Neil Plotkin interviews painter Ryan Cobourn on the occasion of the exhibition Ryan Cobourn: Crazy Nature at Fischbach Gallery, on view through May 25, 2012 . Cobourn remarks: "It’s more about memory and being evocative, as opposed to painting details and specificity. I'm not really interested in specificity. I'm not really interested in how many
Ben Meyer reviews the exhibition Considering the Provisional (through May 27, 2012) at FJORD, Philadelphia, featuring works by Amy Feldman, Annabelle Speer, Hannah Hall, Sarah Pater, Brendan Smith, Jenna Weiss, Hannah Tar, and Ryan McCartney. Meyer writes: "Philadelphia co-curators Liam Holding and Sean Robert FitzGerald are taking a crack at identifying just what is provisional
Caleb De Jong reviews the exhibition Faust and Other Tales: The Paintings of Jan Müller at Lori Bookstein Fine Art, New York, on view through June 23, 2012. De Jong writes: "Müller’s literary subject matter, while seemingly at odds with the high Modernist dictates of 1950s New York, hinted at a truth now more greatly
In a three part video interview, Haniya Rae visits the studio of painter Sangram Majumdar. Of his recent work Majumdar remarks: "Being someone who works with a certain amount of observation and looking at things, I wanted to… compress a space I was familiar with through day to day interaction, like my studio, against a
Rima Marrouch reports on Syrian painters who continue to paint despite the violence, and a recent exhibition of paintings smuggled out of Syria at Espace Kettaneh Kunigk (Tanit), in Beirut. Marrouch tells the story of painter Hiba Akkad, who "started protesting in her neighborhood in Syria's capital, Damascus. Men would hoist her on their shoulders
Sharon Butler visits the exhibition MsBehavior at the ArtBridge Drawing Room, New York, featuring work by Amy Feldman, Polly Shindler, Amanda Valdez, on view through June 28, 2012. Butler writes: "All exponents of a casualist aesthetic, the three women rock insouciant shapes using monochromatic color, humble materials, and simple drawing techniques." Additionally curator Jordana Zeldin
John Seed writes about the work of painter Janice Nowinski on the occasion of her exhibition at the Bowery Gallery, New York, on view from May 22 - June 16, 2012. Seed writes: "Nowinski, is a 'painter's painter,' one who likes to work against technical refinement, which can quickly degenerate into sentimentality. She is one
John Yau reviews the exhibition Chuck Webster: Paintings at ZieherSmith, New York, on view through May 25, 2012. Yau writes: "The structure that Webster is here exploring is a stepped form that owes something to Navaho blankets. He uses a thick line to make the form’s border, appendages and interior lines. The thickness of the
Jonathan Goodman reviews Brice Marden: New Paintings at Matthew Marks Gallery, New York, on view through June 23, 2012. Of Marden's painting Ru Ware Project, 2007-2012, Goodman writes that the "monochromatic panels effectively join Marden's interest in historical Chinese culture with his minimalist work done two generations earlier. The painting exquisitely makes use of colors
A look at the work of Clare Price whose work is on view at studio1.1, London from May 18 - June 10, 2012. Price's paintings are "inspired initially from drawings made on old antiquated computer programs. Marks are translated meticulously onto the canvas allowing for a grid-like structure to reveal itself. It's here that her
Brent Hallard interviews painter Gilbert Hsiao. Gilbert Hsiao: Jump & Flow is on view at Minus Space, Brooklyn through June 16, 2012. Hsiao remarks: "I have never thought in terms of the quantity of information that the eye can hold or that the mind can process. Nor do I want to attack anyone's eye. I
James Kalm visits the exhibition Dana Schutz: Piano in the Rain at Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York, on view through June 16, 2012. Kalm writes: "With this exhibition, the artist appears to be thinning down her paint, exercising a more virtuosic and slippery brush stroke, and striving for a fresher and more spontaneous style. Melding
Michael Shaw visits the studio of painter Rebecca Morris and interviews her about her work. Morris reads from her Abstract Manifesto and recalls what prompted her write a manifesto about abstract painting: "when I came out of school in the 90s, abstraction wasn't very in… that wasn't the sort of gallery style at the moment…
Aimee Walleston talks to painter Rita Ackermann about her new series of work Fire by Days, on view in a solo exhibition at The Journal Gallery, Williamsburg (through June 3, 2012) and in the group show Mix/Remix at Luhring Augustine, New York (through June 9, 2012). Walleston writes that Ackermann's "loose, understated abstractions are often
M. Hoetger blogs about the exhibition Cy Twombly: The Last Paintings at Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills, on view through June 9, 2012. Hoetger writes: "The Last Paintings includes eight untitled works from 2011—all known under the moniker Untitled (Camino Real) - which are closely related to the Camino Real group that inaugurated Gagosian Paris in
Charlie Finch visits Norman Bluhm's monumental painting Coney Island Beauty, recently installed at 499 Park Ave, New York. Although Finch finds that the painting owes an "overwhelming debt to Pablo Picasso," he writes that "a doubling in the subject at hand restored, for a moment, to me, what is right about the painting, why I
Maria Calandra visits the studio of painter Ariel Dill whose exhibition Oscillations is on view at Southfirst Gallery, Williamsburg, Brooklyn through May 27, 2012. Calandra writes: "Ariel's paintings are lush musings on color, pattern, and, as described in the title of her exhibition, oscillations. She arrives at these vibrating medium-sized works both through her vast
Jeffrey Collins posts video conversations with painters Ronnie Landfield, Michael Brennan, Ruth Ann Fredenthal, and John Zinsser as part of his on-going documentary project, "a 21st century version of the legendary 1972 film Painters Painting by Emile De Antonio." Discussing the documentary in a recent article in NYArts Magazine Collins noted: "I began with a
Mario Naves reviews the exhibition Edouard Vuillard: A Painter and His Muses, 1890-1940 at The Jewish Museum, New York, on view through September 23, 2012. Naves writes: "Vuillard wasn't inspired by hearth and home so much as haunted by them. In the best paintings, familial complexity is distilled into images of daunting psychological nuance. (Not
Howard Hurst reviews the exhibition Four Paintings featuring a single painting each by Britta Deardorff, Jackie Gendel, Juan Gomez, and Eric Sall at Regina Rex, Ridgewood, Queens, New York, on view through June 3, 2012. Hurst writes that "these four local artists were chosen because they share something in common. In their work we see