Filed under: Art World, Q&A, Seattle | Tags: Claire Cowie, Erin Langner, James Harris Gallery, Seattle
Claire Cowie. TOP: Stranded Ship, 2011 | Fabric, foam, gesso, sumi color, asphaltum, 16 x 42 x 42 inches. BOTTOM: (detail) panel 3, Dead Reckoning, 2010 | Gouache, acrylic, watercolor, India ink, and collage on paper, 100 x 90 inches. Courtesy James Harris Gallery, Seattle.
Claire Cowie’s colossal multi-panel work on paper, Dead Reckoning, turns the smallest of gallery spaces into a deceptively vast environment. The artist’s new show at Seattle’s James Harris Gallery contains only a handful of works: a twelve-panel painting, acrylic and collage works, and several thematically tied sculptures and small works on paper. Each piece features heavily layered compositions of imagery, techniques, and materials that coalesce into an immersive, physical experience for the viewer. I caught up with the artist to discuss this elaborate, new work more intimately. —Erin Langner, Seattle contributor
Filed under: Art World, Miami | Tags: Art Basel Miami Beach, Lydia Ruby, Miami
Art Basel Miami Beach 2010, The Day After (via hyperallergic)
If images of saccharine palm tree paintings, or the cube and booth chaos of Basel automatically come to mind when the words “art” and “Miami” meet in a sentence, the time has come for a subconscious refresher. True, those notions about the city remain accurate; Miami continues to host the country’s largest, annual concentration of art fairs. Fortunately the city’s less frequently discussed cultural offerings and contributors posses the ability to eclipse those automatic and boringly obvious associations. —Lydia Ruby, Miami contributor
Filed under: Art World, DC | Tags: Braille, Christopher French, DC, Marsha Mateyka Gallery, Matthew Smith, Royal Lichtenstein Circus
Christopher French, I am a River Who Delights in Overflowing, 2011 | Oil and acrylic on linen, 41.5 x 43.5 inches. Courtesy Marsha Mateyka Gallery, Washington, D.C.
The work of Christopher French (New American Paintings edition #21), currently on display at Marsha Mateyka Gallery in Washington, DC, can be read as well as seen. The artist has explored braille in his paintings for over two decades, first as textual passages and more recently through his use of braille graphing paper as a painting surface. The tactile braille grids catalogue a taxonomy of colorful circles, offering the potential for additional sensory interaction while implying a hidden lexical meaning.
The titles he often uses — I am a River Who Delights in Overflowing; My First Everything; Remains of the Day, October 19, 2010 — intimate subjective emotional responses that also remain hidden, within seemingly objective abstract forms. This resonant tension, between what we can read in his paintings and what we must intuit, is an important component of French’s work
We recently caught up with the artist to talk about the use of braille in his paintings, his thoughts on abstraction and minimalism, and his time as a circus performer. —Matthew Smith, D.C. Contributor
Filed under: Art World, Features, New York | Tags: Eddie Martinez, Evan J. Garza, New York, ZieherSmith
Art Basel Miami Beach installation view of Eddie Martinez, The Feast, 2010, mixed media on canvas (tripych), 8 x 28 feet, Courtesy of The Saatchi Collection, London and ZieherSmith, New York.
New American Paintings has joined forces with The Huffington Post‘s new Arts section to cover the work of an artist previously included in the magazine. From our list of 11 to Watch in 2011: Editor’s Picks, New York’s Eddie Martinez is definitely an artist to keep an eye on. (You might remember Eddie’s skeleton from our recent studio visit.)
Featured as the Spotlight artist in the current issue of New American Paintings, #92, Martinez caused a stir in December when his mammoth triptych at Art Basel Miami Beach for ZieherSmith sold to British mega-collector Charles Saatchi. At a staggering 8-by-28 feet, the painting is the largest ever made by the Brooklyn-based artist, whose career in the last several years has seen its own significant amplification.
We’ve included several images of recent work by Eddie below. And you can read more about him in our feature today on The Huffington Post!
Filed under: Art World, Los Angeles, Q&A | Tags: David Rathman, Ellen C. Caldwell, Ellen Caldwell, Los Angeles, Minneapolis
David Rathman, All my Lovelies, 2010 | Watercolor on paper, 48 x 39.25 inches. Courtesy Mark Moore Gallery, Los Angeles.
Amidst LA’s calm and casual art mecca, Culver City, Mark Moore Gallery currently features watercolors by David Rathman and photographs by David Hilliard in the two-man exhibition Great Expectations.
