Link to Post:
http://www.gorkysgranddaughter.com/2013/05/alexi-worth-april-2013.html
Christopher Joy and Zachary Keeting visit the studio of painter Alexi Worth.
Worth discusses his recent work: " ...a few years ago I got very interested in the idea of nearness, things that are right up between your hand and your face, so… your own shadow, or an implication or suggestion of it, is designed to push that idea that you're there." He also comments on the technical decision to begin painting on nylon mesh, and the affect it has had on the work: "there's a kind of solid/void difference in the surface - the surface can collaborate with the illusionism."
Alexi Worth: States is on view at DC Moore Gallery, New York, through June 15, 2013.
Link to Post:
http://artjournal.collegeart.org/?p=3542
A new essay by Josephine Halvorson examines how sometimes a seemingly ideal subject resists the artist's efforts to capture it, receding into memory before it can be, or should be, realized in paint.
Halvorson tells the story of her "attempt to make a painting of a large diesel compressor next to a mine shaft on a ridge along the California-Nevada border. Its base showed the recent shine of a grinder, as if its ankles had been gnawed, its tendons sliced. It had been pushed on its side, an effort requiring considerable force, revealing the concrete foundation on which it had been secured for decades. Thousands of dried black insect carapaces were exposed in a dense layer. Looking at the machine askew, it was suddenly a severed head, its facade transformed into a face: a bolted plate resembled a shut eye, a dark recess became an open mouth, and a heavy steel shaft protruded, suggesting Pinocchio’s telescoping nose. On its rusted side, in white spray paint, someone had written 'Shame.'"
Link to Post:
http://www.aubreylevinthal.blogspot.com/2013/04/sunday-pick-eleanor-ray.html
Aubrey Levinthal conducts a short interview with painter Eleanor Ray. Ray's work is currently on view in the exhibition dooroomwindow at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, New York, through May 26, 2013. The exhibition features the work of Jane Dickson, Bill Rice, Kurt Knobelsdorf, Gideon Bok, Eleanor Ray and Stephanie Pierce.
Ray comments: "Painting a familiar place becomes easier for me when it appears unfamiliar, usually because I am seeing something more basic -- its abstract qualities -- rather than my particular associations with the place. I find that I can see places more clearly when I'm a bit removed from them -- if I'm returning after a long absence, for example, or if I'm simply seeing the place in a new kind of weather, out of the corner of my eye, or through a window. I often become more interested in painting the places I've lived after moving away from them."
Link to Post:
http://www.nysun.com/arts/freilicher-and-friends/88283/
Xico Greenwald reviews the exhibition Jane Freilicher: Painter Among Poets at Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York, on view through June 14, 2013.
Greenwald writes: "The offhanded, intimate approach adopted by Freilicher and some of her fellow painters belies the critically important contributions these artists made to the canon of twentieth century art. One of the works in the show, Pierrot and Peonies, 2007, pays tribute to French Rococo painter Antoine Watteau. Watteau’s friendships with players from commedia dell'arte informed his work, with troupe members posing in costume for paintings depicting human dramas. In Freilicher’s work, too, the artist has gone outside the art world for a creative exchange. Her friendships with New York School poets have deepened her relationship to her surroundings and the paintings here are richer for it."
Link to Post:
http://burnaway.org/2013/04/an-ideal-rhythm-studio-visit-with-andy-cherewick/
Rusty Wallace interviews painter Andy Cherewick.
Cherewick discusses his work and the daily practice of painting. He remarks: "The reality is you have to get accustomed to the fear of going into the unknown. You go into the unknown on purpose. If you’re sincere about wanting to do something vital and meaningful, you have to take that step. Fear is always going to be there... When you get to a place where you’re presenting your work and you’re looking at the work individually, are these guys doing something together? Are there little things going on inside them? What’s their relationship? Do they have enough to survive on their own when they get split up, sent to different places? Can each one transmit the story of whatever it is you’re telling in some way, shape, or form? Are you making sure each one of your works is doing that? For me, that’s the hardest thing to see and control and understand. And that is what is happening to your work versus what is happening in the world with your work."
Link to Post:
http://danielgalas.blogspot.com/2013/04/aubrey-levinthal-studio-visit.html
Daniel Galas visits the studio of painter Aubrey Levinthal.
Galas writes that Levinthal "varies brushwork, prefers pastel colors, and is not afraid to boldly interpret in subject. Aubrey primarily works from life but doesn't hesitate to alter the composition in any imaginative manner she finds fit. Still life is her subject of choice... mainly cups, tabletops, and food. I love her compositions, the confident loose brushwork, her focus on soft light and atmosphere, the melting of representation into abstraction, and her hints of naive/primitive articulation of form."
Link to Post:
http://mnaves.wordpress.com/2013/04/18/simple-but-not-so-simple-the-art-of-victor-pesce/
Mario Naves posts about the work of Victor Pesce on the occasion of an upcoming exhibition at Elizabeth Harris Gallery, New York, on view from April 20 - July 26, 2013.
Naves writes: "Victor Pesce paints pictures of simple things, but the pictures he paints are not so simple. Certainly, his still-life paintings are unadorned. A few pieces of fruit, a couple of bottles, a milk carton or coffee cup–that’s all he needs to pique his interest, to set the pictorial snowball rolling. These items are seen situated against flat expanses of dusky color, mottled fields which are, at the barest maximum, demarcated by a horizon line. Yet even without that line–that not-quite-Platonic table top–we read Pesce’s still-lifes as occupying space, as things that “sit.” It is with this nod to gravity that he lets us know that however spare–or, if you prefer, abstracted–his paintings may be, they are irrevocably of this world."
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://hyperallergic.com/68124/before-we-are-completely-swept-away-joshua-marshs-recent-paintings/
John Yau blogs about the work of Joshua Marsh, on view in the exhibition Joshua Marsh: As If at Jeff Bailey Gallery, New York, through May 4, 2013.
Yau writes that "the perceptual state [Marsh] focuses on is both optical and volumetric, a tension between solid form and ethereal light. Using a high-keyed, hothouse palette, he makes his forms tremble and even undulate between silhouette and shadow, thing and ghost. They seem to be there and not there at the same time... The high-keyed palette places Marsh’s forms under extreme pressure, as if the technological light of LED screens, surveillance cameras and airport security machines is consuming them. In some of the paintings — 'Reflection' (2013) and 'Dustpan' (2013) strike me this way — the forms hover between legibility and illegibility, dissolving the boundaries separating representation from abstraction. In other paintings — such as the square 'Pitcher' (2012), and 'Not'(2013) — it is as if the form has dematerialized into a shadow casting a shadow. There is something eerie and disquieting about the work."
Link to Post:
http://hyperallergic.com/67886/catherine-murphys-challenge/
John Yau blogs about the work of Catherine Murphy, on view at Peter Freeman, Inc., New York thorugh April 27, 2013.
Yau writes: "Murphy doesn’t generalize, doesn’t develop shorthand for her subjects, doesn’t use paint in any way that announces painterliness or style. Rather, she does something far more difficult and demanding — she remains devoted to her subject, however plain and ordinary. And if the subject requires that Murphy paint layers of flesh-colored tissue paper or flakes of falling snow seen through a window on a windy night, then she will take up the challenge. Think of all the artists who become content to produce examples of their brand with just the right little twist. There is none of that in this exhibition. Every painting and drawing is distinct, no variations."
