Link to Post:
http://newamericanpaintings.wordpress.com/2013/05/01/a-conversation-cordy-ryman/
Arthur Peña interviews artist Cordy Ryman on the occasion of the exhibition Cordy Ryman: Adaptive Radiation at Dodge Gallery, New York, on view through May 12, 2013.
Ryman comments: " I can say that I’m aware that I’m working with a certain visual language which is shared and not mine exclusively. As I’ve used this language over the last 20 years or so I’ve been amazed that this language has a sort of innate flexibility and infinite scope. It can fit any mood, time, and place and always find its own honest cords without being overly contrived. Over time my own personal vocabulary within that language continues to expand. I’ve gotten technically better at some things, probably. My comfort zone shifts from time to time and I get seduced periodically by certain solutions which is always a danger if I stay too long. But as I continue, more and more solutions come up leaving me with a deeper bag of tricks so to speak. Some moves are like old friends and will ALWAYS look and feel right to me. Other moves are like exciting new acquaintances which I want to see again but don’t know exactly what I think of yet."
Link to Post:
http://www.nyartsmagazine.com/?p=9801
Leah Oates interviews artist William Crump about his work and process.
Crump comments: "The first thing I do when approaching these paintings, is to try and leave all distraction outside of the studio. It’s about keeping my focus and discipline. There are times when I want to dive in head first, but that can lead to not seeing your work with a critical eye. I spend a lot of time arranging and rearranging the materials I work with until something new happens. Experimenting with new materials has been key for me lately. Cut glass or wrapped linen. The older I get, the more time I spend with my work, I realize I’m not as interested in what the viewer thinks. I remember reading about Albert Oehlen wanting to be taken seriously as the decade changed and his work shifted. That struck a chord with me. If anything is brought into the studio with me it’s just that, 'Take your work seriously, think about the long road.' This approach has been more rewarding and has led to a broader exploration in my practice. I just keep trying to push myself, and my ideas into a new place."
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://artnewengland.com/blogs/paint-things-beyond-the-stretcher/
Robert Moeller reviews the exhibition Paint Things: Beyond The Stretcher at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA, on view through April 21, 2013.
Moeller writes: "As [exhibition curator Dina] Deitsch so aptly states, 'The artists collected in this exhibition paint things. They literally paint things. And by doing so they welcome the notion of the Thing—the object—into the realm of the image and, in the modernist language of a painting, into the flatness that is a painting’s historical hallmark.' This increasingly heated oscillation between the two mediums of painting and sculpture grapples less with answers but rather more with questions, some of which are deliberately pointed and profoundly obscure... The deCordova gathered eighteen artists for Paint Things and the assemblage of work is a smartly executed foray into the blurred and frenzied and ever-shifting world of contemporary practices. Looking backward in time, too, the exhibition pays homage, directly and indirectly, to the work of a host of artists whose presence is keenly felt, making the balance struck seem remarkably current."
Link to Post:
http://brenthallard.wordpress.com/2010/05/01/cecilia-vissers/
Brent Hallard interview with artist Cecilia Vissers, posted here on the occasion of the upcoming exhibition Cecilia Vissers: Wind Swept at Galerie Kunstkabinett Corona Unger, Bremen, Germany, on view from March 16 - April 28, 2013.
Vissers, whose recent relief works engage both sculpture and painting, describes how she uses "chemicals to intensify the colors and patterns sometimes using gunblue to retouch or cover up the scratches on the surface of the metal." She continues: "...the color is in the material and not on the material like paint. Up till now I only use the color orange because of its overpowering quality, it is a very direct color that immediately increases energy levels. Whereas the black can be so deep and absorbing like a sponge. There is this searching for balance and equilibrium between the form, the color and the finish of the material. The preference is for purity, and simplicity: the tension arising between the form, color and the finish of the material. It needs to be perfect."
Link to Post:
http://sameoldart.tumblr.com/post/42581405480/the-many-mouths-of-lee-bontecou
A blog post considering the enduring individuality of Lee Bontecou.
"It is not all about brute sentiments in Lee Bontecou’s work in the 60s. Her assemblage pieces are never too mechanic to take on the look of manufactured goods. These are hand-crafted objects recalling structures that can be found both in the natural and industrial world. These are not Jasper Johns’ painted bronze cans or Robert Rauschenberg’s combines either. This is not to say that Bontecou’s work is comparatively better or worse. But what if we talked about Lee Bontecou in the way that we talked about Johns and Rauschenberg? What if we switched the order of hierarchies in favor of Lee Bontecou or Eva Hesse? Would younger generations of artists be looking at popular culture to the same extent? Are there other ways of making art than constantly referencing and manipulating icons of art history? What about the darker aspects of life? How do they fit in? "
Link to Post:
http://kclogblog.blogspot.com/2013/01/angular-seduction-tsa.html
Kris Chatterson photo blogs installation photos from the exhibition Angular Seduction curated by Vincent Como at Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Brooklyn through February 17, 2013.
The show features work by Maya Hayuk, Jason Karolak, Anna Kunz, Karl LaRocca, Melissa Oresky, and Kirk Stoller, artists who "Painters who are each navigating space through color, shape and line, at times even breaking free of the planar reality of pictorial space to enter the Z-axis, or rather, the world of three dimensions with the rest of us. The differences in these collected works come out of the handling of materials, whether clean and exacting with pure color, a sharp demarcation of elements, or transparent and loose with areas of paint bleeding over/into others. While owing a debt to Color Theory as well as the Hard Edge painters and Minimal artists each of the works on display in Angular Seduction simultaneously bastardize and push the boundaries of those very traditions in an attempt to bring the work to another level of existence and thus lure the unsuspecting viewer closer through their wanton displays of geometric persuasion."
Link to Post:
http://anaba.blogspot.com/2012/12/ken-weathersby.html
Martin Bromirski visits the studio of painter Ken Weathersby.
Bromirski's photographs document Weathersby's process as described by Chris Ashley: "At a quick glance, his images are of a type one might expect to be manufactured, but instead we see that every single aspect of the work is handcrafted, from the elaborate stretchers and framing, to the taped and painted areas, to the surface cuts and insertions. Materially and structurally, he makes plain how the object is made, but there is often a sense of peekaboo or sleight of hand in the layers, displacement, and disruption of image and spaces. One would expect the use of the grid and checkerboard to lead to stability, but more often than not these normally regular fields are set ajar, slid apart, flipped open, broken, or misaligned. This is not art that panders, but rather insists that we engage by visually assembling, disassembling, and reassembling each work’s constituent parts in order to see, experience, and understand a holistic image and object. This is one way that Weathersby’s art extends painting’s possibilities."
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.artcritical.com/2012/12/18/alan-shields/
David Carrier reviews the exhibition Alan Shields: Maze at Greenberg Van Doren Gallery, New York, on view through December 21, 2012.
