Spurred on by the the exhibition The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (through April 5), David Geers examines the landscape of critically and institutionally sanctioned abstract painting. An excerpt: "... while [Kerstin] Brätsch’s work is an almost-analytic deconstruction of painterly codes, artists such as
In part one of a two part post, Piri Halasz reviews Dee Solin at Andre Zarre Gallery (through April 4) and Jason Karolak: Polyrhythm at McKenzie Fine Art, New York (closed). Part one is linked above, part two of the review is here. Halasz writes that "both [Solin and Karolak] are not only abstract painters,
John Yau reviews Suzan Frecon: oil paintings and sun at David Zwirner, New York, on view through March 28, 2015. Yau writes: "One of the strengths of this exhibition, and of Frecon’s work since the beginning of this century, is the tension between harmony and division she is able to infuse into her paintings. The
Kristin Calabrese considers the persistent power and potential of painting. Calabrese comments: "Painting is a magic, fetishized ritual object. It is a place where for some length of time the hand, eye and energy of the artist is focused. More energy is focused in one place than can be looked at in an instance. I
Ken Johnson reviews Vera Iliatova: For Now, At Once at Monya Rowe Gallery, New York, on view through April 12, 2015. Johnson writes: "In her dreamy paintings of girls in verdant landscapes, Vera Iliatova toys with conventional associations of nature, femininity, childhood and innocence... Insofar as the artist herself identifies with her girls, they may
Simon Carr reviews Along His Own Lines: A Retrospective of New York Realist Eugene Speicher at The New York State Museum, Albany, on view through March 22, 2015. Carr writes: "Speicher studied painting with William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri in New York City. Georgia O’Keefe and Edward Hopper were art school friends ... Despite
Christopher Joy and Zachary Keeting visit the studio of painter Fran O'Neill. Thomas Micchelli, writing about O'neill's work for her recent show at Life on Mars, observes that “O’Neill’s art is something you take in with your whole body… [her] blunt, tough-minded, ecstatically convulsive oil paintings are endlessly revealing: pigment and binder, solvent and surface
Joshua Bell reviews Rosalyn Drexler: Vulgar Lives at Garth Greenan Gallery, New York, on view through March 28, 2015. Bell notes that "Drexler depicts her subjects in a very straightforward manner, usually against monochromatic backgrounds. The figures appear uncomfortable and still, isolated in a foreign scene. The saturnine scenes are further augmented by the exhibition’s
Altoon Sultan blogs about Doug Ohlson: Panel Paintings from the 1960s at Washburn Gallery, New York, on view through March 28, 2015. Sultan writes: "Squares of color, placed carefully on adjoining vertical panels, move in space––forward/back, up/down, across––mark weights, move the eye. The sense of empty and full gives rise to the reference to a
Meghan Gordon reviews works by Julian Kreimer at the Lux Art Institute, on view through March 21, 2015 Gordon writes: "The gallery is dominated by mostly small paintings made on the grounds of the residency. Kreimer’s close-cropped images of prickly pear cactus piles steal the show, even among a salon-style wall arrangement of 20 or
Kevin Blake reviews Jackie Saccoccio: Echo at Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago, on view through April 25, 2015. Blake writes: "While the infrastructure of renaissance portraiture may exist in Saccoccio’s paintings, the centralized figure remains only as the most distant resounding of an echo. As the portraits recede into the deep spaces Saccoccio creates through perspectival
Janet McKenzie reviews Ken Kiff: The Hill of Dreams at Marlborough Fine Art, London, on view through April 17, 2015. McKenzie writes: " ... [I]n 1988, Kiff’s exhibition at Fischer Fine Art in King Street, St James’s was my first experience of his work at firsthand; it was the exquisite colour he employed, the understated
Robin Greenwood reviews paintings by Richard Diebenkorn at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, on view March 14 - June 2, 2015. Greenwood writes: "Berkeley No.57, 1955, which is in the first room, and is the best painting in the show. It’s a difficult work, complex, demanding, having something of a wrestling-match with itself over
Seph Rodney considers the persistence of narrative painting in the works of Jane Corrigan, Nicole Eisenman and Raqib Shaw. Rodney begins: "The early 20th-century’s turn towards modernism in painting was a decisive shift in interest away from artistic representation of acts of witnessing. Abstract art—which now seems to dominate many visual demesnes including the decorative
As part of the Backstory series, Richard Benari and Lauren Henkin invited me to share some thoughts on my recent paintings, on view at Elizabeth Harris Gallery, New York through March 28, 2015. An excerpt: "To aim for a more complete expression of reality is not at odds with abstraction. Reality in abstract painting exists
Zachary Keeting and Christopher Joy talk with painter Yevgeniya Baras at her exhibition Of Things Soothsaid and Spoken at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, New York, on view through March 29, 2015. Baras discusses the works on view, described in the catalog as "small-scale, textured oil paintings reconfigure abstraction as a kind of talismanic skin.
Zachary Royer Scholz reviews Erin Lawlor: Four Paintings: London Fields at George Lawson Gallery, San Francisco, on view through March 21, 2015. Scholz writes: "The word gestural comes to mind when looking at Lawlor’s wide, flowing sweeps of paint, but the cumulative effect is more inevitable than personal, like the gradual impact of erosion or
Altoon Sultan blogs about Louise Nevelson: Collage and Assemblage recently on view at Pace Gallery, New York. Sultan writes: "The show included several later assemblages, but what most interested me were the earlier, flatter works, of various materials pasted onto wooden boards. The images are graphically strong, the use of materials wide-ranging and inventive; anything
Joseph Nechvatal recounts witnessing the procession of Duccio's Maesta (in reproduction) to the Duomo in Siena in 2011. Nechvatal writes: "Definitely, one need not be Christian to be touched deeply by the social characteristics surrounding art in Italy when found riding on a current of solemn collective significance. Such was the case with my encounter
Paul Behnke blogs about the paintings of David Pollack. Behnke writes that Pollack "paints encrusted works that are much more sublime than that adjective implies. His surfaces can be gemlike or move towards the monochrome but both evoke the light and élan found in the glistening seasons and environments that inspire them."