Jacqueline Humphries, Xx,�2014, oil on linen, 100 x 111 inches.
Contributed by Sharon Butler / Digital screens, halftone dot patterns, emoticons, and other typographic symbols comprise the imagery in Jacqueline Humphries’s new series of large-scale paintings on view at Greene Naftali through June 20. Once considered a Provisional painter, Humphries’s new work is anything but contingent. Slick and resolved, the enormous canvases are layered with stencils and screen prints so as to create the densely comprehensive patterns that we have come to associate with digitized information.
Jacqueline Humphries, :), detail,� 2015, oil on linen 114 x 127 inches.Jacqueline Humphries, :),�2015, oil on linen 114 x 127 inchesJacqueline Humphries, installation view.�
Humphries has always worked comfortably at a large scale, and these works seem to require the massive square footage. On each canvas, disruptions occur. Splotches of paint, uneven washes of color, agitated brushstrokes, and stencils clotted with paint are among the incidents that create surface texture and remind us that these are paintings–not details from the enormous digital screens like the ones wrapping the buildings in Times Square.
Jacqueline Humphries,� :-/, 2014, oil on linen, 114 x 127 inches.
In older interviews, she describes “destroying the painting” and scraping away to find an image, but here the process is decisively additive. The images result from accumulated layers. Visually, they recall Christopher Wool’s screen print paintings, (some of which are on view at Luhring Augustine in Bushwick), but Humphries employs vivid color where Wool prefers bitmappy black and white. Many of the paintings begin with a layer of the silver paint that Humphries has been using for the past few years to give the paintings a kind of flickering, cinematic light that is difficult to capture in photographs. Her use of pattern and color draw our attention in the same way that we are drawn into our ubiquitous computer screens.
Jacqueline Humphries, ?, 2015, oil and enamel on linen, 100 x 111 inches.
Jacqueline Humphries,� ?, 2015, oil on linen, 100 x 111 inches.
Jacqueline Humphries, : : :, 2014, oil on linen, 100 x 111 inches.
Jacqueline Humphries, [//], 2014, oil on linen, 100 x 111 inches.
Jacqueline Humphries,� [], 2015, oil on linen 100 x 111 inches.
Jacqueline Humphries, installation view.
Indeed, like many painters today, Humphries references the “endemic distraction and proliferation of ever-emerging and fading images in a digital age.” The surprising inventiveness of her previous work, and with it some of the spontaneity, has�yielded to higher production values and assured bravado. This is a handsome series of�paintings, and very much of the moment.
“Jacqueline Humphries,” Greene Naftali, Chelsea, New York, NY. Through June 20, 2015.
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Admittedly commenting from an iPad screen, I see these works as transitional and a let down from her earlier work. The sweeping gestural dynamics has given way to pattern, a pattern that does not seem resolved in the artist's thinking, and a pattern that seems to get lost admist color and planarity, to use an old Formalist term. Her paintings, like Franz Kline's work best within the drama of black and white paint, leaving color like a blind date who brought their best friend along. There is also an overall greying out like the broadcast snow on an old tv left on when programming was over. It is as if technology is nothing more than a decorative two dimensional self-consciousness owned by no one, a vain attempt of painting to seem relevant in the age of the Internet. Abstract Seurat, maybe.
Even though making art is often an experience that happens in the solitude of one's studio, it rarely occurs in a vacuum. Artists rely on each other for support, reinforcement, inspiration, and challenge, forming communities to avoid feeling like fish out of water in this world. Tim Gowan was one of those artists who cherished […]
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Surprise: #PatriciaTreib solo on view in Stockholm @galerie_nordenhake 💥 beautiful show ❤️
Swedish-born and UK-based, artist, activist, writer and eco-feminist Monica Sjöö (31 December 1938 - 8 August 2005) fought for freedom from oppression, but especially for women’s rights. “THE GREAT COSMIC MOTHER” @modernamuseet is her first retrospective. Swipe for the image that was considered blasphemous and obscene in the 1970s.
Rejecting abstract art as a Western male privilege, she asked: “How does one communicate women’s strength, struggle, rising up from oppression, blood, childbirth, sexuality – in stripes and triangles?”
