Contributed by Margaret McCann / In Sasha Gordon’s “The Hands of Others” at Jeffrey Deitch and Maud Madsen’s “Daisy Chain” at Marianne Boesky, fleshy females are pressed on the picture planes as if between corporeality and social stress. All are self-portraits, but the figures read more as types performing hidden allegories.
Author: Two Coats Staff
Louis Osmosis’ gleeful despair
Contributed by Jacob Patrick Brooks / Titled “PLEASE IT IS MAKING THEM THANKS:),” Louis Osmosis’s debut solo show at Kapp Kapp Gallery in Tribeca feels like a 1,000-piece puzzle that’s been dumped on a table. Everything fits together, but it’s not immediately clear how.
Edith Schloss’s deep cheer
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / As the title “Blue Italian Skies Above” suggests, walking into the exhibition of Edith Schloss’s paintings now at Alexandre Gallery produces a kind of pastoral contentment. But don’t be fooled into thinking she was a shallow, acquiescent Pollyanna. Lurking in that casual lightness is a distinct quality of mortality and limitation.
Sensing Joan Mitchell
Contributed by Barry Nemett / With squiggly marks and brilliant colors bringing the bucolic outdoors indoors, the exhibit Joan Mitchell is a sensual delight. What a treat to feel, smell, and hear the French countryside’s springtime breezes and see its glorious summer’s colors in Baltimore.
Two Coats Selected Gallery Guide: May, 2022
At the galleries this month, look for Eric Brown’s solo at Jennifer Baahng on the UES, Elana Herzog at Cathouse Proper in Carroll Gardens, MOD (the show I curated) at Platform Project Space in Dumbo, Scooter LaForge’s sculpture at Theodore in Tribeca, and “Jump Shot,” a charming group show in South Slope ( or is it Gowanus?) at Tappeto Volante, with Ben K. Voss, Marianne Gagnier, Calvin Burton, Maria Walker, Al Svoboda, Julie Torres, Christopher Peterson, and David Scanavino. In Bushwick, check out “Shelter,” a two person show with sculptures and works on paper by Helen O’Leary and Liliana Zavaleta at M. David & Co. through May 14. At Two Coats of Paint HQ we are hosting Afarin Rahmanifar — our first artist-in-residence since Covid arrived in 2020. Please join us for her open studio (55 Washington Street, #454) on May 5, 6 – 8pm. It’s Dumbo First Thursday, so galleries will be open late, too. –Sharon Butler
Ellen Siebers: The visceral pull of her brush
Contributed by Patrick Neal / For her solo show, currently on view at March Gallery in the East Village, Ellen Siebers has created small paintings in oil on beveled birch panel that are poetic in their open-endedness and straightforward in their embrace of beauty.
Non-intent, or, questioning the tyranny of curatorial premise, at Osmos Address
“Mind the Gaps” at the Osmos space on East 1st Street takes as its curatorial premise that it has no consistent curatorial premise and so offers a welcome respite to the incessant connecting of dots of contemporary life. The curatorial statement of non-intent leaves viewers to “puzzle out their own version of coherence.”
Athletics and Art: An Exchange Between Terry Rosenberg and Zach Seeger
Contributed by Sharon Butler / Coinciding with their individual solo exhibitions at Anders Wahlstedt Fine Art and Gold Montclair that involve sports imagery and content, I invited Two Coats contributor Zach Seeger to talk to Terry Rosenberg about his practice and current exhibition. This is the exchange that took place.
Arlene Slavin: In Sequence 1970 – 2022
On a sunny Sag Harbor afternoon Peninah Petruck stopped by the Mark Borghi Gallery to talk to Arlene Slavin before the opening of her show “In Sequence 1970-2022,” which is on view through April 28.
Zach Seeger: All glory is fleeting
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Not many good contemporary painters fully embrace sports. The subject is burdened by daunting precedent (George Bellows) and mild cliché (Leroy Neiman). But this century, as social media have enabled athletes to reveal and fans to probe the people behind and beyond the moves, sports have acquired greater social and political resonance, sending a stronger demand signal to artists.