Solo Shows

Solo Shows

Lexia Hachtmann’s surreal humanism

Contributed by Chunbum Park / The title of British-German painter Lexia Hachtmann’s solo exhibition “Waiting Room,” at YveYANG in Soho, alludes to David Lynch’s surrealist television series Twin Peaks, in which the “red room” or “waiting room” is an extradimensional space where time does not flow sequentially. The program ushered in the 1990s, when Hachtmann was born. In the moment, the nineties seemed to be the height of the American Century and still evoke nostalgia. Often overlooked is the fact that during this supposedly halcyon epoch, popular culture normalized homophobia, sexism, and racism more than it does now, even when Trumpist backsliding is taken into account. Hachtmann confronts this kind of slippage between memory and reality with subtlety and heart.

Continue Reading →
Solo Shows

Jacqueline Gourevitch: Skying abstraction

Contributed by Jason Andrew / Jacqueline Gourevitch’s resilience stems from restraint and slow observation. From her first solo exhibition in 1958 to the current striking survey of 21 cloud paintings dating from 1965–2018 at Storage Gallery in Tribeca, the nonagenarian has shown that sustained attention to a single subject can yield infinite and dynamic variations.

Continue Reading →
Solo Shows

Nora Sturges’ sublime dystopia

Contributed by Mark Wethli / “Edgy” is a word we commonly use to describe daring or provocative art. If anything has been a measure of artistic success in the modern era, it’s been the degree to which new art pushes the boundaries of the work that came before. The term is usually rooted in the theoretical and formal aspects of art making, but the paintings of Nora Sturges – now on view at Sarah Bouchard Gallery in Woolwich, Maine – transport us to edges of another kind…

Continue Reading →
Solo Shows

Ted Stamm’s conceptual adventurism

Contributed by Saul Ostrow / When Ted Stamm’s career was cut short by his death at age 39 in 1984, he had already begun to attract attention in the United States and internationally. Critics including Edit deAk, Peter Frank, Robert Morgan, and Kay Larson recognized Stamm’s ability to bridge formal rigor with playful urban references. In 1975, deAk wrote in Artforum that “Stamm’s work confounds its own apparent simplicity; the shape’s tense complexity and stubborn definition of itself make it totally the artist’s like an insignia. The color is equally personal, and the painting’s presence is quietly assertive. This is certainly not the elegant nihilism of reductive solutions.” Conceptual endeavors were central to his ambition of making the border between art and everyday life porous.

Continue Reading →
Solo Shows

Randy Wray: Fossils to flowers

Contributed by Mary Jones / In “Prehistory,” Randy Wray’s dazzlingly encyclopedic show at Karma in the East Village, some 37 sequential drawings map a vast exploration of investigative study. Like a library, Wray’s array offers far more material than one can take in over the course of an afternoon. But it is worth trying.

Continue Reading →
Solo Shows

Rosy Keyser’s mysterious depth

Contributed by Katy Crowe / The German noun Umwelt means environment. “ultraUMWELT,” the title of Rosy Keyser’s current solo show at Parrasch Heijnen Gallery, denotes a world of dynamically connected matter. You can read a great deal into it – earth, ecosystems, subterranean root networks, and of course decay. Her work recalls biomorphic/organic abstraction, but the serendipity her process allows gives her paintings bracing and distinctive freshness.

Continue Reading →
Solo Shows

Eric Hibit: The constant gardener 

Contributed by Zach Seeger / Dennis Congdon, whose paintings depict acrid colored heaps of art garbage, once told me, “I tend to appreciate painters who work economically with what they’re given from their surroundings. You know, like my grandmother, who lived on a farm, and would whip up a meal with practically nothing in the fridge.” I too was raised to appreciate this beauty-through-austerity approach, and in light of tariffs and stagnating sales, painting with economy and valuing actual pigment may not just be in fashion but necessary. “The Big Seed,” Eric Hibit’s painting show at Morgan Lehman, is a tribute to physical pigment and the conservationist spirit, and a showcase for acute observational detail and the sheer joy of painting. 

Continue Reading →
Solo Shows

Hope Gangloff: Dashing preconceptions

Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / At first blush, Hope Gangloff’s remarkable new paintings, on view at Susan Inglett Gallery and largely set in a notional rustic retreat, could be mistaken for blown-up greeting cards for vacationing hipsters, perhaps with a sly nod to David Hockney. Pristinely applying acrylic paint, she crafts them like illustrations, and they are unabashedly luminous. But the ecstatic vibe that characteristically radiates from that quality, though present, is winkingly deceptive. While Gangloff paints friends and actively cherishes the intimate golden moment, existential concerns burn through her work.

