Month: December 2022

Solo Shows

Spencer Finch’s dazzling originality

Contributed by David Carrier / Spencer Finch’s new and recent work at Hill Art Foundation in Chelsea are set in dialogue with The Creation and the Expulsion from Paradise, a magnificent 1533 stained-glass window by Renaissance master Valentin Bousch. “Lux and Lumen,” the exhibition’s title, comes from Abbot Suger of the cathedral at Saint-Denis, who praised the power of stained glass to transform natural light, or lux, into sacred light, or lumen. Inspired by that medieval idea, and by his visit to Claude Monet’s pond and garden at Giverny, Finch’s Painting Air, an immersive hanging-glass installation, is a dramatic visual essay on light.

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Gallery shows

Past, present, and future: The complementary visions of Jodi Hays and Michi Meko

Contributed by Jenny Zoe Casey / In a fascinating and inspired pairing, “The Burden of Wait” at Susan Inglett brings together painters Michi Meko and Jodi Hays and explores the different ways in which inhabitants of a particular region – here the American South – can experience it. Landscape is an important influence for both artists, but their approaches are mostly in opposition.

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Solo Shows

Heidi Hahn’s bold challenge to figuration

Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / On one level, in “Flex, Rot, and Sp(l)it,” a penetrating and conceptually cohesive show of paintings at Nathalie Karg Gallery, Heidi Hahn visually chronicles the tension between the unavoidable confinement of the body and the irrepressible expansiveness of the mind. While the so-called mind-body problem is as old as philosophy itself, to Western audiences it is perhaps most resonant in René Descartes’ exercise of systematic doubt, concluding with “I think therefore I am.” In terms of value, this ingrained formulation privileges the mind over the body. While philosophers are left to connect mental processes with gray matter, for painters and others it can be discomfiting to realize that although thinking is supposed to be the essence of being, a person’s mind is often prejudged on the basis of their body’s characteristics. 

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Solo Shows

Firelei Báez: Uncharting charted territory, and vice-versa

Contributed by Julia Bland / The eleven canvases in Firelei Báez’s current exhibition “Americananana” at James Cohan Gallery continue her decades-long practice of painting directly on found maps and printed materials. By activating the surface with historical references, Báez calls into focus the dual nature of the painted gesture as both action and erasure. While considering what relevant details have now vanished behind an outstretched arm or pale yellow swath, one might also wonder whether any canvas is ever truly blank.  

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Screens

When Irish eyes aren’t smiling

Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin is darkly comic — invariably mordant and occasionally hilarious. But the situational modesty and outward sardonicism are subterfuge. This is a stealthily grand film with weighty political and existential themes, framing McDonagh as contemporary cinema’s wisest bad-ass.

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Poetry

Five poems by Jamie Romanet

The urgency of our times and the dearth of hours in the studio while I was home with my children during Covid prompted me to begin writing poetry. I wrote the first poems as a response to some portraits I had painted, and, although I’m back in the studio now, I continue to write.

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Fiction

Short story: Bernard’s Eye [Laurie Fendrich]

The annual New Year’s Day party hosted in the cavernous Robeson home in Evanston was invariably a drag, but that didn’t keep anyone who received an invitation from accepting. They went because they were grateful to be on the party list and they wanted to see and be seen. Bernard Souser, the art dealer from whom Sissy Robeson regularly bought paintings, always was invited, of course, and though he’d arrive late and sneak away early, Sissy never noticed….

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Solo Shows

Ridley Howard: Provocative incongruity

Contributed by Riad Miah / Athens, Georgia-based painter Ridley Howard’s new body of work, now on display at his third solo show at Marinaro, continues to explore relationships between figuration and abstraction with a refined pop sensibility, easing effortlessly between small and larger formats. The gallery’s abundant new space on Broadway is ideal, allowing viewers to absorb shifts in scale and reflect on contrasting elements, which Howard now seems to have fully resolved and mastered.

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Artist's Notebook

A Journal of the Burren

Contributed by Frank Webster / In the month of October, I participated in the residency program at the Burren College of Art. During my stay, I hiked extensively documenting the region both photographically and in paintings. The Burren is an UNESCO Global Geopark located in County Clare in the west of Ireland. It is a geologically and environmentally unique area with a rich archeological, cultural, and historical legacy. Here are selections from my journal along with a few images from my travels.

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Solo Shows

Dylan Vandenhoeck: Seeing yourself seeing

Contributed by James J.A. Mercer / The main works in “Inside Out, Outside In,” Dylan Vandenhoeck’s bravura solo show at Jack Barrett gallery, are large, vertically oriented oil paintings, approximately human scale. Two are on interlocking irregular canvases, and there are three smaller horizontal pieces. Some are on unusual fabrics, or contain objects such as candy wrappers and string that could be related to the scenes painted on them. Big gestural swirls and streaks of color frame plein air landscapes and interiors. Certain zones are masterfully illusionistic, such as the wintry parking lot through dirty glass in Of the Corner. Other areas are daringly loose, collapsing into stray marks and spectral debris. 

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