Filed under: New York, Review | Tags: Kansas Gallery, Michael Berryhill, NYC, Whitney Kimball
What comes after stasis? Writing about Michael Berryhill’s work in 2010, Sharon Butler observed a trend of “contingency and ennui” in painting, predicting that “struggle and tenacity” would follow. That bend has arrived in Berryhill’s show at Kansas Gallery (which closed on June 23rd), a series of paintings which, in itself, blossoms.
The entryway is lined with what resemble birdshit-covered antique doorstops. In “Island,” for one, hilly paint gobs crust the cover of an old hardcover book, with a small nautical map peeking out of a vaginal opening. A small wooden pump draped with a canvas donkey skin, “Pump Jack Ass,” is equally dry. - Whitney Kimball, NYC Contributor
Michael Berryhill | Island, 2012, book and oil paint, 9 1/2 x 6 1/2 x 4 inches. Courtesy Kansas Gallery
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Filed under: Art World, New York | Tags: Horton Gallery, Michael Berryhill, New York, Sharon Butler, Two Coats of Paint
Michael Berryhill, Conceiving The Design, 2011 | Oil on linen on panel, 16 x 16 inches. Courtesy Horton Gallery, New York.
Michael Berryhill, a painter who still values a good struggle in his work, has several fine, small-scale paintings in Monkey Wrench, a group show at Horton Gallery, through July 22. Heavily worked and overpainted (in a good way), the paintings depict tabletop objects in the studio, some of which are identifiable, and others which aren’t. Although painters are going through a period in which contingency and ennui are hot, I predict that struggle and tenacity may be right around the corner.
—Sharon L. Butler (via Two Coats of Paint)
