The Edge and a Little Beyond
Six abstract artists push out the edge of the painting. The work, verging on sculpture, clearly comes from a painter’s mind.
Lari Pittman: Magic Carpet Ride
Tulsa Kinney visits the temporary studio of Lari Pittman to view Pittman's three new 30 foot paintings to be exhibited at Regen Projects, Los Angeles from November 9 – Decemeber 21, 2013. Kinney writes: "The three paintings start with a black base and all have a repeated textile pattern, much like a tapestry rug. Huge […]
Matthew Krishanu: Interview
Simon Carter interviews painter Matthew Krishanu about his recent work. Matthew Krishanu comments: "I quite like [the]t idea of a box of memories, because I think in a way, putting together a solo show is about doing that – you’re sort of curating a set of memories that then have a dialogue with each other. […]
Amy Sillman: Interview
R. H. Quaytman interviews painter Amy Sillman whose exhibition Amy Sillman: one lump or two will be on view at the ICA Boston from October 3, 2013 – January 5, 2014. In the interview, Quaytman and Sillman discuss painting's relationship to technology. Quaytman comments: "Paintings now tend to be read as super-flat computer images and […]
Conversation with Zachary Keeting
Zachary Keeting’s works evoke the beauty, emotion, order, and mayhem that lie just below the surface of everyday experience.
Now You See It Now You Don’t
Andy Parkinson blogs about the recent one day exhibition Now You See It Now You Don't curated by painter Karl Bielik. Parkinson writes that "Over the last six years 162 different artists have shown over 300 pieces of work in this now transformed, former wasteland. Exposed to the elements the works have shifted, faded, broken, […]
Simon Hantaï’s Discontent
On the occasion of the exhibition Simon Hantaï at the Centre Pompidou, Paris (through September 2, 2013), Gwenaël Kerlidou considers Hantaï's work in the context of his decision in 1983 to "withdraw from the art scene and stop exhibiting his work, if not to stop painting altogether. He would not show again until 1998, a fifteen-year […]
Joanne Mattera: Chromatic Geometries
Sharon Butler blogs about the exhibition Joanne Mattera: Chromatic Geometries at Arden Galery, Boston, on view through September 30, 2013. Butler writes: "In 'Chromatic Geometries,' … Mattera has decisively moved away from the layered, atmospheric approach of earlier 'Silk Road' and 'Vicolo' series to explore, with her customary virtuosity, the possibilities of figure-ground relationships and […]
Richard Diebenkorn & the Painter’s Predicament
Jed Perl writes about the problems facing contemporary painters and finds "promising directions that painters might further explore" in Richard Diebenkorn’s work from the 1950s and 1960s, currently on view in the exhibtion Richard Diebenkorn, The Berkeley Years 1953-1966 at the M.H. De Young Museum, San Francisco through September 29, 2013. Perl examines "the painter's predicament," […]
Chuck Webster: Blessing
James Kalm visits the exhibition Chuck Webster: Blessing at Betty Cuningham Gallery, New York, on view through October 12, 2013. Kalm notes: "These impressive pieces bare testament to a new freedom and casual approach to materials, color and surface. Many of the works were inspired by a recent visit to the Rothko Chapel in Texas." […]
Breaking the Picture Plane
Altoon Sultan blogs about trompe l'oeil painting, citing various examples of the genre from art history. Sultan writes that she was "thinking about the modernist credo of 'the integrity of the picture plane,' and why it wasn't of importance to me; matter of fact, I take a kind of glee in illusionism, in the sense […]
Mike Cloud: Interview
Karla Wozniak interviews painter Mike Cloud about his work. Asked about "painting as an expanded, flexible discipline that has the power to absorb other media," Cloud responds: "Painting is the contemplation of a skin, a painted film. Whether a painting is on a cave wall, canvas or wood, you can always conceptually separate a painting […]
Painter Painter vs. Painters Panting
Lilly Lampe compares two exhibitions of contemporary painting: Painters Panting, recently on view at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center and Painter Painter at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, on view through September 27, 2013. Lampe concludes: "These exhibitions and their ilk call attention to the insecurities of painting by their very nature, but in their […]
Pat de Groot: Interview
Jennifer Samet interviews painter Pat de Groot about her work and career. De Groot comments: "I work with what I see. That’s what there was to do. They are about creating the feeling you get from the thing — from what it is out there. Even though the paintings are all done in the studio, […]
Theo Stavropoulos: Offerings of Light
Xico Greenwald reviews the exhibition Offerings of Light: Paintings and Studies by Theo Stavropoulos at Lehman College Art Gallery, on view through September 26, 2013. Greenwald writes that "Stavropoulos studied painting with Surrealist artist Giorgos Gounaropoulos. Writing in the exhibition catalog, Amei Wallach says his early exposure to Surrealism allowed Stavropoulos to test 'the borders […]
Tamara de Lempicka: Auto-Icon
Justin E. H. Smith reviews the exhibition Tamara de Lempicka at the Pinacotheque de Paris, on view through September 8, 2013. Smiths writes that Lempicka's "paintings seem to have done more to concretize the figure of the modern woman to which… later pop stars would work so hard to fit themselves, the figure that always […]
Kadar Brock: Interview
Steven Cox interviews painter Kadar Brock, whose work will be on view at The Hole, New York through October 10, 2013. Asked about his "ritual-as-process approach," Brock remarks that "the rituals really started as an extension of, and as a way to manifest, my desire to divest intuition from painting, as a way to push […]
Rachel Youens & Sydney Licht
Mario Naves writes about the paintings of Sidney Licht and Rachel Youens whose work is on view at Salena Gallery, Long Island University, Brooklyn Campus through September 27, 2013. Naves notes: "Visiting the studios of each artist, you might mistake them for undercover sculptors: significant expanses of space are devoted to stuff. Youens’s accumulations of […]
Vedova / Tintoretto in Venice
Robert C. Morgan reviews an exhibition of paintings by Emilio Vedova hung amid paintings by Tintoretto at the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice. Morgan writes: "Vedova Tintoretto is an attempt to reveal the origins of the Venetian Modernist’s approach to abstract painting. Whereas Americans might categorize Vedova in the context of Abstract Expressionism, Celant […]
Two Pioneers of Arab Abstraction
Mostafa Heddaya reviews two exhibitions on view at Tate Modern: Ibrahim El-Salahi: A Visionary Modernist (through September 22 ) and Saloua Raouda Choucair (through October 20). Heddaya writes: "In a time of acute upheaval, there is something comforting about the concurrent retrospectives currently on view at the Tate Modern for two seminal Arab modernists, Saloua […]