Contributed by Holly Coulis / This interview took place on February 13, 2022, on the occasion of the two-person show, “Erin O�Brien and Keiko Narahashi,” at 106 Green, in New York City.
Year: 2022
“Eraser” in Birmingham
Contributed by Sharon Butler / In 2012, artist, writer, and curator Brian Edmonds founded Curating Contemporary, an online exhibition space that, since its inception, has hosted over fifty exhibitions. Then, in 2019, Edmonds took his project to print, and began publishing Eraser, a biannual book featuring the work of contemporary artists and writers. This year he has organized an exhibition called “Eraser” at Ground Floor Contemporary, in Birmingham, Alabama, that brings together some of the artists who have been featured in his publications. I’m pleased to be included in the fourth Eraser book and also to have two paintings in the show, alongside work by a great group of artists: Matt Kleberg, Jered Sprecher, Jason Stopa, Sean Sullivan, Vadis Turner, Cecilia Vissers, Don Voisine, and Thornton Willis.
Armin Kunz: Presentism and art history
Contributed by Armin Kunz / �Can we ever look at Titian�s paintings the same way again?� asked Holland Cotter when he reviewed the reunion of […]
Two Coats Selected Gallery Guide: February 2022
Contributed by Sharon Butler / What’s up February? I’m looking forward to stopping by Ortega y Gasset in Gowanus to see “Surface Tension,” a group show featuring work by Dexter Ciprian, Rachel Granofsky, Christina Graham, Kirstin Lamb, Caitlin Macbride, and Sarah Pater, artists who seem to cast the picture plane as an unreliable narrator. In Tribeca, I’ll be checking out David Diao’s new Berlin Chair paintings on view at Postmasters. On the Lower East Side, Rochelle Feinstein, another painters’ favorite, has a show across two venues, Bridget Donahue and Candice Madey. 106 Green, long located on Green Street in Greenpoint, has reopened at 75 East Broadway. They have a charming two-person exhibition with sculptures by Keiko Narahashi and paintings by Erin O�Brien on view through February 19. In Chelsea, McEnery is showing Roy Dowell’s loose geometric pictures and Erin Lawlor’s dramatic brushy gesturals. More news: Hannah Traore has opened a space at 150 Orchard Street and Marinaro has moved to a new space on Broadway in Noho.
Mark Ryan Chariker’s Romantic No-Man’s-Lands
Contributed by Patrick Neal / Mark Ryan Chariker?s paintings have a romantic, brooding quality that sometimes leans toward the Gothic. In All the Time in the World, his second solo show at 1969 Gallery in Tribeca, he paints youthful figures residing in lush woodlands or dream-like interiors who behave somewhat like fl?neurs, passively inhabiting time and space. These medium scale works in oil on linen and canvas are suffused with a glowing golden aura, and are defined by scenes that wistfully overlay the present onto the past.
Vincent Smith’s powerful ether
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / When the Minimalists were casting paintings as nothing more than value-free objects in the world and the Pop Artists were knocking them off their elitist pedestal, Vincent Smith (1929-2003) was stalwartly maintaining his belief in the form as a conveyor of social reality and, beyond that, an instrument of political assertion. With great substantive range and technical facility, he invested his throat-grabbingly expressionistic paintings of the urban vistas and signature characters of Harlem and Brooklyn — sixteen now on display at Alexandre Gallery on the Lower East Side — with the brimming emotion of the African American nation. He made the work in this exhibition between 1954 and 1972, so the varied subject-matter is perhaps expected. More remarkable is the potent through-line of his vision.
Jobi Bicos: Figuration inside and out
Contributed by Jacob Patrick Brooks / People love to categorize stuff, however silly it sometimes seems. Despite the best efforts of post-modernist artists to remove separations among media, they have proven surprisingly resilient. If you subvert categories, new ones tend to take their place. Jobi Bicos, whose work is currently on display at Lubov on the Lower East Side, is a savvy and interesting artist not because they�re trying to destroy them outright, but because they�re straddling several at once.
Art and Film: The low spark of High Art
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / It’s a rare movie that finds the sweet spot between storyline cohesiveness and minimal exposition as well as great tone. Lisa Cholodenko’s plangent late-nineties gem High Art — her feature debut, now available on Criterion — is one such movie.
Robert Janitz: Reverie over reality
Contributed by Sharon Butler / �Library of a Dream,� Robert Janitz�s elegantly installed exhibition, on view at Canada through January 21, is a knockout. Janitz spent years in intense meditation communities, making paintings that seemed primarily about the physical experience of making the object, reflecting palpable focus and presence. Now he appears compelled to turn his attention gingerly outward and explore a somewhat more playful approach.
Michael Krebber: The poetry in painting?
Contributed by Sharon Butler / I used to think about beginnings, doubt, and irresolution. Lately, though, in my own work and that of other painters, I’ve come to appreciate more rather than less paint on the canvas. It appears that Michael Krebber, now painting in oil, has evolved in a similar direction. In his eighth show at Greene Naftali, two large diptychs, Doll in Pink and La Poupe, look to question his once emphatic emptiness, manifesting more pronounced back-and-forth between layers, edges, shapes and color, more varied brushwork, and, overall, a more intense engagement with paint and brushwork.
Two Coats Selected Gallery Guide: January 2022
Contributed by Sharon Butler / If January feels dreary, cheer up. Take a look at this long, interesting list of exhibtions that are opening in NYC.
Douglas Degges: The aesthetic curiosities of childhood
Contributed by Cody Tumblin / I sat down with Douglas Degges to talk about “Remembering Accardo Tackle,” his recent solo show at St. Ambrose University�s Morrissey Gallery in Iowa. Curated by Christopher Reno, the exhibition consisted of 40 untitled works on paper, made from 2015 to 2021.
Jennifer Coates and the landscape’s afterglow
Contributed by James J. A. Mercer / Mythological characters and creatures from antiquity populate Jennifer Coates�s beguiling solo show �Lesser Gods of Lakewood, PA� at High Noon Gallery on the Lower East Side. Dryads (wood nymphs) peer out of underbrush. Layers of washy acrylic carve out sapphire chambers for bacchanals. An LED Diana hunts herds. The references are not only mythological, however. The figures� proportions and contours trace long paths through art history, from Greco-Roman sculpture to Matisse’s nudes.
