Abstract Painting
Joanna Pousette-Dart: Centering
Brooklyn Rail
Lilly Wei reviews Joanna Pousette-Dart: Centering at Lisson Gallery, New York. Wei observes: “Schooled in a modernist aesthetic, Pousette-Dart soon veered away from non-objective formalism to a more personalized, independent aesthetic. Abstractions sourced in landscapes and painted on multi-paneled shaped canvases have been her calling card since the early 1990s. They are also marvelously quirky—no […]
Kim Uchiyama at Helm Contemporary
The New Criterion
Dana Gordon reviews Kim Uchiyama: Loggia at Helm Contemporary, New York. Gordon observes: “Sicily brings to mind bright sunlight and thus strong color. At midday, when extended shadows disappear, the colors of the ground, objects, and sky can be close in value—there isn’t a lot of contrast in brightness among colors. This kind of light […]
Bosiljka Raditsa and Elizabeth Yamin
Brooklyn Rail
Jonathan Goodman reviews Accommodating the Object: Bosiljka Raditsa and Elizabeth Yamin at the Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation, New York. Goodman writes that both artists, “in distinguished fashion, look to an organic abstraction that elaborates on the ab-ex style that immediately preceded them, at the same time pulling away from the past and working […]
Dana Saulnier: Nearly Distant
Looking Glass
Peter Malone reviews Dana Saulnier: Nearly Distant at First Street Gallery, New York. Malone writes: “Unlike many committed abstract painters today who flirt with spatial depth and the occasional image, yet hold fast to the security of the modernist surface, Saulnier shows no discomfort with illusionary space, or modeling, or receding planes, or atmospheric depth, […]
“The Subject of Painting Is Paint”: On Frank Bowling
The Nation
In a though-provoking profile of painter Frank Bowling, John-Baptiste Oduor contemplates Bowling’s “uneasy relationship to the external sources of influence on his work” given his stated interest in paint as subject. “For Bowling,” Oduor observes, “‘the subject of painting is paint.’ This might be a difficult idea to grasp, but accepting it—or at least finding […]
Interview with Margaux Ogden
Bomb Magazine
Tess Bilhartz interviews Margaux Ogden whose exhibition Tidal Locking was recently on view at Tif Sigfrids. Ogden remarks: “Repetition is very present in ancient Roman architecture, and the degradation or evolution of form that happens over time interests me. You start out with a perfect copy, and eventually it is bastardized to a point where […]
Joan Thorne: An Odyssey of Color
Two Coats of Paint
Vittorio Colaizzi reviews Joan Thorne, An Odyssey of Color at David Richard Gallery, New York. In Orango, a row of concentric green arcs – complicated by her signature trembling – frames a riotous zone of magenta, cobalt, and powdery violet. Only after some deciphering does the sequence and nature of layers become apparent, as the […]
Robert Ryman: The Act of Looking
Whitehot Magazine
Joseph Nechvatal reviews Robert Ryman: The Act of Looking at the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris. Nechvatal observes: “The piece with oil on aluminum panel and four bolts called Accord (1985) I think is the best in the show, because the rolled or sprayed ‘pure’ opticality of the white surface (leitmotif of the Ryman style) on […]
Emily Mason: Tone Control
The New Yorker
Jackson Arn reviews Emily Mason: The Thunder Hurried Slow at Miles McEnery Gallery, New York. Arn observes: “Working your way from the left to the right side of the small, square ‘Like Some Old Fashioned Miracle’ (1972-74), you first find bright yellow and blue cheek to cheek with hunter green, simple as two plus three […]
Conversation with Alan Gouk
Instantloveland
Painter Alan Gouk discusses his six decade career as a painter and writer in a lively, wide-ranging conversation with Matt Dennis. In his introduction Dennis notes that while “any serious consideration of [Gouk’s] lifetime’s achievement must … begin and end with the paintings themselves, there is so much more to be taken into account: his […]
James Brooks reconsidered
Two Coats of Paint
Laurie Fendrich reviews James Brooks: A Painting is a Real Thing, curated by Dr. Klaus Ottmann on view at The Parrish Art Museum from August 6–October 15, 2023. Fendrich writes: “On the rare occasions I’ve encountered Brooks’s paintings, I’ve paid them scant attention. Like many, I have walked on by, presumptively ranking him well below […]
Ed Clark: The Big Sweep
Brooklyn Rail
Charles Moore reviews Ed Clark: The Big Sweep, on view at Hauser & Wirth, New York from September 7– October 21, 2023. Moore notes that “the exhibition, titled The Big Sweep, —named for the artist’s revolutionary use of the push broom as paintbrush—examines how Clark worked at the frontiers of abstract expressionism, experimenting with materiality […]
On Hans Hofmann & Nicolas de Staël
The New Criterion
Dana Gordon links the evolution of Hans Hofmann’s abstract expressionist paintings of the 1950s to the influence of Nicolas de Staël, whose work was prominent and popular in New York galleries at that time. Gordon asserts: “Both Hofmann and de Staël championed the life of abstract forms, the communicative presence of the material of paint, […]
Evan Fugazzi @ Gross McCleaf
Hyperallergic
Stan Mir reviews an exhibition of new paintings by Evan Fugazzi at Gross McCleaf Gallery, Philadelphia, on view through March 30, 2019. Mir observes: “Color has become the driving force of [Fugazzi’s] work. His aesthetic commitment calls to mind Stanley Whitney, who has continued to distinguish himself as a ‘call and response’ painter. As the elder painter describes […]
Donald Martiny: Interview
Whitehot Magazine
Noah Becker interviews painter Donald Martiny about his work. Discussing the germination of the ideas that inform his current work Martiny recalls: “A turning point occurred one day in the studio a little over a decade ago while I was starting a new painting—a de Kooning kind of gestural study. I had painted a single brushstroke […]
Charline von Heyl: Interview
Brooklyn Rail
Raphael Rubinstein interviews painter Charline von Heyl whose exhibition Charline von Heyl: Snake Eyes will be on view at the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington D.C. from November 8, 2018 through January 27, 2019. Von Heyl remarks: “At the root of my painting is the line. As an outline, line defines a shape. In repetition, line creates […]
Peter Plagens: Interview
New City Art
Alan Pocaro talks to painter and critic Peter Plagens whose show, The Age of Innocence: Abstract Paintings by Peter Plagens, was recently on view at the Farmer Family Gallery at The Ohio State University at Lima. Pocaro notes that: “If the project of our lives is to integrate the many conflicting aspects of self into a […]
Peter Halley: Interview
Brooklyn Rail
Tom McGlynn interviews painter Peter Halley on the occasion of a new installation of Halley’s work at Lever House entitled New York, New York. Halley remarks: “I just don’t think the power of abstraction is going away. Our whole cultural universe is built on abstraction, beginning with the abstraction that is money. But in the twentieth […]
David Row @ Loretta Howard
artcritical
Peter Malone reviews David Row: Counter Clockwise at Loretta Howard Gallery, New York, on view through October 20, 2018. Malone writes: “Considering much of current abstract painting’s focus on spontaneity and one-off effects, Row’s tendency to revisit abstract elements embraced by earlier painters—not just Noland but Ellsworth Kelly, Dorothea Rockburne and Al Held, with whom […]
Amy Sillman: Interview
Apollo Magazine
Imelda Barnard interviews painter Amy Sillman on the occasion of her exhibition Landline at Camden Arts Centre, London, on view through January 6, 2019. Sillman remarks: “I feel like I’m working with and against [painting] equally. The piece I’m making for Gallery 3 is structurally ambivalent, it has two sides that are printed on the […]