Filed under: Seattle, The Conversation | Tags: Amanda Manitach, Ian Toms, Platform Gallery, Robert Yoder, Season, The Conversation
This is the first in a series of discussions conducted between professionals – gallerists, collectors, curators, artists – who have some kind of connection or partnership that elicits conversation about practice, collaboration, or the business of art. Robert Yoder (NAP #7, #85) is a Seattle-based artist who has shown work internationally and is no stranger to New American Paintings. He runs a gallery called SEASON out of his mid-century home in the Ravenna neighborhood of Seattle. Ian Toms is a young painter and sculptor who has developed a close working relationship with Yoder. Both of their work flirts with provocative obfuscation and dabbles in a vernacular of glamorous filth. Perhaps flirts and dabbles are too weak of terms.
The following interview took place in Toms’ studio. It’s sparse, gritty. There are a lot of spray paint cans and sharpies scattered around, canvases stacked up, ripped magazine images and sketches taped to the walls. One of the sharpie drawings on the wall shows an S-shape repeated randomly on the page. - Amanda Manitach, Seattle Contributor
Ian Toms and Robert Yoder
Filed under: Other Voices | Tags: Michael Klein, Other Voices, Robert Baribeau
In the countryside north of NYC Robert Baribeau has been feverishly at work on a thirty-year exploration of the impact of landscape and place on abstraction. He is the measure of what he purveys and so his canvases and paintings on paper are simple declarations or essays on the way in which all aspects of nature can be construed through color, form and texture. While for some painters nature is translated in terms of representation or naturalism, Baribeau measures landscape through the dynamics of color and texture.
Robert Baribeau | Field Series, Untiled 466, 2003, mixed media on paper mounted on canvas, 51 1/2 x 73 inches
Courtesy Allan Stone Gallery, New York
Of course Baribeau’s landscapes are seen through the temperament and eye of a home grown abstract painter, someone whose roots are among the mystical painters of the Northwest of the 50s-he is from Aberdeen WA after all and the later stages of the New York School of the 60s. His paintings are a synthesis of sources perhaps influenced by the early Ab Ex works of Grace Hartigan, who also recorded the impression of places through striking colors on large canvases or the later abstract distillations of Joan Mitchell whose eye and palette were attuned to her years in France and working near Monet’s garden in Giverny.
Transplanted to the lower Hudson River Valley he is certainly not revitalizing the 19th century school of painting but though recognizing the sublime power inherent in nature and therefore finding pictorial equivalents of color and sign to match its wonder and chaos. - Read more by Michael Klein, NAP Contributor, after the jump.
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Filed under: DC, Q&A | Tags: Contemporary Wing, Lauren Gentile, Matthew Smith, Next Generation
A few months prior to opening her new storefront gallery, Lauren Gentile organized the group show Next Generation in a raw warehouse space in downtown D.C. It was timed to coincide with the Rubell Family Collection’s 30 Americans at the Corcoran last winter, and it tapped a few art stars from the Rubell show to select a batch of up-and-comers they viewed as the next generation of great artists. It was a novel conceit for an exciting show, as well as a clever pooling of disparate resources that included direct mayoral intervention.
As of earlier this month Gentile’s putting that resourcefulness to work in Contemporary Wing, her new exhibition space on 14th Street. It’s a coming home of sorts — Gentile was the longtime gallery director at Irvine Contemporary, which occupied the same address until it shuttered last summer. And she’s inaugurating the new digs with an aptly titled solo show, I’m Coming Home, by Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi (NAP #87 and #100), a recent MFA graduate from American University. I recently caught up with Lauren to chat about her new gallery and inaugural show, as well as the Next Generation exhibition. Our conversation after the jump. –Matthew Smith, Washington, D.C. contributor
Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi | Detail view of “Knok Knok, Who’s There?”, 2012. Acrylic, gouache, imitation gold leaf and handpainted collage on Mylar. 40 x 30 inches
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Filed under: Gallerist at Home | Tags: Deborah Gribbon, Ellen C. Caldwell, Gallerist at Home
Former Director of the J. Paul Getty Museum, and recent Interim Director of the Cleveland Museum of Art, Deborah Gribbon is by no means a gallerist or collector in the typical sense of the words. But she is most definitely a quick-witted, intelligent, and gifted scholar in the art world, both in and outside of Los Angeles.
