Fred Valentine @ Schema Projects
Jonathan Stevenson reviews Fred Valentine: The Pumpkin Festival and other Portraits at Schema Projects, Bushwick, on view through February 28, 2016. Stevenson writes: "All of Valentine's subjects are presented as slightly disoriented, not quite fitting in the dark space from which they seem to escape or the surface they purport to occupy, unable to fully […]
Eric Aho: Ice Cuts
Christopher Volpe blogs about the exhibition Eric Aho: Ice Cuts at the Hood Museum, Dartmouth University, on view through March 13, 2016. Volpe writes: "A stark, angular void edges out the largely blank, skewed border of remaining white space in the canvases of Vermont painter Eric Aho’s series of Ice Cut paintings. To call these […]
Matt Phillips: Interview
Yevgeniya Baras interviews painter Matt Phillips whose exhibition Comfort Inn is on view at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, New York through February 6, 2016. Phillips comments: "For me, paintings are roughly equal parts body and mind. There is the seeing, thinking, and responding aspect of painting. And the other half is so physical -mixing, […]
Suzanne Dittenber: Interview
Chris Lowrance interviews painter Suzanne Dittenber. Dittenber comments: "In my painting I inquire about the intersection, overlap, fusion, collision of representation and abstraction. Accuracy in drawing or representation is not my exclusive objective, but is offset by other aims … playfulness, for one, and the pursuit of undiluted instances of striking color interaction. Some of […]
Ellsworth Kelly’s Basic Training
Tim Keane writes about the new volume of the Ellsworth Kelly Catalogue Raisonné that focuses on Kelly's early work from 1940–1953. Keane writes: "Before the reader’s eyes, Kelly is transforming himself from a middle-of-the road figurative painter into an innovative, lyrical abstractionist gradually branching out into mixed media works and relief sculptures… the catalogue offers […]
Janet Fish @ DC Moore
Peter Malone reviews Janet Fish: Glass & Plastic, The Early Years, 1968-1978 at DC Moore, New York, on view through February 13, 2016. Malone writes that the show "highlights a selection of Fish’s work from the late 1960s and 1970s that demonstrates how, within the limitations she had set for herself at the time, she […]
Richard Diebenkorn: Early Color Abstractions
Sarah Cascone reviews Richard Diebenkorn: Early Color Abstractions 1949–1955 at Van Doren Waxter, New York, on view through March 5, 2016. Cascone writes: "The paintings [on view] mark an important stage in the artist's development, as he left Sausalito, California, in 1949, and began studying for his graduate degree at the University of New Mexico […]
Robert Ryman @ Dia:Chelsea
James Kalm visits an exhibition of works by Robert Ryman at Dia:Chelsea, New York, on view through June 18, 2016. Kalm notes: "This show presents a wide survey of various experimental and conceptual approaches to the project of painting. Since beginning his practice in the mid 1950s, Ryman has limited his materials to mostly white […]
Mary Addison Hackett @ Marcia Wood
Jordan Amirkhani reviews Mary Addison Hackett: A Tin of Egyptian Cigarettes at Marcia Wood Gallery, Atlanta, on view through February 6, 2016. Amirkhani observes: "While the studio paintings lend the exhibition an important theme, it is Hackett’s dialogue with painting itself that provides the coherent pulse. Whether a studio scene or a vibrant explosion of […]
Rodchenko in Mexico
Ed Schad writes about unexpectedly encountering Alexander Rodchenko's triptych Pure Red, Pure Yellow, and Pure Blue (1921) on a trip to Mexico City. Having been fascinated by the story of this work for decades, Schad notes: "I poured over the surfaces, but there was nothing to see other than cracks and age and fraying edges. The […]
The Onward of Art: American Abstract Artists
Joanne Mattera photo blogs a walkthrough of The Onward of Art: American Abstract Artists at 1285 Avenue of the Americas Gallery, New York, on view through March 25, 2016. In the exhibition brochure, curator Karen Wilkin writes: "The founders of AAA believed implicitly in the power of autonomous, non-representational images to communicate profound ideas and emotions. […]
Jacqueline Gourevitch on Piet Mondrian
Jacqueline Gourevitch reflects on Piet Mondrian’s Oval with Colored Planes (1914) in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gourevitch writes: "for the sheer immediacy of seeing what lies at the heart of making a painting, I turn to this early Mondrian. I want to look closely at how this painted surface, […]
Scott Wolniak & John Phillip Abbott @ Devening Projects
Kelly Reaves reviews works by Scott Wolniak and John Phillip Abbott at Devening Projects + Editions, Chicago, on view through February 13, 2016. Reaves writes: "With nods to studio noodling, [Abbott's paintings] seduce with flashy neon hues and sexy pools and swirls of paint. They start on unstretched canvas first used for sopping up spills […]
Allison Miller @ Susan Inglett
John Yau reviews Allison Miller: Speeds at Susan Inglett Gallery, New York, on view through January 30, 2016. Yau writes: "Miller’s process isn’t to cover the canvas with paint so much as to cover and uncover it, to interrupt, upend or subvert an expectation. For her, a canvas isn’t a surface to which another uniform […]
Michael David: Studio Visit
Zachary Keeting and Christopher Joy visit the studio of painter Michael David. David remarks: "I came up from the roots of AbEx and from punk and I learned all the academics but my goal was to make paintings that when they went on the wall were undeniable. And your experience with them was not well […]
Patrick Jones: Studio Visit
As part of the Brancaster Chronicles studio visit series, Hilde Skilton, Mark Skilton, Anne Smart, Anthony Smart, John Pollard, Alexandra Harley, Nick Moore, Robin Greenwood, Sarah Greenwood, Noela James visit the studio of painter Patrick Jones. Painters' Table interviewed Jones in 2012.
Dana DeGiulio & Molly Zuckerman-Hartung
Martha Schwendener reviews Dana DeGiulio & Molly Zuckerman-Hartung: Queen at Lyles & King, New York, on view through February 7, 2016. Schwendener writes: "DeGiulio’s paintings take a simple trope, the floral still life, and remake it into a black-and-white postpunk-type affair. Call it Manet for the millennium, after his late flower paintings… If … DeGiulio’s […]
Jonathan Lasker @ Cheim & Read
James Kalm visits an exhibition of paintings by Jonathan Lasker at Cheim & Read, New York, on view through February 13, 2016. In his intro to the video Kalm writes: "These paintings continue Lasker's investigation into the operations of perception, as well as how viewers might decipher various visual codes of abstraction. Kalm ponders the […]
Vilhelm Hammershøi: Painting Tranquility
Franklin Einspruch reviews Painting Tranquility: Masterworks by Vilhelm Hammershøi at Scandinavia House, New York, on view through February 27, 2016. Einspruch writes: "… Hammershøi began painting unqualified masterpieces while still in his mid-twenties. It’s not excessive to say that Woman Seen from the Back (1888) recalls Vermeer’s treatment of women in the midst of domesticity. […]
Odili Donald Odita @ Jack Shainman
Robert C. Morgan reviews Odili Donald Odita: The Velocity of Change at Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, on view through January 30, 2016. Morgan writes that over the course of his career "Odita has focused on diagonal, hard-edge color combinations, emphasizing color values and varying hues. His intention is not to illustrate color theory in […]