Jeffrey Deitch Gallery’s latest show might be the most colorful and fun one of this month! It will mesmerize you with its brightly-colored rows of whimsical faces. Kenny Scharf disintegrates his subjects’ faces in order to obscure and mystify the hyperbolic emotion contained in his comic art-inspired characters.

This exhibit delivers an explosive visual power that can only be experienced in person. It does so despite critics’ commentary that Scharf’s work is nothing more than a bizarre mixture of influences ranging from Dali and Pollock to Disney and to Basquiat, rather than part of a progressive art movement in itself.

Whether or not you conceptually connect with this artist’s work, you’ll be taken by the violent force that is conveyed by Scharf’s chaotic superimposition of bright colors on large-scale canvases, which stand in high contrast against this gallery’s massive white walls. 

Jeffrey Deitch Gallery is located at 18 Wooster Street.

4. Laura Owens, Whitney Museum (Closes February 4) 

This month, the Whitney is presenting a retrospective exhibit of Laura Owens’ work. Throughout this show, you will be charmed and moved by her fearless and adventurous approach to painting.

Her body of work is a visually moving exploration of texture, volume, color, and perspective, which isn’t limited by any rules. Owens harmoniously juxtaposes the heaviness of her brushstrokes with the lightness of pastel color palettes. She effortlessly interacts with high and low art, politics and humor as well as abstraction and image.

Her work is as political as it is playful. It explores feminist subjects without fear of “heavy pinks of frilly brushwork,” which showcases her softness and feminine sensibilities.

Her textured brush strokes move with volume out of Owens’ massive canvases, engraving the harmonious symphony of color in your mind.

The Whitney Museum is located at 99 Gansevoort Street.

5. Douglas Gordon, Back and Forth and Forth and Back, Gagosian Gallery (Closes February 3) 

This month, the Gagosian is showing two massive projections of the film Psycho, which Douglas Gordon has slowed down to a length of 24 hours. One plays forwards while the other is screened in reverse.

This show is as exhilarating as it is frightening. It manages to transfer a very physical experience of immobilizing horror through several techniques.

The high-pitch soundtrack of bird screeches, coupled with Psycho’s large-scale projections, stands in high contrast with this room’s all-consuming darkness, sending your mind and body into a state of high alert.

Psycho’s masterful close-up of its characters’ tense and fearful expressions was created to elicit feelings of primal fear. Gordon slows down the film to enhance these sensations in the most unsettling of ways. Moreover, the dualistic display of images moving backward and forwards, which make you feel disoriented in time and space, add to these feelings of tension.

Back and Forth and Forth and Back is a truly immersive art experience, one that awakens your instinctual survival mode as you irrationally feel vulnerable and claustrophobic inside the Gagosian’s perfectly safe, massive rooms.

The Gagosian Gallery is located at 522 West 21st Street. 

6. Benjamin Kress, New Paintings, Callicoon Fine Arts Gallery (Closes December 22) 

Photo by @callicoonfinearts

This exhibit will “transport you into an almost surreal and hypnotic technicolor environment, that enthralls and fascinates.”

This show’s participating artists display techniques such as “the use of piercing, vivid colors as well as 2D and 3D shapes” to spark a physiological and perceptual response to their exploration of color.

These pieces’ playful experimentation with bright, intense colors might evoke a strong emotional response the moment your gaze locks onto one of this exhibit’s paintings.

Castle FitzJohns Gallery is located at 98 Orchard Street.

8. Thomas Hirschhorn, De-pixelation, Gladstone Gallery (Closes December 22)