Filed under: Art Market, Art World | Tags: Alex Schuchard, Arielle Sandler, Artist Relief Project, Chelsea, Chris Cosnowski, Heidi Pollard, Hurricane Sandy, Jessica Snow, Lauren Purje, Nadiah Fellah, New York, NYFA, Rachel Beach, Space B Gallery
Like most New Yorkers, it was hard to look beyond our own basic necessities in the days leading up to Hurricane Sandy. Bottled water, flashlights, canned food. But as the winds died down and the storm’s damage was made known, the extent of its devastation proved bewildering. The homes, neighborhoods, and businesses in New York and New Jersey that took the worst of hits were highly visible news stories. But in the days and weeks following the storm there was another community whose irreparable damages came to light: those of the arts community. - Nadiah Fellah, NYC Contributor
Print featuring artwork from the first exhibition, available for purchase at http://www.ArtistReliefProject.com. 40% of the proceeds will be donated to NYFA’s Emergency Relief Fund for Hurricane Sandy.
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
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)
Filed under: New York, Q&A | Tags: Alex Ebstein, Allison Schulnik, chunky, mound, New York, ZieherSmith
Stepping out of the ambient bustling of West 20th street into ZieherSmith last week, the outside world and its stimuli immediately evaporated. Through the gatherings of weary figures and overripe fauna of Allison Schulnik’s solo exhibition drifts the melancholy melody of Scott Walker’s “It’s Raining Today,” the source imperceptible from the entrance. Dramatically lit with small spots, and thick with the smell of oil paint, Mound (Exhibiting through December 17th), envelopes its viewers in a multi-sensory experience of nostalgia and theatricality. Chunky impastoed canvases depicting flowers, clowns, animals and hobos are displayed along with Schulnik’s works in other media. A small gouache painting on paper entitled “Funeral Party” hangs to the side of a small ceramic mammal and a head-shaped vessel.
In the main gallery space, “Mound,” a stunning stop-motion video, and the source of the soundtrack, is projected to fill an entire wall. Figures and landscape melt into one another, becoming at points, one large undulating mound. On the adjacent walls, similarly-scaled paintings, “Flower Mound” (100” x 148”) and “Idyllwild” (110” x 78”) are awesome in their size and craftsmanship. Schulnik moves seamlessly between media, and from large-scale to smaller, more intimate pieces like “White Flower” (ceramic and wood, 37” x 29” x 29”) with the same amount of detail and care. This tangible transition from painting to film to object brings us fully into the Schulnik world of comic/tragic ruffians, kittens and puppets. I had the opportunity to ask Allison a few questions about her show and the influences in her work… - Alex Ebstein, Baltimore Contributor
Allison Schulnik | Still from Mound, 2011, video, drawing, sculpture, box, 4:33 in length, Courtesy ZieherSmith
Filed under: New York, Review | Tags: Brian Fee, Josephine Halvorson, New York, Sikkema Jenkins & Co
Josephine Halvorson breathes life into marginalized and utilitarian surfaces and objects that most of us don’t just disregard on a daily basis, we’re even oblivious to their very existences. How often have you regarded a steam valve so closely that you could draw it from memory? Does your flat even have steam valves? Halvorson lovingly animates these neglected forms in What Looks Back at Sikkema Jenkins & Co (exhibition runs through December 4th), devoting one brushy oil on linen canvas per subject, rendering every curve and crack with equal attention. - Brian Fee, Austin Contributor
Josephine Halvorson | Steam Donkey Valve, 2011, Oil on linen, 18” x 23”, © Josephine Halvorson; Courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York
Filed under: New York, Portland, Review | Tags: Brian Fee, Fragment, Jonathan LeVine Gallery, Josh Keyes, Migration, New York, Portland
I was pleasantly taken aback by Portland-based artist Josh Keyes’ (NAP #49 & #67) vividly photo-realistic renderings of fauna in cleaved terrain in Fragment, his debut solo exhibition at Jonathan LeVine Gallery last winter. In one fell swoop, Keyes juxtaposed Audobon-precise animals interacting with textbook-style bisected and angled landscapes overrun with premonitions of global warming, a mix of heady surrealism and acute future reality. To say I anticipated his return to the gallery, in Migration — which auspiciously coincided with my long weekend back in town — would be a grave understatement. What I discovered in Keyes’ new series of dissected environments was an even greater sense of realism, between the animals themselves and their depictions, plus the underlying warning signs of a planet headed towards environmental uncertainty. Read more from Austin Contributor, Brian Fee, after the jump!
