Abstract Kansas City
Vince Contarino blogs installation photos from the recent exhibition Abstract Kansas City at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art in Overland Park, Kansas. The exhibition showcases the museum's collection including a fantastic selection of paintings and painting inspired work by artists with Kansas City roots, including Dan Christensen, Rachel Hayes, Anne Lindberg, Wilbur Niewald, Warren […]
John Cage: Controlled Chaos
Nadiah Fellah looks at composer John Cage's printmaking at Crown Point Press. Fellah notes that "Cage both explored and challenged the medium by setting fires on the printing bed, or saturating the paper with water until it nearly disintegrated… Ironically, the extreme to which Cage relied on chance and randomness actually generated a body of work that […]
A Painter’s Painter’s Paintings
Brian Dupont reflects on Bill Jensen's recent exhibition of new paintings at Cheim & Read, New York. Compared to his contemporaries, Brice Marden and Terry Winters who share a "specific and identifiable interest in their respective thorough procedures," Dupont writes, "Jensen has remained restless and constantly searching within his painting practice, forgoing the comfort of […]
David Park: A Painter’s Life
John Seed reviews the new book David Park: A Painter's Life by Nancy Boas (University of California Press). Seed writes: "A Painter's Life offers countless fascinating insights into Park and his development, including revelations about the artists who he was exposed to and influenced by early on. Who knew, for example, that 19-year-old Park had […]
Martin Bromirski: Interview
Valerie Brennan interviews painter Martin Bromirski about his work and studio process. Bromirski notes that he starts with "Something to disrupt the blank canvas. Most of [the paintings] get taken to the sink and scraped at some point… much or all of the paper/sand/paint on a painting will come off… lots of unexpected things happen. Cuts […]
Body Unbound: Modernist Indian Painting
Melissa Stern reviews the exhibition Modernist Art from India The Body Unbound at the Rubin Museum, New York, on view through April 9, 2012. Stern writes: "As the show progresses, both chronologically and thematically, one sees the powerful influence of western painters like Milton Avery and Ben Shahn. What keeps this show constantly interesting is […]
Alan Loehle: Studio Visit
Victoria Webb visits the studio of painter Alan Loehle. Webb writes that "Leohle works with emotional content. He tackles the big issues; lust, death, life. Few of his works are outright humorous, but those that are rock with color and conflict; the human condition as seen by an 'other' creator; the artist. His objective to […]
Storytelling in Japanese Art
Mario Naves reviews the exhibition Storytelling in Japanese Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, on view through May 6, 2012. Naves writes that "The advent and subsequent triumph of modernism did much to diminish the role of narrative in the visual arts, insisting, as it did, that the exigencies of craft should take precedence […]
Gonçalo Ivo: Monumental Acts of Devotion
Steven Alexander writes about the work of painter Gonçalo Ivo for a new monograph on the artist. Alexander notes that Ivo's paintings are "deeply vibrant… with subtle saturated color and chunky oil surfaces – work that is charged with cultural resonances and inclusive in scope… his remarkable Teresopolis studio [is] an expansive magical space, loaded […]
Bill Jensen: Video Interview
In a video interview, Christopher Joy and Zachary Keeting talk with Bill Jensen at his recent exhibition of new paintings at Cheim & Read, New York. Speaking about his new multi-panel paintings Jensen remarks that "it's not a shaped canvas, it's internally divided, so at that physical divide, I can be very abrupt with […]
The Role of Abstraction
Christopher Bedford speaks to five contemporary painters, Tomma Abts, Tauba Auerbach, Matt Connors, Charline von Heyl and Bernd Ribbeck, about the role of abstraction in contemporary painting. Beford writes that "There is a dissonance between the directness of their work and the fuzzier set of interests and objectives – high-minded, metaphysical and historical – that […]
Alan Gouk: On His Work
In a two-part video, Alan Gouk discusses his paintings which were recently on view at Poussin Gallery. Gouk speaks directly in front of his paintings, describing his process. Discussing color he notes that "Matisse said a 'square meter of green is greener than a square centimeter of green' … color needs surface area to in […]
Terry Winters: In Conversation
Terry Winters talks to Tyler Green about his work on the occasion of his exhibition Cricket Music, Tessellation Figures, & Notebook at Matthew Marks Gallery, on view through April 14, 2012. Green and Winters discuss "The evolution of [Winters'] palette over the years and how he comes to color" as well as the "importance of […]
George Grosz: Way of All Flesh
Nova Benway reviews the exhibition George Grosz: Way of All Flesh at David Nolan Gallery, New York, on view through March 3, 2012. In the exhibited drawings, Benway writes, "both skill and rectitude are physical characteristics. Resigned pigs are carted to slaughter by equally resigned laborers; the images are as concerned with the drama of […]
Martin Bromirski, Rachel LaBine, & Elizabeth Riley
Paul Behnke photoblogs an exhibition of paintings by Martin Bromirski, Rachel LaBine, and Elizabeth Riley at Storefront Bushwick, on view through March 11, 2012. The gallery notes that Bromirski, LaBine, and Riley share a free-wheeling, fractured sense of space, time, and reality, which they investigate in their work by stretching the boundaries of their practice."
Sangram Majumdar: Interview
Christopher Joy and Zachary Keeting talk with Sangram Majumdar at his recent exhibition of new work at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects. Majumdar remarks that "Things you think about when you're painting, to me, it's interesting… I'll be painting… and I'm daydreaming about a moment of the painting somewhere else. Some people when they work […]
Deborah Rosenthal: Singular Journeys
John Goodrich reviews the exhibition Deborah Rosenthal: Journeys and Topologies at Bowery Gallery, New York, on view through February 25, 2012. Goodrich writes: "Deborah Rosenthal continues to infuse a highly personal approach with intimations of the mythic. Stylistically, the artist's abstracted paintings have always recalled for me Robert Delaunay in their melodic, organic overlapping of […]
Mondrian & Nicholson: Parallel Painting Paths
Chloe Nelkin visits the exhibition Mondrian, Nicholson: In Parallel at The Courtauld Gallery, London, on view through May 20, 2012. Nelkin writes that "The exhibition explores the creative relationship between Piet Mondrian and Ben Nicholson… When Nicholson first visited Mondrian's studio in 1934 he had to rest in a café afterwards to try to take […]
Cézanne and the Modern City
Nicola Homer reviews the exhibtion Cézanne in Paris at the Musée du Luxembourg, on view through February 26, 2012. Homer writes that "The show takes as its starting point the year in which the 21-year-old Cézanne arrived in the city, after a number of letters from Zola encouraging him to escape the confines of Aix. […]
Van Gogh’s All-Over Fields
Andrea Kirsh reviews the exhibition Van Gogh Up Close at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, on view through May 6, 2012. Kirsch writes that a few of the paintings "rather startlingly, have no discernible focal point. They are the sort of all-over painting we associate with Abstract Expressionism; Pollock avant la lettre… The subjects of […]