The Painter of Modern Life
Sharon Butler blogs about the exhibition The Painter of Modern Life, organized by Bob Nickas at Anton Kern, New York, on view through April 11, 2015. The show includes work by Nathaniel Axel, Lisa Beck, Sadie Benning, Sascha Braunig, Alex Brown, Mathew Cerletty, Wayne Gonzales, Joanne Greenbaum, Daniel Hesidence, Mamie Holst, Cannon Hudson, Chip Hughes, […]
Cordy Ryman: Interview
Lara Saget interviews artist Cordy Ryman whose exhibition Chimera 45 is on view at Zürcher Gallery, New York through May 7, 2015. Ryman comments: "I think anything and everything that is going on in your life, if you are open in your process, will make its way in and have an effect. I think we […]
Russell Roberts @ Heskin
Jennifer Riley reviews Russell Roberts: Paper Bed, Concrete Head at Heskin Contemporary, New York, on view through April 18, 2015. Riley writes: "In these complex paintings, rich in complex spatial propositions, the main white and blue areas evoke Matissian plays of figure and ground, while within the smaller white or blue areas Roberts complicates foreground […]
Elaine de Kooning @ the National Portrait Gallery
Tim Keane reviews Elaine de Kooning: Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C., on view through January 10, 2016. Keane writes that "the show offers uninitiated visitors a chance to discover an American artist who redirected techniques of twentieth-century vanguard painting into a form of portraiture that is as much about the rhythms and […]
Anne Harris: The Eyelid as Metaphor
Anne Harris writes about painting and metaphor. Harris recalls: "I had a break-through in my painting when I began thinking metaphorically. It started with a vein in a forehead, then the realization that everything could be vascular. So tendrils of hair became capillary, as did tendrils of light, stripes in a shirt were arterial, a […]
Glenn Goldberg: Interview
Phong Bui interviews painter Glenn Goldberg whose exhibition All Day is on view at Betty Cuningham Gallery, New York, through April 4, 2015. Goldberg comments: "I think the body has its own needs. Although painters essentially paint with their eyes and their hands, their bodies have to participate in locating elements. And things aren’t always […]
Langdon Quin: Interview
Larry Groff interviews painter Langdon Quin whose exhibition of recent paintings is on view at The Painting Center, New York through April 25, 2015. Quin comments: "… in my day-to-day experience, the landscape seems to intrude most and calls out more for its recognition and observation. Whenever I make a painting of any kind, whether […]
Craig Taylor @ CB1 Gallery
Sharon Butler blogs about the exhibition Craig Taylor: Enface at CB1 Gallery, Los Angeles, on view through April 11, 2015. Butler writes: "Craig Taylor empties traditional portrait bust forms of facial detail and fills the silhouettes with strata of small marks and brushstrokes. The effect is to make visible the unarticulated anxiety behind our carefully […]
Clare Grill @ Zieher Smith & Horton
Steven Alexander blogs about Clare Grill: Touch’d Lustre at Zieher Smith & Horton, New York, on view through April 25, 2015. Alexander writes: "These paintings dive head first into the history of great painting — the all-over space of Pollock, the shape-making of Gorky and Kandinsky, the playfulness of Klee — and emerge looking utterly […]
John Zinsser: Interview
Guy C. Corriero talks to painter John Zinsser about the exhibition Re-Irascibles: Theodoros Stamos and John Zinsser, an exhibition at Graham Gallery in New York, on view through April 17, 2015. For the show, Zinsser created new work in response to abstract expressionsit painter Theodoros Stamos. Commenting on the process Zinsser notes that half of […]
Robert Motherwell @ the Met
Altoon Sultan blogs about Robert Motherwell: Lyric Suite at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, on view through July 26, 2015. Sultan writes: "There is so much life in these drawings; they don't stay still politely, but have a continuing pulsing energy. The drawings remind me of the looser forms of Asian calligraphy, which […]
Ashley Garrett: Interview
Eric Sutphin interviews painter Ashley Garrett. Garrett comments: "I’m trying to include all of the possibilities of perception at once… There are all of these parallel ways of thinking and knowing, mistaking and perceiving. So how do you work from a place where you have a memory, but are in the process of forgetting it […]
Nathan Lewis: Interview
John Seed interviews painter Nathan Lewis whose exhibition Light is the Lion is on view at Fernando Luis Alvarez Gallery, Stamford, Connecticut through April 18, 2015. Lewis comments: "I've always loved exploring abandoned spaces. 2011 is when I first decided to paint them. I've always been more of a figure painter and object (form) oriented. […]
Contemporary Painting Panel @ Hunter College
James Kalm films a recent panel on contemporary painting hosted by Hunter College and the Brooklyn Rail. The panelists include: Phyllis Tuchman, Alex Bacon, Carrie Moyer, Greg Lindquist and Amei Wallach and are introduced by Phong Bui. The panelists discuss issues in contemporary painting raised by, and related to, the exhibition The Forever Now: Contemporary […]
Jack Davidson at THEODORE: Art
William Eckhardt Kohler reviews Jack Davidson: love, mistake, promise, auto crack-up, color, petal at THEODORE: Art, Bushwick, Brooklyn, on view through April 12, 2015. Kohler writes: "The warmth in Davidson's paintings is both related to the strange and inventive forms and color ideas they contain and to subtle decisions such as repainting by hand edges that […]
Ed Valentine on Ivan Albright
Ed Valentine writes about discovering the work of Ivan Albright at the Art Institute of Chicago. Valentine recalls: “I knew the story of St. Anthony of Egypt and had seen reproductions of versions by Grunewald, Bruegel, Bosch and a few others but this thing! Done in the mid, 1940s, it seemed to be smack out of […]
Stephanie Pierce: Radiant Welter
Christopher Lowrance interviews painter Stephanie Pierce, whose show Radiant Welter will be on view at Alpha Gallery, Boston from April 4 – 29, 2015. Pierce comments: "I love getting to the point where the realization of the space has happened, and that I can then begin to let go of things, dissolve, shift, and then […]
Breaking Pattern @ Minus Space
Thomas Micchelli reviews Breaking Pattern at Minus Space, New York, on view through April 18, 2015. Micchelli writes: "Optical or perceptual painting, for all of its rigor and intellection, can be thought of as a vanguard in defense of 'aura,' a Romantic credo affirming the power of the art object. Optical painting may look anything […]
Albert Irvin (1922 -2015)
Mike Tooby writes about the life and career of the late painter Albert Irvin (1922 -2015). Although Irvin's career began in the 1950s, Tooby writes that Irvin's "work became prominent in the reinvigoration of British painting in the 1980s and 90s, and latterly became familiar through wide exhibition and reproduction. He made colour sweep and […]
Gillian Ayres: Interview
Jan Dalley visits the studio of painter Gillian Ayres whose show New Paintings and Prints will be on view at Alan Cristea Gallery, London, from April 13 – May 30, 2015. In the interview Ayres comments: "To me painting is a visual thing. I find this terribly important… People like to understand and I wish […]