Emily Spicer reviews the exhibition Painting Now: Five Contemporary Artists at Tate Britain, London, on view through February 9, 2014. The show features works by Tomma Abts, Gillian Carnegie, Simon Ling, Lucy McKenzie, and Catherine Story. Spicer writes that the show "brings together five contemporary artists whose paintings occupy a variety of conceptual concerns, while
Etty Yaniv reviews the exhibition Painting Impossible at Life on Mars, Bushwick. The show features works by Todd Bienvenu, Katherine Bradford, Jim Herbert, Arnold Mesches, and Karen Schwartz. Yaniv writes "Despite the wide diversity in their work, all five artists integrate figure and gesture with abstraction to generate a charged narrative, draw on the way
Christopher Joy and Zachary Keeting visit the studio of painter Lisa Sigal. Sigal discusses her painting practice in which plein-air painting informs her studio works. She comments: "My background is painting but in some ways I really feel like I want to respond to place... I started to assign myself places to go and look
Sharon Mizota reviews the exhibition of new work by Lesley Vance at David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, on view through January 4, 2014. Mizota writes that Vance "makes the kind of small, abstract paintings that would be easy to dismiss if they weren’t so solid, so alive... The paintings continually flirt with recognition, suggesting a
David Rhodes reviews the recent exhibition Alex Katz: Small Paintings 1987-2013 at Peter Blum Gallery, New York. Rhodes writes that "because the paintings are both very focused and fragmentary, they can be seen as both complete in themselves – time stilled – and as a sequence of moments, hours or years apart. That portraits appear
Daniel Gerwin reviews the exhibition Sarah McEneaney: Trestletown at Locks Gallery, Philadelphia, on view through November 23, 2013. Gerwin writes: "Modernism made much of the separation between life and art, but I’ve never bought that line. One of today’s hot trends is political or social activism as art, which is variously identified as social practice,
Andy Parkinson reviews the exhibition Painting Too at Harrington Mill Studios, on view through November 24, 2013. The show features works by Terry Greene, Vincent Hawkins, Matthew Macauley, Lisa Denyer, Rachel Pinks, Rachael Macarthur, and Stephen MacInnis. Parkinson writes that Painting Too "forms part-two of a duo of shows about abstract painting... If part-one, [The
Colm Tóibín interviews painter Miquel Barceló his recent work, on view at Acquavella Galleries, New York, through November 22, 2013. Talking about his technique of painting with bleach, Barceló comments: "you don’t see what happens until the day after. You believe it happens but you don’t know... With bleach, it’s always the eyes and hands
Julian Bell reviews the exhibition Daumier (1808-1879): Visions of Paris at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, on view through January 26, 2014. Bell writes that Daumier "tends to approach oils as if a matrix of free brushwork could deliver his ideas to him as lucidly as lines drawn with crayon or pen: but the
John Yau reviews an exhibition of paintings and drawings by Jake Berthot at Betty Cuningham Gallery, New York, on view through November 30, 2013. Yau writes: "The paintings are simple observations: a tree; a landscape stretching into the distance; a skull sitting on a table, facing you, like a friend who is trying to tell
Painter Fred Pollock hosts a group studio visit with Hilde Skilton, Mark Skilton, Anne Smart, Anthony Smart, Ben Wiedel-Kaufmann, Robin Greenwood, Sarah Greenwood, John Bunker, Nick Moore, Ashley West, Fred Crayk, Saul Greenberg, Emyr Williams, John Pluthero, Patrick Jones, and Sam Cornish. Discussing his work, Pollock comments: "I’m aware of the space in the painting,
Phillip J. Mellen interviews painter Ashley Garrett about her work. Garrett comments: "What's important in my work is having a sense of being grounded in the world, taking in the outside world... paying attention to light, sound, smell, touch, feeling, all the tactile stuff - [to be] bristling with attention." She continues, noting that this
Maria Calandra visits the studio of painter Jules de Balincourt. Balincourt's exhibition Itinerant Ones is on view at Victoria Miro Gallery, London through December 20, 2013. Calandra writes: "A diverse group of characters fade in and out of De Balincourt's paintings, which gives their personas a mystery akin to the narratives they are partaking in.
John Seed interviews painter Wayne Thiebaud on the occasion of the exhibition Wayne Thiebaud: Memory Mountains at Paul Thiebaud Gallery, San Francisco, on view through December 21, 2013. Discussing the theme of the show, Thiebaud comments; "There was the sort of opposite aspect of venerating them and having them be spiritual sources. That extreme --
Robin Cembalest reviews an exhibition of works by Ad Reinhardt at David Zwirner Gallery, New York, on view through December 18, 2013. Cembalest writes that the "show explores links between Ad Reinhardt's identity as abstract painter and as cartoonist, satirist, crusader, explicator, and slide-show maker... At a time when various New York abstractionists were starting
A’Dora Phillips and Brian Schumacher interview painter Lennart Anderson on the occasion of the exhibition Lennart Anderson: Paintings & Drawings at Leigh Morse Fine Arts, New York, on view through November 23, 2013. Speaking about perceptual painting Anderson comments: "I’m not dependent on what I’m carrying around in my head. If you have something to
Keith J. Varadi writes about the work of Joshua Abelow which was recently on view at James Fuentes, New York. Varadi writes: "It is an endeavor to engage with the factory-like output that is Joshua Abelow’s work... If one were to step inside his studio, he or she would see stacks of packaged paintings and
Miranda Sklaroff blogs excerpts on color from the new book Chatting with Henri Matisse: The Lost 1941 Interview (published by the Getty Research Institute, ed. by Serge Guilbaut) which makes public for the first time an interview with Henri Matisse conducted by Pierre Courthion. In one of the excerpts Matisse comments: "I finally came to
Matthew Hassell interviews artist Claire Chesnier about her work. Chesnier comments: "My compositions proceed from the avoidance of the edges of the paper facing me. The shapes I create result from a physical relation with the support: its dimensions are akin to mine, it embraces me. Thus, the frames that contain the fluid movement of
Maria Doubrovskaia talks to painter Kyle Staver about her paintings which are on view at Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York through November 23, 2013. Staver comments: "Transformation…Painting is transformation. It’s like alchemy of something. I remember being an art student and making light for the first time. Feeling like light was actually coming from