Filed under: DC, Features, Q&A | Tags: Britton Toliver, Bronx River Arts Center, Cordy Ryman, Culture Hall, David Reed, Furthermore, Gary Petersen, Halsey Hathaway, HKJB, Inna Babaeva, Ivin Ballen, Jered Sprecher, Jose Ruiz, Joshua Abelow, Keltie Ferris, Kris Chatterson, Matthew Smith, Milton Resnick, Pamela Jorden, Progress Report, Stacy Fischer, Stacy Fisher, The Working Title, Tompkins Projects, Vince Contarino
Give it time and the Internet will mobilize for change in just about any arena. So it’s not surprising that artist-run exhibition spaces — always bastions of change — are increasingly striving for a stronger online presence, sometimes even eschewing fixed brick-and-mortar locales all together. And it’s not just exhibition spaces. Artist-run curatorial projects like HKJB, Culture hall, and Progress Report exist mainly on the web, producing information that’s decentralized and disseminated horizontally, peer-to-peer. All of which is relatively new.
One of these projects, Progress Report, is designed as an online curatorial resource centered on visual content and studio visits. Co-founded by Brooklyn-based painters Kris Chatterson and Vince Contarino, their project is particularly keen on abstraction and focuses on the creative process from the perspective of working artists. This is noteworthy not only because Chatterson and Contarino are a couple of accomplished abstract painters in their own right, but also because they prove to have an expansive grasp for what their contemporaries are up to. -
More about Progress Report and our conversation after the jump. -Matthew Smith, D.C. Contributor
Installation view of The Working Title, a group show on abstraction curated by Progress Report and exhibited at the Bronx River Arts Center, March 25 through April 29, 2011.
Filed under: Art World, By the Book, Features | Tags: 95, Midwest, tim wirth, wirth, wirth motor company
Innovative artists find ways to interact with their fans and come up with witty ways to attract new ones, and Wirth has done that with “Worth Motor Company.” WMC is a clever project, aimed at car lovers that want to artistically capture their treasured vehicles, whether, “New or Old. Fast or Slow. Polished or Demolished. Good or Bad.” Visitors of the site can submit an image and description of a vehicle, and even request to include special items that might make the resulting original painting even more tear-jerking for the current or former holder of the title.
Filed under: Art Fairs, Art World, Chicago, Features, Q&A | Tags: Art Basel, Art Chicago, DCKT, Evan J. Garza, Kavi Gupta, Ken Tyburski, NEXT, Paul Morris, The Armory Show
Photo credit: Timothy Tompkins, Explosion_v3, 2010.
It seemed as if the entirety of the American art world descended upon Chicago at the end of April last year, and with good reason. Now heading into its fourth edition, 2011 will mark the first year that NEXT, the Invitational Exhibition of Emerging Art, will sit side-by-side with the stalwart Art Chicago on the 12th floor of the Merchandise Mart, April 29 – May 2. Growing larger and to more and more critical acclaim in the last few years, the Spring fairs in Chicago received a staggering 50,000 visitors in 2010, and that figure is almost certain to get blown out of the water this year.
NEXT really seemed to be the hot ticket last year, featuring young, hot (even unheard of) galleries, exciting new work, and panels at Talk Shop + CONVERGE Contemporary Curators Forum, right smack in the center of the fair. However, with both NEXT and Art Chicago exhibiting alongside one another this weekend, the opportunity exists for each fair to stand out more than ever before.
So, what does the new layout mean for viewers? To find out, we spoke with NEXT‘s Curatorial Director, Ken Tyburski, who puts the “KT” in DCKT when he’s not designing art fairs with Curatorial Advisor and NEXT co-founder, Kavi Gupta. Our conversation after the jump.
—Evan J. Garza, Editor-at-Large
Filed under: Art World, Features, San Francisco | Tags: Catharine Clark Gallery, Islam, Los Angeles, Nadiah Fellah, Quran, Sandow Birk
Sandow Birk’s fourth installment in his American Qu’ran project is currently on view at Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco, a 114-part series in which the artist has tediously transcribed each prayer of the Quran (in English), and illuminated the page with a scene from American life, his own interpretation of each particular passage. The text is done in a typeface inspired by Cholo graffiti, a style native to East LA, and the scenes vary from the politically loaded to the mundane. In their final forms, these works are a merging of the artist’s identity growing up in Southern California, and an attempt to connect an oft-misunderstood religious text to an American audience. —Nadiah Fellah, San Francisco contributor
Like this:
Filed under: Art World, Chicago, Features | Tags: Brice Marden, Frank Piatek, John Neff, Jude Ledgerwood, Renaissance Society, Rhona Hoffman Gallery, William Conger
Judy Ledgerwood, from Chromatic Patterns for Chicago & Blob Paintings. Courtesy Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago.
