Sylvia Plimack Mangold: Interior to Landscape
In part two of a three part post about painter Sylvia Plimack Mangold, John Yau looks at Plimack Mangold's "shift from interiors to landscapes." In these works, Yau maintains, Plimack Mangold continues to "paint only what she observes, but with more rigorous parameters than simply investigating her immediate circumstances. Her subject matter will never suggest […]
Stuart Shils in Conversation
On the occasion of his upcoming exhibition at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects (on view from April 26 – May 27, 2012), painter Stuart Shils talks with Nikolai Fox. Shils notes: "The thing that I've been dangling in front of myself in the last couple of years has been the prospect of understanding how to […]
Thoughts on Grids
On the occasion of the exhibition Lines Crossed: Grids + Rhythms on Paper at The Courtauld Gallery, London, Sam Cornish reflects on abstract art's on-going relationship to the grid. The exhibtion centrepiece, Cornish writes, "is a large abstract drawing by Linda Karshan but the rest is more strictly historical, stretching back to the sixteenth century… […]
Conversation with Katherine Bradford
Jason Stopa interviews painter Katherine Bradford on the occasion of her upcoming exhibition of recent work at Edward Thorp Gallery, New York, on view from April 19 – May 26, 2012. Bradford notes that "This may be a good time to be doing paintings that appear human or have a humanity that maybe a decade […]
Henry Samelson: Interview
Valerie Brennan interviews painter Henry Samelson about his work and process. Samelson notes: "Drawing is important to my painting. But there is reciprocity between them with ideas/influence flowing back and forth. I work on a lot of paintings at the same time with dialogue between them as well. Everything plays off of everything else… Departures […]
Susanna Coffey: From Self to City
John Goodrich reviews the exhibition Susanna Coffey: Nocturnes at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, New York, on view through April 22, 2012. This show, Goodrich writes, "concentrates on another, little-known facet of [Coffey's] work: the tiny, nocturnal cityscapes and landscapes—rarely larger than 8 inches across—that the artist has been producing for at least 15 years […]
Mandala: Sacred Circle
Karen Tauches reviews the exhibition Mandala: Sacred Circle in Tibetan Buddhism at Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, on view through April 15, 2012. Tauches writes the mandala's "complexity and repetition of detail are overwhelming. One's attention is repeatedly sidetracked, suspended, and sucked toward seemingly endless labyrinths and crossroads. Artists thus simulate a supernatural state, […]
Stanley Whitney: Left to Right
James Kalm visits the exhibition Stanley Whitney: Left to Right at Team Gallery, New York, on view through April 28, 2012. Kalm notes that Whitney's "approach to color and rhythm are akin to the spontaneous riffs of great jazz solos. With this latest exhibition, Stanley shows three major paintings that show his ability to extend […]
A Visit with Bob Witz
Jed Lipinski visits with artist Bob Witz on the occasion of the exhibition Bob Witz: I Know Where I am Goin' at the New York Studio School, on view through April 16, 2012. Lipinski writes that "If such a thing as an outsider artist still exists in New York City, Bob Witz may well be […]
Tantric Art: An Egoless Practice
Lauren O'Neill-Butler interviews poet Franck André Jamme about the history of abstract Tantric painting from Rajasthan, India. Tantric paintings, O'Neill-Butler writes, "resonate uncannily with lineages of twentieth-century art—from the Bauhaus and Russian Constructivism to Minimalism—as well as with much painting today." Jamme comments that these affinities "could mean that our notion of progress – past, […]
Sonia Almeida: The Angle of the Sun’s Rays
Joan Waltemath reviews the recent exhibition Sonia Almeida: The Angle of the Sun's Rays at Simone Subal Gallery, New York. Considering Almeida's painting Diagonal Pathway, Waltemath writes: "each time I see it, it gets better. It's constructed in layers that are separate, like in a print, but which seamlessly open up a void with contours […]
Dmitry Samarov: Moving In
An essay by painter and writer Dmitry Samarov about the influence of place on an artist's work. Samarov writes: "If you're a painter who's primarily inspired by your physical surroundings, it takes some time for a new place to soak into your consciousness in that way that's required to make pictures. Meanwhile, everywhere I turn […]
Painting in Nashville
Sharon Butler reports on painting in Nashville. She blogs images from many studio visits she conducted on her trip. The post includes views of studios from painters including Lain York, Jodi Hays, Kaaren Hirschowitz Engel, Richard Heinsohn, and Mary Addison Hackett.
Catherine Lee: Quanta
Hearne Pardee reviews the exhibition Catherine Lee: Quanta at Galerie Lelong, New York, on view through April 28, 2012. Pardee writes: "Composed on pencil-drawn grids, the paintings are hand crafted in layers of pigment, applied square by square and stroke by stroke. The grid provides a foil for the sensually inflected material surfaces. What at […]
Sigmar Polke: Between Illusionism & Reality
D Richmond looks at the pictorial achievements of Sigmar Polke. Dicussing Polke's "play between illusionism and reality," in the painting Negative Value II, Mizar, 1982, Richmond writes: "there is no recognizable imagery and the color in itself is ambiguous. What gesture that exists, if one could call it that, is not in the traditional painterly […]
Alan Feltus: Words on Art
Frank Hobbs blogs a selection of thoughts on painting by Alan Feltus. On painting's function in society Feltus writes: "I think art wants to be something people can turn to for a kind of meaning in their lives, or for a calm place within the turbulance of our modern world. Art doesn't have to explain […]
Sylvia Plimack – Mangold: Clearing Space
John Yau reflects on the significant achievements of painter Sylvia Plimack-Mangold. Yau writes: "it seems to me that Plimack-Mangold's early investigations of space should be credited with initiating a dialogue in opposition to Frank Stella's stripe paintings, which squeezed space out of paintings altogether, and the flat, grid-like floor sculptures that Carl Andre began after […]
Kazimira Rachfal: The Shiva Cycle
Steven Alexander visits the exhibition Kazimira Rachfal: The Shiva Cycle at Janet Kurnatowski Gallery, New York, on view through April 22, 2012. Alexander writes that Rachfal's works are "spare and deeply evocative paintings… Employing an iconic motif — a rectangle with a slightly curved angular top, contained in varying ratios by a solid field and […]
Thomas Hart Benton: Counterpoint to Modernism
James Panero reviews the biography Thomas Hart Benton: A Life by Justin Wolff "a keen critical recuperation, if not a defibrillation, of this unique American artist." Panero notes that "Wolff is at his best exploring the philosophy behind the rise of Benton's new signature style, which he locates in the pragmatism of John Dewey. Benton […]