1. Tauba Auerbach at Paula Cooper, through February 13.
“Projective Instrument," an elegant and exciting show of new works by San Francisco-born artist Tauba Auerbach, features large-scale abstract paintings as well as table-like sculptures which hold curious glass objects that resemble scientific instruments. Auerbach was inspired by a 1915 treatise by American architect and theosophist Claude Bragdon, in which he outlined a system for representing four-dimensional ornament on a two-dimensional plane.

With consummate craftsmanship and a visionary's intensity, Auerbach adapts Bragdon's proposals into a unified iconography that resonates throughout the show. In the sculptures, Auerbach transforms Bragdon's "ornaments" into three-dimensional "instruments." The paintings as well as the three-dimensional works highlight repeated patterns—lines and shapes alluding to the vortex and the helix, thus to movement and the passage of time. A number of the glass pieces, resulting from Auerbach's recent residency at Urban Glass in Brooklyn, are refined and imaginative interpretations of the ancient Greek “meander" pattern; only now, they convey ultra-cool precision and a rather menacing beauty.