Author: Two Coats Staff

Solo Shows

Eric Wolf: Into the fog

Contributed by Sharon Butler / Few artists – even among those dedicated to the landscape – would look at a body of water and think, “OK, I’m going to spend the next 30 years painting this.” Yet, year by year, Eric Wolf has done just that, driven by a fascination with the daily transformation of water’s surface, its complementary relationship to air, its connection with people, and the peculiarly seductive power of black ink on paper. “Two Waters,” on view at Abri Mars, spans three decades of Wolf’s en plein air ink painting, which he did exclusively at two sites: a pond in Chatham, New York, and a lake in Rangeley, Maine.

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Solo Shows

Ruby Palmer: Flowers are forever

Contributed by Peter Schroth / Some subjects are immune to age or aesthetic trends. Like the sprout that powers through the crack in the sidewalk, plant life in general and flowers in particular are irrepressible inspirations for art and have breached the territories of artists primarily known for other, more rigorous forms, from Piet Mondrian to Amy Sillman. Ruby Palmer’s show “Garden Theory” at Morgan Lehman Gallery demonstrates yet again that flowers are forever.

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Biennial

At the Whitney Biennial: Ali Eyal’s mirthless amusement park

Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / The 2026 Whitney Biennial is rightly dialed into the world’s abundant strife, most of the selected artists witnessing and declaring it through materials, context, or concept. Ali Eyal, with his knockout of an oil painting Look Where I Took You – arguably the jewel of the exhibition – takes an exceptionally straight-up approach via content. Composed from the memory of a Baghdad amusement park he and his sister visited before the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, when he was nine, the piece spans the strategic arc of the twenty-first century with improbable lyricism while bravely carrying its immense geopolitical freight.

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Artist's Notebook

Sharon’s Substack / April 1, 2026

Contributed by Sharon Butler / Reading Gary Garrels’ remembrance of Brice Marden in Artforum in 2023, I encountered a Rothko quote to the effect that paintings are about basic human emotions – tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on. I was not inclined to think about my work in that way, so I spent some time reading about basic human emotions, which, in my placid New England family, were generally dismissed without much examination….

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Gallery Guides NYC Gallery Guide

NYC Selected Gallery Guide, April 2026

Contributed by Sharon Butler / In “New York Real Estate and the Ruin of American Art,” an article that recently appeared in the winter issue of October, artist Josh Kline points out that art has long been curated, funded, and institutionalized by the very galleries and collectors who profit from it and the schools that train its participants, without necessarily serving the majority of artists. Most NYC artists are familiar with the story Josh is telling, as many have weathered previous market downturns. Some can remember the 1989 stock market crash, the devastation of 9/11, and the 2008 recession. Now, after what has become a years-long rout, even A-listers like Josh feel compelled to rethink the cost of maintaining a NYC studio as the market for their work has changed.

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Solo Shows

Barbara Takenaga’s pinballing fantasia

Contributed by Peter Schroth / Barbara Takenaga’s current exhibition at DC Moore, “Parallax,” picks up from her 2024 exhibit “Whatsis” and continues an arc roughly twenty years in the making. The works are acrylic on canvas and panel and range from diminutive rectangles to monumental multi-paneled pieces.Takenaga iterates her signature techniques of pouring and handwork seamlessly, in a lead-and-follow approach that balances randomness, intuition, and calculation.

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Resident Artist

Two Coats Resident Artist Dale Emmart, April 12–17, 2026

Contributed by Sharon Butler / In April, Two Coats of Paint welcomes resident artist Dale Emmart. Her work reflects a sustained and expansive meditation on rope — in oil, ink on washi, woodcut, and artist books. For her, it is a widely evocative pictorial object owing to its sheer versatility. Essentially unchanged since the Egyptians first documented ropemaking in 4000 BCE, it admits of a remarkable range of associations: industriousness and energy, lethargy and repose, entanglement and freedom.