Josh Keyes | Tangled IV, 2011, acrylic on panel, 30″ x 40″, Courtesy of Jonathan LeVine Gallery, New York.
Filed under: Competitions | Tags: Boston, competition, competitions, Deitsch, Dina Deitsch, Entries, NAP, New York, Northeast
In light of the recent storms that have effected the entire Northeast Region, we have extended the deadline for entry to September 9th, Midnight EST, with no penalty for late entry. We hope that this extension will enable those inconvenienced by the hurricane to apply. If you are an artist residing CT, DE, MA, ME, NH, NJ, NY, PA, RI, & VT, there is still time to enter The deadline is Thursday, September 9th (Midnight EST)! Apply online!
Dina Deitsch, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Musuem, will be jurying what has become one of our most competitive regions.
Artists can now apply online! Simply visit our competition page and follow the instructions. Submitting is easy! Just have four jpegs, less than 1200 pixels at their greatest dimension, and a credit card for the entry fee. Get online and enter by September 9th!
Be sure to check out our recent Q&A with Ms. Deitsch.
Filed under: Alabama, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, DC, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Must-Sees, New York, Philly, Portland, San Francisco, Santa Fe, Seattle | Tags: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, DC, Houston, Los Angeles, Must-See, NAP, New American Paintings, New York, Northeast, Pacific Coast, painting, San Francisco, Seattle
The art world comes alive again in September, as galleries reopen and collectors return from far flung locations. We reviewed upcoming September exhibitions at more than 400 galleries around the country, and there will be a lot of painting on view.
As is typical, many galleries are bringing out the big guns for the new season – from Agnes Martin at The Pace Gallery in New York to a well structured survey of Bay Area figurative painter, Nathan Oliveira, at John Berggruen Gallery in San Francisco. Among the shows opening by emerging artists, it is hard to ignore the trend towards abstract painting that has swept over the art world.
Kimberly Brooks | Punk History, oil on linen, 40 x 36 inches. Courtesy of Taylor De Cordoba, Los Angeles.
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)
Filed under: Art World, New York | Tags: Anna Plesset, Collin Hatton, Corydon Cowansage, Field Kallop, Katie Bell, Keith Allyn Spencer, Mike Schbreiber, Mixed Greens, Nell Painter, New Insight, New York, NEXT, RISD
Katie Bell, Breaker, 2011 | Vinyl, acrylic, foam, rope and paper. Approx. 9 x 10 feet. Courtesy Mixed Greens, New York.
There have been countless MFA thesis shows around the country since May, but few have been as captivating or as relevant as that of the RISD Painting MFA 2011 grads on view at Mixed Greens in New York. (And even fewer are still on view through July.) Hailing from the Rhode Island School of Design, the show features work by Corydon Cowansage, Collin Hatton, Field Kallop, Nell Painter, Anna Plesset, Mike Schbreiber, Keith Allyn Spencer, and Katie Bell, who we recently saw in the annual New Insight show of promising MFA candidates, curated by Susanne Ghez for NEXT Chicago.
If the work by artists in Small Crowd is any indication of what’s taking place in MFA painting programs across the country, the outlook is good. Abstraction is unsurprisingly favored over figuration here, and wielded by Hatton, Kallop, Spencer and others. Contemporary painters are frequently returning to ideas of the painting as object, an approach used by Bell and Plesset, and to brilliant effect.
More pics after the jump! —Evan J. Garza, Editor-at-Large
