Filed under: New York, Review | Tags: Feature Inc., Sam Gordon, Tromple L'Oeil, Whitney Kimball
Sam Gordon’s abstraction poses a photographer’s take on his show title, Trompe L’Oeil (On view at Feature Inc. through May 26th). A painter, photographer, and videographer, Gordon collects and weaves bits of the outside world, in his paintings of dust on mirrors and acrylic and bleach patterns on ratty quilts. Rather than the scrupulously reductive process of someone like Tony Matelli, though, Gordon’s spontaneity and raw materials feel like the naked cruise you get from a Wendy White or Terry Winters, or the anything-goes formalism of early experimental film. Each canvas forms a moving tessellation: in Air Mail, handkerchiefs and scraps of pants form a grid of rectangles, over which Gordon paints a tunnel of air mail envelope borders. On another, concentric loops of chains form negative space in a crusty layer of studio sweepings (staples, dust, little bits of paper). - Whitney Kimball, New York City Contributor
Sam Gordon | Flash (Let the flash flash when the flash wants to flash), 2010; bleach, acrylic paint, spray paint, ink-jet iron-on transfer, PVA sizing on sewn clothes and canvas remnants, artist pins (Photo courtesy of Feature Inc)
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Filed under: New York, Review | Tags: Britta Deardorff, Eric Sall, Four Paintings, Jackie Gendel, Juan Gomez, Regina Rex, Whitney Kimball
The walls of Regina Rex have been taken over by four large, brightly-colored paintings, with luscious layers of thick and thin paint and most with elements of pure black. The paintings in the exhibition, Four Paintings (on view through June 3rd), are the kind of hate-it-or-love-it guilty pleasure that arouses a gut reaction and a tip-of-your-tongue familiarity. The gallery deems this an “unapologetic and visceral appeal to the viewer.” It’s an interesting question, which I think Regina Rex is trying to ask: for what do these have to apologize? - Read the full review by NYC Contributor, Whitney Kimball, after the jump!
Jackie Gendel | tbt, 2012, oil on canvas. 80 x 70 in
Courtesy of Jeff Bailey Gallery
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Filed under: New York, Review | Tags: Alan Shields, Amy Granat, Andrew Lord, Ann Craven, Gladstone Gallery, Hans Josephsohn, Hans Scharer, Kim Jones, Latifa Echakhch, Peter Buggenhout, Rudolf Schwarzkogler, Sam Gilliam, Sarah Lucas, Spirit Level, Ugo Rondinone, Whitney Kimball
Walking into the Spirit Level, on view through April 21, at Gladstone Gallery’s 24th Street branch, one passes through a hallway of Ann Craven’s large, dark paintings with taffy-colored off-white holes in the middle. The floor is lined with Latifa Echakhch’s “Frames”: rectangular rugs with the centers removed, so that only thin edges and fringes remain. The pairing sets the tone for the exhibition, and it’s testament to Ugo Rondinone’s curatorial dexterity: the simple combination evokes prayer, death, infinite, cycles, and detritus which inevitably fills up empty space. - Read more from Whitney Kimball after the jump!
Anne Craven | Moon, 2012. oil on linen, 72 x 72 inches.
Photo courtesy of Gladstone Gallery
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Filed under: Art World, New York | Tags: Andrew Masullo, Dawn Kasper, Forrest Bess, Joanna Malinowska, Jutta Koether, Kai Althoff, Michael E. Smith, Moyra Davey, New York, Nicole Eisenman, Richard Hawkins, Tom Thayer, Whitney, Whitney Biennial
As promised, we’ve posted some of our photos from our trip to the Whitney Biennial. There were many highlights, but we captured some of our favorite artists/pieces. If you went, let us know what you thought about the exhibition in our comments section. More pictures after the jump!
Whitney Biennial Installation featuring works by Andrew Masullo
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Filed under: New York, Review | Tags: Brian Fee, Harris Lieberman Gallery, Zak Prekop
The intense, ostensibly minimalist yet beguilingly layered and process-composed paintings by young Brooklyn-based Zak Prekop unveil themselves like a Jorge Luis Borges plot device. I spent a leisurely while in front of and angled toward his human-scale canvases filling Harris Lieberman Gallery, playing out different scenarios in my head as to just how he created them. Their plain titles give away few secrets, but their respective compositions and surface effects are irresistible to inquisitive eyes. - Brian Fee, Austin Contributor
Zak Prekop | Untitled Transparency, 2012, oil and paper on canvas, 72” x 48”
Courtesy of the artist and Harris Lieberman, New York.
