the present, connecting her laboring limbs with the Mediterranean urns, which were once utilitarian objects. Bodies and hands now support the old urns, evoking acts of collective care. In a related series of reliefs, which do not incorporate older objects but are painted to look equally aged, comforting hands cast from family and friends come together to form a compassionate community—a task that is timeless.