On Kawara and Danica Phelps, two single-minded artists obsessed with documenting life, are on view in New York this month. David Zwirner has over 150 of On Kawara’s date paintings spanning 1966 to the present (known collectively as the “Today” series) hanging in both galleries, and Brennan & Griffin is presenting Danica Phelps new series, “The Cost of Love.”
For the past ten years, using a signature system of brightly-painted stripes, Phelps has charted her income, expenses, and debt. In “The Cost of Love” she focuses on the recent breakup with her longtime girlfriend. Using the court papers
and documents from the subsequent financial fallout, Phelps has produced an emotionally fraught series of panels that don’t track the
passing of time in the same way that her earlier work did, but rather chronicle the phenomenon of loss.
On Kawara, on the other hand, creates calmer, more philosophical paintings that meditate on the nature of human existence. In 1966 he started painting dates, meticulously centering handpainted white, sans serif letters and numbers on monochrome canvases. For the artist, who has made the paintings in more than a hundred different cities, each date evokes a specific location, and a scrapbook with facsimiles of clippings from local newspapers is included in the exhibition. His monk-like dedication is astonishing–I can’t imagine making the same painting (give or take the subtle variations) for
more than forty years. On Kawara’s endeavor is smart and thought provoking, but Phelps works emphatically from emotional necessity.
44 x 26 inches
Danica Phelps,
The Cost of Love (Paragraph 6), 2011-12, detail.
“Danica Phelps: The Cost of Love,” Brennan & Griffin, New York, NY. Through February 12, 2012.
“On Kawara Date Painting(s) in New York and 136 Other Cities,” Zwirner, New York, NY. Through February 11, 2012.
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