James Hayward: Studio Visit
Tulsa Kinney visits the studio of painter James Hayward. Kinney writes: "I ask [Hayward] if painting is a physical thing for him—I have this vision of him in his studio vigorously slathering globs of thick crimson onto a canvas with a paintbrush in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other. In my […]
Kazuo Shiraga at Mnuchin & Dominique Lévy
Robert C. Morgan reviews works by Kazuo Shiraga on view in two concurrent New York exhibitions: Kazuo Shiraga at Mnuchin Gallery (through April 11) and Body and Matter: The Art of Kazuo Shiraga and Satoru Hoshino at Dominique Lévy (through April 4). Morgan notes that "Japanese scholar Koichi Kawasaki … argues that Shiraga was the […]
On Kawara: Carpe Diem
Sharon Butler blogs about On Kawara-Silence, curated by Jeffrey Weiss with Anne Wheeler, on view at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, through May 3, 2015. Butler writes: "Unlike artists today, Kawara eschewed the limelight, even skipping his own openings because attending them would interrupt what he envisioned as a lifelong performance – tracking a single […]
Sandra Mendelsohn Rubin @ LA Louver
John Seed reviews Sandra Mendelsohn Rubin: A Common Thread at LA|Louver, on view through March 28, 2015. Seed notes: "Several of the exhibition's aerial views are very small: for example, Bridge Over the Navarro is just over seven inches across. As a result, I was drawn near as I inspected the painting, only to find […]
John Zurier: A Vessel Filling Slowly
Emil Robinson reviews John Zurier: West of the Future at Peter Blum Gallery, New York, on view through April 4 2015. Robinson writes: "Many of the paintings in West of the Future are named after seasons or times of day. Zurier has a unique ability to be sensitive to his surroundings and the pace of […]
Goya @ the Courtauld
T.J. Clark considers the particular effect of Goya's drawings on view in the exhibition Goya: The Witches and Old Women Album at the Courtauld Gallery, London, on view through May 25, 2015. Clark notes: "Repetition and variation in [Goya's] drawings – each one intense and definitive, monotony coexisting with inventiveness – lead nowhere. That is […]
Joyce Pensato: Castaway
Howard Hurst reviews Joyce Pensato: Castaway at Petzel Gallery, New York, on view through March 28, 2015. Hurst writes: "The first thing one notices about the paintings on display is the immediacy with which they are painted. There is a dark, brooding feeling of aggression that pulls itself across the surfaces of the 9 large […]
Edith Schloss Still Life, Myths, & Mountains
James Kalm visits the exhibition Edith Schloss: Still Life, Myths and Mountains, A Retrospective, at Sundaram Tagore Gallery, New York, curated by Jason Andrew and organized in collaboration with Norte Maar, on view through March 28, 2015. The video walkthrough includes commentary by curator Jason Andrew. Kalm notes: "Beginning with her studies at the Art […]
Christopher Chippendale: Interview
Larry Groff interviews painter Christopher Chippendale. Chippendale comments extensively on observational painting and studying with painter George Nick: "Observational painting, I learned, was not a mimetic art form. We were not in the business of copying or duplicating what was before us, but of transposing it through paint, and through the forms we each adopted […]
Contemporary Painting: Formal Affairs
Spurred on by the the exhibition The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (through April 5), David Geers examines the landscape of critically and institutionally sanctioned abstract painting. An excerpt: "… while [Kerstin] Brätsch’s work is an almost-analytic deconstruction of painterly codes, artists such as […]
Dee Solin & Jason Karolak
In part one of a two part post, Piri Halasz reviews Dee Solin at Andre Zarre Gallery (through April 4) and Jason Karolak: Polyrhythm at McKenzie Fine Art, New York (closed). Part one is linked above, part two of the review is here. Halasz writes that "both [Solin and Karolak] are not only abstract painters, […]
Suzan Frecon @ David Zwirner
John Yau reviews Suzan Frecon: oil paintings and sun at David Zwirner, New York, on view through March 28, 2015. Yau writes: "One of the strengths of this exhibition, and of Frecon’s work since the beginning of this century, is the tension between harmony and division she is able to infuse into her paintings. The […]
Painting Gets a Soul
Kristin Calabrese considers the persistent power and potential of painting. Calabrese comments: "Painting is a magic, fetishized ritual object. It is a place where for some length of time the hand, eye and energy of the artist is focused. More energy is focused in one place than can be looked at in an instance. I […]
Vera Iliatova @ Monya Rowe
Ken Johnson reviews Vera Iliatova: For Now, At Once at Monya Rowe Gallery, New York, on view through April 12, 2015. Johnson writes: "In her dreamy paintings of girls in verdant landscapes, Vera Iliatova toys with conventional associations of nature, femininity, childhood and innocence… Insofar as the artist herself identifies with her girls, they may […]
Eugene Speicher
Simon Carr reviews Along His Own Lines: A Retrospective of New York Realist Eugene Speicher at The New York State Museum, Albany, on view through March 22, 2015. Carr writes: "Speicher studied painting with William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri in New York City. Georgia O’Keefe and Edward Hopper were art school friends … Despite […]
Fran O’Neill: Studio Visit
Christopher Joy and Zachary Keeting visit the studio of painter Fran O'Neill. Thomas Micchelli, writing about O'neill's work for her recent show at Life on Mars, observes that “O’Neill’s art is something you take in with your whole body… [her] blunt, tough-minded, ecstatically convulsive oil paintings are endlessly revealing: pigment and binder, solvent and surface […]
Rosalyn Drexler: Vulgar Lives
Joshua Bell reviews Rosalyn Drexler: Vulgar Lives at Garth Greenan Gallery, New York, on view through March 28, 2015. Bell notes that "Drexler depicts her subjects in a very straightforward manner, usually against monochromatic backgrounds. The figures appear uncomfortable and still, isolated in a foreign scene. The saturnine scenes are further augmented by the exhibition’s […]
Doug Ohlson: Intervals & Balance
Altoon Sultan blogs about Doug Ohlson: Panel Paintings from the 1960s at Washburn Gallery, New York, on view through March 28, 2015. Sultan writes: "Squares of color, placed carefully on adjoining vertical panels, move in space––forward/back, up/down, across––mark weights, move the eye. The sense of empty and full gives rise to the reference to a […]
Julian Kreimer @ the Lux Art Institute
Meghan Gordon reviews works by Julian Kreimer at the Lux Art Institute, on view through March 21, 2015 Gordon writes: "The gallery is dominated by mostly small paintings made on the grounds of the residency. Kreimer’s close-cropped images of prickly pear cactus piles steal the show, even among a salon-style wall arrangement of 20 or […]
Jackie Saccoccio @ Corbett vs. Dempsey
Kevin Blake reviews Jackie Saccoccio: Echo at Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago, on view through April 25, 2015. Blake writes: "While the infrastructure of renaissance portraiture may exist in Saccoccio’s paintings, the centralized figure remains only as the most distant resounding of an echo. As the portraits recede into the deep spaces Saccoccio creates through perspectival […]