Yesterday, I overheard somebody saying that Chicago is one of the “greenest” cities in the United States. I’m not sure that’s true, although Lincoln Park in August is a pretty lush situation. Daley had tulips planted on State Street, too, but at this time of year they’re just bruised-looking stubs of bud trying to work through winter’s accumulated cigarette butts.
To my eye, Chicago isn’t green: it’s a dun beast brindled with black soot and neon. And historically, that’s the way the city’s painters have used color – sharp, sudden accents running through dim fields. Even Ed Paschke’s electric images of urban wildlife look (appropriately) dark, despite their high-keyed palette. In abstraction, the works of Frank Piatek, and the early paintings of Paschke’s former Northwestern University colleague William Conger, feel similar: harsh hues softened by veils of smoke. —John Neff, Chicago 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, 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, DC, Features | Tags: American Academy in Rome, Giorgio de Chirico, Giotto, Marlborough Gallery, Matthew Smith, Philip Guston, Phillips Collection, Piero della Francesca, Rome
TOP: Philip Guston, Pantheon, 1973. Oil on panel. Private Collection, Woodstock, NY. BOTTOM: Philip Guston, Rome, 1971. Oil on paper. Images: © Estate of Philip Guston; courtesy McKee Gallery, New York, NY.
Philip Guston, celebrated abstract expressionist of the New York school, returned to the American Academy in Rome (where he was a fellow in 1949) as resident artist in 1970-71 on the heels of his poorly-received show at Marlborough Gallery in New York, which introduced his controversial return to figurative painting. Currently on display at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., Philip Guston, Roma exhibits the works produced by Guston during his six-month Rome residency — arguably the most creatively fertile period of his career — and presents the artist’s complex visual dialogue with Italian art and culture through the symbolic shorthand that came to characterize his later work. More images after the jump. —Matthew Smith, DC contributor
Like this:
Filed under: Art World, Chicago, Features | Tags: Chicago, Gaylen Gerber, Holt Quentel, Jim Nutt, John Neff, Julia Fish, Michelle Grabner, Mitchell Kane, Ray Yoshida, Robert Nickle, Shane Campbell Gallery, Tony Tasset
Jim Nutt, Miss T. Garmint (she pants a lot), 1967, Acrylic on Plexiglas; enamel on wood frame, 72 x 48 inches. Private Collection, Chicago. Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago.
For a long time, Chicago art has been strongly identified with an eccentric and often grotesquely or humorously distorted variety of figure painting. And it’s accurate that the city’s most widely celebrated — or loudly praised — historical art is a form of funky figuration typified by the work of the Imagist generation and rooted in Post-WWII readings of Art Brut and Surrealism by artists of the Monster Roster. Much of this work is estimable — witness recent local exhibitions of Jim Nutt and Ray Yoshida, both shows eyeball-poppers in their own ways — but it’s not the whole story of painting in Chicago. —John Neff, Chicago contributor
Filed under: Art World, Features, Noteworthy | Tags: Annie Lapin, BLICK Art Materials, Honor Fraser, Reader's Choice
The results are in. We’re proud to announce that after nearly 3,000 votes, the winner of the inaugural New American Paintings Reader’s Choice Poll is Annie Lapin! We asked our readers to vote for their favorite Noteworthy artist of the last year—twelve artists from our six 2010 editions selected by both the juror and our editorial staff—and the response was overwhelming. Annie is the winner of a $500 gift certificate from BLICK Art Materials, and we thank BLICK for their support.
Saying of the Los Angeles-based artist’s work, NAP president and publisher Steven Zevitas writes, “As with many artists of her generation, Annie Lain is deeply concerned with the fluid space between abstraction and representation. In her extraordinarily lush paintings, bits of the real world emerge and recede as they actively compete for dominance with the elements of her creation—surface, stroke, and color. Lapin’s paintings are about wrestling meaning from chaos, but they are equally about an unabashed love for the medium of painting itself.”
Thanks to all who voted! Annie Lapin will be the subject of a forthcoming video, produced with Future Shipwreck, (check out our most recent video with Iva Gueorguieva!), so keep your eyes peeled for more from the L.A. painter. And come back next Monday for the announcement of the $1000 prize! More pics of Annie’s work after the jump. —Evan J. Garza