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Filed under: New York, Review | Tags: Matthew Marks, Terry Winters, Whitney Kimball
On view at Matthew Marks are eleven large-scale paintings by Terry Winters. Each contains a web of diamonds, triangles, and rhombuses, which in places drift apart, and in others cling around invisible ripples, double-helixes, globes. Some are flat, chalky, and rug-like, while others recall wombs with thin, vibrant washes and cells in arranged in dimensional basket weaves. - Read more from NYC Contributor Whitney Kimball after the jump!
Terry Winters | Tessellation Figures (1), 2011, oil on linen, 80 x 76 inches, Courtesy Matthew Marks
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Filed under: New York, Review | Tags: Sarah McEneaney, Tibor de Nagy, Whitney Kimball
Throughout Sarah McEneaney’s modest-sized egg tempera paintings at Tibor de Nagy, we find a singular tourist: a middle-aged woman in water shoes, a bike helmet, rectangular glasses, sketchbook in hand, often surrounded by cats. Her sunny landscapes and idyllic country living rooms throw a brightly-colored wrench into all standards of reticent, high art taste. - Whitney Kimball, NYC Contributor
Sarah McEneaney | Baseball, 2010, egg tempera on wood, 33.5 x 33.5 inches, Photo courtesy of artnet
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Filed under: Art World, Chicago, Dallas, DC, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, Must-Sees, New York, Oakland, Philadelphia, Portland, San Francisco, Santa Fe | Tags: Exhibitions, February, Must-SEe, NAP, Paintings, Publishers Pick, Steven Zevitas
One of the best parts of my job is getting to see the careers of artists that we have worked with take off. Artists such as James Siena, Amy Cutler and Matthew Day Jackson were all featured in New American Paintings long before they reached the international spotlight. This month is not only an extraordinary month for the medium of painting at galleries around the country, it is a particularly strong month for New American Paintings’ alumni. No fewer than twenty artists featured in past, or upcoming editions, have their work on view in February. Two of my favorites, Summer Wheat and Benjamin Degen, will be featured in the soon to be released 2012 Northeast Edition (#98).
I want to bring special attention to the work of Sarah McEneaney, who was first featured in the mid-1990s. Based in Philadelphia, Sarah is a profoundly gifted artist, and, in my opinion, simply one of the best painters working today. Her painstakingly crafted egg tempera paintings have always had a startling immediacy. Of the many micro-trends that are noticeable in current painting practice, a certain predilection for “faux-naïve” representation is high among them. Sarah was entrenched in this pictorial language long before it washed over the art world. Unlike many younger artists, her creative direction is not a conceptual gambit; rather, it is born out of an internal necessity. - Steven Zevitas, Editor/Publisher
Summer Wheat | Onlooker, oil on canvas, 18 x 24 inches
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Filed under: New York, Review | Tags: CRG Gallery, Kahpenakwu, New York, NYC, Robert Buck, Whitney Kimball
A horned cow skull on a nine-foot-tall cement totem looms in the entrance of CRG Gallery. As all of the works in Robert Buck’s show Kahpenakwu (“west” in Comanche), of paintings, drawings, and large sculpture, it serves as a tombstone for Native America, transforming the gallery into an industrial wasteland.
Beyond the totem is a stack of cinder blocks, arranged like the last wall of a dilapidated forge. Otherwise haphazard winter-edition Coca Cola cans have been lightly squeezed and positioned in a ceremonial ascension up the wall’s back; facing the gallery, a few thorny reeds shoot up from the blocks with a similar, seemingly-incidental decorum. - Whitney Kimball, NYC Contributor
Robert Buck | Installation view, Kahpenakwu, 2011 (Courtesy CRG Gallery)
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Filed under: Art Market, Art World, Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, DC, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, Must-Sees, New Jersey, New York, Oakland, Philadelphia, Philly, Portland, San Francisco, Santa Fe, Seattle | Tags: December, Must-SEe
In the 300+ gallery exhibitions that we previewed for this post, we discovered a number of New American Paintings’ alumni on view in December. Jim Lutes continues to produce a substantial body of work and, once again, demonstrates why he is one of Chicago’s leading painters. And check out Dolphin Gallery’s group exhibition “Push” which features several NAP artists, including a favorite of ours, Michael Krueger. Other shows that stand out: Fernando Mastrangelo at Charest-Weinberg, Byron Kim and James Cohan Gallery, and Cordy Ryman and Eli Ridgway. Enjoy the list! Please check them out and let us know what you think in the comments section after the jump!
Cordy Ryman | Shadow Boxed, acrylic, enamel and graphite on wood, 38 x 33.5 x 3.5 inches
