“Emilie Clark: The Weeklies,” Morgan Lehman, New York, NY. Through December 22.
Selected as one of this week’s “Best in Show” by R.C. Baker in the Village Voice, Clark decided in 1995 to make one painting a week for the rest of her life, and she’s still at it. R.C. reports: “Near the door hang a handful of blank, 12-by-nine-inch wood panels awaiting the brush. They hang in the last rows of more than 600 bold and colorful paintings that are ranged around the gallery in eight-high grids. Since 1995, the 38-year-old Clark has finished one painting a week, a series she intends to continue to the grave. Some individual works include grids of their own�a piece in the 1996 section featuring a painted gray network is immediately followed by one with half-inch wire mesh collaged over fat alizarin and yellow brushstrokes, and then a third panel with rows of small oval portraits in the background. Circles, sometimes framing text or images, other times in flat abstract designs or drippy coagulations, recur through the years. Clark’s other work (which includes installations of drawings, paintings, and texts) employs themes concerning ‘the history of natural history’ and encyclopedic organizations of knowledge. According to actuarial tables, this vibrant project is in its youth�it should be fascinating to watch it grow up.”
