Dona Nelson: Phigor
James Kalm visits 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). The gallery press release notes that "Throughout her process, [Nelson] lets the medium itself dictate the form, using its basic components: […]
Emily Berger, Claire Seidl & Mark Wethli
Anne Russinof photoblogs a visit to Emily Berger and Claire Seidl “vis-à-vis” and Mark Wethli: New Work at The Painting Center, New York, on view through April 19, 2014. Kathleen Whitney notes in the catalogue essay that "Both [Seidl and Berger] maximize all types of ambiguity – spatial, structural and inferential. They consistently reconsider and […]
Liam Everett: Unmooring Machinations
Jonathan Stevenson reviews the exhibition Liam Everett: Montolieu at On Stellar Rays, New York, on view through April 6, 2014. Stevenson writes that Everett's paintings "are insidiously provocative. At first glance they just look unevenly worn and washed-out, perhaps casualist or aimed to simulate relics that might be found on the walls of an abandoned […]
Oscar Ghiglia
Ilaria Rosselli Del Turco blogs about the work of the underknown painter Oscar Ghiglia. She writes: "His portraits are characterised by a solid perspective structure, immediate but in fact very complex. They never indulge toward sentimentality nor [do] they become flamboyant. With a classical departure point, they are made modern by the simplification of the […]
Keltie Ferris: Interview
Jarrett Earnest interviews painter Keltie Ferris about her paintings and recent exhibition Body prints at Chapter NY. Asked about references to digital imagery in her work Ferris comments: "I was definitely thinking about textiles before I was thinking about digitalization. I’m really interested in Impressionism and the way small marks build up to make a […]
Gary Wragg: Constant Within The Change
Dan Coombs reflects on a retrospective of paintings by Gary Wragg on view at Clifford Chance, London, through May 2, 2014. A catalogue raisonné of Wragg's paintings, Constant Within Change: Gary Wragg: Five Decades of Painting: A Comprehensive Catalogue (John Sansom & Company) has also just been published. Coombs writes: "The problem, the crisis, the […]
Medford Johnston @ Sandler Hudson & High Museum
Brendan Carroll reviews two concurrent shows of works by painter Medford Johnston: Notes of Africa at Sandler Hudson Gallery, Atlanta (through April 19) and Counterpoise at the High Museum of Art (through June 8). Carroll writes that Johnston uses "shaped lines and irregular geometric forms nestled together in a fashion that suggests intimacy. The objects […]
Gary Stephan @ Susan Inglett
John Yau reviews an exhibition of work by Gary Stephan at Susan Inglett Gallery, New York, on view through April 26, 2014. Yau writes: "Stephan’s sense of precision and timing — when to pull a loaded brush over a still-wet area — never announces itself, but is always there. Working with this circumscribed vocabulary, he […]
Gauguin: Metamorphoses
Mario Naves reviews the exhibition Gauguin: Metamorphoses at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, on view through June 8, 2014. Naves writes: "'Metamorphoses' is selective in its purview. A handful of paintings—some of them iconographic, a few rarely seen—are on view, but Gauguin’s works on paper, especially his prints and transfer drawings, predominate, with […]
Amy Sillman: Labour of Painting
Paige K. Bradley writes about the work of painter Amy Sillman. Bradley begins: "The heritage of conceptualism and minimalism leaves a tendency to interpret a reduction in form as intellectually rigorous. If there is less for the eye to see, so it seems to follow that there’s more for the mind to read into. Amy […]
Margaret McCann on Diego Velázquez
Margaret McCann considers Diego Velázquez's Las Meninas (1656). McCann writes that "the uncertainties of Las Meninas’s imagery feel modern, and resound with postmodern ambiguity. Yet Velazquez’s doubt is not the existential crisis of Prufrock, anxiously asking, 'Do I dare disturb the universe? In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute […]
Simon Dinnerstein: Analog of a World
Tim Nicholas interviews painter Simon Dinnerstein about his work and his Fullbright Triptych, on view at the German Consulate, New York through April 30, 2014. Nicholas notes that the triptych "doesn't fit neatly into any particular movement, tradition, or historical style. It could just as easily relate to conceptual art as to figurative realism… This […]
Pat Steir & Harvey Quaytman: Seductions of Surface
Altoon Sultan blogs about two recent New York exhibitions: Pat Steir at Cheim & Read and Harvey Quaytman at McKee Gallery. Sultan writes: "Many of Steir's paintings appear to be diptychs, as she divides the canvas into two different colors/surfaces. They create a different kind of space, deep and light-filled against one denser and closer […]
Jen Mazza: Interview
A Bascove interviews painter Jen Mazza whose exhibition Graft is on view at Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York through April 12, 2014. Mazza comments: "In the paintings, the formalist reproductions are represented still circumscribed within the rectangle of the page, which, with its dog-eared corners or other signs of age serves both to enclose […]
Cézanne: Modern Impossibility
Julian Bell reviews the exhibition Cézanne and the Modern at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, on view through June 22, 2014. "A tree trunk heads upwards, reaching for light. Cézanne’s pencil follows it. There is a line in nature and now there is a line on the sheet. But no, that won’t do. Stuff buffets the […]
Serge Poliakoff: The Dream of Forms
Gwenaël Kerlidou reviews the recent exhibition Serge Poliakoff: The Dream of Forms at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Kerlidou writes: "What the show made clear was that Poliakoff, an unequaled colorist, remained at his best in the smaller, denser oil paintings from the fifties, in which the artist’s use of a […]
Veronese @ National Gallery, London
Emily Spicer reviews the exhibition Veronese: Magnificence in Renaissance Venice at the National Gallery, London, on view through June 15, 2014. Spicer writes that "the importance of putting on a good show did not escape Veronese. The artist used 'spotlights' in his paintings with all the craft of a theatre director… Painted about 1565 and […]
3 New York Shows
New York Sun Arts
Xico Greenwald reviews three New York painting shows: Place and Passage: Elisa Jensen & Ruth Miller at the New York Studio School (through April 5), Eleanor Ray: Paintings at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects (through April 20), Standing on Cardboard: Avital Burg at Slag Gallery (through April 3, 2014). Greenwald writes: “Jensen paints trendy figures […]
Degas/Cassatt: Mutual Influence
Stephanie Strasnick previews the upcoming exhibition Degas/Cassatt at The National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., on view from May 1 – October 5, 2014. The show examines the artistic dialogue between the two artists. One example, Strasnick writes is that both artists [experimented] with unconventional media such as tempera, distemper, and metallic paints. In Degas’s […]
Joel-Peter Witkin & Jerome Witkin: Interview
Lita Barrie interviews artists Joel-Peter Witkin and Jerome Witkin on the occasion of their exhibition Twin Visions at Jack Rutberg Fine Arts, Los Angeles, on view through May 3, 2014. Joel Witkin: "I think the essence of any great work of art in any history, east or west, is about good and bad. Not the […]