Link to Post:
http://youtu.be/ly7-mfLUcSY
James Kalm visits an exhibition of paintings by Andrew Masullo at Mary Boone Gallery, New York, on view through April 27, 2013.
Kalm films a walkthrough with close-ups of many of Masullo's signature small-scale abstractions. Kalm notes: "Developing a recognizable style which melds formalist nonobjective design with the hot punchy color of Neo-Pop graphics, Masullo has become an exemplary practitioner of the New Abstraction."
Link to Post:
http://aeqai.com/main/2013/03/small-really-is-big/
Marlene Steele reviews the exhibition Small is Big at Manifest Gallery, Cincinnati, Ohio, on view through April 5, 2013. The show features paintings by Catherine Kehoe, Tim Kennedy, Ken Kewley, Eve Mansdorf, and EM Saniga.
Steele writes: "Any artist who undertakes the assignment of smaller works realizes immediately that every mark counts in an informational sense. Power is derived as much from what is left out as what is included. The character and design of mark-making as well as the assignment of real estate in a reduced format are all part of the ‘game’. Scale of execution is both intimate and magnified in the small format. Several of these pieces illustrate that the artist chose ‘constructing’ as opposed to rendering while working through the painting process."
Link to Post:
http://www.burnaway.org/2013/03/please-be-clean-when-you-do-it-interview-with-jim-lee/
Ridley Howard interviews painter Jim Lee on the occasion of the exhibition Jim Lee: Please Be Clean When You Do It at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York, on view through March 31, 2013.
Lee comments: "I need to work and not really know that I am making anything in particular. I guess that’s why I work on multiple pieces at the same time. It allows me to keep moving without focusing so much on the act of painting - in the end, I just want to make things. There shouldn’t be any hierarchy in my process. Oil paint is no more important than latex, and linen is no more important than a piece of plywood. When I paint in this manner, the pieces become more interesting to me…I lose track of what is actually occurring."
Submitted by Brett Baker on March 22, 2013
Al Held, The Yellow X, 1965, acrylic on canvas, 90 x 144 inches: Installation View, Al Held: Alphabet Paintings at Cheim & Read, New York (image courtesy of Cheim & Read)
Al Held: Alphabet Paintings is on view at Cheim & Read, New York through April 20, 2013.
Al Held's paintings of the early to mid 60s are now on view at Cheim & Read. In them, he abandons the physical monumentality previously achieved through the accretion of heavy layers of oil paint in favor of a more visual, graphic monumentality. This graphic monumentality comes from vigorously painted architectonic arrangements of letterforms painted on near-mural scale canvases.
Held denied a metaphorical interest in the letters; nevertheless, the pictorial device of singling out initials for monumental treatment has precedent, most notably in Celtic illuminated manuscript painting, where the scale and lavish decoration of the initial letter alert the reader to the import of the text that follows. Through their intricate design, these "initials" require concentration and pull the reader into a meditative state. They also function as visual thresholds opening outward and inviting the reader to consider the sacred worlds beyond the boundaries of the page and of earth, itself.
In much Abstract Expressionist painting of the 50s, notably paintings by Rothko and Newman, expanded abstract visual fields reflect the viewer's gaze, conjuring an awareness of self. John Yau, however, recently noted that the forms in Held's early 60s paintings, such as The Yellow X, extend beyond the picture plane, creating an awareness of the environment beyond the canvas edge. "Extending off the painting’s physical edges," Yau writes, "the X is simultaneously skewed and stable, conveying a space that hints at a realm beyond and behind the picture plane."
Making paintings that pointed outward, thresholds onto the physical world, was a stated interest of Held's. He accomplished this through drawing, as described by Yau, and also through color. Held himself noted, in a 1975 interview with Paul Cummings, that he was interested in "'taxicab' colors, loud, crass" - the colors of the city.
More of Held's and Cummings' discussion of the "Alphabet" paintings is below:
Link to Post:
http://youtu.be/Zwzbhf0vHZo
James Kalm provides an up-close view of the exhibition Philip Guston: Centennial Exhibition at McKee Gallery, New York, on view through April 20th, 2013.
As the gallery notes, the exhibition "is not a retrospective but a spontaneous celebration, attempting to expand our understanding of Guston with works which have not been widely exhibited, interspersed with some Guston classics which have been shown and reproduced all over the world. This exhibition is meant to surprise us as well as to satisfy us, marking the centenary of one of our great artists."
Link to Post:
http://patternsthatconnext.wordpress.com/2013/03/20/line-circle-and-edwina-leapman-at-annely-juda-fine-art/
Andy Parkinson writes about two exhibitions at Annely Juda Fine Art, London: Line & Circle and new paintings by Edwina Leapman, on view through May 28, 2013.
