Link to Post:
http://abstractcritical.com/article/the-language-of-painting/
Alan Gouk argues that visual art and language share little in common.
Gouk writes: "the relationship of words, either spoken or written, to 'things,' is a world away from that of visual sensation to its pictorial presentment. The pictographic representation of a tree has a morphological link to its object – this means that its significatory function is radically different from that of sign to 'thing' in writing. In developed languages the link between signs and their objects has become arbitrary; not the case when it comes to painting. It is much closer to 'reality' (however defined) than is the word."
He continues: "In writing what may have begun as a pictographic sign is quickly modified by the act of writing itself, the flow of the implement used etc., into a kind of short-hand in which the original sign is transformed until its pictorial element is lost. Not so in art, painting or drawing; here the short-hand – dots and dashes of paint or line retain their direct visual role and are continually brought back into a correspondence with the 'facts' of visual sensation (even in abstraction)."
Link to Post:
http://www.nyartsmagazine.com/conversations/in-conversation-john-phillip-abbott-interviewed-by-cary-smith
Cary Smith interviews painter John Phillip Abbott about his work.
Abbott comments: "I’ll often begin painting with acrylic and brush, or spray paint. Referencing the grid, with stripes, dots, diamonds, etc. I know the 'sweet spot' will be arrived at when these layers, applied relatively quickly, will be overlapped with the perceived accurateness of the tape and slowness of it’s application. Eventually there is a zeroing in, and this is when a loss of time occurs and I find myself concerned only with the success of the image. In that moment, nothing else matters."
Link to Post:
http://www.twocoatsofpaint.com/2012/12/brian-duponts-square-texts.html
Sharon Butler photoblogs a visit to the studio of Brian Dupont.
Butler writes: "Working on hollow, square, aluminum beams, Brian Dupont paints snippets of found text such as passages from Beckett, Richard Serra's verb list drawing, and narratives written by friends... Dupont and I discussed the nature of text, and the difference between writing something by hand and using a typeface... But ultimately Dupont is interested in how we apprehend information. 'I want to force the viewer to reassess their relation to both the text and object,' he says. 'Because all sides can't be viewed simultaneously, the complete text is only comprehended as an abstract construction.' "
Link to Post:
http://www.port-magazine.com/art-photography/laura-owens-pavement-karaokealphabet/
William Kherbek reviews the exhibition Laura Owens: Pavements/Karaoke Alphabet at Sadie Coles HQ, London, on view through November 17, 2012.
Kherbek writes: "It isn’t easy making interesting paintings these days, what with even good artists thinking that a few squiggles on their iPhone converted into oils suffices to become 'Now', but Owens’ works manage the elusive trick of meaningful dialogue with predecessors and intense realisation of individual vision. It’s a marvel that they escape history so deftly, not least given the fact that the works use classified adverts from the 1960s and 70s as a strange species of almost Cartesian grounding for granules of volcanic rock and strips of heavily worked paint... The adverts are interesting as anthropology, but have an impressive way of melting into near abstraction underneath the paint."
Link to Post:
http://icallitoranges.blogspot.com/2012/05/last-paintings-of-cy-twombly.html
An essay by Ed Schad about Cy Twombly: The Last Paintings at Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills, on view through June 9, 2012.
Schad writes: "Camino Real is a 1948 play by Tennessee Williams... and when it comes to entering into a dialogue with the works at Gagosian, reading the text can be illuminating... On the set, there is a wall and a gate that separates the town from what is simply out there - an unknown wasteland, a place where no one ever comes back from, Terra Incognita... I think about Twombly at the end of a long journey, which has taken him to places in the old world and the texts of our Western culture that I would like to visit. To find him in the end in Camino Real, in that uncertain and horrible territory, dizzy with fever and crime and impossible dreaming, where one can peek over the wall but cannot see it, is chilling."
Link to Post:
http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/798722/27-questions-for-artist-and-critic-mira-schor
Chloe Wyma interviews painter Mira Schor on the occasion of the exhibition Mira Schor: Voice and Speech at Marvelli Gallery, New York, on view through April 28, 2012.
Asked about scale in painting Schor replies: "Modest paintings don't necessarily have to be small, and small paintings are not necessarily modest. I'm advocating for a kind of potent expressive reserve that can exist within intimacy, perhaps, but also for painting that is more committed to criticality, rigor and ambition for painting itself than to overpowering the viewer with the size of the work or the ego of the artist. In an age of the world dominance of the 1 percent of the 1 percent, art venues that demand the spectacular, and the empty calories of 'supersize me,' the stakes are emotional, intellectual, and even moral."
Link to Post:
http://www.freundevonfreunden.com/interviews/wendy-white/
Oliver Kann and Frederik Frede interview painter Wendy White. The post also includes an extensive photo gallery by Fette Sans.
White, who began her career as a sculptor, comments "I started painting in the early to mid 90's. I just fell in love with the problems of painting, the problems of surface, and capturing things in a two-dimensional surface, but I always wanted it to be a sculpture painting hybrid somehow. So I was making individual works, and they were gaining closer proximity to each other. I would literally do a painting, and a sculpture on a pole, that would sit in front of another painting. I always wanted to break out of the square or the rectangle, so it was always about somehow breaking up the wall space. So, really the paintings have always been super sculptural."
Link to Post:
http://kclogblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/peter-gallo-horton-gallery.html
Kris Chatterson blogs installation photos from the exhibition Peter Gallo : Paint Symptoms at Horton Gallery, New York, on view through January 14, 2012.
More images and the essay Peter Gallo A—Z by Kevin Killian are available on the gallery website.
Link to Post:
http://www.twocoatsofpaint.com/2011/12/mel-bochner-babble-blather-blabber.html
Sharon Butler blogs about Mel Bochner's Thesaurus Series, now on view in the exhibition In the Tower: Mel Bochner at National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. on view through April 8, 2012.
Butler writes that "The 'Thesaurus' series began with small word-based pieces in the 1960s. Using ink on graph paper Bochner made experimental portraits based on synonyms found in Roget's Thesaurus... [Bochner] returns to Roget's as the subject for a new series of paintings... In [the new paintings] Bochner's engagement shifts from questioning boundaries to a more formal exploration of color and facture."
Link to Post:
http://looksee.chrisashley.net/?p=7122
Chris Ashley writes about the work of Mira Schor on the occasion of the exhibition Mira Schor: Painting in The Space Where Painting Used to Be at Some Walls, Oakland, through December 18, 2011.
In his essay Ashley notes: "What scale in painting is really about is the relationship of all the painting’s components - what is depicted, material, color, line, stroke, etc., but also the subject and content of the painting - to the surface and the size of the painting: an integrated, holistic entity that, in addition to its own actual size, can suggest grandness or intimacy, or something in between and appropriate to the painting's subject... Schor's paintings may be small in size, but the scale of her work is ambitious and generous."
