Author: Two Coats Staff

Solo Shows

Katherine Bradford: Heaven on Earth

Contributed by Rick Briggs / To one growing up Catholic, heaven and hell were in no way, shape, or form mere metaphors for possible destinations in the afterlife. They were very real places to spend all eternity, either heavenly salvation or eternal damnation. Forty years ago, Katherine Bradford proposed an exhibition to Chris Martin and me titled “3 Catholics.” While it never took place, the idea was to gather three lapsed Catholics who shared that particular cultural grounding and also similar painting values, and who were all now earnestly in pursuit of our new religion – Painting. This memory came wafting back to me the morning after viewing “Arms and the Sea,” Bradford’s solo show of remarkable new paintings at Canada.

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Artist's Notebook

Stockholm exchange

Contributed by Kasper Nihlmark / During a two-week trip to New York City from my native Sweden, I had the chance to catch a glimpse of the city’s art scene firsthand. As a sculptor, I was predisposed to wander about sculpture parks and museums. The Pratt Institute’s Sculpture Park, which stretches across its campus in Brooklyn’s Clinton Hill, showcases more than 70 works and a wide range of techniques and materials. Notwithstanding its broadly educational purpose, each piece is well-chosen and nicely integrated with the rest. Among the most striking is Nova Mihai Popa’s Ecstasy, a joyful composition of positive and negative shape. 

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Solo Shows

Ann Craven’s wistful nighttime tales

Contributed by Natasha Sweeten / As children, we learn that nighttime is for hushed voices, unlit rooms, and the chance to briefly disappear into our dreams. In her latest show “Night” at Karma, Ann Craven fully embraces the enchantment of the wee hours. Her paintings, swathed in darkness, capture quiet moments, and the imagery could easily have been conjured from bedtime stories. Yet they’re not all warm and fuzzy. 

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Conversation

Michael Brennan’s moving images

Two Coats of Paint invited painter Kim Uchiyama to sit down with Michael Brennan to discuss “Floating Weeds,” Brennan’s fourth solo show at Minus Space. In their wide-ranging conversation, they discuss Japanese film, Russell Lee’s photographs, Charles Olson’s poetry, Venetian lagoons, architect Carlo Scarpa, Homer, and more.

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Group Shows

An Italian American colloquy with Joanne Mattera and John Avelluto

On the occasion of “A Legacy of Making: 21 Contemporary Italian American Artists,” a sprawling group show on view at the Calandra Institute through January 12, 2024,  Two Coats of Paint invited John Avelluto, one of the artists in the show, and Joanne Mattera, the mastermind behind the whole project, which began as an online exhibition called “Italianità,” to talk about growing up in Italian families, and how the experience shaped their lives and their work. John currently has a solo exhibition on view at Stand 4 in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, too.

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Group Shows

The uppercrust on display in “Wave Pattern”

Contributed by Jacob Patrick Brooks / The lofts of downtown New York occupy a special place in American art history. They functioned most importantly as incubators for Abstract Expressionism in the 1950s, eventually giving way to the galleries of the 1980s and 1990s. Today, the spaces once occupied by Barbara Gladstone, Pat Hearn, and Willem de Kooning have been replaced with Uniqlo, Nike, and expansive apartments for the super wealthy. In “Wave Pattern,” a downtown apartment show on the sixth floor of an unassuming Broadway building, art world scions Dylan Brant and Max Werner provide some relief from this cluttered, big-box nightmare. 

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Solo Shows

Stephen Whisler: Smoke signals

Contributed by Natasha Sweeten / In Stephen Whisler’s solo show “Past is Prologue” at 325 Project Space, I seem to have stumbled onto an archeologist’s record of discovery, showcasing a vanished world. Three large black-and-white charcoal drawings are straightforward portraits isolating simple, mysterious organic structures. The two cast-iron sculptures strike me as rendering long-lost implements whole again. This work is imbued with a somber sense often associated with scientific research. Yet lurking within is a playfulness, and a tender, vulnerable unraveling.

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Solo Shows

Rebecca Morris: Resisting beauty

Contributed by Sharon Butler and Jonathan Stevenson / Rebecca Morris, a masterly abstract painter who could do pretty if she wanted to, insists that when a painting starts to look beautiful she catches herself on and pivots to more discomfiting territory. That kind of grim integrity and its visual realization has an austere appeal, but there’s no need right now to get into the niceties of infinite regress or meta paradox. Judging by her solo show at Bortolami, parsimoniously titled “#31” after the number of solo shows she has presented during her career, Morris does consciously resist the pursuit of visual beauty and representation. The large-scale oil-and-spray-paint works are all untitled, distinguished only by parenthetical number indicating the year and the order in which the paintings were made. Each canvas is replete with vivid color and divergent shapes but embodies an irresolute and disconsolate state of play. This could ramify for a given viewer in any number of ways – though not, presumably, as lovely.

