Leo Bates: Painting in the Shadows
Annie Correal profiles painter Leo J. Bates (1944-2013). Correal writes: "Looking at Mr. Bates’s work, it is clear that something happened when he left Manhattan and moved to Brooklyn. When he plunged into deep solitude, he found something new… Mr. Bates’s last paintings were huge X’s and chevrons that when examined closely revealed tiny grids […]
Blinky Palermo: An Expansive Minimalism
Altoon Sultan blogs about the recent exhibition Palermo Works 1973-1976 at David Zwirner Gallery, New York. Sultan observes: "Looking at the long black line on the left wall, I see that it has some weight and presence, but it's not quite a sculpture. It is, rather, a long narrow, irregular painting, pointed on both ends […]
Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series
Anne Blood reviews One-Way Ticket: Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series and Other Works at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, on view through September 7, 2014. Blood writes: "Lawrence conceived the Migration Series as a single work composed of 60 parts … He began by writing the captions, which were then edited by his […]
Etel Adnan @ Galerie Lelong
Alexis Clements reviews works by Etel Adnan at Galerie Lelong, New York, on view through May 8, 2015. Clements writes: "On Adnan’s uncluttered canvases the color vibrates and pulses with an ecstatic fluorescence that lends many of the abstract works on display an energy and life that I could not look away from… Beyond Adnan’s […]
John Dubrow: The Transformations
John Goodrich reviews John Dubrow: Transformations at Lori Bookstein Fine Art, New York, on view through April 25, 2015. Goodrich writes that "what is especially rewarding about [Dubrow's] latest work… is the way it continues to explore and evolve. In his case, the evolution isn’t towards a more provocative technique or motif – if anything, these […]
Thomas Nozkowski: Roundtable
David Cohen moderates an email roundtable discussion on the work of Thomas Nozkowski, on view at Pace Gallery, New York, through April 25, 2015. Participants include: Joseph Masheck, David Brody, Alexander Ross, Marjorie Welish, Jennifer Riley and Raphael Rubinstein. Rubinstein comments: "Putting aside for the moment the question of why Nozkowski and others have been […]
Benjamin Britton on Julie Mehretu
Benjamin Britton considers Julie Mehretu's Mogamma (A Painting in Four Parts): Part II in the collection of the High Museum of Art. Britton writes: "From my first introduction to Mehretu’s work, I was struck by its speed and multiplicity of transparent perspectives. The paintings gave the sensation of lives lived in multiple locations, the architecture […]
Julian Hatton @ Elizabeth Harris
Steven Alexander blogs about Julian Hatton: New Season at Elizabeth Harris Gallery, New York, on view through May 9, 2015. Alexander writes: "Working with aspects of observed landscape as his starting point, Hatton builds abstract compositions comprised of many layers of shapes and spaces — beautiful contrasts of linear and planar dynamics laid out in […]
Stanley Whitney: Interview
Alteronce Gumby conducts an extensive oral history interview with painter Stanley Whitney. Whitney comments: "… my big goal.[was that] I wanted to open the work up—not relying on the color, but on structure. I thought that Color Field artists were weak with their structure. And the color in those days was weak too. They used […]
Summer Wheat: Walk-In Pantry
John Goodrich reviews Summer Wheat: Walk-In Pantry at Fridman Gallery, New York, on view through April 25, 2015. Goodrich writes: " Lining the black-painted walls are 11 six-foot-tall paintings, each a brushy, schematic depiction of kitchenware-laden shelves. Caught in florid strokes of black enamel paint and charcoal dust, the depicted objects have a cartoon-like life […]
Cubism 2.0
Janet McKenzie reviews Cubism 2.0 at Hanina Fine Arts, London, on view through July 8, 2015. The show features works by André Beaudin, Étienne Béothy, Róbert Bérény, Jacques Busse, Youla (Jules) Chapoval, Serge Charchoune, Jean Chevolleau, Jean Isy De Botton, Maurice-Henri Gaudefroy, Léon Gischia, Gino Gregori, Raymond Guerrier, André Lhote, Bill Parker, Ferdinand Parpan, Jean […]
From Now On In @ Brian Morris
Dennis Kardon reviews From Now On In at Brian Morris Gallery and Buddy Warren Inc., New York, on view through April 25, 2015. The show features works by Michael Berryhill, Tom Burckhardt, Steve DiBenedetto, Lydia Dona, Fabian Marcaccio, Carrie Moyer, and Alexi Worth. Kardon notes: "Significant painting is so difficult to attain today because it […]
Richard Estes & John Dubrow
Jerry Weiss reviews Richard Estes: Painting New York at the Museum of Arts and Design (through September 20) and John Dubrow: Transformations at Lori Bookstein Fine Art (through April 25). Weiss writes that Estes' "cityscapes are straightforward in their depiction of surfaces—usually architectural but occasionally organic—and as free of social commentary as one could imagine. Nor […]
Julia Fish @ David Nolan Gallery
John Yau reviews Julia Fish: Threshold at David Nolan Gallery, New York, on view through April 25, 2015. Yau writes: "[Judith Russi] Kirshner gets to the heart of Fish’s paintings when she advances that the artist’s 'close focus allows her subjects to become unhinged from their referents, to become inexplicable.' I would further advance that […]
Ralph Humphrey: Conveyance
Jeffrey Collins photo blogs a visit to Ralph Humphrey: Conveyance at Garth Greenan Gallery, New York, on view through May 16, 2015. The gallery press release notes: "The exhibition focuses on the Conveyance paintings, a singularly important, emotionally fraught body of work, created between 1974 and 1977. The paintings—hulking masses of casein and modeling paste […]
Mara Held, Margrit Lewczuk & Meg Lipke
James Kalm visits an exhibition of works by Mara Held, Margrit Lewczuk and Meg Lipke at David Findlay Jr. Gallery, New York, on view through May 9, 2015. Kalm notes that these three painters have "achieved unique visions through independent approaches, to not just formal issues like color, line and shape, but who've also experimented […]
Katharina Grosse: Anarchic Color
In a new video, artist Katharina Grosse discusses the use of color in her work. Katharina Grosse: The Smoking Kid will be on view at Johann König Gallery, Berlin from May 2 – June 21, 2015. Grosse comments: "…color is such an very, very important spatial feature in my work in relationship to the crystallized […]
Jason Stopa: Interview
Jennifer Samet interviews painter Jason Stopa on the occasion of his exhibition Double Trouble at Hionas Gallery, New York, on view through April 25, 2015. Stopa observes: "At the end of the day I am most interested in [the paintings] being read as formal images. I am less interested in images that are solely based […]
Alice Neel: Unsparing Vision
Paddy Johnson reviews Alice Neel Drawings and Watercolors 1927-1978 at David Zwirner, New York, on view through April 18, 2015. Johnson writes that Neel's images of "parks, beaches, political rallies, and even illustrations for the Brothers Karmazov (1938)—that offer some respite from a show otherwise defined by portraits that expose the sitter in some way. […]
Peter Halley: Hyperreal
Sharon Butler reviews Peter Halley: Big Paintings at the Florence Griswold Museum, on view through May 31, 2015. Butler writes: "Halley’s strict visual language is clear enough and his political underpinnings are well documented. Yet his nine enormous paintings, with the shifts in the shapes, sizes, and configuration of their three primary geometric elements, also […]