Link to Post:
http://abstractcritical.com/article/richard-diebenkorn-a-door-opened/
Ashley West writes about Richard Diebenkorn's Ocean Park paintings after a recent visit to the exhibition Richard Diebenkorn: The Ocean Park Series at the Cororan Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. through September 23, 2012.
West recalls his first exposure to Diebenkorn's paintings at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1991: "A door was opened and it dawned on me that here was an approach to painting that was both measured and free – on the one hand the geometric structure was alive, dynamic, felt, and on the other the freedom of brushwork and colour was intensified through containment. These paintings were rigorous in their abstraction and presence, while expressing a sublime feeling for landscape. They seemed to epitomise for me painting in its purest sense, and I was compelled to explore what he was doing through my own work. The geometry was important, and in the first paintings I would rule out a grid as a starting point, but this was something to work from or against. The key seemed to be in the extent to which one could dissolve or rework statements, placing more emphasis on the process of search rather than accepting something as final too soon."
Link to Post:
http://www.gorkysgranddaughter.com/2012/09/tom-burckhardt-sept-2012.html
Christopher Joy and Zachary Keeting visit the studio of Tom Burckhardt who discusses his work and questions of authenticity and doubt in painting.
Burckhardt elaborates on ideas he shared with John Yau in a recent interview: "I do like the idea, like I said, of embedding this doubt. I also think that in a way it makes them from the beginning, yeah, fake in a certain way. They’re kind of like a representational sculpture. And then from that fake, false beginning, maybe they’re a little bit like masks, somehow. It’s my job to wrestle them back into integrity with the painting. I was thinking that the early work squashed something down to the ground and then they grew up; and, to me, these come out laterally into a point of integrity. You know, I really love painting, but I also want to make fun of it. I want to have that full range of experience. I don’t want to be a true believer, and wear blinkers about it. I want to acknowledge its absurdity, that’s the thing. I think the key word is 'absurdity,'and I always thought that 'absurd' is a lovely, generous word about a relationship to something."
Tom Burckhardt: Pretty Little Liars will be on view at Tibor de Nagy, New York, October 17 - November 24, 2012.
Link to Post:
http://www.artcritical.com/2012/09/16/kris-scheifele/
DeShawn Dumas reviews the exhibition Kris Scheifele: Fade at Janet Kurnatowski, Brooklyn, New York, on view through October 7, 2012.
Dumas writes that "these new works extend an intimate, methodological and obsessive relationship with acrylic,finding their locus in the materiality and literalness of paint. Reveling in the alchemy of her process, Scheifele intersperses layer upon layer of viscous paint with polymer binder and then proceeds to remove the encrusted surface from its wood panel support, slicing the peeled-off rubbery skein into a flexible, hanging, knotty strap."
Link to Post:
http://anaba.blogspot.com/2012/09/fred-gutzeit.html
Martin Bromirski visits the exhibition Fred Gutzeit: SigNature at Sideshow Gallery, on view through October 7, 2012.
In a recent two part (1 & 2) interview at On-Verge, Gutzeit remarks: "My current paintings amount to plays with space and light. I want to create pressures and contractions... I feel like it’s important to have these tensions; It gives me something to orchestrate, to manipulate... I’m trying to... push whatever I can do with painting to a interesting level by my own interpretation of it. Maybe I can add something to what painting is about, what art is about..."
Link to Post:
http://www.gorkysgranddaughter.com/2012/09/claudia-chaseling-sept-2012.html
Christopher Joy and Zachary Keeting visit the studio of Claudia Chaseling whose work was recently on view in the exhibition Claudia Chaseling: Infiltration at SLAG Contemporary, Brooklyn.
Reviewing that exhibition at Artcritical, Christina Kee wrote that there is "a tradition of 'painting away from the canvas,' from the playful off-frame whimsies of the baroque and mannerist artists through to Fontana to Stella. More recent variations of the approach tend to draw from a modernist challenge of the conventions of the form, often powerfully – and cerebrally – questioning expectations of illusionism and representation. Chaseling, by contrast, seems to be working from a less self-conscious motivation. Her hors-piste maneuvers refreshingly appear to spring from a spontaneous, if anxious, impulse to shift the impact of the painting beyond the restrictions of the canvas’s home base."
