Tirtzah Bassel: The Line Starts Here
Etty Yaniv reviews the exhibition Tirtzah Bassel: The Lines Start Here at Slag, Bushwick, Brooklyn, on view through May 11, 2014. Yaniv writes: “Charged with urgency, precision and an acute sense of place, Tirtzah Bassel’s luminous oil paintings at Slag capture figures lingering in uncannily familiar public spaces. Whether the subject matter of these canvases are […]
Gary Stephan @ Susan Inglett
Drew Lowenstein reviews an exhibition of paintings by Gary Stephan at Susan Inglett Gallery, New York, on view through April 26, 2014. Lowenstein writes: "Gary Stephan’s new paintings exude matter-of-factness about their own making that perfectly embodies the often overused term 'practice.' Stephan toys with expectations of how foreground and background are supposed to function, […]
Stephen Maine: Halftone Paintings
James Kalm visits the exhibition Stephen Maine: Halftone Paintings at 490 Atlantic Gallery, Brooklyn, New York. Kalm notes: "Having developed his vision of abstraction over more than thirty years, Maine has developed a very personal and unique method that removes his hand and habits from the paintings. With a very perceptive eye, and probing intellect, […]
Jon Imber Remembered
Carl Belz remembers painter Jon Imber (1950-2014), posting a 1999 essay written for an exhibition of Imber's paintings at Boston University. Considering Imber's early figure paintings, Belz notes: "The situations are conventional enough, but they are unconventionally presented. The figures look anxious and uncomfortable, they leer and grimace, their bodies awkwardly entangle one another, and […]
Barbara Campbell Thomas @ Schulman Project
Cara Ober reviews Barbara Campbell Thomas: World Without End at Schulman Project, Baltimore, on view through May 11, 2014. Ober writes that Thomas' works "buzz with a loose predictability that renders them charmingly familiar, yet capricious up close. As you scan their surfaces, these awkward accumulations of small proliferating shapes coalesce into dense hubs of […]
Gary Wragg: Interview
Matthew Collings interviews painter Gary Wragg about his work which is on view at Clifford Chance, London, through May 2, 2014. A catalogue raisonné of Wragg's paintings, Constant Within The Change: Gary Wragg: Five Decades of Paintings (John Sansom & Company) has also just been published. Wragg comments: "…one of the problems people have when […]
Remembering Alan Davie
Helen Little remembers painter Alan Davie (1920-2014) and posts a portion of Louise Cohen's 2009 interview with the artist. BP Spotlight: Alan Davie is on view at Tate Britain through September 14, 2014. Little writes that early in the late 1940s "Davie set out to free himself from the conventions of picture making. Working quickly […]
Henri Matisse: Constant Effort of Vision
A 1954 statement by Henri Matisse, republished on the occasion of the exhibition Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs at Tate Modern, on view through September 17, 2014. Matisse writes: "Thus, for the artist creation begins with vision. To see is itself a creative operation, requiring an effort. Everything that we see in our daily life is […]
Veronese’s Allegories of Love
T.J. Clark considers the paintings of Veronese. Veronese: Magnificence in Renaissance Venice at the National Gallery, London, on view through June 15, 2014. Clark writes: "What seems to me the central feature of Veronese’s achievement – I could use many examples, but let us focus on the counterpoised bodies in Respect – is a unique […]
Leslie Baum: Studio Visit
John Yau blogs about the work of artist Leslie Baum. Yau writes: "The fragment, which is one of the touchstones of Baum’s approach, conveys the possibility that there is no whole. It also suggests that the artist probably believes that we are born into a shattered world and that we will likely shatter it further. […]
Sandra Mendelsohn Rubin: Interview
John Seed interviews painter Sandra Mendelsohn Rubin whose work will be on view at Ameringer McEnery Yohe, New York from April 24 – May 31, 2014. Rubin comments: "In the past few years I have made the leap to using digital photographs to supplement working exclusively from life. It has given me access to a […]
Ben Steele: Interview
Dan Weiskopf interviews painter Ben Steele, whose exhibition From this, a Mountain is on view at {poem:88}, Atlanta, through May 24, 2014. Steele comments: "I’ve never been an artist working from my imagination in terms of just saying, 'I’m going to decide to put this here.' Someone might say, well, if you want to put […]
Didier William: Studio Visit
Zachary Keeting and Christopher Joy visit the studio of painter Didier William. William comments: "Instead of the paintings becoming a kind of depictive space or natural space with up and down axes and rational gravity… I build them up through layers and allow the layers to come together to build the space of the painting. […]
Julie Mehretu: Interview
Faith McClure interviews painter Julie Mehretu about her work. Mehretu remarks: "I’m constantly playing with these various sides of making, one where you’re trying to make sense of what you’re doing and understand with some kind of rational perspective what’s happening in the work, the intention, who am I in the work, why am I […]
Samuel Feinstein @ McCormick Gallery
Chris Miller reviews the exhibition Samuel Feinstein: Paintings from the Fifties at McCormick Gallery, Chicago, on view through April 26, 2014. Miller writes: "Like his friend and mentor, Hans Hofmann, Sam Feinstein (1915-2003) was a teacher and practitioner of what Hofmann called 'pure painting—the rhythmic interweavings of color scales.' His work is gestural, but all those […]
Marsden Hartley: The German Pictures
William Kherbek reviews the exhibition Marsden Hartley: Die Deutschen Bilder 1913-1915 at the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, on view through June 29, 2014. Kherbek writes: "In these works, Hartley’s inclination towards symbolically-themed abstraction finds a concrete expression in the visual accoutrements of military insignia and national flags… From a painterly perspective, the works retain the expressionistic […]
Julian Schnabel: In The Course of Seven Days
Video blog post featuring the short Julian Schnabel: In the Course of Seven Days by Porfirio Munoz. 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. In the film Schnabel remarks: "I started to use different kinds of materials because […]
Eleanor Ray: Power of Tiny Paintings
John Goodrich reviews an exhibition of paintings by Eleanor Ray at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, New York, on view through April 20, 2014. Goodrich writes: "A lot of current art relies on spectacle and effect, and Ray’s rejection of these could be considered a kind of performance in itself. But her paintings reveal other […]
Martin Kippenberger: Raft of the Medusa
Chris Reitz reviews the exhibition Martin Kippenberger: The Raft of the Medusa at Skarstedt Gallery, New York, on view through April 26, 2014. Reitz writes: "Taking Théodore Géricault’s iconic 1818–19 painting as its point of departure, and working from photographs taken by his wife Elfie Semotan, 'The Raft of the Medusa' eventually came to include […]
An Hoang: Interview
Hilary Harkness interviews painter An Hoang on the occasion of her exhibtion As the Crow Flies at Halsey McKay Gallery, New York, on view through April 30, 2014. Hoang remarks: "Alaska had an important impact on my work because the landscape is a striking contrast to my daily experience in the city. I had the […]