Jennifer Samet

Jennifer Samet interviews painter Joyce Pensato. Pensato comments: "I have to look at something for the drawing and the structure ... What I also do is mix up parts to throw off expectations. You’re not quite sure what you’re looking at. I sometimes use Felix the Cat’s eyes, a clown’s mouth, and Mickey’s ears. I

Jennifer Samet interviews painter Emily Cheng. Cheng remarks: "A lot of what I’m painting doesn’t exist in the visible world. So, to capture its enormity and its suggestive power, you have to be able to go into your imagination, which is not always cooperative. You pull out what you can from it. I want to

Jennifer Samet reviews Mercedes Matter: A Survey: Paintings & Drawings from 1929 to 1998 at Mark Borghi Fine Art, New York, on view through May 26, 2017. Samet writes: "Matter’s insistence on the nude female body, and on still lifes of flowers, drapery, and skulls as the focus of observational painting — for herself and

Jennifer Samet interviews painter Albert Oehlen on the occasion of his exhibition Elevator Paintings: Trees at Gagosian Gallery, New York, on view through April 15, 2017. Oehlen comments: "I decided to make painting, but I wasn’t coming from painting in the sense of needing to hold a brush and smear paint. Rather, it was a

Jennifer Samet reviews painting at the The 2017 Whitney Biennial continues at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, on view through June 11, 2017. Samet writes: "This year, the Whitney Biennial includes plenty of painting. And — for the most part — the painting is on message. It’s eccentric figuration with political content.

Jennifer Samet interviews painter Jennifer Coates, whose exhibition All U Can Eat is on view at Freight + Volume Gallery, New York, through April 16, 2017. Coates: "There are a lot of painting jokes. There are all kinds of moments where I think I can pretend to be this or that artist. It is very

Jennifer Samet interviews painter Craig Stockwell whose work is included in the 2016 deCordova New England Biennial, at the de Cordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts, on view through March 26, 2017. Stockwell remarks: "In our contemporary political moment, there is a conversation about control and freedom happening — on both sides. The conversation

Jennifer Samet interviews painter Tal R whose exhibition Tal R: Keyhole is on view at Cheim & Read through February 11, 2017. Tal R remarks: "Bonnard and Matisse are much more dangerous to get close to than some Surrealist painter from Helsinki in the 1940s. Think about the artists your mother would like (and who

Jennifer Samet interviews painter Alex Katz. Katz remarks: "So many things can be great subject matter. I could be looking at Nefertiti, and that could be something I see today. But it also could be movies and billboards and TV. I think everything in our culture is potential subject matter. You go into these areas

Jennifer Samet reviews Max Beckmann in New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, on view through February 20, 2017. Samet writes: "Clearly, what New York gave Beckmann was not superficial subject matter, but inspiration in the form of energy. His painterly style, developed and refined out of four decades of working, became