Filed under: By the Book, San Francisco | Tags: Art Openings, Eleanor Harwood Gallery, Fecal Face, Jesse Thomas, Robert Bills Contemporary, San Francisco
We were excited to find coverage of Jesse Thomas’s exhibition at Eleanor Harwood Gallery on Fecal Face. Our staff also had the pleasure of seeing Jesse’s work at the NEXT art fair in Chicago when he showed with Robert Bills Contemporary, so we know they are really great in person. Thomas, a St. Louis based artist, will be featured in the upcoming New American Paintings Midwest Issue, #95, due to hit newsstands on August 9th.
For more on pictures from the show, visit Fecal Face (all photos by Ashley Taylor).
Filed under: Art World, Boston, Competitions | Tags: competitions, DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Dina Deitsch, Evan J. Garza, NEXT, Northeast
It’s time to begin preparations for one of our most anticipated issues of the year, the Northeast Competition! (The deadline to apply is August 31, and the competition is open to artists in CT, DE, ME, MA, NJ, NH, NY, PA, RI, and VT. Apply online!)
For nearly two decades, the Northeast book has featured artists of exceptional promise who have gone on to incredible international success, and NAP alums from the region include such celebrated contemporary artists as Matthew Day Jackson, William Cordova, Eddie Martinez, and countless others.
We are beyond thrilled to feature the perspective of talented curator (and friend) Dina Deitsch, Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art for the deCordova Sculpture Park + Museum, Lincoln, MA. Dina’s years of experience working with emerging artists for the museum’s deCordova Biennial and her intensive work with multiple media, make her an incredible candidate for jurying the Northeast Competition.
I chatted with the Cambridge-based curator this week to talk up the competition and her experience with emerging work. She also shares with us her thoughts on recent developments in contemporary painting, which you don’t want to miss. Our conversation is below! More after the jump! —Evan J. Garza, Editor-at-Large
EJG: As the curator for a sculpture park and museum, how do you address painting in the museum’s program?
DD: Easily and often! While deCordova is a sculpture park, and a fantastic one at that, we also have a good 5000 sq ft of gallery space that we program with not only sculpture but general contemporary art. One branch of our mission is to collect and promote artists from the New England region, which we do through single-artist PLATFORM projects and our sprawling Biennial program. In that particular program, variety is the name of the game and there’s always room for painting! I also organize group thematic shows that often do and can include or even center on painting, such as the forthcoming show I’m curating with you, Paint Thing (working title), which looks at painting as a spatial art, and where and how it meets sculpture.
Installation view, Mad Homes, Seattle. Above: SuttonBeresCuller, The Ties that Bind, Custom polypropylene rachet straps. Image by Bryan Ohno. Below: Exterior view, Ryan Molenkamp, Strain. Image courtesy the artist.
A saran wrapped house resides next to two others that happen to be ratcheted together with red belts, beside the laytex shell of yet another residence. This block of artist interventions, titled Mad Homes, provides an unassuming side street of Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood with a large scale, temporary installation. Unsuspecting motorists and dog-walking neighbors stop to gawk at this visual spectacle conceived by MadArt, a modest, local organization that commissioned eleven emerging Seattle artists to transform four houses slated for demolition into sites for artistic experimentation. —Erin Langner, Seattle contributor
Guerilla artists IEPE & the anonymous crew took painting the town literally when they initiated the public art project “Painting Reality.” The project involved members of the crew pouring 500 liters of paint into Berlin’s Rosenthaler Platz where 2000 unwitting cars and bicyclists became artists. They strategically dropped water-based environmentally-friendly paint in every corner of the intersection while the cars spread the paint in every direction. Check out a video of the project below.
(via Huffington Post Arts)
Filed under: Art World, Boston, Q&A | Tags: DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Justin Richel
Justin Richel of Rangeley, Maine recently participated in the group show Wall Works at DeCordova Sculpture Park + Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts. In Richel’s mural, appropriately located in the museum’s cafe, cartoon-like desserts fly through the air in the midst of furniture and household appliances. I had a chance to ask the artist about the biggest misconception about his work (that it’s all light-hearted and whimsical) and whether he has a sweet tooth (he doesn’t). —Kate Singleton, NAP contributor
Filed under: Art World, New York | Tags: Horton Gallery, Michael Berryhill, New York, Sharon Butler, Two Coats of Paint
Michael Berryhill, Conceiving The Design, 2011 | Oil on linen on panel, 16 x 16 inches. Courtesy Horton Gallery, New York.
