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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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: Los Angeles, Review | Tags: Ellen C. Caldwell, Mark Moore Gallery, Stephanie Washburn
In “Twice Told,” Stephanie Washburn’s inaugural solo show at Mark Moore Gallery, Washburn creates a distinct and unusual medium through a combination of many. Mixing paint, digital media, and everyday three-dimensional items, she creates the surface for and subject of her photographs.
In her “Reception” series, Washburn makes what she calls “television drawings” based off of her intervention and reinterpretation of pop culture images that act as a backdrop of her colorful photography. – Ellen C. Caldwell
Stephanie Washburn, Reception 5, 2011 | digital c-print | Edition of 3 + 2 AP | 30 x 30 inches
Courtesy of Mark Moore Gallery
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Filed under: Los Angeles, Review | Tags: Charlene Liu, Ellen C. Caldwell, Taylor De Cordoba
In her third solo show “Everywhere Close to Me” at Taylor De Cordoba, Charlene Liu creates and mediates really special moments with her works on paper. Using delicate cutouts, overlapping and woven papers, and sculptural pigmented pulpy constructs, Liu creates a world that is both delicate and daring.
Continuing to experiment with and expand upon her works on paper, Liu mixes, introduces, and pits her soft, organic, handmade, pigmented pulp paper against sharp acrylic lacquered cutouts and flattened painted paper surfaces. Here, bold colors and hard edges interplay and mix with soft shapes and fluid lines. - Ellen C. Caldwell, Los Angeles Contributor
Charlene Liu | Swoop and cyclone, 2012, watercolor, handmade paper, pigmented pulp, 51.5” x 40.5” Courtesy of Taylor De Cordoba.
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Filed under: Review, Santa Fe | Tags: Bernard Chaet, Jenni Higginbotham, LewAllen Contemporary
LewAllen Contemporary’s exhibition of paintings by American artist Bernard Chaet (b. 1924) features work from the 1960’s to the present. Keeping with LewAllen Contemporary’s penchant for expressive painters, this work is very formal and concerned almost exclusively with the materiality of paint on a surface. Known best for his landscape paintings, the subject matter of Chaet’s work at the gallery includes beaches, sea bathers, rocky coves, harbors clogged with boats, stormy horizons and a smattering of still lifes. His work challenges and celebrates the representational power of paint. A gushy slab of burnt sienna is a cloud on the sea’s horizon. Oblong slathers of cadmium orange are rocks on a shore. - Jenni Higginbotham, Sante Fe Contributor
Bernard Chaet | Rocky Shore, 2006, oil on canvas, 32 x 32 inches, Courtesy LewAllen Contemporary
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Filed under: Chicago, Review | Tags: Matthew Metzger, Robin Dluzen, Tony Wight Gallery
There’s no getting around the fact that Matthew Metzger makes difficult paintings. His may be among most difficult paintings I have ever seen, though the act of “seeing them” or “looking at them” is certainly not the difficult part. In his current exhibition at Tony Wight Gallery entitled, “Backdrop,” the artist presents a succinct seven paintings, rendered in the artist’s trademark, impeccable trompe l’oeil. Metzger’s practice has long employed this unwavering stylistic approach, depicting objects that also speak to the history of painting, like Duchampian rubber bands or the faux-monochrome of a Sharpie-d cover of The Eagles’ The Long Run. -Robin Dluzen, Chicago Contributor
Matthew Metzger | Guard (version 1), 2012, acrylic and oil on MRMDF, 36 1/4 x 24 1/4 inches, Image courtesy of Tony Wight Gallery
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Filed under: Review, Santa Fe | Tags: Corbett vs. Dempsey, Eight Modern Gallery, Jenni Higginbotham, Rebecca Shore
In conjunction with an exhibition at Corbett vs. Dempsey in Chicago, Eight Modern Gallery (Santa Fe, New Mexico), will show the paintings of Rebecca Shore (NAP #41) until May 5. This two-gallery exhibit, titled All in One, features about 50 paintings, 23 of which are at Eight Modern. – Read more by Jenni Higginbotham, Sante Fe Contributor, after the jump!
Installation shot
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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: Review, Seattle | Tags: Denzil Hurley, Erin Langner, Francine Sedars Gallery, Robert Storr
One would not expect to happen upon Robert Storr’s paintings inside a small gallery in a residential neighborhood of Seattle. Finding Storr’s paintings on the Internet is difficult enough, given the visual art behemoth’s repertoire of curatorial projects and writings. For the month of April, however, four modest works titled S.P. #1, 2, 3, 4 reside in a corner of Francine Sedars’s house-turned-gallery, alongside a series of monochromatic black paintings by Seattle artist Denzil Hurley. - Erin Langner, Seattle Contributor
Installation view. Image courtesy of Francine Sedars Gallery.
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Filed under: Los Angeles, Review | Tags: David Kordanksy, Ellen C. Caldwell, Jonas Wood
Straight up, Jonas Wood’s solo show at the David Kordansky Gallery (through May 12th) is one of my favorite shows of 2012 thus far. His larger-than-life, vibrant, and bright paintings are fetching, nostalgic, and cheerful. They are not “cheerful” in a sickening, sugarcoated, Katy-Perry-esque way, but in one that is varied, unexpected, and welcome. Some of the imagery and styles bring to mind childhood memories and the accompanying nostalgic feelings. - Ellen Caldwell, LA Contributor
