Link to Post:
http://hyperallergic.com/69134/standing-on-the-edge-of-space-painting-as-noun-and-verb/
Thomas Micchelli interviews painter Jennifer Riley on the occasion of the exhibition Jennifer Riley: Memory from Sight at Allegra LaViola Gallery, New York, on view through April 27, 2013.
Riley comments: "I think... that wanting to depict/relate images of hard facts needs to be balanced by an awareness of what lies beyond the boundaries. I literally said to myself that ‘painting’ is also verb — it is an action — as well as a noun. I’d been too long in the noun; it felt natural to shift from ‘sign’ to ‘record.’ From something that indicates sets of information, so to speak, to showing tangible evidence of experiences. No doubt that nature has influenced my recent work. I find my self staring with my mouth wide open at birds, at the edge of the forest — I sometimes feel guilty for looking — like I should get back to work — but looking is working for a painter."
Link to Post:
http://www.paintersbread.com/2013/04/johnny-cash-buttered-toast-interview.html
Michael Rutherford interviews painter Robert Janitz about his work.
Rutherford's introduction begins: "Paint on canvas and their combined affect on a viewer are what painting is all about. I can’t help but admire an artist who uses those materials in a bold matter-of-fact way, and the paintings of Robert Janitz are exactly what I mean. There’s no wondering about how they were made and there’s no ooing & aahing over them to be done. They’re tough and visceral, with paint that’s honestly, truthfully applied—just workmanlike, and a resulting grace that transcends the means of its application. While some painters have gone off the picture plane in order to push forward (a move which I also admire), Janitz has stuck with the stretched canvas, and I’m thankful he did. He’s a well-informed painter, digging deep into art history and pulling in references from far enough back that the resulting work is spiced and nuanced as if it were from some old lost recipe newly found."
Link to Post:
http://www.artslant.com/ams/articles/show/34694
Andrea Alessi reviews the exhibition Katharina Grosse: Two Younger Women Come In And Pull Out A Table at De Pont, Tilburg, Netherlands, on view through June 9, 2013.
Alessi writes: "color and technique combination creates a sense of immediacy and presence evocative of both graffiti and action painting. Though action painters readily come to mind, it’s never the “hand of the artist” we see in Grosse’s work, for her apparatus – not to mention protective suit and facemask – keeps her at a distance from its surface. We can calculate her gestures, angles, and positions, but we can’t find a fingerprint. In her oversized paintings (one is so tall it leans at an angle against the wall to fit in the space), time is collapsed into the present and we view every decision the artist made at once. The canvases encompass built up layers formed from masks, stencils, spray paint, and sometimes dirt. They appear to have windows, alternate dimensions, ruptures, and puddles that distort positive and negative space (judgmental distinctions one suspects might irritate the artist). If it’s even possible to pick apart Grosse’s process we must become archaeologists or geologists, excavating the stratified layers of the visible present to work out the past."
Link to Post:
http://www.pirihalasz.com/blog.htm?post=907117
Piri Halasz reviews four recent and current painting shows in New York: Radiance: The Paintings of Stanley Boxer, 1970s—1990s, Thirteen Contemporary Artists, and Frank Bowling: Paintings, 1967-2012 (through April 20) at Spanierman Modern, and Painterly Pasted Pictures at Freedman Art (through May 18).
Link to Post:
http://www.ahtcast.com/2013/04/artist-interview-julia-schwartz.html
Phillip J. Mellen talks with painter Julia Schwartz about her work and process.
Schwartz returns several times in the conversation to the importance of place to her as a painter. "In general," she remarks, "I'm working more from a kind of mental place.. I don't think it's an intellectual place, it's just more from a reverie state… I'm just trying to be open to the experience of being in the studio." Later she comments: "Everything that I do, whether it's painting or work in my office, or just being - living - it's all coming out of the same place… It's like walking around with your filters open all the time… receptive all the time."
Julia Schwartz recently curated the online exhibition States of Being at curatingcontemporary.com (through May 15) and her work will be included in the group show What I Like About You at Parallel Art Space, Brooklyn from May 31 - June 30, 2013.
