Filed under: Los Angeles, Review | Tags: Betye Saar, Derrick Adams, Ellen C. Caldwell, John Monn, KEHINDE WILEY, Roberts and Tilton, The Road Ahead
The Road Ahead is a retrospective group show at Roberts & Tilton this summer in Los Angeles. It features work from 14 artists, with many artists contributing multiple works.
This is definitely not the typical summer group show in Culver City right now – as The Road Ahead features a combination of contemporaneous work with some slightly older pieces from the late ‘70s – early ‘80s. As such, it comingles heavy hitters of the art world, such as Betye Saar and Kehinde Wiley, with newer and more emerging artists such as John Monn and Derrick Adams. - Ellen C. Caldwell, Los Angeles Contributor
Installation view of The Road Ahead. Photo by Robert Wedemeyer. Courtesy of Roberts & Tilton, Culver City, CA.
Filed under: Review, Seattle | Tags: Amanda Manitach, Blindfold Gallery, Leanne Grimes, Seattle
Two newcomers to the Seattle scene are worth checking out this month: Blindfold Gallery, now mounting its fourth exhibit since opening in April, and Leanne Grimes, who graduated last year from the University of Washington’s MFA painting program.
Grimes’ paintings often depict landscapes built out of heaps of rich, chunky paint and loud color. But for the paintings in The Journey to Radiant Earth, a show that lightheartedly glosses over the fetishization and elusiveness of memory, she punched the color up even more with day-glo oranges, yellows and pink. They’re the colors of plastic toys and melting popsicles. These paintings depict apocalyptic black night skies spattered with emerald stars, candy-raver mountains and surreal beaches. They range in size from petite to a huge, unstretched canvas pinned across an entire wall of the gallery. - Amanda Manitach, Seattle Contributor
Leanne Grimes | CherryTop, 2012, oil on mylar, 11 x 14 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.
Filed under: Poll | Tags: Chris Martin, Dana Schutz, Joe Bradley, Julie Mehretu, MARK BRADFORD, Mark Grotjahn, Nicole Eisenman, POLL, R.H. Quaytman, Richard Aldrich, Sterling Ruby, Tauba Auerbach, Wade Guyton
So you don’t believe in miracles? Think about this: Painting has been pronounced clinically dead dozens of times, and, like Lazarus, it keeps coming back for more. It is the medium that simply refuses to die.
The 1990s were a tough decade for painting, as video, installation, and, in particular, photography, relegated it to the margins of the art world’s often too narrow field of vision. But as the 2000s began, the oldest of mediums returned with a vengeance. Impressively, it has continued to be the dominant medium for more than a decade, first with an explosion of figurative work in the early 2000s, and now with an extreme focus on abstraction.
Topics like this often start as debates in the New American Paintings office, and thanks to the blog, we can “take it to the streets” and settle some scores…There are a number of significant artists who have emerged since 2000, and we want to know which ones you think are the most significant. We consciously avoided artists who already had long careers, but have only recently “blown up”: Luc Tuymans, Amy Sillman, Mary Heilmann, Glenn Ligon and Thomas Nozkowski, among them.
We want to hear from you! The twelve painters listed below do not constitute an all-inclusive list, so feel free to add any names that you think we have missed in the comments section below.
Here is our list, and be sure to learn more about each and vote after the jump!
Richard Aldrich
Tauba Auerbach
Mark Bradford
Joe Bradley
Nicole Eisenman
Mark Grotjahn
Wade Guyton
Chris Martin
Julie Mehretu
R.H. Quaytman
Sterling Ruby
Dana Schutz
Filed under: Los Angeles, Video | Tags: Future Shipwreck, Graham Kolbeins, Iva Gueorguieva, Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects
We hope you have a chance to view new works by Iva Gueorguieva at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects this coming weekend, or through August 23rd. This show is not to be missed! Gueorguieva was the focus of our Spotlight in edition #91 of New American Paintings. She opened up about her process, the importance of cutting in her work, and how something as simple as sound informs the paintings she makes.
Back in 2011, she was also featured in our first New American Paintings video production, which we teamed up with blogger Graham Kolbeins of Future Shipwreck fame to produce, who caught up with the Bulgarian-born artist recently while working in her studio. To get you excited to see the show, we’ve decided to post that video again to remind you of her amazing talents. Enjoy!
