Chaim Soutine: Luminous Writhing Paint
David Carbone reviews the exhibition Life in Death: Still Lifes and Select Masterworks of Chaim Soutine at Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, on view through June 14, 2014. Carbone writes: "Soutine remains an outsider to the mainstream narrative of Modernism; he belongs instead to the still largely unwritten alternative history of modernist figurative painting. Well […]
Olivier Mosset: Inhabiting Space
Peter Scott writes about the work of Olivier Mosset. Scott notes: "Resolutely inhabiting the space within which they’re exhibited, the paintings of Olivier Mosset often seem inseparable from the architecture of the gallery or museum within which they’re presented. Occasionally employing a scale and format reminiscent of the Hudson River School painters Church and Bierstadt, […]
Chris Martin: Cool Drink on a Hot Day
Alexander Koch reviews the exhibition Chris Martin: Cool Drink on a Hot Day at Kow, Berlin, on view through July 27, 2014. Koch writes that Martin "makes art’s transcendental and animist ambitions profane. The presence of landscape, good music and good sex, a starry night and a person’s death, colors and shapes on a surface […]
Joan Snyder: Interview
Cara Manes interviews painter Joan Snyder about her work. Snyder's painting Sweet Cathy’s Song (For Cathy Elzea) (1978) is included in a new installation of works on the fourth floor of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York. Asked about her use of the grid, Snyder remarks: "The source of the grid began for […]
Joseph Noderer @ Linda Warren Projects
Chris Miller reviews the exhibition Joseph Noderer: 'Neath the Light at Linda Warren Projects, Chicago, on view through May 17, 2014. Miller writes that Noderer's paintings evoke "a gothic tale, like 'Wuthering Heights,' where nature has reclaimed that problematic experiment we call civilization—made all the more compelling because Noderer is such an expressive and painterly […]
Clare Rojas: Caerulea
David M. Roth reviews the exhibition Clare Rojas: Caerulea at Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco, on view through May 31, 2014. Roth writes: "… it’s worth remembering that the original impetus behind nonobjective art was to banish representation and illusionism… the rewards have grown substantially harder to reach, owing to the number of possibilities that […]
Sandro Chia: On the Road
An essay by Elaine Smollin on the recent work of Sandro Chia, currently on view at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, New York through May 25, 2014. Smollin writes: "Chia has been acutely aware of the mythical conditions that imbue modern existence while associated with the Transavanguardia movement and as a singular actor in the […]
The Breakfast Group
Hearne Pardee writes about the artists in "The Breakfast Group" – a meetup of Berkeley-based artists, a selection of whose work is included in the exhibition The Breakfast Group: Jive and Java at the Richmond Art Center, on view through May 30, 2014. Pardee observes that "the Breakfast Group, a loose affiliation of Berkeley-based artists, […]
John Gordon Gauld: Still Life Mayhem
Howard Hurst reviews the exhibition John Gordon Gauld: Interstellar Overdrive at Salomon Contemporary, New York, on view through May 10, 2014. Hurst writes: "For every good new painting in the world there seems to be at least five of the half-baked variety. John Gordon Gauld’s selection of carefully hand painted still lives at Solomon Contemporary […]
Sylvia Plimack Mangold: Interview
Alex Bacon interviews painter Sylvia Plimack Mangold about her work. Plimack Mangold comments: "I think I would have never taken on painting a tree like I do now when I was younger because it really is art. And you might think it’s an accomplishment to paint a ruler or a piece of tape or anything […]
Shara Hughes: Wonder of Paint
Eric Hancock reviews the exhibition Shara Hughes: Guess You Had to Be There at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, on view through June 28, 2014. Hancock writes that Hughes "prioritizes spontaneity of gesture, giving a nod to the expressionist trust in paint’s ability to attain natural equilibrium of concept and form. Fast-moving paint […]
Chaim Soutine: Life in Death
James Kalm video blogs a walkthrough of the exhibition Life in Death: Still Lifes and Select Masterworks of Chaim Soutine at Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, on view through June 14, 2014. The gallery press release notes that: "The exhibition will focus on the artist’s still life paintings, most often depicting slaughtered carcasses of hares […]
Veronese @ National Gallery, London
Charles Hope reviews the exhibition Veronese: Magnificence in Renaissance Venice at the National Gallery, London, on view through June 15, 2014. Hope writes: "Visitors to the exhibition will get a very clear idea of Veronese’s strengths as a painter, but also of his weaknesses. He is notable above all as a colourist who used a […]
Robert Longo at Metro Pictures & Petzel
Paul Corio considers two exhibitions of work by Robert Longo: at Metro Pictures (through May 23) and Petzel Gallery (through May 10). Corio writes: "When a group of pictures affects one so viscerally that they challenge some of the deeper convictions one holds about art-making, they certainly bear further analysis. Isn’t this one of the […]
Julian Schnabel: Formula for Greatness
John Yau reviews the exhibition Julian Schnabel: View of Dawn in the Tropics: Paintings, 1989-1990 is on view at Gagosian Gallery, New York, through May 31, 2014. Yau writes: The problem with Schnabel’s work is that his marks and actions are made by someone who is easily satisfied by everything he does, which makes what […]
Terry Winters: Vivid Complexity
Christopher Knight reviews the exhibition Terry Winters: patterns in a chromatic field at Matthew Marks Gallery, Los Angeles, on view through June 21, 2014. Knight writes that the show title's "lowercase spelling a hint of the best works’ luxurious visual intimacy – the dozen paintings generate form in complex ways. Take No. 14 in the […]
Dona Nelson @ Thomas Erben
Rick Briggs blogs about the work of painter Dona Nelson, whose exhibition Phigor is on view at Thomas Erben Gallery, New York through May 17, 2014. Briggs writes: "One of the relative constants amidst the variety of these paintings is the previously mentioned imprint of the grid of the stretcher and crossbars on the canvas. […]
April Gornik: Interview
John Seed interviews painter April Gornik on the occasion of her exhibition Recent Paintings and Drawings at Danese/Corey, New York, on view through May 31, 2014. Gornik comments: "Paintings to me are machines that generate emotion, thought, and real experience through what's been embedded there by the artist. If a person is inured to that […]
Jered Sprecher: Interview
An interview with painter Jered Sprecher whose exhibition Half Moon Maker is on view at Steven Zevitas Gallery, Boston through May 10, 2014. Sprecher comments: "When I am working on a painting, I am pushing it toward being a concrete object, yet I want it to maintain poetic possibilities. As I look at a painting, […]