Continue Reading →
Out of Town Solo Shows

Sam Anderson: Feeling is structural

Contributed by Patrick Ryan Bell / Situated in Baltimore’s Old Goucher neighborhood, art hall has rapidly established itself as a pivotal space for contemporary art. Once a Hells Angels bar, the venue has undergone a thoughtful transformation that embraces its history and urban context by way of significant international artists tailored to Charm City’s audience. In a city shaped by economic precariousness, institutional neglect, and fierce grassroots creativity, art hall presents an alternative model: serious contemporary programming without the trappings of market pressure or institutional polish. Owner and director Shawn Mudd is not looking to feed or mimic New York but instead to divert its pipeline, bringing established artists to Baltimore. Now up is Sam Anderson’s solo exhibition, “There’s a Girl in My Soup,” which features a wide range of her work. It fits the gallery: rigorous, poetic, and strange. 

Continue Reading →
Solo Shows

Camilla Fallon: Womanizer

Contributed by Amanda Church / Following the fleshy path of Rubens, Lucian Freud, Joan Semmel, and Cecily Brown, among many others, Camilla Fallon has recently focused her loose, lush brushwork on the female body’s midsection, specifically the navel. “The Navel Is the Center,” her current show at The Painting Center, consists of eight medium-scale paintings and four very small ones, most providing an intimate view of this inverted body part. Under such close scrutiny, it becomes symbolic, implying vulnerability, contemplation, and introspection. 

Continue Reading →
Solo Shows

Maria Helena Vieira da Silva: Master of the grid

Contributed by David Carrier / Thanks to remarkably cultivated parents, Lisbon-born Maria Helena Vieira da Silva (1908–1992) was exposed to a lot of important art from early on. When she was just five, she saw the work of Paolo Uccello, a clear influence, in London’s National Gallery. Moving to France in 1928, Vieiro da Silva showed in Paris in the late 1920s and 1930s, took refuge from the German occupation during World War II in Brazil (her husband, Arpad Szenes, was a Hungarian Jew), and after the war returned to Paris, where she had a successful career. The expertly installed exhibition currently at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice aims to bring her art to the attention of contemporary audiences. 

Continue Reading →
Solo Shows

Jan Dickey: The art of breakdown

Contributed by Lucas Moran / In art, limitations often define, shape, and mold strengths. We can embrace drawbacks and spin them into gold. An impoverished de Kooning, living off ketchup packets and free coffee, turned to house paint to create some of his most compelling work. A bedridden Matisse cut paper. Scarcity, oppression, impairment – these forces have shaped the course of art history. Rather than relying on convention, Jan Dickey – investigator, tinkerer, and forager as well as painter – has immersed himself in studying how things break down, bond, and hold together. “The High Collapse,” now on view at 5-50 Gallery, is the culmination of that endeavor….

Continue Reading →
Solo Shows

Benjamin Klein’s quiet defiance

Contributed by R. Blake Miller / Benjamin Klein’s solo exhibition “Sentinels and Satellites” at Tappeto Volante Gallery is at once enchanting and unnerving, like the fresh memory of a dream seen vividly even as it slips away. With an unapologetically saturated palette, the Brooklyn-based artist lays down paint in both translucent coats of tinted light and thick pools, blending natural textures with sublime color-mixing techniques. A surreal story involving animals and their plant counterparts unfolds. What initially feels inviting and innocent becomes tinted by dread. Mythic symbols hover beyond easy reading, coaxing viewers to explore their relationships with art more deeply.

Continue Reading →
Solo Shows

Rick Briggs’s compositional irreverence

Contributed by Jason Andrew / It’s refreshing and a little humbling to walk into a gallery and be blitzed by art that’s cleverly derived from years of play, probing, and practice. Rick Briggs’s solo show at Satchel Projects shows us how open-ended and liberating painting can be.

Continue Reading →
Solo Shows

Curtis Mitchell’s powerfully oblivious dogs

Contributed by Adam Simon / I tend to rail against art openings. Few attendees of a crowded art opening ever get to really see the show; the glimpses they’re afforded are more like scrolling Instagram than anything approaching contemplation. I felt differently at the opening of Curtis Mitchell’s pop-up show “19 Black Dogs” at the untraditional talent agency called No Agency on Bowery. The work does lend itself to contemplation, but at the opening of this show, Mitchell’s sculptures – stuffed dogs he purchases on the internet and then abuses in various ways – were contextualized by a young, hip crowd, connected I assume to No Agency rather than to Mitchell. Some appeared to be fashion models. 

Continue Reading →
1 … 4 5 6 7 8 … 41