Reviews — Page 14

David Rhodes reviews Painting Paintings (David Reed) 1975 at Gagosian Gallery, New York, on view through February 25, 2017. "In the context of painting in the ’70s, which sought to proscribe illusionism and favor complete material literalism, the paintings are pictures, as well as process. Not only do they record—actively conveying different configurations, speeds, and

Anna McNay reviews Vanessa Bell: 1879-1941 at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, on view through June 4, 2017. McNay concludes: "[Bell's] art and her life were inextricably intertwined: as her art was her life, so her life was her art. As [curator Ian A C ] Dejardin notes, in his preface to the exhibition catalogue:

John Yau reviews Chuck Webster: Look Around at Betty Cuningham Gallery, New York, on view through February 18, 2017. Yau writes: "'Liberty or Death' is a breakthrough painting for Webster and, in that regard, a major step for this artist, whose work is always interesting. For one thing, he has opened up a vast space

Andy Battaglia profiles painter Adrian Ghenie whose recent paintings are on view at Pace Gallery, New York through February 18, 2017. Battaglia notes: "Compositions can be figurative, [Ghenie] said, but the power of painting—when it has any power at all—is less in the cause than in the effect. And that effect is abstract regardless of

James Kalm visits an exhibition of new paintings by Sandro Chia at Marc Straus Gallery, New York, on view through April 2, 2017. Kalm notes: "In this, his first major show with Marc Straus Gallery, [Chia] shows a group of recent paintings, many featuring single figures accompanied by animals. Chia’s masterful feel for the painter’s

David DiMichele reviews Frank Stella: A Retrospective at the de Young Museum, San Francisco, on view through February 26, 2017. DiMichele notes: "The decorative quality in many of Stella’s paintings, particularly the protractor series from the late 1960s, has led many writers to compare him to Matisse, the master of color, but I see him

John Held, Jr. considers Japanese Gutai and its influences and impact in light of three San Francisco exhibitions: Kazuo Shiraga & Kour Pour: Earthquakes And the Mid Winter Burning Sun at Ever Gold Projects (through March 18), Tsuyoshi Maekawa, Alberto Burri, Lucio Fontana, et al.:Beyond Matter at Gagosian San Franciso (through March 18), and Japanese

Jason Ramos reviews Claire Tabouret: Eclipse at Night Gallery, Los Angeles, on view through March 4, 2017. Ramos writes: "Half-way between the vibrant exuberance of Rebecca Campbell’s images and Luc Tuyman’s clinical stroke-by-stroke reproductions lay the gliding, neutral toned figures of LA based French painter Claire Tabouret... The figures in the larger works and monoprints

Amanda Manitach reviews the recent exhibition Emily Gherard: Making Presence Known at Bridge Productions, Seattle. Manitach writes: "In [Gherard's] most recent series ... scale has diminished—dwarfed. Many of Gherard’s panels are smaller than the palm of a hand. Yet the bijou-sized pieces are encrusted with material that has a density as yet not experienced in

Paul Carey Kent reviews and compares two versions of the exhibition Abstract Expressionism, first on view at the at the Royal Academy, London this past fall and currently on view at the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain (through June 4, 2017). Kent concludes: "In all respects, then, Bilbao was superior to London, and what had seemed

Frances Spalding reviews Joan Eardley: A Sense of Place is at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, on view through May 21, 2017. Spalding writes: "[Eardley's] intense looking and her method of drawing affirm her admiration for Van Gogh, and an affinity between her urban work and his involvement with the coal mining

Robert C. Morgan reviews Jean Dubuffet and Larry Poons: Material Topologies at Loretta Howard Gallery, New York, on view through February 18, 2017. Morgan writes: "We know that both [Dubuffet and Poons] are painters, but culturally, they appear to have been informed by different attributes regarding scale and color, line, and force of visual impact...

Sharon Butler reviews works by Katharina Grosse at Gagosian Gallery, New York, on view through March 11, 2017. Butler writes: "The strength of Grosse’s past work rested in the clever, audacious way she combined paint and physical structure. These new paintings on canvas, though ambitious and slick in terms of energy and scale, lack the

Michael Hofmann reviews Max Beckmann in New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, on view through February 20, 2017. Hofmann writes: "One of the interesting things about Beckmann is how much the paintings moved and morphed under him. The form of the triptych was arrived at adventitiously; he simply had more material

Martin Gayford reviews Victor Pasmore: Towards a New Reality at Djanogly Gallery, Nottingham Lakeside Arts, on view through February 19, 2017. Gayford observes: "Few artists made more abrupt stylistic swerves. Consequently, [Pasmore's] career was a thesaurus of all the possibilities open to a 20th-century painter, from dingy social realism to millenarian modernism."

Hrag Vartanian reviews Tamara Gonzales: Ometeoli at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, New York, on view through February 11, 2017. Vartanian writes: "Gonzales is known for incorporating visual culture that has traditionally been more associated with lived culture — lace, graffiti, embroidery, textiles — rather than the world of art galleries. ... Her true subject matter

Charles A. Riley II reviews Willem de Kooning | Zao Wou-Ki at Lévy Gorvy Gallery, New York, on view through March 5, 2017. Riley writes that the show "features more than 20 paintings from the two artists’ absolute peak decades, the ’40s through the ’70s ... The initial presentation certainly makes the case for one

David Carrier reviews Postwar: Art Between the Pacific and the Atlantic, 1945–1965 at the Haus der Kunst, Munich, on view through March 26, 2017. Carrier concludes: "This powerful exhibition changes permanently your sense of the history of postwar art. It demonstrates that it is now possible to present a world art history in which the

Ron Morosan reviews Inventing Downtown: Artist-Run Galleries in New York City, 1952–1965 at the Grey Art Gallery, New York University, on view through April 1, 2017. Morosan writes: "As we examine more of the evidence presented in Inventing Downtown we start to see how this exhibition shows the missing link in the development of what

Matthew Sperling writes about David Hockney's pool paintings. A retrospective of works by David Hockney will be on view at Tate Britain from February 9 - May 29, 2017. Sperling writes: "... on arrival in California ... one particular feature of the architecture, previously only seen in black and white photographs, struck Hockney with fresh