Jane Freilicher: The Fugitive Moment
David Rhodes reviews the recent exhibition Jane Freilicher: Painter Among Poets at Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York. Rhodes writes: "Always conscious of the transient pleasures of the fugitive moment, Freilicher made paintings poignant with the passing of experience and never-to-be-retrieved time. As with Bonnard—but without that artist’s languorousness—it is the detail and atmosphere of […]
Phillip Allen @ Kerlin Gallery
John Yau reviews the exhibition Phillip Allen: Oxblood at Kerlin Gallery, Dublin, on view through July 20, 2013. Yau writes that in Allen's recent paintings "his long preoccupation with paint as matter has become increasingly evident … Allen doesn’t define his commitment through style but through an exploration of materiality. This is what distinguishes him […]
Daniel Lefcourt: Modeling Art
Lucy Li reviews an exhibition of works by Daniel Lefcourt at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York, on view through July 19, 2013. Li writes: "The paintings in the Cast series have clinical, gently descriptive subtitles such as 'Impressions at a Distance' and 'Points in a Coordinate System.' Created with an industrial paint pigment called PBK31 […]
Gerhard Richter: Tapestries
Carol Diehl blogs about Gerhard Richter: Tapestries at Gagosian Gallery, London, on view through July 27, 2013. Diehl writes: "The tapestries are based on a single scraped painting: Abstract Painting (724-4) (1990)… Woven on a mechanical jacquard loom, each tapestry represents a Rohrschach-like four-time multiplication of one quadrant of the original image. Dense and rich, […]
Nicolas Carone: Rhythm of Mass
Tim Keane reviews the exhibition Nicolas Carone: The East Hampton Years at the Pollock-Krasner House & Study Center, East Hampton, New York, on view through July 27, 2013. Keane writes: "Maybe the “mass of rhythm” that Carone cited in his last interview is what “Ear of Earth” embodies. The painting seems a sort of synesthetic […]
Four Paintings: Picture Window
Sharon Butler blogs about the exhibition Four Paintings: Picture Window at Regina Rex, Ridgewood, Queens, on view through August 8, 2013. Butler writes: "In the second installment of their 'Four Paintings' series, Regina Rex presents four huge figurative paintings, one each from accomplished artists Hannah Barrett, Linda Gallagher, Becky Kinder and Summer Wheat… For the […]
Hilma Af Klint: With Great Force, Swiftly & Surely
Cindi di Marzo reviews the book Hilma af Klint: A Pioneer of Abstraction edited by Iris Müller-Westermann with Jo Widoff (Moderna Museet/Hatje Cantz). Di Marzo writes: "In an age when men claimed primary status as creators, af Klint became a medium – the ultimate passive, receptive state – and used it to secure her independence; […]
Dennis Congdon @ Cue Art Foundation
William Corwin reviews a recent exhibition of paintings by Dennis Congdon at the Cue Art Foundation, New York. Corwin writes: "Dennis Congdon’s palette of soothing pastel tones in oil, flashe, enamel, and lightly abraded surfaces may lay claim to the fresco aesthetic of Latium, but his subject matter inhabits the coffee houses and bars (and […]
Jess: Opening of the Field
Peter Frank reviews the exhibition An Opening of the Field: Jess, Robert Duncan and Their Circle at the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento (through September 1), as well as the new book Jess: O! Tricky Cad and Other Jessoterica (Siglio Press) edited by exhibition co-curator Michael Duncan. Frank writes: "Jess's insouciant profundity accounts in great part […]
David Reed: Interview
Alexander Forbes interviews painter David Reed on the occasion of an exhibition of paintings at Häusler Contemporary, Zürich, on view through August 17, 2013. Reed comments: "I started some paintings in the 60s of brush marks. I wanted them to be directly about process, to show how the painting was made. But they looked like […]
Cubism, Technology & Abstraction
Henri Art Magazine
In part two of his series of essays titled Untethered (part one is here), Mark Stone looks back to how the cubism of Picasso and Braque paved the way for abstraction by creating an art that could bridge the history of painting and the rapid technological advancement of the early 20th century. Stone writes: “Abstraction as […]
Phaedo @ Storefront Bushwick
Patrick Neal reviews the exhibition Phaedo at Storefront Bushwick, Brooklyn, on view through July 28, 2013. The show features works by Emily Berger, Benjamin Echeverria, Nate Ethier, JJ Garfinkel, Elizabeth Hazan, Gilbert Hsiao, Osamu Kobayashi, Dominic Mangila, Lauren Portada, and Anne Russinof. Neal writes: "Taking its title from Plato’s dialogue on the soul’s immortality, the […]
Nicholas Middleton: Interview
Barbara Peirson interviews painter Nicholas Middleton about his work. Middleton comments that "pretty much all the paintings I do are based on photographs I take myself with film cameras and I develop the film myself and so I’m sort of in control of the whole process from start to finish, so in a sense having […]
Vanessa Hodgkinson: Techno Primitivism
An essay by David Trotter discussing the concept of "techno-primitivism" – that which "draws back from the technological only in order to get a better grasp upon it" – first in the literature of D.H. Lawrence and then in the paintings of Vanessa Hodgkinson. Trotter writes: "Encountering Vanessa’s work has encouraged me to wonder what […]
Carl-Henning Pedersen: 100 Years
Photo blog of the exhibition Carl-Henning Pedersen: 100 Years at ARKEN Museum of Modern Art, Denmark, on view through August 11, 2013. The press release states that Pedersen "was among other things a leading figure in the European artist group Cobra, and whose hallmark was a boundless imagination and an inexhaustible joy in creation… Besides […]
Nicole Eisenman at BAM/PFA
William J. Simmons reviews the exhibition Nicole Eisenman / MATRIX 248 at at Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA, on view through July 14, 2013. Simmons writes: "Eisenman uses her penchant for subversion to at once undo and reify the importance of the visual arts in posing those unanswerable questions that must […]
Les Macchiaioli @ the Musée de l’Orangerie
Linda Y. Peng reviews the exhibition Les Macchiaioli 1850-1874: Des impressionnistes italiens? at the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris, on view through July 22, 2013. Peng writes: "The Macchiaioli artists rebelled against the established art academy stultifying conventions of ‘finished paintings’ and thematic restrictions to biblical and historical or courtly subjects. They were the descendants of […]
Fred Valentine at Sometimes
Sharon Butler blogs about an exhibition of paintings by Fred Valentine at Sometimes (works of art), New York, on view through July 19, 2013. Butler writes: "Valentine has roots in the 1970s Chicago Imagist scene that included Jim Nutt and Roger Brown, swaggeringly shameless picture painters who famously embraced human flaws and misadventure when the […]
John Cronin: Standard Deviation
John Yau reviews the recent exhibition John Cronin: Standard Deviation at Red on Green Gallery, Dublin. Yau writes: "Cronin’s paintings are a record of their coming into being, which links them to Abstract Expressionism. The difference — an important one — is that they convey no nostalgia for the so-called glory days of painting. In […]
Andrea Medjesi-Jones: Ventriloquist
John Bunker reviews the exhibition Andrea Medjesi–Jones:Ventriloquist at Laurent Delaye Gallery, London, on view through July 27, 2013. Bunker writes: "Sometimes we ask ourselves what abstract painting is supposed to do ‘now’. What is it for? What has it to offer in the 21st century? Well, Medjesi-Jones offers us a fascinating and strange duality. An […]