Link to Post:
http://anaba.blogspot.com/2012/09/george-hofmann.html
Martin Bromirski photoblogs the opening reception for an exhibition of paintings by George Hofmann at Show Room, New York, on view through October 7, 2012.
Of Hofmann's new work Paul Corio recently wrote: "The removal of the paint is perhaps more important than the application in this group. The barely-there smears of high-key colors give the pictures a lightness - both in the sense of weight and illumination - and transforms the plywood ground into a hazy yellowish atmosphere, even as the hardness and physicality of the wood tries to reassert itself."
Link to Post:
http://www.pirihalasz.com/blog.htm?post=873479
Piri Halasz reviews several new shows in Chelsea including The Lure of Paris at Loretta Howard Gallery (thorugh November 3), Jackson Pollock and Tony Smith at Matthew Marks Gallery (through October 27), and Carolanna Parlato at Elizabeth Harris Gallery (through October 6).
In the Lure of Paris Halasz finds Jules Olitski and Ed Clark to be standouts. She writes: "Olitski seems to have been one of the few Americans actually looking at the better postwar French painters practicing the French equivalents to American abstract expressionism known as tachisme or l’art informel..." Halasz continues: "[Clark] is... known for having painted with push brooms instead of brushes... [his painting] benefits from the use of large, sweepingly simple forms and clear, vigorous colors, wisely limited & separated from each other -- much livelier than the blackened, bush-like center in the Joan Mitchell on display, or the muddy, overdone creation of Al Held."
The Lure of Paris provides a fitting backdrop for Halasz to view a show of new paintings by Carolanna Parlato: "[Parlato's] intuitive color sense is one of the strong points of the current show... Also, her paint is a lot thinner than the hallmark smears of the 50s, sometimes transparent in fact, when an almost dry brush appears to have been stroked across the canvas, depositing only hair-like lines of paint, as opposed to solid areas, and allowing the complimentary undercoat to shine through. Finally, at its best her organization is a lot stronger than most of the tyros at work in 'The Lure of Paris.' "
Link to Post:
http://www.artnews.com/2012/09/13/jacksonsotheractions/
Robin Cembalest writes about Jackson Pollock's little-known sculptures from 1956, on view in the exhibition Jackson Pollock & Tony Smith: Sculpture at Matthew Marks Gallery, New York, through October 27, 2012.
Cembalest writes that "the lowly status of Pollock’s object-making has its roots in the artist’s own day, when painting was considered the pinnacle of Abstract Expressionism—and sculpture, as Ad Reinhardt famously put it, was 'something you back into when you look at a painting.' It didn’t help that Pollock’s sculptures hardly resemble his drip classics. The humble objects don’t scream 'Pollock,' or action, never mind painting. Most of his extant sculptures, under a dozen, don’t even resemble each other. And their hands-on quality—hammered copper, hand-built clay—contradicts the popular image of Pollock conjuring his abstractions in a rhythmic ritual dance."
Link to Post:
http://abstractcritical.com/note/paul-behnke-a-theatre-of-colour/
An essay by John Yau on the paintings of Paul Behnke, written for the exhibition Paul Behnke: Like Giants, on view at The Rosenfeld Gallery, Philadelphia through September 30, 2012.
Yau writes: "Without any hint of irony, Behnke embraces the legacy of improvisation central to a number of the Abstract Expressionists. In his high-key, color-saturated paintings of planar forms and flame-like wisps, he wants to celebrate an imaginative space in which light and solid, translucence and opacity engage in a lively, open-ended dialogue. While Behnke’s paintings may evoke rooms and still-lives, they never become representational. He doesn’t abstract from life, but begins with paint and color. This is the key to his work. The final composition emerges from the act of putting paint on and scraping it away, of finding the painting."
Link to Post:
http://studiocritical.blogspot.com/2012/09/ted-gahl.html
Valerie Brennan interviews painter Ted Gahl about his work and studio practice.
Gahl comments: "I do a lot of drawings on napkins at bars and restaurants, and I keep all of them. My larger works are usually derived from these small drawings, and the paintings are kind of a record of the images and ideas. The paintings become these tapestries of collaged drawing imagery."
