Contributed by Sharon Butler / As I walk through the dimly lit space behind an elegantly nostalgic bespoke clothing store on the Lower East Side, I feel as if I’ve landed in Desperately Seeking Susan, the iconic film starring Madonna that captured New York creative life of the 1980s. On the other side of a worn red curtain looms Riad Miah’s bright, busy studio. Confronting me is a plethora of colorful canvases, covered with writhing shapes, floating freely on irregular canvases.
Exhibition essay
Jamie Madison: A walk in the flatlands
Contributed by Sharon Butler / At the beginning of the pandemic, when Jamie Madison’s Bay Area studio was less accessible, she settled into her home studio in a rural area of Northern California and got a puppy. Behind her house lay the wild, oak-studded riparian woodland of Putah Creek, and in the front conventional orchards and farms stretched for miles.
Jennifer Riley’s Machine Series paintings
Contributed by Sharon Butler / When Brooklyn artist Jennifer Riley began making large-scale abstract paintings using discarded laser-cut pieces of steel, she connected with a century of artists preoccupied with the deconstructed machine. They ranged from post-World War I Dadaists like Raoul Hausmann and Francis Picabia whose images of humans […]