How Artists Today Are Mocking Donald Trump

Donald Trump may have just been forced to abandon one of his most prominent properties in New York, but elsewhere in the city—only a bit further uptown from the soon-to-be former Trump Soho—the president has become a smashing success in real estate. (Though for the first time ever, this achievement might actually not be to his liking.) Dozens of Trumps are now starting to dominate an ever-growing radius in Chelsea, establishing their presence in galleries like Metro Pictures and Jack Shainman via Jim Shaw‘s not so flattering ink drawings and Nina Chanel Abney‘s chaotic canvases capturing today’s political climate, which are of course occasionally studded with a fleshy man whose blonde hair resembles a helmet (and whose exposed lower half is thankfully obscured in one instance by a strategically placed dollar sign). Now that Peter Saul‘s flocks of both ducks and Trumps have vacated Mary Boone Gallery with the closing of his exhibition “Fake News,” even more of Abney’s political work can be glimpsed just a few blocks away, too—not too far off, in fact, from Mathieu Malouf’s “Toxic Masculinity Fallout Shelter” at Greene Naftali, which is peopled with everyone from Caitlyn Jenner to Kim Jong Un to—you guessed it—the president. See those works and more, unsurprisingly all made in 2017, here.