Parrish museum, Guild Hall show art discoveries in many forms

Remembrance, romance and a sense of discovery are all fine art reasons to spend a day visiting two leading museums in the Hamptons to see their new fall-winter shows.

PARRISH ART MUSEUM

In a triennial event, the Parrish presents its third iteration of “Artists Choose Artists,” opening Sunday. Seven established artists who have homes, studios or both on the East End serve as jurors, selecting two emerging artists whose works will be exhibited along with theirs.

The jurors are photographers Cindy Sherman and Tina Barney, sculptor-painter-performance artist Lynda Benglis, sculptors Jorge Pardo and Donald Lipski (the latter known for large-scale public installations), multimedia installation artist Tony Oursler, and Leo Villareal, whose work combines LED lights and computerized video effects.

“You see a definite kinship between the selected artists and the jurors who picked them,” says Corinne Erni, Parrish’s curator of special projects, of which this is one. “But they’re not all working in the same field.”

Sherman, who photographs herself in most of her work, including a triptych in this show, chose painter Bill Komoski and site-specific clay artist Toni Ross. “Yet you can find a sense of mystery that creates a metaphor in their work as well as Cindy’s,” Erni says.

Dinah Maxwell Smith, who paints from photos, and RJT Haynes’ memory paintings evoke the everyday-life imagery of the large-scale photos of Barney, the juror who selected them.

Benglis, exhibiting 3-D paper work for this show, chose painters Garrett Chingery and Saskia Friedrich, whose works combine the metaphysical and fabric, respectively.

Pardo’s architectural-design silk-screen contrasts with Anne Bae’s paper cages signifying emotional bondage and Monica Banks’ signature porcelain cakes with commonplace events depicted on top.

While Lipski’s hanging installation relates to the large scaffolding by Ben Butler, who was selected by Lipski along with Suzanne Anker, the tiny, 3-D printer petri dishes mixing art with biology by Anker represent a stark contrast.

Oursler, whose video devices create talking heads, selected photographer Jackie Black — “Last Meals” on death row — and glass-metal sculptor Marianne Weil, who literally melts her work.

Juror Villareal’s “Particle Universe” LED map diverges sharply with Karin Waisman’s vegetable-like ceramics and Almond Zigmund’s classical-style abstracts on pedestals.

“It’s quite a diverse show,” Erni says in an understatement.

GUILD HALL

In 1974, artist Michael Knigin was invited by the Israel Museum and the Jerusalem Foundation to establish an atelier. Though this work he met Holocaust survivors and interpreted their experiences through drawings and montages. Granted access to the museum’s Holocaust archives, Knigin created a chronology of terror — ghettos, deportation, concentration camps — into which was born one of the most famous victims, Anne Frank, and a record of her response. The result is “Michael Knigin: The Holocaust and Anne Frank” now in the Museum at Guild Hall.

In another gallery, fonder memories are evoked in “Connie Fox & William King: An Artist Couple.” Meeting later in life, when their careers were established, abstract painter Fox and figurative sculptor King lived together in East Hampton, eventually marrying. When asked how their partnership worked, King, who died last year, said, “We only give our opinions when asked.” See the work of King and his widow — together again in art.

Meanwhile, colorist painter-sculptor William Heppenheimer, winner of Guild Hall’s 76th Annual Artist Members Exhibition in 2014, gets his first museum solo exhibit.