In the studio of Prince Eugen Napoleon Nicolaus of Sweden and Norway, Duke of Närke (1 August 1865 – 17 August 1947) was a Swedish painter, art collector, and patron of artists. Swipe through for a wide angle of his attic studio. Yes, it has a water view :) #stockholmartist #Waldemarsudde #Djurgården #princeeugen #landscapepainting
Save the date: Two Coats of Paint is hosting our first Hudson Valley Gallery Crawl on Oct 14 and 15. 💥 To kick off the weekend, we`re organizing a live conversation on the evening of Friday, October 13, moderated by Two Coats of Paint publisher @sharon_butler / Details to come ✍️
Participating galleries include: Analog Diary Art Sales & Research Artport Kingston Buster Levi Collar Works D’Arcy Simpson Art Works Susan Eley Fine Art Elijah Wheat Showroom Front Room Gallery Galerie Gris Garage Gallery Garrison Art Center Geary Joyce Goldstein Gallery Alexander Gray Associates Carrie Haddad Gallery Hudson Hall LABspace Lightforms Art Center Lockwood Gallery Mother Gallery Opalka Gallery Private Public Gallery The Re Institute SEPTEMBER Pamela Salisbury Gallery Turley Gallery Visitor Center Woodstock Artists Association & Museum
Latest post, link in profile / Ed Ruscha’s retro spective / Contributed by Laurie Fendrich / The work of the Los Angeles artist Ed Ruscha is often referred to as a West Coast version of Pop Art. The implication, of course, is that since it didn’t come out of New York, it must be inferior. His retrospective “Now Then,” his first at the Museum of Modern Art and first in New York since 1983, contains over 200 works from 1958 to the present…. Despite its outward similarity to conceptual art and New York Pop Art, Ruscha’s work feels decidedly different. Link in profile
Image: Ed Ruscha, The Los Angeles County Museum on Fire, 1965-68, oil on canvas, 135.89 x 339.09 cm
New post, link in profile / Selected Paintings from SPRING/BREAK NYC 2023 / Contributed by Fay Sanders and Bob Szyantyr / In a shift befitting this year’s theme, !WILD CARD!, the Spring/Break Art Show departs from its past trajectory of more-and-bigger spectacle, year after year. Building on the “Secret Show” of this past spring, which returned to the Old School where the fair began, the organizers asked artists for this year’s show at 625 Madison to revisit past themes with a mix of nostalgia, homage, and cheekiness. Link in profile
Image: Jackson Hill (detail) / Booth 1018 “Backyards” curated by Todd Cramer. Featuring artists Todd Cramer + Jackson Hill + Guillermo Amat. Theme: Fact and Fiction (2019)
When I got the email from @alexandregallery yesterday, announcing that they were presenting a clutch of #lorenmaciver paintings @independent_hq, I scrambled for a press ticket to the preview so I could see the work one more time before it passed into private hands. The fair, located on the waterfront next to the Staten Island Ferry, was nothing if not elegant, and the MacIvers didn’t disappoint. Here are details of a MacIver and some other pieces that caught my eye. Then I walked over to Pier 11 and took the ferry back to the studio in Dumbo. Great morning 💥Sorry not to have images of the Sigmar Polke photographs — knockout @sieshoeke — Kenwyn Critchlow paintings @dianerosenstein, the Mary Dill Henry paintings and notes @hauserwirth, Emilio Cruz @corbettvsdempsey, and others. If you can’t make it to the fair, go look them up. Tags to come, but feel free to identify in the comments.
Admittedly commenting from an iPad screen, I see these works as transitional and a let down from her earlier work. The sweeping gestural dynamics has given way to pattern, a pattern that does not seem resolved in the artist's thinking, and a pattern that seems to get lost admist color and planarity, to use an old Formalist term. Her paintings, like Franz Kline's work best within the drama of black and white paint, leaving color like a blind date who brought their best friend along. There is also an overall greying out like the broadcast snow on an old tv left on when programming was over. It is as if technology is nothing more than a decorative two dimensional self-consciousness owned by no one, a vain attempt of painting to seem relevant in the age of the Internet. Abstract Seurat, maybe.