Alexei Jawlensky & Vija Celmins
The New Yorker
Peter Schjeldahl reviews Alexei Jawlensky at the Neue Galerie, New York (through May 29) and Vija Celmins at Matthew Marks, New York (through April 15). Schjeldahl writes: “… The [Jawlensky] show ends with the kicker of a room of small, even tiny, paintings, unfamiliar to me, of an abstracted face. A black stripe serves for […]
Aubrey Levinthal’s Refrigerator Paintings
ARTnews
Ella Coon reviews Aubrey Levinthal: Refrigerator Paintings, recently on view at The Painting Center, New York. Coon writes: “The paintings’ quotidian content, fragmented imagery, and color choices make the pieces feel both elusive and earthy. When looking at the works together in the tiny space, the viewer is reminded of not only the bodily activity […]
Turner’s Modern and Ancient Ports @ The Frick
Hyperallergic
Allison Meier previews Turner’s Modern and Ancient Ports: Passages through Time which will be on view from at the Frick Collection, New York, from February 23 to May 14 , 2017. Meier writes: “Along with the era’s modernization and freedom of exchange, Turner’s Modern and Ancient Ports considers the artist’s obsession with light in his […]
Emma Coulter: Interview
Visual Discrepancies
Brent Hallard interviews artist Emma Coulter. Coulter notes that “opticality and the illusion of form, these things really just happen through the positioning of two-dimensional paint. I guess this is one of the things I’m wanting to work with – the idea of the architectural space being as important as the art in terms of […]
Mimi Lauter: Interiors
LA Times
Leah Ollman reviews Mimi Lauter: Interiors at Tif Sigfrids, Los Angeles, on view through March 4, 2017. Ollman writes: “Mimi Lauter’s enthralling drawings have a visual grammar all their own. Their sense of scale is elusive and independent of their physical size. They feel immersive, whether small as a notebook page or large enough to […]
The Shchukin Collection at Fondation Louis Vuitton
AbCrit
Alan Gouk reviews Icons of Modern Art. The Collection Shchukin at The Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, on view through March 5, 2017. Gouk writes: “This is what was so apparent in the confrontations afforded here, however many times one may have seen some of these pictures in different contexts and settings; how solidly and succulently […]
Painting Paintings (David Reed) 1975
Brooklyn Rail
David Rhodes reviews Painting Paintings (David Reed) 1975 at Gagosian Gallery, New York, on view through February 25, 2017. “In the context of painting in the ’70s, which sought to proscribe illusionism and favor complete material literalism, the paintings are pictures, as well as process. Not only do they record—actively conveying different configurations, speeds, and […]
Vanessa Bell: 1879-1941
Studio International
Anna McNay reviews Vanessa Bell: 1879-1941 at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, on view through June 4, 2017. McNay concludes: “[Bell’s] art and her life were inextricably intertwined: as her art was her life, so her life was her art. As [curator Ian A C ] Dejardin notes, in his preface to the exhibition catalogue: […]
Chuck Webster @ Betty Cuningham
Hyperallergic
John Yau reviews Chuck Webster: Look Around at Betty Cuningham Gallery, New York, on view through February 18, 2017. Yau writes: “‘Liberty or Death’ is a breakthrough painting for Webster and, in that regard, a major step for this artist, whose work is always interesting. For one thing, he has opened up a vast space which […]
Adrian Ghenie: Every Painting Is Abstract
ARTnews
Andy Battaglia profiles painter Adrian Ghenie whose recent paintings are on view at Pace Gallery, New York through February 18, 2017. Battaglia notes: “Compositions can be figurative, [Ghenie] said, but the power of painting—when it has any power at all—is less in the cause than in the effect. And that effect is abstract regardless of the […]
Sandro Chia @ Marc Straus
James Kalm Report
James Kalm visits an exhibition of new paintings by Sandro Chia at Marc Straus Gallery, New York, on view through April 2, 2017. Kalm notes: “In this, his first major show with Marc Straus Gallery, [Chia] shows a group of recent paintings, many featuring single figures accompanied by animals. Chia’s masterful feel for the painter’s […]
Stella Still Intriguing
Artillery
David DiMichele reviews Frank Stella: A Retrospective at the de Young Museum, San Francisco, on view through February 26, 2017. DiMichele notes: “The decorative quality in many of Stella’s paintings, particularly the protractor series from the late 1960s, has led many writers to compare him to Matisse, the master of color, but I see him […]
Gutai & the Unraveling of Linear Modernism
Squarecylinder
John Held, Jr. considers Japanese Gutai and its influences and impact in light of three San Francisco exhibitions: Kazuo Shiraga & Kour Pour: Earthquakes And the Mid Winter Burning Sun at Ever Gold Projects (through March 18), Tsuyoshi Maekawa, Alberto Burri, Lucio Fontana, et al.:Beyond Matter at Gagosian San Franciso (through March 18), and Japanese […]
Barkley Hendricks on Louis Sloan
Painters on Paintings
Barkley Hendricks writes about painter Louis Sloan. Hendricks notes: “Louis Sloan was an under-recognized painter who happened to be a ‘Black Artist’ who didn’t do ‘black art.’ His main focus was the beauty of the planet; landscapes were an example of his raison d’etre … His influence followed me into my studio many years after his […]
Claire Tabouret @ Night Gallery
EatingPaintingSmoking
Jason Ramos reviews Claire Tabouret: Eclipse at Night Gallery, Los Angeles, on view through March 4, 2017. Ramos writes: “Half-way between the vibrant exuberance of Rebecca Campbell’s images and Luc Tuyman’s clinical stroke-by-stroke reproductions lay the gliding, neutral toned figures of LA based French painter Claire Tabouret… The figures in the larger works and monoprints […]
Emily Gherard: Making Presence Known
Art Ltd
Amanda Manitach reviews the recent exhibition Emily Gherard: Making Presence Known at Bridge Productions, Seattle. Manitach writes: “In [Gherard’s] most recent series … scale has diminished—dwarfed. Many of Gherard’s panels are smaller than the palm of a hand. Yet the bijou-sized pieces are encrusted with material that has a density as yet not experienced in […]
Christopher Le Brun: Interview
Brooklyn Rail
Barbara Rose interviews painter Christopher Le Brun. Le Brun comments: “Painting wants to be spatial. It has a compass in it that switches to north, and the north of painting is space… But painting is also—which is not said enough, at a high level—extremely difficult. Because you’re not trying to simplify the situation, you’re trying […]
Abstract Expressionism: The Impact of Display
Saturation Point
Paul Carey Kent reviews and compares two versions of the exhibition Abstract Expressionism, first on view at the at the Royal Academy, London this past fall and currently on view at the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain (through June 4, 2017). Kent concludes: “In all respects, then, Bilbao was superior to London, and what had seemed […]
Joan Wadleigh Curran: Interview
Painting Perceptions
Larry Groff interviews painter Joan Wadleigh Curran. Curran remarks: “I think of my approach as a kind of hybrid involving careful description that incorporates still life and a kind of portraiture. I find objects seductive and hope for a kind of animism in how I paint them. I am particularly interested in the power of […]
Joan Eardley: A Sense of Place
The Guardian
Frances Spalding reviews Joan Eardley: A Sense of Place is at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, on view through May 21, 2017. Spalding writes: “[Eardley’s] intense looking and her method of drawing affirm her admiration for Van Gogh, and an affinity between her urban work and his involvement with the coal mining […]