Hyperallergic
Evan Fugazzi @ Gross McCleaf
Hyperallergic
Stan Mir reviews an exhibition of new paintings by Evan Fugazzi at Gross McCleaf Gallery, Philadelphia, on view through March 30, 2019. Mir observes: “Color has become the driving force of [Fugazzi’s] work. His aesthetic commitment calls to mind Stanley Whitney, who has continued to distinguish himself as a ‘call and response’ painter. As the elder painter describes […]
Berthe Morisot @ the Barnes Foundation
Hyperallergic
Ilene Dube reviews Berthe Morisot: Woman Impressionist, on view at the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia through January 14, 2019. Dube notes that “… unlike many Impressionist painters who depicted women as ornamental, a part of the decoration, Morisot set her eye on working women — the cooks, the maids, the nannies and governesses who made it […]
Rackstraw Downes @ Betty Cunningham
Hyperallergic
John Yau reviews Rackstraw Downes: Paintings and Drawings at Betty Cunningham Gallery, New York, on view through October 14, 2018. Yau writes: “In ‘Outdoor Passageway at 15 Rivington,’ Downes recognizes infinite time (the sky above), seasonal time (the air conditioning units), and historical time (the dirty walls), as well as time passing (the passageway). Despite all the […]
Abstraction with a Political Conscience
Hyperallergic
Gwenaël Kerlidou examines the career of Olivier Mosset. Kerlidou concudes: “The critique of the art system has often been done from a neo-conceptual standpoint, but rarely from a painting standpoint, since painting has been the standard scapegoat of the conceptual critique. In both cases, however, the objects produced can never be seen simply literally: no […]
Sharon Butler @ Theodore:Art
Hyperallergic
Paul D’Agostino reviews Sharon Butler: New Paintings at Theodore:Art, Bushwick, Brooklyn, on view through October 7, 2018. D’Agostino notes that Butler’s new paintings are based on selections from daily iPad drawings that “readily became not merely an ersatz sketchbook, but also a journal. What’s more, given the textureless surface and inverted, in a sense, light […]
Marc Chagall & the People’s Art School
Hyperallergic
Wilson Tarbox reviews Chagall, Lissitzky, Malevich: The Russian Avant-garde in Vitebsk, 1918–1922, on view at the Centre Pompidou, Paris through July 16, 2018. The exhibition highlights the short lived People’s Art School, started in 1918 by Marc Chagall, and its demise that coincided with the “tension … between Chagall and his particular notion of revolutionary art — […]
Joyce Pensato: Interview
Hyperallergic
Jennifer Samet interviews painter Joyce Pensato. Pensato comments: “I have to look at something for the drawing and the structure … What I also do is mix up parts to throw off expectations. You’re not quite sure what you’re looking at. I sometimes use Felix the Cat’s eyes, a clown’s mouth, and Mickey’s ears. I have […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
The Dazzling Sweep of the Hunter Color School
Hyperallergic
Thomas Micchelli reviews Radiant Energy at the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, on view through May 13, 2018. Micchelli begins: “Radiant Energy is both the title and the most succinct descriptor of the exhibition bringing together, for the first time, the paintings of Gabriele Evertz, Robert Swain, and Sanford Wurmfeld, key members of the […]
Trevor Winkfield’s Undomesticated Imagination
Hyperallergic
John Yau reviews Trevor Winkfield: Saints, Dancers and Acrobats at Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York, on view through March 25, 2018. Yau writes: “Modest in scale, rigorous in execution, mysterious and aloof in outcome, Winkfield’s invented forms tell us that all is not lost, that capitalism does not yet own our imagination — that […]
Back When Painting Was Dead
Hyperallergic
John Yau “[takes] issue with … [the] myth that painting, after taking a hiatus in the 1970s, ‘returned’ in the 1980s. This view justifies the fact that painting was ignored or denigrated during the 1970s, as it verifies the appetites of the marketplace… In narrowing down painting, as [critics] Greenberg, Stella, and Judd did, they overlooked […]
Christian Bonnefoi: Taking the Painter Out of Painting
Hyperallergic
Gwenaël Kerlidou writes about the work of Christian Bonnefoi. Kerlidou writes: “Bonnefoi’s strategies seem to condense a few aspects of the work of his American contemporaries: the objectification and theatricalization of a gesture devoid of pathos of David Reed; the deconstructing strategies of Jonathan Lasker — even if Lasker’s use of exaggeratedly thick brushstrokes seems […]
Ryan Crotty @ High Noon Gallery
Hyperallergic
Stephen Maine reviews Ryan Crotty: Never the Less at High Noon Gallery, New York, on view through February 4, 2018. Maine writes: “To the extent that Crotty’s work is about the fluid movement of color across the surface, it can be viewed in terms of Color Field painters such as Morris Louis and Helen Frankenthaler […]
Painting as Total Environment
Hyperallergic
Jason Stopa writes about “Laura Owens, Keltie Ferris, Rachel Rossin, and Trudy Benson — artists who have explored multi-media paintings that rival sculpture.” “These works,” Stopa argues, “feel constructed as opposed to made, and engage with several forms of tactility, illusion, and physical depth. In a time in which younger artists continue to churn out […]
Graham Nickson: Light and Geometry
Hyperallergic
Karen Wilkin reviews Graham Nickson: Light and Geometry at Betty Cuningham Gallery, New York, on view through December 22, 2018. Wilkin writes: “The canvases and watercolors [Nickson] has produced over the years — of flamboyant sunrises and feverish sunsets — address themes that most committed modernists would either scorn or find too frightening to tackle. […]
Arshile Gorky Landscapes @ Hauser & Wirth
Hyperallergic
Thomas Micchelli reviews Ardent Nature: Arshile Gorky Landscapes, 1943–47 at Hauser & Wirth, New York, on view through December 23, 2017. Micchelli observes: “The drawings in this show are breathtaking in their variety and intensity. Motifs glide in and out; graphite lines trace the contours of unknown plants and body parts, accented by strokes of green, […]
Marcia Marcus @ Eric Firestone Gallery
Hyperallergic
John Yau reviews Marcia Marcus, Role Play: Paintings 1958 – 1973 at Eric Firestone Gallery, New York, on view through December 2, 2017. Yau writes: “Between 1958 and ’73, the period covered by the exhibition, Marcus achieved something as singular and powerful as any of her more celebrated male counterparts, including Alex Katz and Philip […]
Nicolas Carone: Visualizing the Imaginary and Unseen
Hyperallergic
Carter Ratcliff reviews Nicolas Carone: Imaginary Portraits at Loretta Howard Gallery (through October 28)and The Thing Unseen: A Centennial Celebration of Nicolas Carone, organized by Ro Lohin, at the New York Studio School (closed). Ratcliff notes that “The Studio School catalog is prefaced by one of Carone’s precepts: ‘The process is to draw the thing […]