Exhibitions
Leslie Wayne: Beyond Painterly
Two Coats of Paint
Sharon Butler and Jonathan Stevenson review Leslie Wayne: Free Experience at Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, on view through October 21st, 2017. They write: “… in his lecture series at Harvard in the 1980s, Frank Stella came up with the notion of ‘working space’ – that is, activating the space in front of the canvas by building out from […]
Suzan Frecon: The Pleasures of Slow Paintings
Hyperallergic
John Yau reviews Suzan Frecon: recent oil paintings at David Zwirner Gallery, New York, on view through October 21, 2017. Yau writes: “I think of Frecon’s shape as an abstract thing, a form that defies being turned into language or a message. I think her resistance to the tendency to easily convert her art into […]
Wayne Thiebaud: Interview
Apollo Magazine
Martin Gayford interviews painter Wayne Thiebaud on the occasion of Thiebaud’s recent exhibiton at White Cube, London. Thiebaud remarks: “‘I’d been working in food, washing dishes. That was my environment. I remember seeing pies laid out, processed food that I’d worked on, so I started painting these triangles and turning them into pies. I thought, […]
Jennifer Packer: Interview
artcritical
Lee Ann Norman interviews painter Jennifer Packer whose show Tenderheaded is on view at the Renaissance Society, University of Chicago through November 5, 2017. Packer comments: “I’ve been interested for a long time in how I present or protect humans in the work. It’s not figures, not bodies, but humans I am painting. I want […]
Bridget Riley: Our Instinct Enhanced
Christchurch Art Gallery
Richard Schiff writes on the paintings of Bridget Riley on the occasion of Bridget Riley: Cosmos on view at the Christchurch Gallery, New Zealand through November 17, 2017. Schiff observes: “Riley grants that the ‘role of art’ changes. Yet this social and historical role is merely an aspect of the art that an artist creates. […]
Andrea Belag: Making Changes
Two Coats of Paint
Sharon Butler reviews Andrea Belag: Ghost Writer at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, New York, on view through October 15, 2017. Butler writes: “In [Belag’s] older work, the deep color triggered an inchoate emotional response, but now simple shapes and lines, truncated brushstrokes rendered in lively color, float on the picture plane. Many of the new paintings leave large […]
The Beauty of Ugly Painting
New York Times
Charlie Fox considers the allure of “ugly painting” in advance of a mid-career retrospective of works by Laura Owens at the Whitney Museum of American Art, on view November 10, 2017 – February 4, 2018. Fox writes: “Our present moment bristles with an extra-special awfulness, which may explain not only the existence of this new […]
Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction
Hyperallergic
Karen Emenhiser-Harris reviews Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, on view through September 17, 2017. Emenhiser-Harris writes: “According to the Kemper, this is the first museum exhibit in the US to show abstract artwork created exclusively by women of color. Stylistically varied and teeming […]
Mystery and Rapture: Landscapes by Four
Painting Perceptions
Tina Engels blogs about the recent exhibition Mystery and Rapture: Landscapes by Four, curated by William Bailey, at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Civitella Ranieri, Italy. The show featured works by Mario Fallani, Marco Fallani, Dan Gustin, and Langdon Quin. Engels notes that selections made by curator “[William] Bailey [convey] the resonance of different cultural spheres that results […]
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: Painting is Presence
The Nation
Ratik Asokan reviews Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s recent exhibition Under-Song For A Cipher at the New Museum, New York. Asokan observes: “For a portraitist, it’s a strange approach. But perhaps we aren’t dealing with portraiture. Abstract painting, as defined by Octavio Paz, ‘suggests contemplation to us—not of what it shows but of a presence which the colors and […]
Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting
Studio International
Donald Stone reviews Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting: Inspiration and Rivalry, on view at the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin through September 17, 2017 and the National Gallery of Art, Washington from October 22, 2017 – January 21, 2018. Stone writes: “The organisers of the latest exhibition … want us to see Vermeer […]
Guy Goodwin: Interview
Brooklyn Rail
Phong Bui interviews painter Guy Goodwin whose exhibition Grotto Relief was recently on view at Brennan & Griffin, New York. Goodwin remarks: “The relationship I’ve developed with my color, which takes a day or two to dry, is the biggest step I’ve taken in my life as an artist. The miraculous thing is that when […]
Patricia Treib: Interstices
ARTnews
Ella Coon reviews Patricia Treib: Interstices recently on view at Bureau, New York. Coon writes: “Treib’s engagement with ciphers and symbols coupled with her treatment of the canvas as uncharted territory—something to be delicately partitioned or meted out—suggests she is interested in something more than abstracting reality—that is, reducing observable objects and scenes to aestheticized […]
Brenda Goodman Turns Towards the Light
Whitehot Magazine
Deborah Krieger writes about Brenda Goodman’s recent paintings which will be on view in Goodman’s show In a New Space at David & Schweitzer Contemporary, New York, from September 8 – October 1, 2017. Krieger writes: “The visual language and vocabulary Goodman has used—and continues to use—to reflect her frame of mind is always evolving, forever […]
John Walker @ the Center for Maine Contemporary Art
Hyperallergic
Chris Crosman reviews John Walker: From Seal Point at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, on view through October 29, 2017. Corsman writes: “Walker is an unrepentant modernist who has led a resurgence — mostly through uncompromising example — of painters reinvigorating abstraction by looking to nature, ideas, emotion and, especially, place. The Seal Point […]
Gillian Ayres @ the National Museum Cardiff
AbCrit
Nick Moore reviews a retrospective exhibition of paintings by Gillian Ayres at the National Museum, Cardiff, on view through September 3, 2017. Moore begins: “The overarching sense of this exhibition is of a celebration of a painter whose work is vibrant, energetic and ambitious, but perhaps, above all, someone who has lived in painting. Ayres’s rich colour and […]
Women of Abstract Expressionism
Artillery
David DiMichele reviews Women of Abstract Expressionism recently on view at the Palm Springs Museum of Art. The show features works by Mary Abbott, Jay DeFeo, Perle Fine, Helen Frankenthaler, Sonia Gechtoff, Judith Godwin, Grace Hartigan, Elaine de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell, Deborah Remington, and Ethel Schwabacher. DiMichele writes: “The big surprise in the […]
Bram Bogart: The White Paintings
The Art Section
Erin Lawlor reviews Salon 002: Bram Bogart, Witte de Witte at the Saatchi Gallery, London, on view through September 10, 2017. Lawlor writes: “It might seem a curious challenge to present Bogart’s work through the white paintings; yet this reduction or even denial of colour provides something of the clarity of an x-ray, allowing a […]
Giovanni da Rimini @ the National Gallery, London
Apollo Magazine
Florence Hallett reviews Giovanni da Rimini: A 14th-Century Masterpiece Unveiled at the National Gallery, London, on view through October 8, 2017. Hallett begins: “Jewel-like, and embellished with engrossing details, the exquisite little panel at the centre of the National Gallery’s current exhibition is a rare evocation of Rimini at the turn of the 14th century, […]
Gabriele Evertz & Sanford Wurmfeld @ Minus Space
Hyperallergic
John Yau reviews Gabriele Evertz/Sanford Wurmfeld: Polychromy at MINUS SPACE, Brooklyn, New York, on view through August 12, 2017. Yau observes that the two artists’ “work is very different from each other, demonstrating that the ontology of color is a wide-open field — a space where research, color theory, and painting can arrive at very […]