Reviews
Al Held in Paris: 1952-53
Brooklyn Rail
Tom McGlynn reviews Al Held in Paris: 1952-53 at Nathalie Karg Gallery, New York, on view through June 15, 2018. McGlynn begins: “Al Held moved to Paris in the early 1950s where he was part of a loose-knit expatriate community of American painters that included Joan Mitchell and Sam Francis. Mitchell, Francis and Held all […]
Tomma Abts @ the Serpentine Gallery
The Guardian
Adrian Searle reviews works by Tomma Abts at the Serpentine Gallery, London, on view through September 9, 2018. Searle writes: “Someone once said Abts’ work reminded them of wallpaper designs from East Germany. The paintings flirt with a kind of datedness. They do not quite belong to their moment. They are hard to place. This is […]
Len Bellinger & Jamison Brosseau
James Kalm Rough Cut
James Kalm visits Len Bellinger: Painting Notes 1993-2018 at David & Schweitzer Contemporary and Jamison Brosseau: Skittles at SARDINE. Both shows are on view through June 3, 2018. In the video Kalm provides a close look at both Bellinger and Brosseau’s works and talks to Bellinger about his paintings and career.
Paul Resika, Geometry and the Sea
artcritical
David Carrier reviews reviews Paul Resika: Geometry and the Sea at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects (through May 20) and Bookstein Projects (through May 26). Carrier writes: ” … as if working in a highly personal way through a Gombrichian history of figuration, [Resika] juxtaposes backgrounds of clear skies, with yellow suns, with jagged pyramids in the […]
Devastatingly Human
New York Review of Books
Jenny Uglow reviews All Too Human: Bacon, Freud, and a Century of Painting Life at the Tate Britain through August 27, 2018. Uglow begins: “The gripping and dramatic show … merits its title: it is ‘all too human’ in the tender, painful works that form its core. But ‘a century of painting life’ promises something wider—does it smack […]
Elisa Jensen @ David & Schweitzer Contemporary
Whitehot Magazine
Jonathan Goodman reviews Elisa Jensen: 100 Boats and the Fair Wheel, recently on view at David & Schweitzer Contemporary, New York. Goodman writes: “[Jensen’s] offering, which argues for a bronze-age reading of Brooklyn contemporary art, consists of a wall installation of diminutive golden boats, a group of small paintings, a few larger paintings, and a bench […]
Inka Essenhigh @ Miles McEnery Gallery
Hyperallergic
Peter Malone reviews paintings by Inka Essenhigh at Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, on view through May 25, 2018. Malone concludes: “What separates Essenhigh … is her willingness to embrace the implications of her narratives and to share her dramatic intuitions openly with the viewer, without abandoning the improvisational spontaneity of her drawing and painting. […]
Ewelina Bochenska @ The Fortnight Institute
Art in America
Elizabeth Buhe reviews Ewelina Bochenska: A Hole Was Placed in the Sky and Sealed with Water recently on view at The Fortnight Institute. Buhe writes that the show “featured nearly thirty jewellike oil paintings—most around eight by ten inches, though two could fit in the palm of your hand—that seemed to transform Fortnight Institute into a site […]
Angel Otero: Painting and the Social Landscape
Two Coats of Paint
Eileen Jeng Lynch reviews Angel Otero: Elegies, curated by Christian Viveros-Fauné, at the Bronx Museum of the Arts. The show pairs Otero’s work with three works by Robert Motherwell. Lynch writes: “The intention was not to be a one-to-one comparison but to draw parallels between the works of Otero and Motherwell, such as their emotive effect. … […]
Stanley Boxer & James Little
From the Mayor's Doorstep
Piri Halasz reviews Stanley Boxer: Gradations at Berry Campbell (through May 19) and James Little: Slants and White Paintings at June Kelly (through May 15). Halasz writes: “Although [Boxer’s] paint is about as thick as was Olitski’s during this period, Boxer’s way of laying it on – in quantities of small, solid, pats – looks […]
Laura Newman @ Victoria Munroe
artcritical