Filed under: Interview | Tags: Amanda Manitach, Conversation, Gretchen Bennett, Matthew Offenbacher
The following is a conversation conducted between Seattle artists Gretchen Bennett and Matthew Offenbacher on July 11, 2012 in Offenbacher’s studio. Bennett and Offenbacher are both prolific artists in their own right and have been collaborating on a variety of projects, including exhibits, publications and business, since 2009. - Amanda Manitach, Seattle Contributor
Gretchen Bennett and Matthew Offenbacher
You already know we enjoy James Kalm videos on our favorite artists. Dug up a few more that we’ll share over the next few days. This one on Dana Shutz covering her show, Piano in the Rain at Friedrich Petzel Gallery back in June.
As reported in the video’s intro, “Schutz is a favorite among the New York painting community, and because with this show she begins working with a new gallery, Friedrich Petzel, your reporter decided to stick with the precedent and cover “Piano in the Rain”. With this exhibition, the artist appears to be thinning down her paint, exercising a more virtuosic and slippery brush stroke, and striving for a fresher and more spontaneous style. Melding a goofy figuration with painterly abstraction, viewers are given a choice to appreciate the narrative or the process with which these pictures are fabricated.”
ENJOY!
Filed under: Review | Tags: Erin Langner, James Harris Gallery, NOAH DAVIS, Savage Wilds
The six new paintings comprising Savage Wilds by L.A. artist Noah Davis pop wildly with disparate references, ranging from talk show host Maury Povich to Mondrian. Evocative of flat screens with TV show logos in their corners and caption-like titles, such as Crush on Daughter In-law, this new body of work on view at Seattle’s James Harris Gallery (through August 24th) has the feel of an electronics store with screens on every surface. Creating the visual equivalent of surround sound through their flailing figures, physical confrontations and pointed details, the artist’s imagery instantly draws the viewer into the works’ commanding narratives.
Noah Davis | Crush on Daughter In-law, 2012, Oil on canvas, 48” x 48”, image courtesy of James Harris Gallery.
The title Savage Wilds references the controversial 1988 play of the same name by Ishmael Reed, in which two women hosting a game show hire an African American comedian to be hunted live on television. When rubber bullets are mistakenly replaced with real ammunition, the stakes for questions of spectacle and exploitation rise exponentially. Davis’s paintings achieve a similarly pointed impact through charged scenes loaded with dense imagery that exist in a space estranged from reality but still in many ways familiar.
Noah Davis | Jerry, 2012, Oil on canvas, 60” x 74”, image courtesy of James Harris Gallery.
Filed under: Art Market, Boston/Cambridge | Tags: Andrew Katz, Boston, Carroll and Sons Art Gallery, Gallery Kayafas, Howard Yezerksi Gallery, Photos, SOWA
I was wandering around our quiet South of Washington Avenue neighborhood this afternoon and grabbed some photos from terrific summer shows at surrounding Galleries. I made it in to see Material Abstraction at Howard Yezerski Gallery, featuring works by Bob Oppenheim, Carter Potter, Ulrich Wellmann, and Brian Zink (A serial NAP Featured artist). From there I checked out Nancy Murphy Spicer’s, Biking in Berlin at Carroll and Sons Art Gallery. Finally, I stopped in to see my friend Arlette, owner of Gallery Kayafas, who has a show called Intra Country: Patriotic Expressions. It is a sweet and summery combination of photographs (gallery specialty), paintings, and installations both sculptural and video. Not much else to say! Enjoy the pictures and have a great weekend. - Andrew Katz, Associate Publisher
Installation View at Howard Yezerski Gallery
Filed under: Art World, Austin, Interview | Tags: Brian Fee, Brian Willey, Thao Votang, Tiny Park
Part two of my interview with Thao Votang and Brian Willey, owners of Tiny Park in Austin, TX. Find part one here. — Brian Fee, Austin contributor
Tiny Park’s Greatest Hits grand opening at Navasota St, June 2012. Courtesy Tiny Park, Austin.
Filed under: Video | Tags: James Kalm, Leo Koenig Inc., Loren Munk, Nicole Esienman
“James Kalm dodges into the Leo Koenig Gallery, and captures some video of the opening of Nicole Eisenman: Woodcuts, Etchings, Lithographs and Monotypes. Though Eisenman has received extensive critical attention for her painting, this show reveals an abiding attachment and pursuit of, the grand tradition of classic printmaking. While the monotypes display a very painterly sensibility. Eisenman’s etchings and lithographs highlight the artists wonderful facility with linen and tone.”
Thanks to James…And to you readers, Enjoy!
