Eve Mansdorf: Interview
Larry Groff interviews painter Eve Mansdorf. Mansdorf comments: "I often want a tension between formal elements such as form, light, color and other elements that are more subjective and psychological. I guess the Freudian part is the psychological aspect of the painting. The Kantian part is the formal part… When you’re doing figure painting, one […]
Jack Whitten: Profile
Alex Greenberger profiles painter Jack Whitten. Greenberger notes: "By the mid-’70s, Whitten had leapt into total, process-based abstraction, and had even switched media—he stopped working with oil paint all together and took up acrylic because it dried faster. His 'Slab' paintings, the works shown at the Whitney in 1974, were very much of their era, […]
Gregory Amenoff: Interview
Jennifer Samet interviews painter Gregory Amenoff. Amenoff comments: "Landscape, as an idea, has to do with longing. Paintings are alternate worlds – worlds unto themselves, manifested by each artist to satisfy a desire to fill a void. One summer I taught with Per Kirkeby at Skowhegan and he said that paintings are more real than […]
Sarah Cain: The Imaginary Architecture of Love
Megan Abrahams writes about the work of Sarah Cain whose installation The Imaginary Architecture of Love was recently on view at the Contemporary Art Museum (CAM), Raleigh, North Carolina. Abrahams writes: "[Cain's] work encompasses the range from gestural, loose and playful marks to controlled repeated lines and shapes that define sections of composition, like measures […]
Larry Poons: The Gravity of a Volcano
Piri Halasz reviews Larry Poons: Choral Fantasy at Loretta Howard Gallery, New York, on view through February 13, 2016. Halasz writes: "Entering [the gallery] is like walking into the middle of Niagara Falls, or being confronted by the descending lava of a volcano—all as frozen for eternity by a modernist photographer like Brassaï…" Halasz adds: […]
Matt Phillips: Studio Visit
Maria Calandra visits the studio of painter Matt Phillips whose show Comfort Inn is on view at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, New York through February 6, 2016. Calandra writes: "With multiple points of entry, Phillips' work is generously made. The larger canvases, which often depict familiar fantastical structures straight out of a sixties psychedelic […]
Katherine Bradford @ Canada
John Yau reviews Katherine Bradford: Fear of Waves at Canada, New York, on view through February 14, 2016. Yau writes: "These are Bradford’s “Deluge” paintings — that’s what I mean by breakthrough. She has done something unforeseen — the envisioning of an all-consuming catastrophe of biblical proportions. She is not only updating Guston’s own take […]
Alan Ebnother: Interview
George Lawson interviews painter Alan Ebnother on the occasion of Ebnother's exhibition twelve paintings at George Lawson Gallery, San Francisco, on view through February 20, 2016. Ebnother comments: "With my love of a paint structure thicker and heavier then history provided me, I was forced to study and learn how to create a thick paint […]
Sally Michel: Landscapes of Color and Texture
Roberta Smith reviews paintings by Sally Michel at D. Wigmore Fine Art, New York, on view through February 13, 2016. Smith writes: "This excellent exhibition sheds needed light, presenting about 30 of Michel’s paintings from the 1950s… Mostly landscapes, they are clumsier but also more intense, less Olympian than [husband Milton] Avery’s works. They tend […]
Natalie Dower @ Eagle Gallery
James Campion reviews Natalie Dower: Reflections, at Eagle Gallery, London, on view through January 16, 2016. Campion writes: "All the works in the show sit on a spectrum of decipherability… I think it might be fruitful to evaluate each of Dower’s works in terms of her ‘management of decipherability’. One can think about how successfully […]
Jane Freilicher & Jane Wilson
Xico Greenwald reviews Jane Freilicher and Jane Wilson: Seen and Unseen at the Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, New York, on view through January 18, 2016. Greenwald writes: "Despite all they have in common, in this show [Freilicher's and Wilson's] differences stand out. While working in the same place at the same time, moving in […]
Ann Pibal: Like a Sequence of Thoughts
David Rhodes reviews works by Ann Pibal at Lucien Terras, New York, on view through January 17, 2016. Rhodes writes: "Pibal’s art is not one of cool formalism. There is a precision here that does not exclude either intellect or sensual pleasure. Neither of these attributes is reduced because of the presence of the other; on […]
Carolanna Parlato & Sandy Walker
Piri Halasz reviews Carolanna Parlato: A Delicate Balance and Sandy Walker: Stehekin Poems at Elizabeth Harris Gallery, New York, on view through February 13, 2016. Halasz writes that Parlato's "earlier work … was conspicuously (if attractively) dripped and/or poured." In this show Halasz adds, "Parlato employs acrylic and molding paste to create many small to […]
Clare Grill: Interview
Rob Kaiser-Schatzlein interviews painter Clare Grill. Grill comments: "What I do as a painter is to paint a lot. It's part of what we all do as artists, doing a lot of work over and over again. In a way being an artist is growing your gut muscle and that tells you when you have […]
Valerie Brennan: Interview
Yifat Gat interviews painter Valerie Brennan. Brennan remarks: "I don’t think each painting is an isolated event, so I find myself starting with the last paintings I made in my mind, sometimes painting what I have done before, and to go forward, I must destroy that and let the new painting reveal itself. When I […]
John Bunker: Collages
Group discussion: Anne Smart, Anthony Smart, John Pollard, Alexandra Harley, Nick Moore, Robin Greenwood, Sarah Greenwood, Hilde Skilton, Mark Skilton, Noela James, Patrick Jones, Ben Wiedel-Kaufmann, Matthew Dennis, Andrew Revell, Bob Aldous, Fred Pollock discuss the collages of artist John Bunker. Opening the discussion with a short statement, Bunker comments: "For me [scale] a bit […]
Mary Heilmann: Life into Art
Altoon Sultan blogs about the recent exhibition Mary Heilmann: Geometrics: Waves, Roads, etc., at 303 Gallery, New York. Sultan writes: "With a quick glance, we might think that Mary Heilmann is a formalist abstract artist, concerned with issues of shape and color, with the unity or breaking of the picture plane. But, what to make […]
Janet Fish: Glass & Plastic @ DC Moore
James Kalm visits Janet Fish: Glass & Plastic, The Early Years, 1968-1978 at DC Moore, New York, on view through February 13, 2016. Kalm notes: "As a serious painter, battling against both the historic legacy of Abstract Expressionism, and the contemporary steamroller of Minimalist dogma, Fish concentrated on capturing the delicate and transient effects of […]
Mariam Aziza Stephan in Cairo
Sharon Butler blogs about the paintings of Mariam Aziza Stephan, whose show Undercurrents is on view at The Gezira Art Center, Cairo, Egypt, through January 12, 2016. Butler writes that in Stephan's paintings: "Multiple forms are situated in the same space, and different points in time are revealed at once. At first glance the paintings […]
Karel Appel @ the Centre Pompidou
Joseph Nechvatal reviews Karel Appel at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, on view through January 11, 2016. The show will be on view at the Pinakothek der Moderne/Staatliche Graphische Sammlung from February 4 April 17, 2016. Nechvatal writes: "Appel was one of our best, last bets on visceral enthusiasm, so if anyone can restore zeal to […]