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
Buddy Bunting | Idaho Correctional Center, Kuna, Idaho, 2011-12, watercolor, flashe and pencil on paper, 52 x 145 in.
Image courtesy of Prole Drift.
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Filed under: Interview, Seattle | Tags: Amanda Manitach, Jen Erickson, Punch Gallery
The tenuously-connected tissue of small marks on Jen Erickson’s paintings at PUNCH Gallery (On view through June 3) fan out like smoke curls, clustered blooms of algae or exploding supernova. Some diptych panels, hung side-by-side, have mirrored designs, like bifurcated stains on a Rorschach blot or diagrams depicting binary division and replication of cells. The unfurling sprawl is comprised of thousands of graphite zeroes drawn over oil paint on panels. In this blend of the organic and mathematical, Erickson’s work melancholically dwells on the inability to retain memory. But if the paintings are wastelands filled with empty marks, wandering over them triggers its own host of daydreams, associations and involuntary memory. - Amanda Manitach, Seattle Contributor
Jen Erickson | Diversion 1, 2011, graphite and oil on panel, 36 x 48 inches.
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Filed under: Interview, San Francisco | Tags: Libby Black, Marx & Zavattero, Nadiah Fellah, Nothing Lasts Forever
I caught up with artist Libby Black (NAP #67 and #85) at Marx & Zavattero gallery in San Francisco, where her show ‘Nothing Lasts Forever’ is currently on view (through May 26th). Black has carefully selected and curated the images in the show, mindful of how flower paintings can be associated with ‘Sunday painters.’ To combat this tendency she has injected a layer of darkness and playfulness into the show through unique juxtapositions. For instance, between still-lifes of colorful bouquets is one of a high heel shoe with a penis extending from the toe, a design by Vivienne Westwood. The placement of a woman’s crotch sheathed in nothing more than nude pantyhose next to a painting of a flamingo’s head instantly brings to mind the phallic nature of the bird’s beak. She says, “I really needed these other pieces [in the show] so it wasn’t just about flowers—it’s about life, death, and sex; mundane moments mixed with elevated things that keep you thinking. I like to introduce this other layer within the work, just to take you down a different avenue for a little bit.” - Read the entire interview by Nadiah Fellah, our San Francisco Contributor, after the jump!
Left:
Libby Black | Pantyhose, 2011, oil on canvas, 12 x 9 inches
Right:
Libby Black | Pink, 2012, oil on canvas, 48 x 36 inches
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Filed under: Interview | Tags: Carmichael Gallery, CT Scans, Ellen C. Caldwell, Elyse Graham, Futero Anteriore, Los Angeles
At once lifelike and ethereal, organic and otherworldly, Elyse Graham’s geodes are captivating and mysterious. Simply put, they tell a story. But that story is not at all simplistic in style, process, or production.
After seeing Elyse Graham’s geodes in the group show Futero Anteriore at the Carmichael Gallery, I wanted to learn more about them. The geodes at the show were presented in clustered groups with both halves of each geode paired together, boldly bearing their raw and vivid interiors. Behind them, black and white video images of CT scans of the geodes morphed and danced on the back wall, illuminating neon linings and pockets of light both in the sculptural and projected forms of the geodes. - Ellen C. Caldwell, Los Angeles Contributor
Elyse Graham | Installation view.
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Filed under: Interview | Tags: DC, Matthew Smith, MICA, NUDASHANK, Paper Chasers, Steven Riddle, towson university
Steven Riddle’s paper collages are additive. They’re layers and layers of material that slope past their underlying surfaces in gentle relief. They’re also subtractive, just as much the result of recursively eliminating elements. And they’re practically alive. A single composition is often an amalgamation of pieces produced more recently mixed with others from two years prior. They’re like living, breathing documents of the artist’s extended studio history, all of it cumulatively recorded in the bins of scrap paper in his studio — blank paper that’s been air brushed, silkscreened, brushed over with gouache, monotyped , and that’s just for starters. Colorful and seemingly delicate, Riddle’s collages might seem like a reaction to the urban gray and grit of Baltimore, where he lives. Perhaps they’re escapist renditions, or more likely, ornate celebrations of a city’s latent energy.
