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."
Link to Post:
http://art.newcity.com/2013/04/16/review-mcarthur-binionkavi-gupta-gallery/
Alan Pocaro reviews the exhibition McArthur Binion: Ghost: Rhythms at Kavi Gupta, Chicago, on view through June 22, 2013.
Pocaro writes: "Binion’s larger, more rural works... stand out. These misty-toned 'Circuit Landscapes Nos. V and VI' are freer in their deference to the Modernist grid, retaining the more ridged works’ austere coloration but with enhanced emotional purchase. Like ethereal heirloom quilts on antiseptic walls, they hang unpretentiously without stretchers... By maintaining an ongoing dialogue with his roots in the agrarian south, Binion’s paintings are largely symbolic, achieving a spiritual resonance that defies the typically reductive materialism associated with East Coast minimalism. "
Link to Post:
http://www.thisistomorrow.info/viewArticle.aspx?artId=1772&Title=Jerwood%2520Painting%2520Fellowships%25202013
Simon Bayliss reviews the Jerwood Painting Fellowships 2013 exhibition at Jerwood Space, London, through April 28, 2013. The show features work by Anthony Faroux, Susan Sluglett and Sophia Starling.
Bayliss begins: "Painting can now be considered a mode of thought or a philosophy which can be applied outside of the confines of the medium and its traditional supports. This was the defiant outlook of the last Jerwood Painting Fellowships; coloured-paper sculptures and snapshots of paintings placed in urban settings shared the limelight with just one body of conventional canvases. This assertion continues in this year’s exhibition of three candidates, as perhaps it should, but to a lesser extent. And it is refreshing to see more paint; the push and pull of brushmarks, as well as more insistent dialogue with the history of the medium."
Link to Post:
http://www.newcriterion.com/posts.cfm/-Painterly-Pasted-Pictures--at-FreedmanArt-7100
Brendan Dooley reviews the exhibition Painterly Pasted Pictures at Freedman Art, New York, on view through May 18, 2013.
Dooley writes that the exhibtion "brings together a group of collages from the 20th century united by the stylistic trait of 'painterliness.' ... Though painterliness obviously has its roots in painting, this exhibition shows how easily and successfully the concept can be applied to other mediums; painterliness is, in a sense, materiality, which is why collage – the mixing of different materials and forms – seems to be one of the best mediums to demonstrate this visual effect."
Link to Post:
http://www.twocoatsofpaint.com/2013/04/paris-multiplicity-of-simple.html
Sharon Butler posts installation photos from the exhibition Emergence at Hôtel de Sauroy, Paris, on view through April 27, 2013. The show features works by Eve Aschheim, A.T Biltereyst, Katrin Bremermann, Sharon Butler, Claire Chesnier, Clem Crosby, Fieroza Doorsen, Amy Feldman, Yifat Gat, Kevin Monot, Erin Lawlor, Paul Pagk, Marine Pages, Andrew Seto, Radu Tuian, Richard Van der Aa, Don Voisine, and Michael Voss.
The exhibition, co-curated by Katrin Bremermann, Erin Lawlor, and Yifat Gat presents work that investigates "the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions."
Link to Post:
http://hyperallergic.com/68740/color-visions-the-sanford-wurmfeld-experience/
John Yau writes about the exhibition Sanford Wurmfeld: Color Visions 1966 – 2013 at the Hunter College/Times Square Gallery, New York, on view through April 30, 2013.
Yau notes: "Wurmfeld’s deep historical research in the field of color theory is unrivaled. He is, in that regard, both a painter and a scholar, a combination the art world distrusts. Formalist academics and critics have spent years cleaving thinking from craft, believing the latter to be obsolete and unnecessary, rather than a matter of necessity and urgency... It is impossible to enumerate all the different things that Wurmfeld does with color, and all the effects he achieves, from an optical buzz to a kind of luminous fog that seems to float in front of the surface — something that J. M. W. Turner and Agnes Martin get in some of their work."