For Parkinson, both exhibitions engender silent contemplation. He describes how in a Max Bill painting (in the Line & Circle show), it is "impossible to determine which form is figure and which is ground, it shifts continually, from green figure against blue ground to blue figure with green ground, the colour relationship between them seeming somehow to be just right, as if there was such a thing as 'correct.' Motion is arrested as I fix my attention on this object/image. It’s not just that the experience is a silent one, it’s more that the painting is the visual equivalence of silence: shifting, dependent on our perception of it, between presence and absence."
In the Leapman show, Parkinson notes that "each of the paintings is of two colours only, a ground and a sequence of lines in another colour, sometimes contrasting in hue and sometimes matching, but generally closely matched in tone. Although I feel drawn into that conversation about process, and even more so having seen the Max Bill painting pura III and wanting to compare and contrast them, they do then bid me to become silent again..."
Link to Post:
http://abstractcritical.com/article/john-elderfield-on-painted-on-21st-street-helen-frankenthaler-from-1950-to-1959/
Sam Cornish interviews John Elderfield about Helen Frankenthaler's work from the 1950s on the occasion of the exhibition Helen Frankenthaler: Painted on 21st Street - 1950 -1959, at Gagosian Gallery, New York, on view through April 13, 2013.
Elderfield remarks: "Looking again at about thirty of Helen’s great 1950s works, I was especially struck by three things: 1. The extraordinary variety of inventive mark-making in many of the paintings, which belies the idea that Colour Field painting was about creating homogeneous surfaces—but, then, Helen was a second-generation Abstract Expressionist, not a Colour Field painter, in the 1950s. 2. The over-all depictive thrust of these canvases. There are some works that read primarily as non-referential, abstract works, but the majority are depictive re-presentations of observed, remembered, and imagined phenomena created by 'abstract' means—which is also to say that she was intolerant of received notions of depiction and abstraction. 3. The fact that every single work is different. The means may be similar, but are certainly not the same from work to work. The organization of certain works are also similar, but never identical. And the imaginative subject of individual works are always different. She never repeats herself."
Link to Post:
http://notesonlooking.com/2013/03/henry-taylor-at-blum-and-poe/
Geoff Tuck reviews an exhibition of paintings by Henry Taylor at Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, on view through March 30, 2013.
Tuck writes: "Henry Taylor reveals much about human nature in [The 'We' Hours, 2012], as he does in other paintings in the show. Taylor challenges us to move beyond a reliance on recognizable types in contemporary representation, instead inviting us to trust our own judgment and to employ empathy. Like many artists who paint from life, Taylor drops faces and bodies he sees on the streets and among his friends into painted characters without regard to context...Taylor is always drawing and sketching people, and this shows in the work. Taylor is able to render a person exactly: with the slightest of means, using rough and gestural brush strokes, this artist imbues his figures and faces with ambiguity that is truly human."
Link to Post:
http://artnewengland.com/blogs/paint-things-beyond-the-stretcher/
Robert Moeller reviews the exhibition Paint Things: Beyond The Stretcher at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA, on view through April 21, 2013.
Moeller writes: "As [exhibition curator Dina] Deitsch so aptly states, 'The artists collected in this exhibition paint things. They literally paint things. And by doing so they welcome the notion of the Thing—the object—into the realm of the image and, in the modernist language of a painting, into the flatness that is a painting’s historical hallmark.' This increasingly heated oscillation between the two mediums of painting and sculpture grapples less with answers but rather more with questions, some of which are deliberately pointed and profoundly obscure... The deCordova gathered eighteen artists for Paint Things and the assemblage of work is a smartly executed foray into the blurred and frenzied and ever-shifting world of contemporary practices. Looking backward in time, too, the exhibition pays homage, directly and indirectly, to the work of a host of artists whose presence is keenly felt, making the balance struck seem remarkably current."
Link to Post:
http://www.nyartsmagazine.com/reviewed/jaune-quick-to-see-smith-at-accola-griefen
A Bascove reviews the exhibition Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Water and War at Accola Griefen, New York, on view through April 6, 2013.
Bascove writes: "The figures in these paintings are unique to the land of Native Americans, transmitting the force of its endurance. There is a recitation of the struggles of indigenes peoples and the balm of humor, community, and belief that speak of its survival... Quick-To See-Smith’s vocabulary is also punctuated with another tribe, that of the Artist. There are a cacophony of references to, among others, Picasso, Louise Bourgeoisie, Robert Rauschenberg, Frida Kahlo, Goya, Mexican muralists, and Sunday matinee cartoons. These are seamlessly integrated into narratives that tell the stories of the sacred symbols of indigenes societies and the ravages of war."