For this column, I use the term “gallerist” loosely in order to explore the ways in which people involved in the art world in various capacities collect and showcase personal art in their private homes (see previous features Heather Taylor and Catlin Moore). Our interest in such personal showcases certainly has a voyeuristic undertone, but it is also my hope that this column uncovers a deeper and more intricate connection between art historians, cultural curators, and gallerists and the art they collect. - Ellen Caldwell, Los Angeles Contributor
Gribbon’s Living Room and Home Office.
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Filed under: Review | Tags: #84, #87, Brian Porray, Ellen C. Caldwell, NAP, Western Project
The wide open space of Culver City’s WESTERN PROJECT is the perfect white-walled arena for Brian Porray’s (NAP #84 and #87) looming, neon, psychedelic architectural landscapes. – Ellen Caldwell, Los Angeles Contributor
Walking into the gallery, the viewer is met with such massive, loud, and bright paintings that a really engaging and interactive experience begins immediately. Porray, who was born and raised in Las Vegas, based this entire solo show “–(\DARKHOR5E/)–” on his psychological interpretations of and experiences around the city’s Luxor Hotel.
Brian Porray | –(\DARKHOR5E/)–, synthetic polymer, spray paint, paper on canvas (three parts), 96″ x 216 inches.
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Another weekly recap, for those that simply couldn’t follow along the past few days on our blog…“after the jump,” as they say.
Sam Gordon | Impossible Object, 2010; acrylic paint, spray paint, ink-jet iron-on transfer on sewn clothes and fabric remnants; 58 x 58” (Photo courtesy of Feature Inc)
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Filed under: Art World, Unlocking The Vault | Tags: Bridget Riley, John Pyper, Shuttle II, Unlocking The Vault, Wadsworth Antheneum
Museums have gone crazy for traveling group blockbusters but the works in their collections can still inspire. In the coming months, our Boston Contributor, John Pyper, will explore some of the works in permanent collections in a column called: Unlocking The Vault
Bridget Riley, Shuttle II, 1964
Wadsworth Atheneum
Bridget Riley, Shuttle II, 1964. Emulsion on panel; 42 1/8 x 42 1/8 in. The Alexander A. Goldfarb Contemporary Art Acquisition Fund and the Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund, 1994.5.1
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One of the great things about being in Boston’s South End is that we have tons of great art all around us. You may think that we have enough art to look at, given the competitions we manage, but it’s always nice to see original works right in front of our eyes, rather than in digital and printed reproductions. Especially when the local installation belongs to one of New American Paintings past featured artists. I was passing by Samson Projects today (thanks to a lazy lunch during our 70 degree weather), just three doors down from the Open Studios Press, and had an urge to document the Steve Locke show, You Don’t Deserve me, and share it with our readers. So I grabbed my camera, and here’s what I got. You may recall Steve from a conversation we did on the blog a while back. He was also featured in New American Paintings, Issue #86. Needless to say, we are all fans here of Steve and his work. Drew Katz, Associate Publisher
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Filed under: Competitions, Pacific Coast | Tags: Monica Ramirez-Montagut, NAP, Pacific Coast
Our next New American Paintings deadline is for the Pacific Coast region, which includes Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington. If you reside in any of these states, now is your chance to apply to New American Paintings. The Deadline is June 30, Midnight, EST. We are happy to have Monica Ramirez-Montagut, Senior Curator at the San Jose Museum of Art, as our 2012 juror. We’ll be posting more about Ms. Ramirez-Montagut soon, so stay tuned.
So, what are you waiting for? The last few minutes of June to Apply? PLEASE DON’T (our technical support people thank you)!!! It’s easy to submit work, you just need 4 images, 1200 pixels at their greatest dimension or less, and a credit card for our submission fee. Go here and apply now if you live in AK, CA, HI, OR, WA!
As always, you can learn a little more about the competition on our website. Or, check out our FAQs.
GOOD LUCK!
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Filed under: Interview, Seattle | Tags: Amanda Manitach, Buddy Bunting, Pole Drift, Seattle
The centerpiece of Buddy Bunting’s Flat Time Blue at Prole Drift (on view through May 27th) is a panoramic watercolor and flashe painting that stretches twelve feet across the wall. The painting depicts a prison washed out and warmed up with scalding bright yellow sun, its structural starkness rendered sheer and almost weightless. It’s the tenth in a series Bunting has been developing since 2004. In this piece, as well as in the smaller sketches hung in Prole Drift’s back room, Bunting transforms the sterile architecture of correctional facilities and American industrial sprawl into visionary landscapes where the political and social narratives nested within the physicality of buildings meld with a sense of the imaginary. - Amanda Manitach, Seattle Contributor