Jennifer Riley reviews Laura Newman: New Paintings at Victoria Munroe Fine Art, New York, on view through May 12, 2018. Riley writes: “Newman conjures varied moods in this show that lead us on non-verbal paths of visual exploration. One painting suggests night walks in a city under construction; others suggest dreamscapes of layered experience; others […]
Claude Monet: Strictly A Revolution In Seeing
Artlyst
Edward Lucie-Smith reviews Claude Monet & Architecture at The National Gallery, London, on view through July 29, 2018. Lucie-Smith observes: “One of the most interesting things about the show, at a time when social and political virtue-signalling have become primary subjects for art, is that, where themes of this kind are concerned, Monet is studiously […]
Paul Resika: Geometry and the Sea
Hyperallergic
Tim Keane reviews Paul Resika: Geometry and the Sea at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects (through May 20) and Bookstein Projects (through May 26). Keane writes: “Resika’s recent seascapes in Geometry and the Sea prove Hofmann’s painting theory right: relationships are everything. The intensities in coloration are contained by austere discs, triangles, and quadrants. Horizons […]
Eros, Weaver of Myth: Image and Text in Cy Twombly
artcritical
Wen Tao reviews two exhibitions of works by Cy Twombly: In Beauty It Is Finished: Drawings 1951-2008 (through April 25) and Coronation of Sesostris (through April 28). The former is on view at Gagosian, 980 Madison Avenue New York and the latter at Gagosian, 522 West 21st Street, New York. Tao writes: “Image and text […]
Surface Work @ Victoria Miro
The Guardian
Laura Cumming reviews Surface Work, a comprehensive survey of abstract painting by female artists, at Victoria Miro Mayfair (through June 16) and Victoria Miro Wharf Road (through May 19), London. Cumming writes that the show “is nothing less than an anthology of abstract painting spanning an entire century, from early constructivism to post-digital sampling, in which […]
Steve DiBenedetto: A Denatured Humanism
New York Review of Books
Dan Nadel reviews Steve DiBenedetto: Toasted with Everything at Derek Eller Gallery, New York, on view through April 22, 2018. Nadel notes that DiBenedetto’s paintings “are first and foremost creations of the physical act of brush and scraper on canvas—where once DiBenedetto layered his paintings with allusions to psychedelic phenomena, science fiction films and literature, and modernist […]
From Stasis to Kinesis: The Woosters of Ted Stamm
artcritical
Robert C. Morgan writes about Ted Stamm’s Wooster paintings, recently on view at Lisson Gallery, New York. Morgan writes: “The Woosters employ an unusual rectangular theme that extends into a triangular hinge on the left side. These works were both drawn in graphite and painted in black and white (and, later in silver). At the outset (1978), […]
When Photorealism Meets Delacroix
Hyperallergic
Joe Fyfe observes connections between the work of Robert Bechtle and Eugene Delacroix. Bechtle’s work is on view at Gladstone 64, New York through April 21, 2018. Fyfe writes: “Both Delacroix and Bechtle are representing an ethos, that is, something that an era believes, but not something that is necessarily true. In both cases, this belief […]
Peter Lanyon: Total Immersion in Landscape
Apollo Magazine
Maggie Gray reviews Peter Lanyon: Cornwall Inside Out recently on view at Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert, London. Gray writes: “Over the course of his career Lanyon devised a unique approach to painting that relied on his total immersion within the landscape. He would walk, drive, climb, cycle, swim and eventually glide across and over Cornwall; he learnt […]
Murillo: The Self-Portraits
Studio International
Emily Spicer reviews Murillo: The Self-Portraits at the National Gallery, London, on view through May 21, 2018. Spicer begins: “At least 20 years passed between the Spanish artists Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617-82) painting his first self-portrait and his second and, on the surface, they look strikingly similar. The artist is wearing black, has framed his […]