Link to Post:
http://www.thoughtsthatcureradically.com/2012/08/ruth-abrams-microcosms-yeshiva.html
Caleb De Jong reviews the exhibition Ruth Abrams: Microcosms at Yeshiva University Museum, on view through January 6, 2012.
De Jong writes: "Sometimes measuring only a square inch on either side, these paintings, if such a big word can be used to describe these objects, conger corners of landscapes, moons and mountains. Whereas her larger paintings appear muddled in their intention and of their moment, the smaller paintings on paper achieve what Abrams discusses in her video, ‘The Paradox of the Big’ in which the smaller a paintings becomes the more space and infinitude it can contain."
Link to Post:
http://abstractcritical.com/article/simon-callery-interview/
Simon Callery discusses his exhibition Inland Sealand, commissioned by Exlab and Sherborne House Arts, on view though September 9, 2012.
Callery remarks: "my challenge was to be aware of the geology under foot, to recognize its impact on the character and use of the landscape and importantly to work out how this might influence the paintings. There is a very vital equation that needs to be made absolutely clear in this situation and that is how the experience of landscape impacts on painting. Since I don’t use painting as a way of depicting the surface appearance of landscape it is the experience of the material landscape that I go to for clues to develop my paintings. I see it as how the experience of landscape can serve the needs of painting rather than how painting can serve to represent landscape."
Link to Post:
http://hyperallergic.com/55806/zolla-lieberman-zg-gallery-roy-boyd-gallery-chicago/
Philip A Hartigan reviews three painting exhibitions in Chicago: Wilder Buck, Dan Mills and Glenn Wexler at Zolla-Lieberman (through August 25), Zg Gallery‘s 10th Anniversary Summer Group Show (through September 1), Marco Casentini: New Work at Roy Boyd Gallery (through September 1).
Hartigan writes: "This part of the Chicago art world, believe it or not, tends to be overlooked sometimes due to the vibrancy of the not-for-profit spaces, and the real originality of programming shown by the big museum spaces here. But overall, I was pleased to see that these galleries were serious about including painters in their stable, and that the painting on show was varied, never less than interesting and occasionally very good indeed."
Link to Post:
http://bushwickdaily.com/artist-of-the-moment-steven-charles/
Katarina Hybenova profiles Bushwick-based painter Steven Charles whose work was recently on view in the exhibiiton There Are No Giants Upstairs at Theodore:Art, Brooklyn.
Hybenova writes: "Steven Charles’ soul probably looks something like his art. It’s colorful, lively and giggling at a bunch of insider jokes. If you look closely and patiently you will see hundreds of amazing details and colors. A 'lightness of being,' his colorful schemes that stroke one’s soul, little provocations by orange fur here and there, some tickling glitter – Steven Charles is an analogue child who discovered the 8-bit world of the first PC."
Link to Post:
http://www.gorkysgranddaughter.com/2012/08/chuck-webster-august-2012.html
Zachary Keeting and Christopher Joy visit the studio of painter Chuck Webster.
Webster's work will be on view at Steven Zevitas Gallery, Boston from September 6 - October 13, 2012.
In 2011 Carol Diehl wrote of Webster's work: "At first glance, the quirky, cartoonlike quality of Webster's semiabstractions may seem more trendy than profound. With a little scrutiny, however, this impression is mitigated by the ambiguity of the subject matter—which, like all good abstraction, seems to be filled with meaning while actually signifying no specific thing. Points of reference are also ambiguous: often biomorphic, other times jagged, these emblematic symbols could just as easily be co-opted from early tribal paintings as could represent signals channeled from a simpler, postapocalyptic future."
Link to Post:
http://www.portlandart.net/archives/2012/08/gerhard_richter.html
Arcy Douglass blogs about the exhibition Gerhard Richter: Seven Works at the Portland Art Museum, on view through September 9, 2012.
"The works are often monochromes, the most spectacular of which is Grau (Gray)... One gets the feeling that it is a painting made out of frustration. Maybe he wanted to make a painting that would be completely objective. Gray, being neither black nor white, is neutral, rational. It is also the type of thing that gets made when the language and history of painting are no longer able to tell us anything new, and the same forms and ideas are endlessly recycled. So Richter makes a painting that destroys everything that we are taught is essential about painting."
Link to Post:
http://notesonlooking.com/?p=16633
Geoff Tuck reviews the exhibition Kevin Appel, Paintings at Susanne Vielmetter, Los Angeles, on view through August 23, 2012.
"There is a photographic base to these paintings – Appel takes pictures of landscapes ('in the landscape,' the artist says) and he mechanically applies them to treated canvas and then by hand he paints over them. (Here I want to keep in mind the insubstantial nature of photographic images.)... looking at Salton Sea (heap), I find black, oily smears, these are veined as though they are spreading or are under pressure. (There are such colored smears on several paintings in the show.) The smears remind me of chemical mishaps that might be experienced using Polaroid cameras, when the developer would squeeze out of the pouch across the photo print. Appel’s paintings, which were begun in the camera, make reference to the photographic process again and again."
Link to Post:
http://hyperallergic.com/55657/flying-blind-de-koonings-closed-eye-drawings/
Thomas Micchelli discusses the "blind" drawings of Willem de Kooning, now on view in the exhibition Eyes Closed/Eyes Open: Recent Acquisitions in Drawings at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, through January 7, 2012.
Micchelli writes: "De Kooning’s hand... feels out the image in two dimensions, creating space and volume that exists in its own enclosed precinct. I speculate that the sensation would not be far removed from the way he squeezed clay between his fingers to make his gangly, clotted sculptures, which were always one or two steps removed from being bas-reliefs. These drawings would be marvelous by any standard; that they were done blindly is astonishing. The sensitivity of touch, the rawness of the sexuality, the tactility of the forms, the wit and invention of the imagery, and the ethereal gradations of the charcoal line are masterful even by de Kooning’s very high bar."
Submitted by Brett Baker on August 16, 2012
Never Let the Screen Door Slam is a video interview and studio visit with painter Frederick Hammersley (1919-2009), directed by Vanessa H. Smith. Hammersley's work was most recently on view at LA Louver.
Hammersley discusses his general thoughts on painting as well as the specifics and development of his practice, including what he calls painting by "hunch" or intuition: "You put down a shape and they just lie there, and then you make a movement and it comes alive. I've never quite understood that, but it's marvelous. The shapes have attitudes and the painting just clicks."
Link to Post:
http://art-rated.com/?p=589
Jonathan Beer reviews the exhibition Les Rogers: Summer Swells at Half Gallery, New York, on view through September 2, 2012.
Beer writes: "At first glance the modestly sized abstract works appear to be inside strange wooden frames; a thick black line outlining each painting. With a closer look it becomes clear that the frame and painting are in fact one and the same. The only thing separating ‘frame’ from image is a wobbly router line painted black. What appears kitchy is surprisingly the opposite – this is not the same collage sensibility trending in painting for the past 15 years, this is an honest investigation into the intricacies of both the image and its context."
