Joy Garnett: Interview
Julia Schwartz interviews painter Joy Garnett about her work and studio process. Garnett comments: "I think that painting is a radical gesture. Painting itself is a political act, an intervention, a détournement. By contrast, I don’t think it is truly radical or politically expedient to try to hitch painting or any art, really, to an […]
Colman Rutkin: Inner Visions
Michael J. Fressola reviews the exhibition A Visual Journey featuring paintings and drawings by Colman Rutkin at the Staten Island Museum, on view through January 21, 2013. Fressola writes: "Rutkin reports to a world of his own, a luminous plane that apparently has water and oxygen and the means of sustaining life. But there are things we […]
The Road to Van Eyck
Julie Beckers reviews the exhibition The Road to Van Eyck at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, on view through February 10, 2013. Beckers writes: "The showstopper however has to be The Annunciation (c1430-35), once perhaps the left wing of a triptych. It is here Van Eyck is at his best. The detail on the cloak of Gabriel, […]
Oscar Murillo: Interview
On the occasion of the exhibition Oscar Murillo: work at the Rubell Family Collection, Miami (on view through August 2, 2013) Legacy Russell talks to painter Oscar Murillo about his work and process. Murillo comments: "Paintings happen in the studio where I have my own kind of system, although there can be physical residue of […]
Brian Dupont: Studio Visit
Sharon Butler photoblogs a visit to the studio of Brian Dupont. Butler writes: "Working on hollow, square, aluminum beams, Brian Dupont paints snippets of found text such as passages from Beckett, Richard Serra's verb list drawing, and narratives written by friends… Dupont and I discussed the nature of text, and the difference between writing something […]
James Krone: Interview
Caroline Picard interviews painter James Krone about his work and process on the occasion of his exhibition Waterhome at Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago, on view through February 2, 2013. Krone comments: "The canvases are sized with several layers of rabbit skin glue and then I paint a single wash of paint on them daily. The […]
Anoka Faruqee: Truth is Out There
Elspeth Walker reviews the exhibition Anoka Faruqee: The Sum is Greater Than Its Parts at Hosfelt Gallery, New York, on view through December 29, 2012. Walker writes: "Faruqee’s paintings are constructed using 'comb-like notched trowels' that she pulls through wet paint, 'kind of like raking sand in a zen garden.' As the layers of colors […]
John Bunker: Vital Signs
Emyr Williams muses on the collages in the exhibition John Bunker: Vital Signs at the Half Moon Theatre, London through January 28, 2012. Williams that Bunker is "looking for life in the deathly pit of the rubbish bin: bits and bobs that once served other purposes have been resuscitated, re-energised, reconfigured and pictorialised. Mary Shelley […]
Farrell Brickhouse: Interview
Painter's Bread
Michael Rutherford interviews painter Farrell Brickhouse about his work and process. Brickhouse comments: "One question I ask when entering the studio is, 'what needs to be said, what can my art contain?' My studio time is not unique, it runs the whole gamut: from the workman-like strokes that one makes until something more significant can […]
Alan Shields: Taking Color Field for a Walk
David Carrier reviews the exhibition Alan Shields: Maze at Greenberg Van Doren Gallery, New York, on view through December 21, 2012. Carrier writes: "The Greenberg Van Doren Gallery has a relatively large unobstructed display room. And so, filling a large part of it with Maze (1981-82), filled with decorative circles, triangles and rectangles composed of […]
D.I.Y. Abstraction
Lane Relyea considers trends in contemporary painting in relation to "the talent economy." Relyea addresses the tendency in painting towards "steady, routinized, repetitive labor and use of personal-scale, low-budget materials, and … [an] overall sense of precariousness and impermanence." He argues that "it may be that what most recommends this kind of painting to a […]
Painting ‘Til the World Ends
An essay that proposes links between pop culture attitudes (music and dance in particular) and the "provisional" trend in contemporary painting. "Dancing, at least as it might happen in a club to the tune of Kesha’s songs, is a kind of ecstatic yet responsive expression, the physical enactment of an internal reaction to an external […]
Franz Kline: Coal and Steel
Elizabeth Johnson reports on the exhibition Franz Kline: Coal and Steel at the Allentown Art Museum, PA, on view through January 13, 2013. Johnson writes: "Highlighting Kline’s childhood and attachment to the industrial Lehigh Valley, Coal and Steel unites Kline’s early realism with his late abstraction, framing the artist’s development within the beautiful but harsh […]
Grant Miller: Sensation of Technology
Halcombe Miller blogs about the work of painter Grant Miller. Miller writes that Grant Miller's paintings provide "a visual vocabulary for our current social and technological landscape, and his work truly looks like the sensation of having unfettered access to information: convoluted, dense, and highly intriguing… With thoughtful mark making and controlled, determined layers [he] […]
Alison Berry & Julian Hatton: Studio Visits
Elisabeth Condon photoblogs visits to the studios of painters Alison Berry and Julian Hatton. Condon notes that Berry "has been omitting some of the intensive detail of her previous work and 'letting color and shape take over.' " Condon continues commenting that Hatton "has been working a range of sizes, playing with paint applications and […]
Stephen Mueller: Bright Spirituality
Altoon Sultan blogs about the exhibition Stephen Mueller: Selected Works 2007-2011 at Lennon, Weinberg, Inc., New York, on view through December 22, 2012. Sultan writes: "The small works on paper, in their bright, almost wacky colors, and their translucent light, were joyful and meditative. I felt I was looking at a Western cousin to the […]
Per Kirkeby: Interview
Nicolai Hartvig interviews painter Per Kirkeby about his work and career. Kirkeby comments: " In the 1980s, when I decided to begin to paint in oil on canvas in the great European tradition — a decisive turning point for me — there was an openness and an incertitude to the work. Each painting was different, […]
Small Paintings in Miami
Joanne Mattera photoblogs images of the wide variety of small paintings on view at the Miami Art Fairs in 2012. Mattera writes: "Big paintings really did make an impact at the fairs, but it's eminently worth noting that there were a lot of strong small paintings and works on paper… After several days of the […]
Keltie Ferris: Collisions of Improvisation & Decay
John Yau reviews an exhibition of paintings by Keltie Ferris at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York, on view through January 12, 2013. Yau writes: "Ferris isn’t a purist. She uses pastels, oil paint and acrylic. She applies paint with a palette knife or a spray gun for which she mixes her own colors. She builds […]
Inventing Abstraction: 1910 – 1925
Blake Gopnik previews the exhibition Inventing Abstraction: 1910 – 1925 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, on view from December 23, 2012–April 15, 2013. In addition to a slideshow of works from the exhibition, Gopnik posts: "At this moment we are officially in the middle of yet another abstract-art revival, according to dealers […]