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Interviews

Daniel Giordano’s sculpture: Memory fueled, magically sprouting

Contributed by Kari Adelaide Razdow / Daniel Giordano’s sculptures, some of them currently on view at MassMoCA and Visitor Center in Newburgh, NY, it is possible to decipher a deeply personal language ensconced in forms and symbols. His works defy easy classification while honoring memories that inhabit his industrially tinged studio in Newburgh, NY, once his family’s clothing factory. His freewheeling use of materials and evocative titles suggest a comprehensive embrace of sculpture as a repository of humor, narrative, and poetics, as well as a means of integration and rupture alike. There is a logic underpinning the wild combinations and ambiguous forms in his work. It resonates with echoes from the past and suggestions of the future, like a postcard from someone we have not yet met.

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Out of Town

Stockholm’s art scene: Gracefully forward

Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / A sense of continuity and integration permeates Stockholm’s grand state museums, its smaller konsthalls, its bountiful old salons, its stylish established galleries, and even its hipster-ish artists’ spaces. Just as consistently, though, contemporary assertiveness challenges tradition. At least on the evidence of an unavoidably incomplete late September visit to the city, the net result is contained vibrancy, exciting and inventive but also richly contextualized and sensibly progressive.

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Solo Shows

Ron Linden’s eccentric abstraction

Contributed by Katy Crowe / Ron Linden’s exhibition “re.dux” at 478 Gallery in San Pedro is a welcome introduction to a large body of visually engaging abstract work that invites interpretation. His reductive, conceptual approach has persisted while evolving. Linden’s palette is minimal, mostly ochre and shades of black with, now and then, red oxide and cobalt blue. Included in his tool kit are staples of traditional painting, commercial and scenic art from which he also borrows tricks of the trade, such as forced perspective, stencils, and faux-finish techniques. The show comprises 16 medium-to-large paintings and a dozen smaller ones installed as a single set. They all adhere to his minimal palette, and most are acrylic and charcoal on canvas, just two on paper. 478 Gallery’s generous exhibition space allows for plenty of air between works, and the consistent palette, punctuated by a spot of red oxide here and there, makes for visual coherence. 

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Gallery shows

NYC Selected Gallery Guide: Nov 2023

Welcome to the Two Coats of Paint painting-centric guide to galleries in New York. Interesting shows this month include Keltie Ferris at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, Katherine Bradford at Canada, Fran Shalom at Kathryn Markel, Ann Craven at Karma, and Yinka Shonibare, who is exploring African abstraction in his solo at James Cohan. A group show at Marinaro called “The Triumph of Death” seems to suit the mood of the past few weeks, as does Yevgeniya Baras’ solo at Sargent’s Daughters. She began the series of paintings while she was on a summer residency in Tel Aviv. We’re intrigued by images of Anna Berlin’s work at Olympia. Are the paintings made in grayscale or are the pictures black and white? Must run over and check them out IRL this week.

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Gallery shows

Hudson Valley Selected Gallery Guide: Nov 2023

New stuff for November: Last month we produced a handy interactive map of the galleries in the Hudson Valley region for the Two Coats Gallery Crawl, with links to both the galleries and to their location on Google Maps. As out-of-towners, we found it incredibly helpful driving from space to space, so we have decided to create a version for use year-round. Readers can find a link on the menu bar at the top or click here to take a look. Keep in mind it’s a work in progress, and more galleries will be added shortly. Note that a couple of galleries have closed for the season: Elijah Wheat and the Re Institute.

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Group Shows

The sea: Vulnerable and mysterious at Field of Play

Contributed by Jenny Zoe Casey / The title of the group exhibition “1,000 Year Current,” on view at Field of Play Gallery in Gowanus, refers to the time it takes for a particle of water to circumnavigate the earth. Curated by gallery director Matt Dogsdon, the show encompasses a generous range of linked subjects, from the sea’s primal mysteries to its vulnerability to climate change.

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Solo Shows

Charline von Heyl’s audacious eclecticism

Contributed by Barbara A. MacAdam / Where to begin in exploring Charline von Heyl’s formidably eclectic and multifaceted show of new paintings at Petzel Gallery? She embarks on a visual discussion with her mostly nineteenth- and twentieth-century European and American predecessors and counterparts in a tour de force. The show, cluttered yet precisely deployed, demands equally targeted unpacking, close looking, and an individual assessment of each painting on its own terms.

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