“Chris Martin,” (click through for good set of images) Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York, NY. Through March 1. Roberta Smith: “It makes sense that Mr. Martin had his first solo show in 1988. Although he rightfully counts the painters Alfred Jensen and Forrest Bess among his inspirations, his style might be called �80s mongrel; a m�lange of outtakes from Julian Schnabel, Keith Haring, Elizabeth Murray and Sigmar Polke. But he takes possession of all this by infusing it with his own sense of funky materiality, quasi-psychedelic color and hallucinatory light. Mainly he knows how to make a surface come to life with a fuss so minimal that it seems like showing off.”
“Mark Bradford: Nobody Jones,”Sikkema Jenkins & Company, New York, NY. Through Feb. 23. Karen Resenberg: “Fresh off his solo exhibition at the Whitney, which honored him with the Bucksbaum Award for his work in the 2006 biennial, Mark Bradford is at a crossroads. His latest large-scale collage paintings have plenty of pizazz, but they seem alternately overloaded and stripped down.”
“Larry Poons: Throw, Pour, Drip, Spill & Splash,” Jacobson Howard, New York, NY. Through Feb. 25.
Roberta Smith: “The nine canvases here date from 1975 to 1981 and look very much of their time, an example of push-the-envelope Process Art that remained true to stretched canvas. They also look quite prescient, given recent random acts of painting from artists like Rudolf Stingel, and various postmodern evocations of Mr. Poons�s distinctive technique, starting, I believe, with the Swiss artist John Armleder. But by now the �70s Poons paintings also seem eminently traditional, visually lush and rather well composed. The colors build and subside across the heavy downpours of paint, which often erupt in thick patches of splashes and splatters, or dissipate into exposed bits of canvas.”
Related posts:
Chris Martin’s dare at Mitchell-Innes & Nash
Larry Poons exuberance
