Reviews
Holly Coulis: Table Studies
Brooklyn Rail
Jason Rosenfeld reviews Holly Coulis: Table Studies at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, New York, on view through October 22, 2017. Rosenfeld writes: “Coulis’s subjects are not erotic. They are not vanitas images. They are not naturalistic. Instead, they somehow propel you into an imaginative space of sign systems denoting some arcane language—Pale Table, Red Tumblers […]
Thomas Trosch @ Fredericks & Freiser
Art in America
Eric Sutphin reviews the recent exhibition Thomas Trosch: Paintings: New And Old at Fredericks & Freiser, New York. Sutphin writes: “Trosch has mastered the art of suggestion: one gets a sense of the ages and affects of the figures through dashes and globs of paint. He accomplishes the difficult task of marrying subject matter and […]
Robert Motherwell: Early Paintings
artcritical
Megan Kincaid reviews Robert Motherwell: Early Paintings at Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, on view through October 28, 2017. Kincaid writes: “… Kasmin tackles a body of work that has been overshadowed by Motherwell’s critically lauded early explorations into collage and automatic drawing. Despite the commercial appeal of paintings and their prominence in Motherwell’s later career, […]
Power Color: Peter Saul at Mary Boone
Peter Saul has met the enemy and it’s us, and imparts this discomfort beautifully.
Expressionism Revisited
Painting Perceptions
John Goodrich reviews Crossroads: Lynette Lombard, David Paulson, and Thaddeus Radell at Sideshow Gallery, Brooklyn, on view through October 8, 2017. Goodrich writes: “Lombard’s paintings are unpopulated by human figures, and also appear to be anchored in immediate observations – though these are heightened by twisting, vertiginous plunges of space. Despite such distortions, Lombard’s sure sense […]
Ad Reinhardt: Blue Paintings
Brooklyn Rail
Eleanor Ray reviews Ad Reinhardt: Blue Paintings at David Zwirner Gallery, New York, on view through October 21, 2017. Ray writes: “Our idea of Reinhardt’s work, whether from reproductions or sporadic viewings, might tend to flatten it, and the in-person effect far exceeds that mental image. Having already been a fan of Reinhardt, I was […]
Rachel Rickert at E.TAY Gallery
artcritical
Roman Kalinovski reviews Rachel Rickert: The Ins and Outs at E.TAY Gallery, New York, on view through October 7, 2017. Kalinovski writes: “The strange pleasure that comes from visual frustration is a recurring theme in this exhibition. While Soft Boundaries and Verge present its two extremes with the curtain drawn and closed, respectively, and the […]
Alberto Giacometti and Alice Neel
The Nation
Barry Schwabsky investigates connections between the portrait paintings of Alberto Giacometti and those of Alice Neel. Schwabsky observes: “Although Neel and Giacometti both emerged from a left that was aligned with communism, neither one produced anything in a social-realist vein. It would also be wrong to see their insistence on portraiture as an acceptance of individualism. […]
Carolyn Case: The Mythic and The Mundane
Two Coats of Paint
William Eckhardt Kohler reviews Carolyn Case: Homemade Tatoo at Asya Geisberg, Chelsea, New York, on view through October 14, 2017. Kohler writes: “Case digs in with persistence, perseverance, and painterly inventiveness. Seeing this, one might think that paint and painting are the subject of these paintings, but that is only true in part. The paintings […]
Bernard Chaet: First Light
The New Criterion
Franklin Einspruch reviews Bernard Chaet: First Light at Alpha Gallery, Boston, on view through October 4, 2017. Einspruch writes that “[Chaet’s] landscapes are exuberant to the point of ferocity. Alpha Gallery in Boston is showing a suite of them produced during or inspired by plein-air sessions at dawn on the North Shore, towards and soon after the end […]
Emily Berger: Rhythm and Light
Huffington Post Arts: D. Dominick Lombardi
D. Dominick Lombardi reviews Emily Berger: Rhythm and Light at Walter Wickiser Gallery, New York, on view through October 25, 2017. Lombardi begins: “Emily Berger’s abstract paintings are the product of an intuitive process. Berger sees them as being about ‘thought and vision; they deal with light, space, movement, rhythm, color, speed and change, point […]
Brenda Goodman Cuts Deep
Hyperallergic
John Yau reviews Brenda Goodman: In a New Space continues at DAVID&SCHWEITZER Contemporary, Bushwick, Brooklyn through October 1, 2017. Yau writes: “Goodman renders the border between abstraction and representation meaningless. The internal sectioning of her forms invites us to categorize what we are looking at, even as they resist succumbing to that dominance. In the nearly […]
Leslie Wayne: Beyond Painterly
Two Coats of Paint
Sharon Butler and Jonathan Stevenson review Leslie Wayne: Free Experience at Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, on view through October 21st, 2017. They write: “… in his lecture series at Harvard in the 1980s, Frank Stella came up with the notion of ‘working space’ – that is, activating the space in front of the canvas by building out from […]
Suzan Frecon: The Pleasures of Slow Paintings
Hyperallergic
John Yau reviews Suzan Frecon: recent oil paintings at David Zwirner Gallery, New York, on view through October 21, 2017. Yau writes: “I think of Frecon’s shape as an abstract thing, a form that defies being turned into language or a message. I think her resistance to the tendency to easily convert her art into […]
Andrea Belag: Making Changes
Two Coats of Paint
Sharon Butler reviews Andrea Belag: Ghost Writer at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, New York, on view through October 15, 2017. Butler writes: “In [Belag’s] older work, the deep color triggered an inchoate emotional response, but now simple shapes and lines, truncated brushstrokes rendered in lively color, float on the picture plane. Many of the new paintings leave large […]
The Beauty of Ugly Painting
New York Times
Charlie Fox considers the allure of “ugly painting” in advance of a mid-career retrospective of works by Laura Owens at the Whitney Museum of American Art, on view November 10, 2017 – February 4, 2018. Fox writes: “Our present moment bristles with an extra-special awfulness, which may explain not only the existence of this new […]
Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction
Hyperallergic
Karen Emenhiser-Harris reviews Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, on view through September 17, 2017. Emenhiser-Harris writes: “According to the Kemper, this is the first museum exhibit in the US to show abstract artwork created exclusively by women of color. Stylistically varied and teeming […]
Mystery and Rapture: Landscapes by Four
Painting Perceptions
Tina Engels blogs about the recent exhibition Mystery and Rapture: Landscapes by Four, curated by William Bailey, at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Civitella Ranieri, Italy. The show featured works by Mario Fallani, Marco Fallani, Dan Gustin, and Langdon Quin. Engels notes that selections made by curator “[William] Bailey [convey] the resonance of different cultural spheres that results […]
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: Painting is Presence
The Nation
Ratik Asokan reviews Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s recent exhibition Under-Song For A Cipher at the New Museum, New York. Asokan observes: “For a portraitist, it’s a strange approach. But perhaps we aren’t dealing with portraiture. Abstract painting, as defined by Octavio Paz, ‘suggests contemplation to us—not of what it shows but of a presence which the colors and […]
Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting
Studio International
Donald Stone reviews Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting: Inspiration and Rivalry, on view at the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin through September 17, 2017 and the National Gallery of Art, Washington from October 22, 2017 – January 21, 2018. Stone writes: “The organisers of the latest exhibition … want us to see Vermeer […]