Josphine Halvorson: Facings
Jarrett Earnest reviews the recent exhibition Josphine Halvorson: Facings at Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York. Earnest writes: "Halvorson’s paint is polysemic, it flutters between itself and the cement or mud or dust or soot or weathered house paint that it depicts, that it is. And in a deep way they really are these things. […]
Emily Weiner: Studio Visit
Christopher Joy and Zachary Keeting visit the studio of painter Emily Weiner. Weiner comments: "I'm always creating a fiction… I start with something real. The spark comes from something in the world… You give it it's own life that exists in this field of being – the world you create in your studio."
Frankenthaler at Face Value
(Long read) Through the lens of the recent exhibition Helen Frankenthaler: Painted on 21st Street – 1950 -1959 at Gagosian Gallery, Shepherd Steiner considers the complicated impact the inflated art market has on the presentation, reception, and criticism of works of art – ultimately arguing for a return to the work itself, for an attempt […]
Gideon Bok @ Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects
John Yau reviews the exhibition Gideon Bok: Welcome to the Afterfuture at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, New York, on view through March 16, 2014. Yau writes; "Bok works on several paintings at once, working within a predetermined time frame in order to keep the ambient light in the painting consistent… Bok seems to be […]
Siri Berg: In Conversation
Richard Benari talks to painter Siri Berg about her work which will be on view at with Hionas Gallery at Volta, New York, March 6-9, 2014. Benari notes that: "works daily, making drawings and paintings that are, at first glance, deceptively simple, but in the real show a concern for surface, light and color that […]
Ryan Mosley: Interview
Harriet Thorpe interviews painter Ryan Mosley whose work is on view at Alison Jacques Gallery, London, through March 15, 2014. Thorpe writes that Mosley describes "his own strange and fantastical world where, shifting and morphing, reality and imagination are constantly in flux… Recurring motifs in his work include the vanitas, the harlequin-diamond print, portraits in […]
Painting Beyond Art
Viktor Witkowski laments the lack of painting concerned with issues outside of art. Witkowski writes: "I have always held the belief that painting can take a stance… But for the past years, almost a decade now, I have mainly come across safe and easy painting. Colorful, predominantly abstract, expressive in gesture (a sort of Neo-Neo-Expressionism […]
Jock McFadyen: Interview
Susie Pentelow interviews painter Jock McFadyen whose work is on view at Marsden Woo Gallery, London through March 29, 2014. McFayden comments: "What I’m obsessed with in painting is surface and making the paint bloom. What I like in painting is the counter point between accident and design, so I like the fact that paint […]
Frances Barth on Piero della Francesca
Frances Barth responds to Piero della Francesca's painting Saint Jerome in the Wilderness (1450) on view in the exhibition Piero della Francesca: Personal Encounters at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, on view through March 30, 2014. Barth writes: "When I saw 'St. Jerome in the Wilderness' at the Met show, I was immediately struck and […]
Ken Weathersby @ Parallel Art Space
Mostafa Heddaya reviews works by Ken Weathersby on view in the group show Off the Wall at Parallel Art Space, Ridgewood, Queens, New York through March 23, 2014. Heddaya writes: "From the outside, Weathersby’s pieces straddle the clinical geometry of Op art and the organic architectural character of traditional room dividers and panels, like the […]
Molly Zuckerman-Hartung: Interview
Kevin Blake interviews painter Molly Zuckerman-Hartung whose exhibition Violet Fogs Azure Snot at Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago, on view through March 15, 2014. Zuckerman-Hartung's work is also on view at the 2014 Whitney Biennial through May 5. Zuckerman-Hartung comments "I think the crisis for me is the flatness of the surface of the painting. With […]
Alfredo Gisholt: Canto General
Kara L. Rooney reviews the exhibition Alfredo Gisholt: Canto General at the CUE Art Foundation, New York, on view thorugh March 8, 2014. Rooney writes: "In these canvases, scribbles, zips, and coarse gestural passages, often painted wet into wet, populate both large and small-scale compositions in a frenzy of energy and intent. Abstracted marks are […]
Indian Space Painters: In the Shadow of Ab-Ex
John Goodrich reviews the exhibition Indian Space Painters at David Findlay Jr. Gallery, New York, on view through March 8, 2014. Goodrich writes: "Seeking an innately American response to Cubism and Surrealism, artists such as Steve Wheeler, Peter Busa, and Robert Barrell began in the late 1930s to combine elements of Native American and pre-Columbian […]
Clive Hodgson: Interview
Sherman Sam interviews painter Clive Hodgson about his work which is on view at White Columns, New York through April 19, 2014. Hodgson relates his current work with an interest in decorative painting: "The decorative thing I saw as being painting, existing in a real and vivid form precisely because it is outside of traditional […]
Claire Sherman: Studio Visit
Zachary Keeting and Christopher Joy visit the studio of painter Claire Sherman. Speaking about two complementary series of recent paintings Sherman comments: "I want them to ride a line between inviting you in and pushing you out… I would think of [my paintings] as confrontational – [but] not all of them are that way – […]
Matisse: Cutting it Fine
Mali Morris considers Matisse's late work on the occasion of the exhibition Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs at Tate Modern, on view from April 17 – September 7, 2014. Writing about Matisse's Snow Flowers (1951), Morris notes: "This chromatic orchestration in and out of pictorial space is inseparable from a literal, collaged layering, as fronds overlap […]
Deborah Brown: Outer Limits
Sharon Butler blogs about the exhibition Deborah Brown: Outer Limits at Lesley Heller Workspace, New York, on view through March 9, 2014. Butler writes: "Most of the energetic paintings in [Brown's] new series are based on details of well-known portraits, the sitter seemingly overwhelmed by some kind of crazy, top-heavy rollercoaster scaffolding or rings of […]
Provisional Criticism & the New Mannerism
Brian Dupont responds to the ongoing debate about Provisional and Casual painting. Dupont argues: "Provisionalism did not remove the need for manual skill in art (that ship has long since sailed), but as it has become a focus in the practice of young artists it has become threatening exactly because it challenges the need for […]
8 Painters on Painting
Jennifer Higgie interviews eight artists – Ellen Altfest, Apostolos Georgiou, Imran Qureshi, Helen Johnson, Henry Taylor, Mark Sadler, Rose Wylie, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye – about "the whys and wherefores of figurative painting." Altfest notes: "Why paint? There’s no good reason. It’s something I’m driven to do. I’d like to make something that is both of […]
From Edwin Dickinson to the Perceptual Painters
In a new video painter/curator Scott Noel discusses a lineage of observational painting that spans four generations.