Vincent Como: Relativity of Black
Matt Smith Chavez interviews painter Vincent Como about his work. Como comments: "This thing-in-itself, this monochrome, acts as an object rather than an illusion, even if it presents an illusory space due to its depth of surface. That’s an issue with the organ or tool perceiving the object though, not the object itself. This object […]
Jackie Saccoccio: Portrait Gallery
Matteo Mottin interviews painter Jackie Saccoccio on the occasion of her exhibition Portrait Gallery at the Museum of Contemporary Art Villa Croce, Genoa, on view through March 9, 2014. In her statement for the exhibition Saccoccio writes: "I want you to tell the whole canvas painting experience, bringing trace of doubt stunts that are part of […]
Jen Hitchings: Studio Visit
Zachary Keeting and Christopher Joy visit the studio of painter Jen Hitchings. In the video Hitchings discusses her narrative paintings of which she has written: "once, i found myself situated in a room with about a dozen others all focusing on the outcome of an event unfolding in our presence. that focal point, which consisted […]
Tine Lundsfryd: Interview
Jennifer Samet interviews painter Tine Lundsfryd about her work. Lundsfryd remarks: "There are symbols I see in nautical museums, and I sketch them. They might be on the floor at the Met, or in a painting. There are Sassanian symbols that are floral, but also look like feathers. I like when they are ambiguous. There […]
Reinhardt, Mondrian & Color
In an article from a special issue devoted to Ad Reinhardt, Margit Rowell examines the similarities and differences in Mondrian and Reinhardt's approaches to color. Rowell writes: "For Reinhardt, as for Mondrian, the penultimate experiment with non-color incited a return to vibrant primary hues. But Mondrian combined the primaries within a single composition, while Reinhardt […]
Abstraction II @ Marcia Wood Gallery
Donna Mintz reviews the exhibition Abstract Part 2 at Marcia Wood Gallery, Atlanta. The show features works by Lorri Ott, Deborah Zlotsky, Clark Derbes, and Amanda Hughen. Mintz writes that the "lively dialogue among this quartet of artists serves best by raising important questions of form, color and material. Relationships and comparisons emerge to deepen […]
Howard Hodgkin: Studio Visit
After a visit to the artist's studio, John-Paul Stonard muses on several recent works by Howard Hodgkin. Considering the painting The Sea, Goa (2013), Stonard writes: "Measuring barely a foot across, it seems at first glance to consist of nothing more than three horizontal stripes of scarlet red and cobalt blue, stacked at the bottom […]
Dennis Hollingsworth: In Conversation
Lita Barrie talks to painter Dennis Hollingsworth. Hollingsworth comments: "My efforts toward the fullest dimension of intellectuality in art is to read widely and try to learn as much as I can about different things. But I don’t want to express ideas in a linear way in my work. What I try to do is […]
Sedrick Huckaby: Interview
Tyler Green talks to painter Sedrick Huckaby about his work. Huckaby's large painting – Hidden in Plain Site (2011) – is on view at the Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth through February 2, 2014. Huckaby comments: "There's always a thought about how deep does a picture go – and obviously many of them it's almost zero […]
Larry Poons @ Danese/Corey
Peter Malone reviews the exhibition Larry Poons: New Paintings at Danese/Corey, New York, on view through February 8, 2014. Malone writes: "There is a depth of understanding and clear evidence of a living interaction with painting’s history in this work — a hard-won quality that can only come from eye and hand working in tandem… […]
Lori Ellison @ McKenzie Fine Art
James Kalm visits an exhibition of works by Lori Ellison at McKenzie Fine Art, New York, on view through February 16, 2014. Kalm notes that Ellison "peruses her painting with an obsessive devotion to repeated pattern and compact picture plane design… Reducing most pictures to shades of one color, and simple binary motifs, through hand […]
Vincent Desiderio: Interview
Larry Groff interviews painter Vincent Desiderio about his work and process. Desiderio comments: "I really cannot speak to the idea of figurative painting as something apart from abstract painting or conceptual painting. It would be nice if I could but I don’t really think in terms that make a significant distinction between these approaches. I […]
Annie Lapin @ Honor Fraser
Blog post featuring a video about painter Annie Lapin, posted on the occasion of her exhibition Various Peep Shows at Honor Fraser, Los Angeles, on view through February 22, 2014. The gallery press release states: "Quick, confident brush strokes appear to rest lightly on the surface of the canvas, operating as pure mark making until […]
Red Grooms: Larger than Life
Stephen Kobasa reviews the exhibition Red Grooms: Larger than Life at the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, on view through March 9, 2014. Writing about Grooms' 27 foot painting Cedar Bar (1986) Kobasa notes that the "detailed remembrance of this place suggests that a verifiable reality lies beneath the commedia dell’arte riot of figures which […]
Amy Sillman @ ICA Boston
Joe Leduc reviews the recent exhibition Amy Sillman: one lump or two at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. Leduc wrtites: "Sillman reinvigorates a beloved painterly mode by shrugging off its baggage. Her wit disarms expectations, allowing her to explore modernist form in a contemporary manner, invention flowing seemingly unfiltered from an endlessly turning mind […]
Painting Past Present
Andy Parkinson reviews the exhibition Painting Past Present: A Painters Craft at Laing Art Gallery, on view through February 9, 2014. The show features paintings by Frank Auerbach, Laura Lancaster, William Brooker, Helen Baker, Derek Hirst, Narbi Price, William Holman Hunt, Emma Talbot, Paul Huxley, Sue Spark, Louis James, Paul Housley, Edmund Blair Leighton, Eleanor […]
Depiction & the Picture
Lawrence Gipe and John Seed discuss their mutual enthusiasm for and their "oppositional" tastes in contemporary representational painting. Two excerpts: Seed: "Painting is a very, very old tradition, and the painting that interests me now attempts to consolidate and refine venerable traditions… when I first see a new artist's work I ask myself, 'What are […]
Fascination of Unfinished Paintings
Roberta Smith muses on several unfinished paintings on view in the recently redesigned European galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Smith begins: "Unfinished paintings are enticing cracks in the facade of art history, lures along the path to a deeper understanding of artistic processes and impulses. For all the paintings that artists […]
Guan Jingjing: Painting for Stimulation
Dr. Janet McKenzie reviews the recent exhibition Painting for Stimulation: Guan Jingjing at Today Art Museum, Beijing. McKenzine writes: "In each work, [Jingjing] confronts a metaphysical void; in each, the mental preparation for the work is often significantly longer than the time required to complete the actual work. She pays homage to the long classical […]
Paul Klee: Intimacy and Spectacle
After reading T.J. Clark's recent review of the exhibition Paul Klee: Making Visible at Tate Modern (through March 9, 2014), Mira Schor considers "the lost condition of modernism." Schor begins: "When a cultural value or quality is lost or altered by time and fashion to such an extent that its first, indeed even its second […]