Like the Dickens novel it’s titled after, the show explores the aftermath of a number of great fallen expectations: dichotomous images of masculinity, the role of male heroes past and present, and the art of nostalgic remembrance. Rathman’s paintings may be subdued in color, but not in content. I spoke with him about the show and his musings on capturing momentum and creating memories. —Ellen Caldwell, LA contributor
Filed under: Art World, DC | Tags: Matthew Smith, DC, Blinky Palermo, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Joseph Beuys, Lynne Cooke, DIA Art Foundation, CCS Bard
Blinky Palermo, Untitled, 1964 | Oil on canvas, 37 3/8 x 31 3/4 inches. Collection Ströher, Darmstadt. © 2010 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Photo: Jens Ziehe.
The work of German artist Blinky Palermo (1943-1977) can be generally classified into four cohesive groupings: Objects, Stoffbilder (Cloth Pictures), Wall Drawings and Paintings, and Metal Pictures. Like his contemporaries Frank Stella, Robert Ryman, and Richard Tuttle, Palermo interest lied in probing the conceptual limits of painting by exploring unconventional materials, and he did so with an uncommon curiosity for the wide-ranging strategies of his peers and predecessors. Joseph Beuys, his mentor and instructor at the Dusseldorf Art Academy, labeled Palermo’s openness to a variety of media as “porosity.” Blinky Palermo: Retrospective 1964-1977, currently on display at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., provides an opportunity for closer inspection of the artist’s ambitious technical versatility. —Matthew Smith, D.C. Contributor
Filed under: Art World, New York | Tags: Molly Dilworth, New York, Rhizome, site-specific installation, Times Square, video
Filed under: Art World, Features, Los Angeles | Tags: Beverly Hills, Ed Ruscha, Evan J. Garza, Gagosian, Los Angeles
Psycho Spaghetti Western #9, 2010-2011 | Acrylic on canvas, 64 x 80 inches. © Ed Ruscha. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery.
Tucked away in a busy corner of Beverly Hills, a stone’s throw from the clamor of Rodeo Drive, is Gagosian‘s mammoth new Los Angeles space. Within it is housed Ed Ruscha‘s first painting show in LA in a staggering twelve years. It’s a major homecoming, and the ten wide, horizontal works exhibited here, known affectionately as Psycho Spaghetti Westerns, represent not so much a departure for Ruscha, but rather a means by which to further contextualize his previous bodies of work while doing what he does best: laconically re-examining America. —Evan J. Garza, Editor-at-Large
Filed under: Art World, Seattle | Tags: Andy Arkley, Erin Langner, Installation, Joey Veltkamp, Julie Alpert, sculpture, Seattle, SOIL
TOP: (installation view) Julie Alpert and Andy Arkley, Flat & Bright. Courtesy of the artists. BOTTOM: Joey Veltkamp, The Ghost of Claude, acrylic and resin on bisque ceramic. Courtesy of the artist. Photos: Amanda Ringstad.
When Seattle’s first ever exhibition of Picasso’s work closed at the end of January, the city had been thoroughly saturated with the weight of both the artist’s legacy and the museum blockbuster experience. Leaving a heavy association with painting to linger in the city, this month Seattle’s SOIL provides an antidote with the March shows Flat & Bright and The Ghosts of Joey Veltkamp. Here, painting lets its guard down, leaving behind the tradition of the three-dimensional canvas in exchange for a pursuit of proudly flat forms closely tied to video games and cartoons. More after the jump! —Erin Langner, Seattle contributor
Filed under: Art World, Austin, Q&A | Tags: Austin, collage, Kate Singleton, Katy Horan, LACE
Katy Horan, Spinster #3, 2011 | Gouache, tissue paper and graphite on paper, 20 x 20 inches. Courtesy the artist and Swarm Gallery, Oakland, CA.
If you’ve ever laid eyes on Austin-based artist Katy Horan‘s work (perhaps in the recent West edition, #90, of New American Paintings) you probably recall the ghostly, lace-laden women and women-creatures that are Horan’s signature. These mysterious and striking figures combine Katy’s interest in Victorian fashion, Renaissance portraiture and historical female archetypes, and I’ve always been curious to learn more about them.
Last summer I had the chance to meet Katy for coffee while she was in Brooklyn and just beginning a new body of work for her recent show at Swarm Gallery in Oakland, CA. Katy had a ton of work ahead of her and so we agreed to do this interview when she finished. I asked Katy, among other things, about her process of creating new work and the significance behind her female archetypes and their elaborate dresses. It turns out that, growing up, Katy wanted to be a fashion designer and studied costume design before transferring to art school. Given her obsession with historical dresses and their haunting, cultural significance, this makes perfect sense. Our conversation after the jump. —Kate Singleton, contributor