I recently dropped by Steve’s studio at Towson University outside of Baltimore, where he’s a second year MFA candidate. You can check out his work space, and our conversation, after the jump. -Matthew Smith, Washington, D.C. Contributor
Steven Riddle | A Still History, 2011, marker, gouache, acrylic, oil-based mono type, collage on paper, 26 × 33″
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Filed under: Interview, Seattle | Tags: Ben Waterman, Erin Langner, Greg Kucera, Seattle
Ben Waterman’s paintings invite extended meditation on seemingly banal objects: a red mosquito net, a brown piano, a vacant fireplace. These highly specific objects float in contrast to their surroundings–disorientingly unidentifiable places painted with inarticulate brushstrokes. Given the Seattle artist’s pronounced affinity for travel to new places, these surreal landscapes prompt questions on the complicated role of inspiration within constructed visual images. I caught up with Ben to discuss Midnight Lullaby, his new show at Greg Kucera Gallery, and the real places buried within the layers of his work. - Erin Langner, Seattle Contributor
Ben Waterman | Piano in a Room with a Greek Amphora, 2011, Oil paint and graphite on canvas, 24 x 40 inches.
Image courtesy of Greg Kucera Gallery.
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Filed under: Chicago, Interview | Tags: Adam Scott, Angel Otero, Antonia Gurkovska, Curtis Mann, Josh Reames, Kavi Gupta, Tony Tasset
I recently went to Kavi Gupta Gallery in Chicago to see Antonia Gurkovska’s first solo show with the gallery, after viewing her show I stepped into Kavi’s second gallery where a group show of his artists was installed. I made my way past a Tony Tasset sculpture, a huge Angel Otero painting, and a few Curtis Mann photos to the back room, which was full of a group of incredibly exciting, though unfamiliar paintings. It came as quite a shock to find out they belonged to Adam Scott, whose work I have been familiar with and a huge fan of. Adam has been making large, super-saturated paintings of deconstructed cartoon-y figures and scenes with a sort of implied narrative. The paintings are made by pouring paint in a controlled way to construct an recognizable image, but with a degree of slippage allowing for a wavy, tripped-out looseness to the it. The new work is much different; no cartoons, a new collage aesthetic, and a nod to a left-brained formalism not formerly prevalent in his paintings. So I decided to talk to Adam about the reinvention (after the jump)… –Josh Reames, Chicago Contributor
Adam Scott | Victory at Sea, 2011, acrylic polymer, mica, silica, and color xerox on canvas,
66″ x 60″ (more…)
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Satirical. Sexual? Sensical and non… Gavin Bunner’s (NAP #65 & #97) paintings are flat out funny, farcical, and intelligent. Growing out of his earlier experimentation with watercolors and humorous juxtapositions, Bunner began creating larger compositions in which he inundates the viewer and field with likely and unlikely pairings from pop-culture and the larger media oversoul: Google. - Ellen C. Caldwell, Los Angeles Contributor
Gavin Bunner | Easter Egg Hunt, 44.5in x 30in, 2009
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Filed under: Interview, Los Angeles | Tags: 5790projects, Allison Schulnik, Andrew Schoultz, Catlin Moore, David Hilliard, Ellen C. Caldwell, Ellen Caldwell, Gallerist at Home, Gin Stevens, Heather Taylor, Jeremy Fish, Kim Dorland, Mark Moore Gallery, Mark Mulroney, New American Paintings, Okay Mountain, Peter Alexander, Ryan Taber
Catlin Moore, the Director of the contemporary Mark Moore Gallery and co-Director of 5790projects, is stylish, youthful and a definite force to be reckoned with. Though she cites her collection as being “in its infancy” (especially compared to her father gallery-owner and namesake Mark Moore), her art and artifice at home make me drool. An established arts writer and LA gallerist, Catlin has created a respite at home, reflecting a space where contemporary art browses with library-esque bookshelves, curiosity cabinets, and a tangible life of its own.
I am so pleased to feature Catlin in the official launch of the monthly column Gallerist at Home for New American Paintings. Following the same inspiration and interface of the interview I conducted with Heather Taylor in October of 2011, Gallerist at Home will showcase American art personas and explore the process of collecting art for both for public and private spaces. I see this largely as a forum for discussing the practice, process, and procedure of art collecting, and look forward to the conversations it sparks. - Read the interview with Catlin Moore by Ellen Caldwell, LA Contributor, after the jump!
Catlin Moore at home, Photo by Cambria Beilstein.
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Always, there is a gap between new ideas and public acceptance. Art history is rife with iconic figures and work which initially met with decades of rejection, not to mention a tendency toward posthumous adoration. It’s no leap to suppose that, whether due to market forces, critical trends, or perceived level of completion, an important chunk of today’s work remains in artists’ studios. As part of a new interview series “Not For Sale,” (inspired by the PS1 show of that title), I ask artists to discuss pieces which are unlikely to appear in a gallery.
With this is mind, I recently visited the Brooklyn studio of painter Angela Dufresne. Her sweeping, cinematic landscapes are formally similar to music: richly colored panoramas, mashing rock, film, and art history, are painted- or performed- with the sensitivity and virtuoso of a legendary electric guitarist. Angela describes her own process as such: the painter as performer, as cover artist, as groupie. - Whitney Kimball, NYC Contributor
