Odilon Redon: In Darkness & Light
Courtney Wilder looks at Odilon Redon's lithographs. The print Lumière and ten prints from The Temptation of Saint Anthony are currently on view at The Getty Research Institute through September 2, 2012. Wilder notes that in Lumière "the viewer becomes a double voyeur, left to contemplate the two small men in the foreground as well […]
Jackie Saccoccio: Portraits
David Rhodes reviews a recent exhibition of paintings by Jackie Saccoccio at Eleven Rivington, New York. Rhodes writes: "Saccoccio's Portraits, abstract works that make clear an anthropomorphic intention, engage with an ongoing idea in painting… in which each work stands in for a face, the differences manifested through changes in color combinations. Saccoccio’s paintings are such an […]
Altoon Sultan: Landscape to Abstraction
Rob Colvin interviews painter Altoon Sultan about the development of her work from "finely detailed panoramas of farms shown at Marlborough Gallery for two decades, then at Tibor de Nagy… to small-scale abstractions in the form of egg tempera paintings and hooked wool textiles." Sultan remarks: "I continue to be very tied to the resonance […]
Domenico Gnoli
Caleb De Jong reviews the exhibition Domenico Gnoli: Paintings 1964-1969 at Luxembourg & Dayan, New York, on view through June 30, 2012. De Jong writes: "Painted with acrylic mixed with sand on medium to largish sized canvases, Gnoli’s paintings are an amalgam of Giorgio Morandi's quietist sensibility and Rene Magritte's standoffish matter-of-fact paint handling… Dry […]
Painters Panting
Karen Tauches reviews the exhibition Painters Panting featuring works by David Diao, Craig Drennen, Saul Fletcher, Alex Hubbard, Judy Ledgerwood, Chris Martin, and Jennifer West at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, on view through June 24, 2012. Tauches writes that "painters are the last great materialists in a world dematerialized by technology; they chose lifetyles […]
Renoir’s Umbrellas
John Haber visits the exhibition Renoir, Impressionism, and Full-Length Painting at the Frick Collection, New York, on view through May 13, 2012. Haber writes that in the painting The Umbrellas, Renoir "surrounded a family dressed for success with the broader shading of clouds, a woman's full-length dress, and a swarm of umbrellas behind her. Those […]
John Chamberlain: Crumpled Color
Altoon Sultan blogs about the exhibition John Chamberlain: Choices at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, on view through May 13, 2012. Sultan writes: "This 'right thing at the right moment', as John Chamberlain describes his process, must have been a great adventure for him. I could still feel the excitement and sense of discovery in […]
René Korten: Interview
Valerie Brennan interviews painter René Korten about his work and process. Korten notes: "Each painting has its own process of creation. Sometimes I make a painting or a series of paintings, based on a concept, for instance in a recent three-part series, where the first layer of each of the works is a big letter […]
Charline Von Heyl: Now or Else
John Bunker reflects on the work of Charline Von Heyl on view at Tate Liverpool through May 27, 2012. Bunker writes that "Some might see abstraction as a safe haven, 'an escape from it all'. But what if we reverse this idea and look at it as a way of analysing, even critiquing the ever […]
Susan Jane Walp: Interview
Larry Groff interviews painter Susan Jane Walp about her work, her thoughts on painting, and her development as an artist. Walp remarks "that the concentration of working from observation can be similar to a meditation practice. And perhaps with still life even more so than working from the figure or landscape, because the distractions are […]
Jennifer Omaitz: Above Ground, Beneath the Surface
Robin Miller reviews the recent exhibition Jennifer Omaitz: Above Ground, Beneath the Surface at 1point618 Gallery, Cleveland. Miller writes that Omaitz's "work contains layers, not only in the literal sense but also in the many ideas behind it. She works with ideas from the histories of abstraction, architecture, landscapes, natural disasters and tactical responses to […]
Jacqueline Humphries: Silver & Noir
Paul Soto interviews painter Jacqueline Humphries about her work on the occasion of a recent exhibition of new paintings at Greene Naftali, New York. Humphries remarks that in a "passage about the stylistics of film noir [Paul Schrader] talks about how the character, or figure, in noir films, is unlike the figure in Western or […]
Katherine Bradford @ Edward Thorp
Kyle Gallup reviews the exhibition Katherine Bradford: New Work at Edward Thorp Gallery, New York, on view through May 26, 2012. Gallup writes: "The lush surfaces reveal under-painting and a sense that she is searching for her subjects, allowing them to reveal themselves slowly through the painting process and within their own invented time. The […]
Mitchell Johnson: Interview
John Seed talks with painter Mitchell Johnson about his work on the occasion of the exhibition Mitchell Johnson: Are You Going With Me? at Res Ipsa Gallery, Oakland, CA on view from May 4 – June 15, 2012. Johnson observes that in his paintings "the abstraction was always happening, in many ways all of my […]
Gary Stephan: State of Otherness
After visiting painter Gary Stephan's studio, John Yau muses on Stephan's new work. Yau writes: "Gary Stephan has moved into a place where he is operating without a safety net, where there is no justification or theory that supports what he does, or even the move he makes in a particular work, but there it […]
The Lightness of Jack Bush
James Panero reviews Jack Bush: New York Visit at Freedman Art, New York, on view through April 28, 2012. Panero writes that Bush's "colors are battery powered. His paint application is luminous. His shapes are unashamed. Bush was an artist who came of age relatively late in his career, but he somehow managed to keep […]
Thoughts on Frederick Hammersley
Steve Roden writes about the work of painter Frederick Hammersley, whose work is on view at LA Louver through May 12, 2012. Roden writes: "when i discovered hammersley's organics they felt not only like the perfect antidote to the bombastic gargantuan works of painters like anselm kiefer and julian schnabel, but they also felt like […]
Denzil Hurley & Robert Storr
Erin Langner reviews an exhibition of paintings by Denzil Hurley and Robert Storr on view at Francine Sedars Gallery, Seattle, WA through May 6, 2012. Langner writes that "Hurley's works make the subtle details of Storr's design more poignant and graspable. Conversely, the light, easy pace embedded within Storr's series brings out the heavy, slowness […]
Giles Lyon: Dream Catcher
Mark Stone profiles Brooklyn painter Giles Lyon. Stone writes: "I connected immediately with the paintings. Giles was working in an AbEx style but doing it very self consciously. He was changing the intent of the historical style to make over 'action painting' into a thoughtful reexamination of the act of painting. It was an abstraction of […]
Vollard Suite: Picasso’s Mind at Work
Jonathan Jones previews the exhibition Picasso Prints: The Vollard Suite at the British Museum, London, on view from May 3 – September 2, 2012. Jones asserts that "lay bare his imagination and his creative energy like nothing else he ever did. If every painting by Picasso were to vanish, and only this series of prints survived, […]