Abstract Painting

Sharon Butler @ Theodore:Art
Hyperallergic

Paul D’Agostino reviews Sharon Butler: New Paintings at Theodore:Art, Bushwick, Brooklyn, on view through October 7, 2018. D’Agostino notes that Butler’s new paintings are based on selections from daily iPad drawings that “readily became not merely an ersatz sketchbook, but also a journal. What’s more, given the textureless surface and inverted, in a sense, light […]

Patrick Heron @ Tate St. Ives
AbCrit

Geoff Hands reviews works by Patrick Heron at Tate St Ives, on view through September 30, 2018. Hands writes: “Heron’s work is often distinguished by its example of colour-shape dexterity and glorious visuality and a chronological display may not have accommodated or extended the potential impact of his achievements. The visual dynamism of the paintings, from all […]

Ellen Berkenblit: Interview
Sound & Vision Podcast

Brian Alfred talks to painter Ellen Berkenblit. Berkenblit comments: “If I let myself do what I naturally do physically, with a canvas, there are elements that are continuous. They’re like a diary, they keep morphing, they change. And they also become a springboard for paint and color mixing which is something that makes my heart […]

Dona Nelson: In Conversation
Brooklyn Rail

Leeza Meksin interviews painter Dona Nelson whose exhibition Stand Alone Paintings is on view at the Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College through August 12, 2018. Nelson remarks: “I am interested when architecture does not dominate the experience of the paintings. Maybe one of the strategies of Pollock and Still making such big paintings was […]

Ewelina Bochenska: Interview
Painter's Bread

Michael Rutherford interviews painter Ewelina Bochenska. Bochenska remarks: “Painting is the most difficult thing there is, yet it is so magical and mysterious, almost miraculous. It is about liberation, freedom. Freedom from oneself and freedom from the known. It reminds me of a book by Jiddu Krishnamurti of the same title ‘Freedom from the Known’. […]

Al Held in Paris: 1952-53
Brooklyn Rail

Tom McGlynn reviews Al Held in Paris: 1952-53 at Nathalie Karg Gallery, New York, on view through June 15, 2018. McGlynn begins: “Al Held moved to Paris in the early 1950s where he was part of a loose-knit expatriate community of American painters that included Joan Mitchell and Sam Francis. Mitchell, Francis and Held all […]

Tomma Abts @ the Serpentine Gallery
The Guardian

Adrian Searle reviews works by Tomma Abts at the Serpentine Gallery, London, on view through September 9, 2018. Searle writes: “Someone once said Abts’ work reminded them of wallpaper designs from East Germany. The paintings flirt with a kind of datedness. They do not quite belong to their moment. They are hard to place. This is […]

Jack Youngerman: Studio Visit
Gorky's Granddaughter

Zachary Keeting and Christopher Joy visit the studio of artist Jack Youngerman. Youngerman discusses both his recent paintings and his sculptures.

Len Bellinger & Jamison Brosseau
James Kalm Rough Cut

James Kalm visits Len Bellinger: Painting Notes 1993-2018 at David & Schweitzer Contemporary and Jamison Brosseau: Skittles at SARDINE. Both shows are on view through June 3, 2018. In the video Kalm provides a close look at both Bellinger and Brosseau’s works and talks to Bellinger about his paintings and career.   

Paul Resika, Geometry and the Sea
artcritical

David Carrier reviews reviews Paul Resika: Geometry and the Sea at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects (through May 20) and Bookstein Projects (through May 26). Carrier writes: ” … as if working in a highly personal way through a Gombrichian history of figuration, [Resika] juxtaposes backgrounds of clear skies, with yellow suns, with jagged pyramids in the […]

Elisa Jensen @ David & Schweitzer Contemporary
Whitehot Magazine

Jonathan Goodman reviews Elisa Jensen: 100 Boats and the Fair Wheel, recently on view at David & Schweitzer Contemporary, New York. Goodman writes: “[Jensen’s] offering, which argues for a bronze-age reading of Brooklyn contemporary art, consists of a wall installation of diminutive golden boats, a group of small paintings, a few larger paintings, and a bench […]

Inka Essenhigh @ Miles McEnery Gallery
Hyperallergic

Peter Malone reviews paintings by Inka Essenhigh at Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, on view through May 25, 2018. Malone concludes: “What separates Essenhigh … is her willingness to embrace the implications of her narratives and to share her dramatic intuitions openly with the viewer, without abandoning the improvisational spontaneity of her drawing and painting. […]

Ewelina Bochenska @ The Fortnight Institute
Art in America

Elizabeth Buhe reviews Ewelina Bochenska: A Hole Was Placed in the Sky and Sealed with Water recently on view at The Fortnight Institute. Buhe writes that the show “featured nearly thirty jewellike oil paintings—most around eight by ten inches, though two could fit in the palm of your hand—that seemed to transform Fortnight Institute into a site […]

Angel Otero: Painting and the Social Landscape
Two Coats of Paint

Eileen Jeng Lynch reviews Angel Otero: Elegies, curated by Christian Viveros-Fauné, at the Bronx Museum of the Arts. The show pairs Otero’s work with three works by Robert Motherwell. Lynch writes: “The intention was not to be a one-to-one comparison but to draw parallels between the works of Otero and Motherwell, such as their emotive effect. … […]

Stanley Boxer & James Little
From the Mayor's Doorstep

Piri Halasz reviews Stanley Boxer: Gradations at Berry Campbell (through May 19) and James Little: Slants and White Paintings at June Kelly (through May 15). Halasz writes: “Although [Boxer’s] paint is about as thick as was Olitski’s during this period, Boxer’s way of laying it on – in quantities of small, solid, pats – looks […]

James Hyde @ Freight+Volume
James Kalm Rough Cut

James Kalm talks to artist James Hyde at Hyde’s show West on view at Freight+Volume, New York through May 27, 2018. Hyde comments that his new work is “a type of criticism of my own [previous] abstract painting where I felt that it was becoming divorced from the world, and with these I’m trying to allow […]

Laura Newman @ Victoria Munroe
artcritical

Jennifer Riley reviews Laura Newman: New Paintings at Victoria Munroe Fine Art, New York, on view through May 12, 2018. Riley writes: “Newman conjures varied moods in this show that lead us on non-verbal paths of visual exploration. One painting suggests night walks in a city under construction; others suggest dreamscapes of layered experience; others […]

Paul Resika: Geometry and the Sea
Hyperallergic

Tim Keane reviews Paul Resika: Geometry and the Sea at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects (through May 20) and Bookstein Projects (through May 26). Keane writes: “Resika’s recent seascapes in Geometry and the Sea prove Hofmann’s painting theory right: relationships are everything. The intensities in coloration are contained by austere discs, triangles, and quadrants. Horizons […]

Eros, Weaver of Myth: Image and Text in Cy Twombly
artcritical

Wen Tao reviews two exhibitions of works by Cy Twombly: In Beauty It Is Finished: Drawings 1951-2008 (through April 25) and Coronation of Sesostris (through April 28). The former is on view at Gagosian, 980 Madison Avenue New York and the latter at Gagosian, 522 West 21st Street, New York. Tao writes: “Image and text […]

Surface Work @ Victoria Miro
The Guardian

Laura Cumming reviews Surface Work, a comprehensive survey of abstract painting by female artists, at Victoria Miro Mayfair (through June 16) and Victoria Miro Wharf Road (through May 19), London. Cumming writes that the show “is nothing less than an anthology of abstract painting spanning an entire century, from early constructivism to post-digital sampling, in which […]