Link posts — Page 21

David M. Roth reviews Ruth Pastine: Witness at Brian Gross Gallery, San Francisco, on view through February 25, 2017. Roth writes: "Ruth Pastine’s supersaturated color-field paintings unite two seemingly contradictory characteristics: sensuality and remoteness. How might that work? Smashingly well, as it turns out. The Ojai-based artist blends vertical bands of strong color into gradients

Jennifer Samet interviews painter Tal R whose exhibition Tal R: Keyhole is on view at Cheim & Read through February 11, 2017. Tal R remarks: "Bonnard and Matisse are much more dangerous to get close to than some Surrealist painter from Helsinki in the 1940s. Think about the artists your mother would like (and who

John Stephens reviews the recent exhibition Sean Scully: Horizon at Timothy Taylor Gallery, London. Stephens writes: "I’d say [Scully] owes his success over the decades since the 70s not only to his deft and confident handling of paint but also to his understanding, not just of modernist abstraction but of the history of Western painting.

Joseph Nechvatal reviews Henri Fantin-Latour: À fleur de peau at the Musée du Luxembourg, Paris, on view through February 12, 2017. Nechvatal writes: "Henri Fantin-Latour’s 19th-century Realist paintings ... remind us that the real must be processed through the flesh and the blood of our eyes. In his early, clear-eyed (yet lovely) paintings that celebrate

Eric Sutphin reviews a recent exhibition of paintings by Lee Lozano: c. 1962 at KARMA, New York. Sutphin writes: "The recent exhibition at Karma offered an important and illuminating look at Lozano’s rarely seen early work, from around 1962 ... The paintings here (all untitled) can be read as studies made on the path toward

Hilton Als writes about painter Alice Neel. Alice Neel, Uptown, curated by Hilton Als, will be on view at David Zwirner Gallery, New York from February 23, - April 22, 2017. Als observes: "I am certain that Alice Neel, more than many an American artist, had a deep understanding of affliction. She did not use

Peter Schjeldahl reviews Fast Forward: Painting from the 1980s at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, on view through May 14, 2017. "Starting in the late nineteen-seventies, young American artists plunged, pell-mell, into making figurative paintings. That seemed ridiculously backward by the lights of the time’s reigning vanguards of flinty post-minimalism, cagey conceptualism,

Barbara A. MacAdam reviews Marjorie Welish: Some Differences at Art 3, New York, on view through February 5, 2017. MacAdam writes: "What is most surprising in this gathering is the personal, physical quality of the works. They seem to mimic breathing, inhaling and exhaling between the vacant areas and the more expansive blue mounds. Sometimes

Mario Naves reviews Francis Picabia: Our Heads Are Round so Our Thoughts Can Change Direction at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) on view through March 19, 2017. Naves concludes that the exhibition "is an attempt at promoting Picabia up the totem pole of great artists in the cause of revamping the Modernist 'narrative.' As

Peter Malone reviews paintings by Emily Mason at Ameringer McEnery Yohe, New York, on view through February 7, 2017. Malone observes: "Though Mason’s palette is keyed to the higher pitches, it avoids the flash and punch embraced by much recent abstract painting. Apparently not interested in deadpan statements or the lure of eye-candy, she creates

Joan Boykoff Baron and Reuben M. Baron review two exhibitions: John McLaughlin Paintings: Total Abstraction at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (through April 16) and John McLaughlin: Marvelous Void at Van Doren Waxter, New York (closed). The reviewers write: "[McLaughlin] sought a purer basis for abstraction in the Zen concept of the 'marvelous

Dan Nadel profiles painter Mimi Gross who designed the sets and costumes for Douglas Dunn + Dancers: Antipodes at Danspace Project, New York, February 2–4, 2017. Nadel writes: "Gross told me that she is guided by a 'fanaticism for Titian,' which is to say, she builds compositions from planes of color. No matter how casual,

D. Creahan reviews works by Dan Walsh at Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, on view through February 4, 2017. Crehan writes: "Artist Dan Walsh’s work draws on process as a mode of transcendence, working through canvases through a series of evolving forms and rule-based approaches to the canvas space. The artist ... draws on repetitive,

Leigh Markopoulos reviews the recent exhibition Suzanne Blank Redstone: 1960s Portal Paintings at Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco. Markopoulos writes: "Featuring primary-colored geometric forms and grids, [Redstone's] compositions instantly evoke Piet Mondrian, at the same time hinting at a venerable tradition of European pre-war geometric abstraction of the sort practiced by Jean Hélion. While her

Elizabeth Fullerton reviews the recent exhibition Intrigue: James Ensor by Luc Tuymans at the Royal Academy of Arts, London. Fullerton writes: "In his curation, Tuymans has played down the cliché of his countryman as a romantic outcast. The show’s sixty-six paintings, drawings, and prints primarily from Ensor’s productive early career include satirical images, landscapes, intimate

Alfred Mac Adam reviews the recent exhibition Mark Rothko: Dark Palette at Pace Gallery, New York Mac Adam observes: "The act of superimposing black on color ironically transforms the surface into a mirror that enables viewers to seek and lose themselves in the work. The paintings invite speculation, and speculation generates dynamic narrative, going “on

Sharon Butler reviews Ken Weathersby; Time After Time at Minus Space, Brooklyn, on view through February 25, 2017. Butler writes: "Weathersby seems to be reminding the viewer that abstract paintings may seem formalist, or, to some viewers, simply decorative, but they are in fact part of a larger timeline rooted in history, politics, and philosophy.

Craig Drennen interviews painter Carl Ostendarp whose work is on view at Elizabeth Dee Gallery, New York, through February 25, 2017. Ostendarp remarks: "Well there is secret stuff in the paintings! In addition to the images, there’s a crackpot math thing that I do. And there’s an idea about the 'field' that’s as much American

John Yau reviews Ed Clark: Paintings at the Tilton Gallery, New York, on view through February 18, 2017. Yau writes: "Clark’s approach is simple and straightforward, and he has not altered it much over the years. I don’t think he needs to. I think what needs to happen is to bring together in an exhibition

Lauren Elkin previews Vanessa Bell: 1879-1941 at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London. The show will be on view from February 8 - June 4, 2017. Elkin concludes: "Bell’s art countered symbolism with intense sensuality and a celebration of the tactile. The explosive beauty of the surface takes us back to the material of the work,