Michael Berryhill, a painter who still values a good struggle in his work, has several fine, small-scale paintings in Monkey Wrench, a group show at Horton Gallery, through July 22. Heavily worked and overpainted (in a good way), the paintings depict tabletop objects in the studio, some of which are identifiable, and others which aren’t. Although painters are going through a period in which contingency and ennui are hot, I predict that struggle and tenacity may be right around the corner.
—Sharon L. Butler (via Two Coats of Paint)
Like this:
Installation view, Ted Gahl and Tatiana Berg, Nudashank, Baltimore
If Paddy Johnson calls you a star, you must be doing something right, and lately it seems like Nudashank can’t miss. Most recently it was Out of Practice, a group show artist-run gallery curated at the temporary Art Blog Art Blog exhibition space in Chelsea, which gathered a bevy of exciting young abstract painters including NAP blog favorites Cordy Ryman, Katie Bell, and Maria Walker. Before that, it was their timely show The Shape of Things to Come that caught our attention.
Busy as they are, Nudashank co-founders Seth Adelsberger (Editions #45, #57, #75) and Alex Ebstein opened another group show at their Baltimore gallery over the weekend, Street Level, but not before I got them on record with ten questions. Their answers after the jump. —Matthew Smith, DC Contributor
Filed under: Art World, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Must-Sees, New York, Philly, San Francisco, Santa Fe | Tags: Amy Casey, Andy Cross, Charles Ritchie, Chris Johanson, Cordy Ryman, Erik Parker, Jaqueline Cedar, Jered Sprecher, Kiel Johnson, Laurel Sparks, Leidy Churchman, Lesley Vance, Matt Connors, Must-Sees, Njideka Akunyili, Siobahn Liddell, Travis Collinson
Chris Johanson, Hey There, That’s You, 2011 | Acrylic and latex and mirror on wood, 45 1/2 x 54 inches. Courtesy Altman Siegel, San Francisco.
It’s time to break out the sunscreen and the summer group shows (and there’s no shortage of each). Our editorial staff have put together our Summer Must-See list for July and August, our guide to more than 50 of the best contemporary painting exhibitions in the country, including dozens of notable and not-to-be-missed shows by masters like De Kooning and serious emerging talent like Matt Connors, Lesley Vance, Leidy Churchman, Chris Johanson, and more. Also included are our picks for summer shows by artists previously featured in New American Paintings.
From L.A. to Chicago, Houston to New York and back, our guide includes exhibitions in every corner of the country. Images and listings after the jump!
Filed under: Art World, Portland | Tags: Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Kelli Rule
John Sansini, Francisco and Louie, oil on canvas, 72″ x 60″, 2008
I’ll admit, with all the hubbub over Portland’s annual Trek In The Park (trust me, it’s huge), I was lured into Elizabeth Leach Gallery by Luke Butler’s stunning little trio of Trek characters (which we spotted earlier this year while shooting video at Art Los Angeles Contemporary), which show Bones, Kirk, and Spock, in that order, frozen in anguish on seas of gray. Butler is attracted to Trek and more specifically, Kirk, calling the Captain “a model of vulnerability,” and of Shatner, the man, “His vulnerabilities are on the surface for all to see.” What’s great, too, is that Butler’s fallen heroes – though Trek they be – aren’t silly, and they don’t aspire to kitsch – they’re too well-painted, and too inspiring of pathos. Butler’s most well-known works are the Star Trek pieces, but his work at large too deals with masculinity and vulnerability. (Google him and check out the nude president collages.)
There are more heroes in the group show: John Sansini’s “Francisco and Louie” is a love letter to big, bold painting – the oil is rich and swirly and begs to be touched. According to the gallery, Sonsini hires day-laborers who are typically tapped for manual labor, mainly building projects or landscaping, and pays them hourly to model. The subjects, with their Thomas Hart Benton hands and head-on gaze, rule the room.
More after the jump! Kelli Rule, Portland contributor
Joseph Park, Vanessa, 2009, Oil on board, 24 x 18 inches. Courtesy the artist.
Seattle artist Joe Park recently walked me through his studio before he shipped out his latest show to Rena Bransten Gallery in San Francisco. The title, This is Prizmism, is a sly nod to the art world’s predilection to create more and more schools of -isms. Originally inspired by a J.G. Ballard story, Park has been developing his prizmism style for the past couple of years. Hallmarks are fractal, geometric explosions of light which create a crystalline cubism. —Joey Veltkamp, Seattle contributor
