Ying Li: Foreign Terrain
Ying Li’s recent paintings, on view at the College of Staten Island, fuse natural phenomena and the act of painting.
David Salle: Ghost Paintings
Drew Lowenstein reviews the recent exhibition David Salle Ghost Paintings at Skarstedt Gallery, New York. Lowenstein writes: "The narrative-driven formats used by Salle’s Picture Generation peers promoted sequential arrangements that mimicked authoritarian modes of instruction and control…In contrast, Salle’s single image doesn’t settle into a read. However, in a tacit nod to Minimalist iconoclasm, each […]
Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: In Perspective
Janet McKenzie reviews the exhibition Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: In Perspective: The Late Works at Art First, London, on view through May 17, 2014. McKenzie writes that Barns-Graham "was a key figure in the abstract movement in Britain yet it was only towards the end of her long and productive life that she received the critical attention […]
Angela de la Cruz & Simon Callery
Interviews with Angela de la Cruz and Simon Callery, two artists featured in the exhibition Enantiodromia at FOLD Gallery, London, on view through May 10, 2014. De la Cruz: "I am continuing the tradition of painting… I believe that if you want to continue the language of painting, you have to use very good technical understanding […]
Sandro Chia: Sator Arepo
James Kalm visits the exhibition Sandro Chia: Sator Arepo at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, New York, on view through May 25, 2014. In the video Kalm talks to Sandro Chia about the series of "intimate gem like works on paper that the artist has laboured on for years." From the gallery press release: "Realized […]
Milton Resnick: Painting to Live
Geoffrey Dorfman discusses the life and work of painter Milton Resnick.
Rackstraw Downes: The Still Point
John Haber reviews an exhibition of paintings by Rackstraw Downes at Betty Cuningham Gallery, New York, on view through May 3, 2014. Haber compares Downes' fisheye perspective to T. S. Eliot's "still point in a turning world.” Haber continues: "When an artist takes his time, every exhibition can aim for a rediscovery, even if he […]
Joanne Greenbaum: Interview
Karolle Rabarison interviews painter Joanne Greenbaum about her work which was recently on view at Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York. Greenbaum comments: "Most of the time, I’m not thinking of a viewer. In fact, the only viewer I really think about is myself. I imagine that I am the ideal viewer to that work, and […]
Notations / Revolutions of the Real
Deborah Anne Krieger reviews Notations/Revolutions of the Real: Painting the Figure, 1960s to Now at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Gallery 176). The installation features works by Sidney Goodman, James Rosenquist, Alex Katz, Chuck Close, Philip Pearlstein, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Alice Neel, Elizabeth Peyton, and Noel Mahaffey. Kreiger writes: "While at first glance this show seems […]
Sculpting with Color
Barry Schwabsky reviews recent exhibitions by Ed Clark (Tilton Gallery), Lynda Benglis (Cheim & Read) and Lois Dodd (Alexandre Gallery). Schwabsky writes: "Clark revels in the subtlest interplay of will and accident, painting wet-into-wet to coax suave modulations of color out of the bluntest, even seemingly most slapdash concatenations of matter… Clark’s muscular approach to […]
Wolf Kahn: Six Decades of Color
Scott Indrisek profiles painter Wolf Kahn on the occasion of the exhibition Wolf Kahn: Six Decades at Ameringer McEnery Yohe, New York, on view through May 31, 2014. Indrisek notes: "Even though Kahn has been working within a fairly narrow choice of subject matter — forests, trees, barns, lakes, fields, skies — he seems to […]
Matisse’s Cut-Outs as Environments
Charles Kessler blogs about the achievement of Matisse's late collages on the occasion of the exhibition Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs at Tate Modern, on view through September 17, 2014. Kessler writes: "like Abstract Expressionist painting, Matisse's late cut-outs are large and environmental in their impact. Not only are they large, often encompassing entire rooms, but […]
Robert Dukes on Drawing
Painter Robert Dukes argues for drawing as an essential artistic activity. Dukes writes: "Drawing and painting are very closely combined. This might seem a surprisingly obvious statement: after all, the act of painting could hypothetically be broken down into drawing, colour and tone – yet some serious observational painters nowadays hardly draw at all. For […]
How Painting Can Help Save the World, Actually
Jordan Wolfson considers what it means to paint in a time when "painting has no real context… no larger story and meaningful myth within which to hold and nurture the activity of painting." He argues that: "Painting offers two contradictory experiences. On the one hand, a painting is a flat two-dimensional object, with its surface […]
Van Gogh / Artaud @ the Musée d’Orsay
Darran Anderson reviews the exhibition Van Gogh / Artaud: The Man Suicided by Society at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, on view through July 6, 2014. Anderson writes: "The Musée d’Orsay exhibition, curated by Isabelle Cahn, links fragments of Artaud’s impassioned accusing essay to a formidable collection of Van Gogh’s paintings, and excerpts from Van Gogh’s […]
Imi Knoebel: Rosa Ort
E. Baker reviews Imi Knoebel: Rosa Ort at Kewenig, Berlin, on view through April 26, 2014. Baker writes that Knoebel's new works are "comprised of solid-colored aluminum plates in various forms made with acrylic paint. The works have been interpreted both as paintings and flat wall sculptures, hovering weightlessly in their large-scale formats. Non-representational and […]
Josephine Halvorson: Interview
Jennifer Samet interviews painter Josephine Halvorson about her work. Halvorson comments: "I’ve become interested in the notion of liveliness: the way that paintings are neither dead nor alive; they are neither living beings, nor inert materials, but exist in that space in between… Certain things catch my eye, calling out to me in some way. […]
Dona Nelson: Alchemy of Phigor
Fabian Lopez reviews the exhibition Dona Nelson: Phigor at Thomas Erben Gallery, New York, on view through May 17, 2014. Nelson's work is also on view at the 2014 Whitney Biennial (through May 25). Lopez writes: "Vibrant splashes from one work to another lead us through a maze of freestanding large paintings and finally to […]
Howardena Pindell: Aesthetic Accumulations
Altoon Sultan blogs about the exhibition Howardena Pindell: Paintings, 1974 – 1980 at Garth Greenan Gallery, New York, on view through May 17, 2014. Sultan writes that "are full of light and air and shimmering surfaces. It was not until I walked up to the paintings that I got a sense of the intense process […]
Barry Nemett on Antonio López García
Barry Nemett considers Antonio López García's painting Antonio López García, Sink and Mirror (1967). Nemett writes: "…the selective nature of [López García's] objectivity imbues even his vulgarity with an otherworldly elegance, mystery, and nuance. López elevates to sublime status down-to-earth stuff like dirt, leftover food, skinned rabbits, and soaking laundry. The unposed, just-left-that-way feel of […]