Ink Art: Past as Present in Contemporary China
Mario Naves reviews the exhibition Ink Art: Past as Present in Contemporary China at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, on view through April 6, 2014. Naves notes: "Continuity is the abiding leitmotif. Bimo, or brush and ink, is to Chinese art as oil paint is to the West. Tradition is a bolster; that’s […]
Lauren Luloff: In Conversation
Amanda Friedman talks to Lauren Luloff about her exhibition Pineapples and Teapots at The Hole, New York, on view through March 1, 2014. The gallery describes Luloff's work as having "multiple strata; many begin with hand-painted fabrics where Luloff creates textures and colors using bleach on domestic fabrics to paint a sort of pan-international imagery […]
Daniel Sturgis @ noshowspace
John Bunker reviews the exhibition Daniel Sturgis: And then again at noshowspace, London, on view through March 8, 2014. Bunker writes that Sturgis "has been developing an abstract painterly realm saturated by forms that evolve from a complex interweaving of drawing, painting and painting’s histories. They are all re-energised by the seductive colour and technological […]
Elisabeth Condon on Henri Matisse
Elisabeth Condon muses on Henri Matisse's Tea in the Garden (1919). Condon writes: "The fleshy network of binding mechanisms—pathway, trees and fence—encircling the painting’s protagonists, reaffirmed by mysterious sunspots echoed in human or canine forms, cedes to the rhythm of brushwork, its dance of warm and cool. A canopy of leaves overhead flattens into a […]
F. Scott Hess: Retrospective
Christopher Knight reviews F. Scott Hess: Retrospective at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, on view through March 16, 2014. Hess' work was also recently on view at Koplin Del Rio Gallery, Los Angeles. Knight notes that in Hess' paintings "it’s the small detail – or the accumulation of them – that carries his pictorial […]
Angela Dufresne: Precarious Space
Bradley Rubenstein interviews painter Angela Dufresne about her work. Dufresne comments on her interest in "the way space can expand, emphasize, or focus can be directed — scale can become narrative… I actually think of painting as a physical medium and a metaphysical medium that can converse on multiple planes simultaneously. The framing of parlors […]
William Bailey: Interview
John Seed interviews painter William Bailey on the occasion of his exhibition at Betty Cuningham Gallery, New York, on view through March 29, 2014. Bailey comments: "I think subtlety has to do with a way of seeing and what you value in what you see… The most important thing is for [viewers] to take time […]
Idea: Painting-Force
Beatrice Schulz reviews the exhibition Idea: Painting-Force at the Reina Sofia, Madrid, on view through May 18, 2014. The show presents works by Alfonso Albacete, Miguel Ángel Campano, Ferran García Sevilla, Juan Navarro Baldeweg, and Manolo Quejido. Schulz writes that the exhibition "revolves around the paintings of five Spanish male artists between 1978 and 1984. […]
Abstract Origins
Through the motif of the red dot, Randee Silv considers the continuum of abstract painting extending back 40,800 years. Silv concludes: "Zig-zags. Grids. Nested curves. Clouds of dots. The edges of vision. 'Neurological bridge.' 'Neural artifacts.' The human nervous system hasn’t changed. Whether provoked through repetitive music, dancing, hallucinogenic plants, lack of food, chanting, sensory […]
Drawing in Abstract Painting
Ten artists – Graham Boyd, Alice Browne, Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, Alan Gouk, Robert Linsley, Jeanne Masoero, Rebecca Norton, Mark Stone, David Sweet, and Gary Wragg offer their thoughts on drawing in abstract painting. Browne remarks: "When I think about it, drawing seems to be an innately abstract act: reducing matter and ideas to a series of […]
Alfred Leslie: Multi-Panel Mammoths
Matthew Polzin reviews the exhibition Alfred Leslie: Multi-Panel Mammoths at Hill Gallery, Birmingham, Michigan. An excellent slideshow accompanies the post. Polzin writes: "Working as a painter and filmmaker, Leslie left Abstract Expressionism altogether in the mid ’60s for grisaille figurative painting, a maturation running against the grain of his peers. The six paintings on view are […]
Painting Pros and Cons
Artpulse
Laurie Fendrich and Peter Plagens discuss the pros and cons of painting in the 21st century. Plagens: "… painting has become pretty much a niche medium in the big-time contemporary art world… The argument that painting has value because of its history, in the way a lot of current painters invoke it, is merely valuing […]
Pop Abstraction @ Fredericks & Freiser
James Kalm visits the recent exhibition Pop Abstraction at Fredericks & Freiser, New York. Kalm notes that the show "[gathers] together a multigenerational contingent of painters, this exhibition presents a legacy of style that has become recently significant for its innovation as well as its critical stance towards formalistic abstraction. Since the beginnings of Modernism, […]
Ryan Cobourn: Paintings Without Irony
Matthew Metzger considers the paintings of Ryan Cobourn which were recently on view at Nancy Margolis Gallery, New York and remain on view at Bryant Street Gallery in Palo Alto, CA through February 28. Metzger writes: "Ryan Cobourn’s paintings dance on the precipice of a familiar scene – a landscape, a flower, an animal we […]
Whistler’s Battles
Barry Schwabsky reviews the new book Whistler: A Life for Art's Sake by Daniel E. Sutherland (Yale University Press). Schwabsky writes: "The brilliance of some of Whistler’s work—perhaps even more in his prints than in his paintings—and the radicality of his ideas makes it inevitable to wonder why his accomplishment seems so much smaller than […]
Melissa Meyer: Rewriting the Lyric
John Haber reviews a recent exhibition of paintings by Melissa Meyer at Lennon, Weinberg, Inc., New York. Haber writes that Meyer's paintings have "begun not just to dance but to jump… One can see the jumps as a lack of disjunction, with each calligraphic trace and color in its cell running up against and slightly […]
Stanley Spencer @ Pallant House
Richard Moss reviews the exhibition Stanley Spencer: Heaven in a Hell of War at Pallant House Gallery, on view through June 15, 2014. Moss writes: "Sometimes Spencer casts these self-contained figures as celestial angels or Jesus and the apostles and the parallels with the complicated inner world he created in his beloved Cookham are unmistakeable. […]
Cable Griffith: Interview
Erin Langner interviews painter Cable Griffith about his work on the occasion of the exhibition Quest at G. Gibson Gallery, Seattle, on view through March 1, 2014. Griffith comments: "I was really starting to experiment with the ways different modes of video game techniques and systems of landscape representation parallel Modernist painting. For instance, when […]
Robert Bechtle at Gladstone
Lucy Li reviews the exhibition Robert Bechtle at Gladstone Gallery, New York. Li writes: "Bechtle’s nonfiction of the most overlooked moments in life can send viewers to the verge of panic about becoming enthralled by the beauty of sheer banal insignificance. Bechtle’s current exhibition at Gladstone Gallery provides a much-needed respite in a world serving up […]
The Big Picture: Filling the Space
Daniel Maidman reviews the exhibition The Big Picture at the New York Academy of Art, on view through March 2, 2014. Maidman writes that the show is "a rare opportunity to see large-format paintings by a notable shortlist of contemporary painters: Vincent Desiderio, Eric Fischl, Neo Rauch, Jenny Saville and Mark Tansey. These painters have […]