Award-winning blogazine, primarily about painting
Monday, May 29, 2023
Contributed by Sharon Butler / Danielle Dimston’s sublime watercolor images have an ethereal, other-worldly quality, as if they were the visual manifestations of a deeply meditative state. In her exhibition at Municipal Bonds, much of the work, spanning the last twelve years, focuses on creating the illusion of light through […]
Contributed by Sharon Butler / This semester, as readers who tune in to my stories on Instagram and are friends on Facebook already know, I’ve been up in Ithaca teaching at Cornell. One morning at the crack of dawn, I ran into printmaking professor Elizabeth Meyer in the Tjaden Hall […]
Contributed by Sharon Butler / “Postwar Women� is a big group exhibition of more than forty female artists, active from 1945-1965, who studied at The Art Students League. The League, which, with its focus on painting, sculpture, and printmaking, seems very old-school now. It was originally founded in 1875 by independent-minded […]
Brooklyn artist Beth Dary thinks about the individual bubbles in which we all live. She was settled in a new house in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit, and her home, which she had been thinking of turning into a residency program, experienced major flooding and mold damage. She and her family evacuated to New York […]
Contributed by Fay Sanders and Bob Szantyr / New York art fair season is here, and SPRING/BREAK, in its eighth year, has mounted another bold and energized display of contemporary art in an unexpected space. The new location, in a United Nations building, hosts a six-day presentation of work by over 400 artists. More than 100 curators have […]
Contributed by Sharon Butler / I �just read a piece by Rachel Corbett in artnet News about Mitchell Algus, a dealer who manages�a small second-floor space on the corner of Delancy and Norfolk on the Lower East Side. He’s been mounting shows in different spaces for more than 25 years, […]
This year the Independent Art Fair showed a slew of conventionally good paintings, which is not necessarily de rigueur for�the�enterprise�that prides itself on being the most �edgy� and��risk-taking��of the New York art fairs.�On�Spring Studios�at 50�Varick Street, just below Canal, the space was full of natural light, and, as the afternoon […]
“The sketchbook practice is always something I return to when painting or any other more physical work seems too daunting. The intimacy is healing. It�s a safe space where I can fool around with unresolved ideas that no one ever has to see. My sketchbook also acts as a storage place for scraps I don’t want […]
At Gorky’s Grandaughter, watch Zachary Keeting and Christopher Joy attempt to discuss Thomas Nozkowski’s work in progress during a recent studio visit. CJ: That one is pretty crazy! TN: Thank you! And later Nozkowski tells some funny stories about fat cats and curators. Another priceless interview from the guys at […]
Jim Condron has put together a lovable show of crazy sculptures he made using things sourced from other artists and writers. One piece includes a pair of pink crocs — Grace Hartigan’s last painting shoes — and I was reminded of a Rachel Harrison piece I saw this winter @glenstonemuseum . Kind of heartbreaking that Hartigan’s shoes don’t have more paint on them. Swipe for images
Jim Condron: Collected Things
Sculptures from the Collected Items of Artists, Writers and Thinkers
On view through June 17 @artcake_nyc (but closed for Memorial Day Weekend)
Image info:
Grace Hartigan’s Things, 2023
Crocs shoes, paint stick, pillow, steel
antique chair, steel
35 x 45 x35 inches
In the Glenstone collection:
Rachel Harrison, Sculpture with Boots, 2017
wood, polystyrene, chicken wire, cardboard, burlap, cement, acrylic, steel, and pigmented inkjet print
93 x 60 x 46 inches (236 x 152 x 116 cm)
© Rachel Harrison
Rachel Harrison, Sculpture with Boots (detail)
@jimcondron #gracehartigan #leekrasner @pollockkrasnerfoundation #rachelharrison #paintersshoes
(I gave Jim a few coffee pots from my favorite hometown thrift shop —the only store I’ve ever loved. Go see what he did with them ☕️)
On the UES yesterday I stopped in to see Andrea Marie Breiling’s solo
“Swallowtail” at @alminerech. In the press release the artist says that the paintings are like the swallowtail butterflies in that the closer you get to the work, the more the surface begins to reveal its details, but honestly the details don’t really seem important, overwhelmed as they are by the brash color, the mesmerizing circular action of the mark making, and the mural-sized scale. Natural wonder doesn’t stand a chance next to Breiling’s industrial strength vision, but maybe that’s the point. Love the illusion of depth and the sense of light. On view through June 10.
