James Kalm visits the exhibition Painting 101 at Sargent's Daughters, New York, on view through December 7, 2013. The show features paintings by Denis Hollingsworth, Francesca DiMattio, Jonathan Lasker, Daniel Rios Rodriguez, and Sandi Slone. The gallery press release notes that "a force within painting has a hold over the viewer as well as the
Christopher Joy and Zachary Keeting visit the studio of painter Farrell Brickhouse. Brickhouse speaks at length about the motivations behind his work. He comments: "I realized really I'm a story teller, I like telling stories... I look at an artist like Goya, and you look at the range of things he was able to speak
Peter Malone reviews an exhibition of paintings by Elizabeth O’Reilly at George Billis Gallery, New York, on view through November 16, 2013. Malone writes that "O’Reilly is once again applying unbound oil color to ground, guiding her brush with just the right viscosity to imply in a single stroke the effects of texture, shadow and
John Seed talks to painters Hearne Pardee and Gina Werfel on the occasion of their two-person exhibition [ he said, she said...] at Adler and Co., San Francisco, on view through December 4, 2013. Pardee and Werfel are married and both teach at UC Davis. Werfel remarks: "We have shown together in the past, however,
David M. Roth reviews the exhibition Dannielle Tegeder: The Library of Abstract Sound at Gregory Lind Gallery, San Francisco, on view through November 30, 2013. Roth writes that Tegeder's "compositions, while precisely balanced, have a provisional feel, as if the elements were interchangeable, modular. But, as with everything Tegeder does, the [Library of Abstract Sound]
Celia White reviews the exhibition Mark Bradford: Through Darkest America by Truck and Tank at White Cube, London, on view through January 12, 2014. White writes that Bradford employs "a creative practice that, while not necessarily innovative, he has made his own, both technically and conceptually. Collage’s history is short but intense, and Bradford’s use
Debra Cash reviews Red Grooms: Larger than Life at the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, on view through March 9, 2014. Cash writes that "The show circling around Grooms’ mural-sized tributes to visual artists of the past is a hoot, shoehorning crowded genre scenes (think Brueghel or Bosch) into the region of knowing winks.
Matthew Marchand reviews the recent exhibition of Vince Contarino and Zachary Royer Scholz at c2c project space, San Francisco. Marchand writes that Contarino "takes the sublime monumentality of expressionist abstraction, sweeping away the maudlin sentimentality to expose a more intimate and personal sublimity... the careful curation of the mark making removes the marks from the
Ben La Rocco review three painting shows at 56 Bogart, Bushwick, Brooklyn: Ana Wieder-Blank: Women of Song at Honey Ramka (through November 10), Tim Kent at SLAG (November 10), and Scale at Life on Mars Gallery (closed) which featured works by Larry Barns, Todd Bienvenu, Danielle Dimston, Paul D'Agostino, James Gillispie, Christina Kee, Ben LaRocco,
Paul Behnke photo blogs several shows of paintings and painted objects currently on view on the Lower East Side including: Peter Acheson: Rusted Giacometti at Novella Gallery (through November 17), Lester Johnson: Dark Paintings at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects (through November 17), Rebecca Smith: Interference at Hionas Gallery (through November 24), Tatiana Kronberg: .
Supreme Fiction
James Panero reviews an exhibition of recent paintings by Joan Thorne at Sideshow Gallery, on view through November 10, 2013. Panero writes: "One of abstract painting’s earliest interests was the depiction of sound... Joan Thorne explores this legacy with a finely tuned suite of work.Like the recent sculptures of Frank Stella, which visualized Scarlatti, Thorne’s
Jennifer Samet interviews painter Raoul Middleman about his life and work. Middleman remarks: "The form can become an extension of the content. I find in my own work that these things happen organically. Often, it is only after I have finished a painting, that I discover the formal elements, which add to the narration... As
Christopher Knight reviews the exhibition Lari Pittman: From a Late Western Impaerium at Regen Projects, Los Angeles, on view November 9 - December 21, 2013. Knight writes that "Pittman's inescapable polemic points straight to what this art is: painting... In a lecture Wednesday night to a full auditorium at the UCLA Hammer Museum, Pittman simply
Zachary Keeting and Christopher Joy visit the studio of painter Lydia Dona. Dona discusses at length how the elements in her paintings (color, materials, mark-making, and forms) develop from observations and sensations in her personal life, and also from reactions to significant global issues and events. She cites an interest in "the possiblity of being
Tina Engels reviews the exhibition Balthus: Cats and Girls - Paintings and Provocations at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, on view through January 12, 2014. Engels writes: "Balthus employs a mode of thinking that is linked intrinsically, both to the pictorial structure within the works and a visual interior world that holds his
Tyler Green interviews painter Vija Celmins about her paintings and career. An exhibition of Celmins' work will be on view at The Art Museum Riga Bourse from April 11 - June 24, 2014. Celmins remarks that early in her career she "started going back to images, after making stroke-like paintings, deKooning-like paintings, and trying to
Sharon Butler photoblogs a visit to the studio of painter Heather Leigh McPherson. Butler writes that "the brightly-colored, mask-like images in [McPherson's] new work speak to the disconnect between who we imagine we are, who we are, and who we want to be. Fascinated by the notion that unfixed personhood runs counter to the myth
Stephanie Cristello reviews the exhibition Wendy White: Pick Up a Knock at Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Chicago, on view through November 9, 2013. Cristello writes that "the exhibition is made up of three parts – the paintings themselves, which are factual references, each with a quote, location, or site to one famous event in soccer history,
Ezrha Jean Black reviews the recent exhibition Iva Gueorguieva: Spill/Frame at ACME, Los Angeles. Black writes that the show title, Spill/Frame "seemed almost a naked admission of its strategies and ambition with a concomitant risk of crashing, careening failure. In almost all of the works on view there was both a willful, self-imposed notion of
Viktor Witkowski reviews the multi-venue exhibition Painting Forever at the Berlinische Galerie, the Deutsche Bank KunstHalle, the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, and the Neue Nationalgalerie - Staatliche Museen, Berlin, on view through November 10, 2013. Witkowski writes that the title Painting Forever "comes with a sense of humor and the realization that maybe any