Link to Post:
http://youtu.be/wXQdp11Sizw
James Kalm visits the exhibition Mary Grigoriadis Strokescapes 1970s-1980s at Accola Griefen Gallery, New York, on view through May 18, 2013.
Kalm's video provides an up-close look at Grigoriadis' paintings. The gallery press release notes that the paintings are "secular icons that are luscious in both color and texture. [Grigoriadis] applies layer upon layer of oil paint to build up a sumptuous, glowing surface of pronounced brushstrokes... These works incorporate poly-ethnic borders using sources as diverse as Byzantine icons, Native American fabrics and Islamic architecture. Rooted in her personal background, the paintings also explore the use of pattern in various art historical moments and in women’s crafts from western and nonwestern cultures."
Link to Post:
http://dailyserving.com/2013/04/the-scattered-geometries-of-matt-phillips/
Allegra Kirkland blogs about the exhibition Matt Phillips: this and then at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, New York, on view through April 20, 2013.
Kirkland writes that the "exhibition’s title refers to Phillips’ interest in the relationship between the fixed, stable quality of finished artworks and the active, immediate way in which the viewer processes them... Phillips’ works underscore our craving for narrative familiarity and our insistence on transforming abstract lines into recognizable objects and forms... For Phillips, the challenge of communicating organic, real-world subject matter through a limited, geometric formal vocabulary is endlessly intriguing."
Link to Post:
http://www.theelectricbeef.com/post/47703303610/featuredartistoftheweekelisabethcondon2
Joseph Kendrick interviews painter Elisabeth Condon about her work.
Asked about process Condon notes: "Earlier I’d balanced pours and imagery, but in the recent paintings was looking for a way to express the inspiration of 1970s glam rock working with glitter and mylar, which were new materials for me. Lately there has been less of a need to intercede with a brush, as I am interested in the balance between form and formlessness. But I still love brushes, and a desire for form may reassert itself. I’ve learned to work shorter but more frequent sessions, in Chinese landscape scroll painting there is so much rehearsal required for a momentary engagement, much like a sport or a performance. It’s like working in a burst, whereas I see figure painting, for example, as a more sustained endeavor over time. At this moment, the speed and fluency of pouring feels right for how time moves, and spreads, and it also echoes the definitive images of our historical time such as 9/11 and the BP oil spill among others."
Link to Post:
http://bombsite.com/issues/999/articles/7144
Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe interviews artist Christian Haub. Haub's exhibition New Floats was recently on view at Kathryn Markel Fine Arts, New York.
Haub comments: "I can’t call the Floats paintings because I don’t use paint, but they hang on the wall and come from painting, I think they could be called 'shallow reliefs.' When my wife, Vera Miljkovic, photographs them she has the problem of where to focus. There is the physical surface of the plastic, and then there is the colored light cast behind it on the wall. As you once pointed out, you look both at and through the works. I see the works as like fresco and watercolor—color cast onto and illuminated by the ground. I also think a lot about Matisse’s paper cutouts. My plexi is a sheet of cast acrylic, which, starting out as a liquid, is then cut into pieces and bonded together. I am free to move the parts around as much as I like before fixing them, like collage. Matisse’s final work, the Rosace, was a paper cutout and maquette for a stained glass window."
Link to Post:
http://hyperallergic.com/68896/oddly-warped-and-genuinely-thrilling-paintings/
Rob Colvin reviews the exhibition of paintings by Andrew Masullo at Mary Boone Gallery, New York, on view through April 27, 2013.
Colvin writes that Masullo's paintings "outwit, defy, and make gallery-going fun again. With numbers for titles, the works elicit numerous surprises, and these of several kinds. Even the dates startle. One work, ten inches by eight, took him ten years to make. Very few contemporary abstract painters... excite and bewilder as Masullo does... In each of Masullo’s works is an idiosyncratic self-organization that pulsates with inner life. It’s in his economy of means, his concision of wit, and even his materials."