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Solo Shows

Lois Dodd: A balm against cynicism

Contributed by David Whelan / I first saw a Lois Dodd painting in 2004. View through Elliot’s Shack Looking South was part of a group show at our college gallery when I was a freshman. The painting absolutely stunned me and served as a touchstone throughout my education and early adulthood. Dodd’s solo show “A Radiant Simplicity” at The Art Gallery at Brooklyn College might have done the same for others.

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Ideas about Painting Museum Exhibitions

St. Francis at the Frick

Contributed by Ken Buhler / There is an unsubstantiated claim in Catholic lore that the number of books written about St. Francis of Assisi (c. 1181–1226) is second only to the number written about Jesus. But keen interest in the life of St. Francis has been continuous. During his lifetime, his many followers had already established a religious order in his name. My particular interest began towards the end of the twentieth century, when my job in the Frick Collection afforded me many hours, essentially alone, in the galleries with Giovanni Bellini’s much-beloved St. Francis in the Desert, which depicts an ecstatic St. Francis in an idyllic landscape. 

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Museum Exhibitions

Kathy Butterly’s small-scale magnitude

Contributed by Bill Arning / Kathy Butterly’s largest survey to date could, in theory, be boring. Thirty-five years of work in the same medium – highly glazed porcelain and earthenware – always at conspicuously small-scale, from four to 14 inches, might sound stultifying. You could perhaps imagine some visitors, having glanced at a sea of colored dots arranged on three massive irregular platforms in roughly chronological order, anticipating a hard slog and a rapid escape.

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Biennial

Doomscrolling 3-D + IRL: The 2026 Whitney Biennial

Contributed by Sharon Butler / The Whitney Biennial 2026 has a knack for knocking the human project, wistfully and ruefully examining the past, and planting dread about the future. Curators Marcela Guerrero and Drew Sawyer, with Beatriz Cifuentes and Carina Martinez, made 300 studio visits, ultimately winnowing the roster down to 56 artists, duos, and collectives. The curators’ definition of what is “American” is expansive; the artists’ birthplaces span the globe, and many have settled in the US after fleeing wars and other forms of political turmoil….

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Museum Exhibitions

Wifredo Lam’s global reach

Contributed by Margaret McCann / “When I Don’t Sleep I Dream” at the Museum of Modern Art traces the odyssey of Afro-Asian Cuban painter Wilfredo Lam (1902–1982). His 20th-century oeuvre encompasses a prescient global combination of influences. Youthful talent afforded him portraiture study in Spain, where he remained for 15 years. But, like Goya, inclination and events pushed his art past appearances.

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Gallery Guides NYC Gallery Guide

NYC Selected Gallery Guide, February 2026

Contributed by Sharon Butler / It’s February and my head is already spinning. I saw a few shows yesterday and recommend a trip to 15 Orient on 72 Walker Street (enter on Cortlandt Alley) to see Mitchell Kehe’s show “Bonded by the Spirit of Doubt,” in which enigmatic composition seems to affirm and concretize the pit I feel in my stomach. If narrative is more your jam, stop by LUNCH, a pop-up space downstairs from NADA headquarters at 311 East Broadway. Bill Arning has curated a show called “Ambiguous Storytellers” featuring Hannah Barrett, Tyler Brandon, Ario Elami, Matthew Gilbert, T.J. Griffin, Paula Hayes, Brian Kenny, Phil Knoll, Steven Lack, Jean Paul Mallozzi, Daniel Morowitz, Donna Moylan, Rajab Ali Sayed, and Erik Daniel White. Don’t miss Hilary Harnischfeger’s “Song for Clouds,” the artist’s fifth exhibition at Uffner & Liu. She crafts handmade objects that uncannily reflect the geological processes of tectonic pressure, sediment layering, and mineral buildup. Two Coats fave Alex Kwartler returns to Magenta Plains with “Off-Peak,” a solo show in which he presents “an inventory of passing attentions” that perfectly capture this age of distraction.

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