Contributed by Art Fair Correspondent Jonathan Stevenson / Having started with Frieze�s 200-odd galleries on Thursday and proceeded to NADA�s 90-plus on Friday, I necked down to the smaller Pulse New York Contemporary Art Fair on Saturday. While the trend towards abstract painting observed of NADA was perhaps gently in evidence at Pulse, the work presented by the fifty or so exhibitors there was more varied and less cohesive.
[Image at top: Brian Dupont at Adah Rose]
To be sure, there was plenty of abstraction, across a wide range. Eye-catching paintings included Clayton Colvin�s probing multilayered works shown by Beta Pictoris (Birmingham, AL), Diana Copperwhite�s colorful but lugubrious canvases at 532 Gallery Thomas Jaeckel, the acid-distressed oils of Sara Hoppe from Dresden�s M2A gallery, Ethiopian painter Tegene Kunbi�s strangely doleful striations of color at Margaret Thatcher Gallery�s booth, Chris Trueman�s hypnotically undulating grids from Adah Rose Gallery (Kensington, MD), and a brace of small paintings by Jill Baroff, Astrid Bowlby, and Allyson Strafella at Philadelphia�s Gallery Joe.
But there was also a lot of representational and textual work on display. Freight + Volume (complementing its showcase of abstract painter Ezra Johnson at NADA) featured a sardonic Katherine Bradford painting referencing Guston and the explorer Ernest Shackleton, Erik den Breejen�s witty 1970s-throwback text-portraits, and one of Loren Munk�s vividly replete New York art chronicles. Adah Rose showed Brian Dupont�s text fragments set to aluminum, which evoke the tension and synergy between art and industry (image at top of post). Ikon Art Foundation presented an array of Croatian artist Marko Tadic�s of precise meditative paintings. Schroeder Romero Editions had a couple of William Powhida�s smart-ass � and inexorably smart � lists.
Erik den Breejen @ Freight + Volume
And, perhaps owing to Pulse�s variety and dedication to alternative models, it offered a few inconspicuous gems. I happened onto one of Jen Dalton�s This Too Shall Pass candy jars (which she told me someone had actually dipped into, necessitating the addition of a �Do Not Touch� sign) at Schroeder Romero, Keith Allyn Spencer�s goofy jigsaw-like paintings at Phalanx, and a sublime small landscape, Blind, by Laura Newman at Keeler & Co.
Related posts:
Masking strategies: Residue in DC (2014)
IMAGES: Laura Newman (2012)
Selected paintings from Scope, Aqua, Pierogi, and Pulse (2009)
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That Laura Newman painting is a gem. Thanks for including it in your roundup. I'm glad to see that she's found another gallery.
I just wish Powhida weren't always right.