Maria Calandra / John Lees
Xico Greenwald reviews two exhibitions: John Lees at Betty Cuningham Gallery (through June 22) and Maria Calandra: Pencil in the Studio at Sardine (through June 16). For John Lees, Greenwald writes, "the seclusion of an upstate attic studio [is] where the painter found the physical and psychic space to make personal artworks from excavated memories. […]
Jennifer Bartlett: Chaos Theory
Jacob Feige reviews Jennifer Bartlett: Chaos Theory (1971-2013) at Locks Gallery, Philadelphia, on view through June 29, 2013. Feige writes that "Bartlett is able to use mathematical rules to create paintings that buzz unexpectedly with humanity, in contrast to other formula followers like Sol Lewitt and Carl Andre. Emerging just after those artists in the […]
Sanford Wurmfeld: Chorus of Color
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Heather Zises reviews two recent exhibitions Sanford Wurmfeld: Color Visions 1966 – 2013 at the Hunter College/Times Square Gallery and Sanford Wurmfeld: Light & Dark at Minus Space. Zises writes that “The key to appreciating these works has much to do with the figure-ground relationship of form and color. For each painting, Wurmfeld maps out […]
Jacques Callot: Line Sublime
Jed Perl reviews the recent exhibition Princes & Paupers: The Art of Jacques Callot at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. Perl begins: "Rarely have life’s sweetness and bitterness been embraced with more evenhanded genius than in the work of Jacques Callot. The seventeenth-century French printmaker finds an ethics of vision—a way of grappling with […]
Dan Walsh: Interview
George Stolz's interview with painter Dan Walsh, posted on the occasion of his recent exhibition of paintings at Elvira Gonzalez, Madrid. Walsh comments: "There is a way of painting that is very much about the elemental, step-by-step methological commitment. Whereas color for me is exactly the opposite. I am hiding under a very methological approach […]
Gazes and Shadows
Jonathan Kamholtz reviews the exhibition Continuity and Change: The Return to Figurative Painting, curated by Daniel Brown, on view at Cininnati Art Galleries through June 8, 2013. The show features works by Linda E. Anderson, Rob Anderson, Brian Burt, Tim Kennedy, Eve Mansdorf, Emil Robinson, and Aidan Schapera. Kamholtz writes that he is "interested in some […]
Peter Acheson @ Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects
James Kalm visits an exhibition of paintings by Peter Acheson at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, New York, on view through May 26, 2013. Kalm notes "Peter has promoted a serious commitment to painting despite the recent predominance of New Media Art. Since leaving the city and moving up-state to raise his family, Peter has […]
What I Like About You
Yifat Gat posts an interview with painter Julie Torres, curator of What I Like About You at Parallel Art Space. The exhibition which opens during Bushwick Open Studios weekend features a work by 19 international artists who have each selected an artist from Brooklyn to participate in the show. Torres comments that "it never hurts […]
Sabine Tress: In Process
Paul Behnke photo blogs the progress of Sabine Tress' painting My Beautiful Valentine (2013). Tress comments: "My work is more and more based on experimenting. It evolves through the working process which leaves a lot of room for changes and surprises. The piece 'My beautiful Valentine' is one of my latest paintings and it is […]
Hilma Af Klint: Abstract Pioneer
Julia Voss examines Hilma af Klint's background and her emergence as the first European abstract painter, a title famously claimed by Kandinsky. Voss writes: "When Wassily Kandinsky wrote to his New York gallerist Jerome Neumann in December 1935, he was clearly anxious to reassure him once again that he had painted his first abstract picture […]
Sam Reveles: Interview
Arthur Peña talks to painter Sam Reveles on the occasion of the exhibition Sam Reveles: Aran at Talley Dunn Gallery, Dallas, on view through June 1, 2013. Reveles remarks: "Very early on my relationship to the canvas was important for me. I remember staring at the canvas and thinking; 'what motivates me to do something […]
Don Voisine: Geometry Under Pressure
John Yau reviews an exhibition of paintings by Don Voisine at McKenzie Fine Art, New York, on view through June 9, 2013. Yau writes: "In the formal tensions Voisine establishes in his painting — as the result of a process, his elements never appear forced or extraneous — all kinds of feelings and possible readings […]
Fabian Marcaccio: Studio Visit
Zachary Keeting and Christopher Joy visit the studio of painter Fabian Marcaccio. Marcaccio discusses his large scale "environmental" paintings which he describes as "creating a zone where your peripheral vision and your central vision can could keep putting together parts of the painting so the painting really is not an object but is a zone. […]
Marie Thibeault: Dazzling Disturbance
Leah Ollman reviews the exhibition Marie Thibeault: funtown at George Lawson Gallery, Los Angeles, on view through June 8, 2013. Ollman writes that Thibeault's new paintings "are loosely focused on 'Funtown,' a New Jersey amusement park ravaged last fall by Hurricane Sandy. The paintings are images of motion machines and dynamic motion machines in themselves. […]
Gwennan Thomas: Interview
Valerie Brennan interviews painter Gwennan Thomas about her work and process. Thomas comments: "Drawing is a really important part of my process and I generally have quite a few primed pieces of paper stuck on the wall where I can either test out new colours or colour-combinations or possibilities for or within paintings, as well […]
John Zurier: Atmosphere & Touch
Altoon Sultan blogs about the exhibition John Zurier: A spring a thousand years ago at Peter Blum Gallery, New York, on view through June 22 2013. Sultan writes: "Within these minimally painted, sensitively brushed paintings there is a sense of boundless space, of light shimmering through thin veils of color… The paintings are paradoxically both […]
Sydney Cohen: What We Do Is Secret
Scott Hewicker interviews painter Sydney Cohen about her work on the occasion of the exhibtion Sydney Cohen: Some Other Need at Right Window Gallery, 992 Valencia St., San Francisco, on view through May 31, 2013. Hewicker writes that Cohen's paintings are "small to medium-large brilliantly colorful layered abstractions of oblique lyrical structures and spaces; each […]
Jon Imber: The Spiral & the Source
Alexander Nemser writes an appreciation of Jon Imber's recent paintings on the occasion of the exhibition Palaemon, A Survey of Paintings by Jon Imber, on view at the Godwin-Ternbach Museum, Queens College, New York through June 15, 2013. Nemser writes: "In the last ten years, Jon Imber’s paintings have taken on a new dynamism, a […]
Painting Expanded
Leigh Markopoulos recaps Painting Expanded a symposium on the contemporary painting practice at California College of the Arts, San Francisco, April 13, 2013. Speakers and guests included Tom La Duke, Mary Weatherford, Keltie Ferris, Dushko Petrovich, John Zurier, and Mary Heilmann among others. Markopoulos writes that the participants "addressed neither the specter of Rosalind Krauss […]
John Walker: In Conversation
Jennifer Samet interviews painter John Walker about his work and career. Walker recounts a formative experience: "As a young man, I had gone to Amsterdam to look at Van Gogh, actually. I saw the Rembrandts, including the painting that is still the most important painting to me — 'The Jewish Bride.' It just touched me […]