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Solo Shows

Peter Plagens’ portals and vortexes

Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / At Nancy Hoffman Gallery, Peter Plagens’ bracing new abstract paintings don’t so much as invite you in as dare you not to enter. Each canvas consists of three basic components: a painted frame of washy gray or brown; a pristinely rendered hard-edge shape, assertively opaque, centrally positioned, vertically symmetrical, and horizontally striated; and scattered, seemingly directional slashes. The second feature propels the paintings, but the other two steer them. The distinctly dilute vagueness of the frames might impart risk, the pesky shards impulse, and the vivid, intuitively color-coded ramps expansive fate – humble versions of Jacob’s Ladder, vouchsafing a future that need not be feared, at least distantly echoing one of Dave Hickey’s blithely peremptory and eminently arguable mantras: “Beauty is and always will be blue skies and open highway.” 

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Solo Shows

Su-Mei Tse, composer and orchestrator

Contributed by Joe Fyfe / A large souvenir brochure accompanied Leonard Cohen’s “I’m Your Man” tour in the late 1980s. It included, among an assortment of photographs of him and reproductions of his sketches, a thousand-word essay titled “How To Speak Poetry” that has had a second life on the internet. In this singular artistic manifesto, Cohen admonishes singers that they are “among the people. Then be modest. Speak the words, convey the data, step aside.” On the next page, he tells them to “think of the words as science, not as art. They are a report.” If an audience appreciates the event, “it will be in the data and the quiet organization of your presence.” Su-Mei Tse’s current exhibition at Peter Blum Gallery seems to freshly embody Cohen’s abiding concern with presentation and how an artist must address an audience.

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Museum Exhibitions

George Morrison, Native American modernist

Contributed by Laurie Fendrich / Before going to see “The Magical City: George Morrison’s New York” at the Met, I did not know a Native American artist had been part of the Abstract Expressionist movement. The 35 works in this exhibition include paintings and drawings made during Morrison’s two stints in New York – the first in the late 1940s, when he was in his early twenties, the second in the mid-1950s – along with paintings from his 1980s Horizon Series. The best paintings come from the artist’s New York years, when he was committed to full abstraction.

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Solo Shows

Jane Haimes: Rehabilitating geometric abstraction

Contributed by Michael Brennan / A painter I once knew – a highly regarded abstractionist, modernist, and lover of Matisse as well as a popular professor – praised the work of a student during a critique. One of his colleagues, a postmodernist painter not so well regarded, said dismissively, “I don’t know, all I see are some colors on canvas.” The first painter replied hotly, “What the hell do you think painting is all about?” Another time, I invited a painter, now sadly sidelined, to join me at a survey of contemporary abstraction. There was a pregnant pause, “To see what exactly, Michael … shapes?” Many remain skeptical about the relevance, meaning, and remaining potential of manipulating shapes and colors. But Jane Haimes is still fruitfully exploring the possibilities. She understands that as long as there is painting, there will be shapes and colors, so we ought to make something of them.

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Gallery shows

A nocturnal dance at Springs Projects

Contributed by Patrick Neal / As we orbit Winter Solstice, marking the shortest days, longest nights, and coldest temperatures of the year, along comes the perfectly timed exhibition, “Night Traveling in the Early Country of the Imagination” at Springs Projects in Dumbo. The show, which presents the work of multimedia artists Donna Dennis and Tommy Hartung, is dark, atmospheric, and hauntingly beautiful, evoking the season’s long shadows, monochrome palette, and stark beauty.

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Museum Exhibitions

The Columbus Museum of Art’s clever tribute to Artemisia Gentileschi

Contributed by David Carrier / Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–1654) has been much celebrated for two generations, in a now vast critical literature. And she has had numerous museum shows, some large. Both the intrinsic quality of her paintings and her difficult and extraordinary life as a female Italian artist warrant the praise and attention are warranted. How then could the Columbus Museum of Art, which owns just one Gentileschi – Bathsheba (1635–37) – duly highlight her achievement in its current exhibition “Artemeisia Gentileschi: Naples to Beirut”? The story is remarkable. 

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Books Writing

Susanna Coffey: One of the last artists standing

Last Artist Standing, Sharon Louden’s compelling new anthology, features essays by a selection of artists who have managed to pass 50 and still make art. Such persistence and durability are especially impressive considering that many of their art school pals have given up the studio and resigned themselves to “real jobs” as building contractors, real estate agents, lawyers, psychotherapists, librarians, and more…,

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Gallery shows NYC Gallery Guide

NYC Selected Gallery Guide, January 2026

Contributed by Sharon Butler / Because of you, Two Coats of Paint will continue to thrive in 2026. Your contributions will enable us to continue producing these painting-centric monthly gallery guides that help the painting community discover exhibitions in New York City, the Hudson Valley, and beyond. Cheers to another year of great art, great writing, and great community, despite the dark days ahead….

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Gallery Guides Hudson Valley & Vicinity Gallery Guide

Hudson Valley (+ Vicinity) Selected Gallery Guide, January 2026

Contributed by Karlyn Benson / Happy New Year! January is a quieter month in the Hudson Valley, but there is still plenty of great art to see around the region. From north to south, Barbara Todd: Undoings opens at Opalka Gallery in Albany on January 20. Three solo shows open at Catskill Art Space in Livingston Manor on January 17: Richard Barlow, Lisa Craft and Ellen Driscoll. Yura Adams’ solo exhibition Marvel’s Cabinet opens at WAAM in Woodstock on January 23. At the Millbrook Library The Color of Growth with Irja Bodén, JoAnne Lobotsky, Patrick Neal, and Colin O’Con opens on January 9, and on January 10, a two person show with Susan English and Laura Moriarty opens at Kenise Barnes Fine Art in Kent, CT and CRAZY, a group show curated by Jaime Ransome opens at BAU in Beacon. Also on January 10, Boundaries: Beth Dary, Amy Kupferberg, Rita Maas, and Mary Negro opens at Yellow Studio in Cross River, NY.

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Conversation

Susanna Tanger: 50 years around Mulberry Street

Contributed by Natasha Sweeten / A few winters ago, in a small town upstate, I met my neighbor, the artist Susanna Tanger. She’d invited me for tea, and as we got to know each other I felt grateful to have a kindred spirit nearby. Her paintings seemed to grow from concentrated, layered planes of light, the soft colors humming and communing with river vistas framed by her studio windows. Our neighborship was brief. Susanna returned full-time to her Soho loft, where she’s lived and worked since 1975. But her short biography seemed compelling: she’d arrived in NYC in her early twenties to a burgeoning art community, maintained a studio practice, and raised two children as a single parent. I had the urge to learn more about her.

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Solo Shows

Ana Benaroya: Sexual politics burlesque

Contributed by Aaron Michael Skolnick / Ana Benaroya’s solo exhibition “Eternal Flame” at The FLAG Art Foundation is a joyously absurd exploration of the female body and masculinity. As a child of the ‘90’s making my way from room to room bouncing between fields of color and exotic scenarios, I can’t help but think about the burlesque quality of American Gladiators and the World Wrestling Federation’s images of women. But Benaroya is also serious about sexual politics. 

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