@alminerech @andrea_marie_breiling #futurism #contemporarypainting #LAPainting #LAArtist
Latest post, link in profile / Ethel Schwabacher: Canon-adjacent? / Contributed by David Carrier / Revisionist arguments about who should be counted among the artistic elite, whether they be old masters or modernists, provide essential stimulus in the art world. They proceed in an established manner. Some reasonably influential figure contends that a significant artist has been unjustly excluded from a particular art canon. Commentaries are published and shows organized making the case for supplementing it. The recent amendments to the predominantly white male Abstract Expressionist elite have proven especially tricky, as issues of gender and race enter the picture. Does Alma Thomas belong? Norman Lewis? What about Ethel Schwabacher? With “Woman in Nature (Paintings from the 1950s)”, Berry and Campbell argue energetically, though not entirely convincingly, that she deserves a place. Link in profile
#davidcarrier #ethelschwabacher @berrycampbell #womenpainters #1950spainting #abstractexpressionism @carrier3909 #twocoatsofpaint
Spread across two floors at Magenta Plains, Jennifer Bolande’s solo, “Persistence of Vision” is as compelling as it is enigmatic. Downstairs, Bolande captures images of fragmented scenes and objects (perhaps from dusty road trips in an old muscle car?), a series of moments that manifest deeper meaning. The work upstairs focuses on the handmade. Rachel Kushner, are you out there? Through June 17.
@magentaplains #jenniferbolande #rachelkushner #lesgalleries #magentaplains #persistenceofvision #contemporaryphotography #plastersculpture
This afternoon I spent some time @platformprojectspace talking with artist (and curator for this show) @franklinevansart and gallery director @elizabethhazan during the last day for “Philosophicalinvestigations” a lovable group show that included faded images of exhibitions past and work by artists who are showing for the first time in the space. It has been a glorious celebration of Platform’s first five years 🎉😀🏆 Congratulations Elizabeth and Franklin. Great show.
#philosophicalinvestigations #franklinevans #elizabethhazan #platformprojectspace
Latest post, link in profile / Rita Ackermann’s alternative dimension / Contributed by Jeffrey Grunthaner / Currently on view at MASI Lugano in Lugano, Switzerland, Rita Ackermann’s solo show, “Hidden,” offers a rare melding of museum-oriented historicism with gallery-style directness. Occupying two cavernous rooms in the museum’s bottom floor, the exhibition comprises four bodies of work, ranging from early sketchbook collages prefiguring Ackermann’s iconic “nymph” paintings of the 1990s to more visceral canvases that explore erasure and disappearance. It culminates in three monumental paintings from Ackermann’s most recent series, War Drawings, which recall murals while also resembling magnified pages of an exploded notebook. Link in profile
@ritaackermann @masilugano @shadowblockedthoo #figurativepainting #ritaackermann #jeffreygrunthaler
Shout out to Salon Zürcher, a satellite fair of Frieze New York, for their 28th Edition of “The Women of Spirit” series, on view through May 21. Artists in this iteration include Bettina Blohm, Petey Brown, Sue Collier, Fukuko Harris, Nancy Manter, Victoria Palermo, Sacha Floch Poliakoff, Jo Ann Rothschild, Sonita Singwi, Jenny Tango, April Vollmer
Images are tagged. Sorry I didn’t take more!
@bettinablohm @__petey.brown__ @Sue_Collier @hukuharri @nmanter2 @victoriapalermostudio @sachaflochpoliakoff @jo_ann_rothschild @sonitasingwi #JennyTango @aprilvollmer_artist
#zurchergallery #womenofspirit #friezenewyork @zurcher_gallery @friezenewyork #twocoatsofpaint #womenartists
Psychedelia reigns @frosch.and.co with JOE WARDWELL’s solo “Present Company Excepted.” These wild layered paintings are harder to read in person than they are in JPEGs. The extra-bold texts all focus on American political divisions and pandemic/post-pandemic anxieties. Through May 28
@joe_wardwell @brandeis_finearts @frosch.and.co #joewardell #froschandco #chinatowngalleriesnyc @uw_paintingdrawing
Jonathan Ryan’s surreal, beautifully-executed landscape paintings remind me of “City,” Michael Heizer’s sprawling land art project built on a desolate outpost in Nevada that looks like a bomb site. Or post-extinction landscapes. Or a miniature golf course on another planet. On view @hesse_flatow through Saturday.
#jonathanryan #hesseflatow #landscapepainting #michaelheizer #miniaturegolfpaintings
