Tag: Clare Gemima

Group Shows

Confrontational color at Analog Diary

Contributed by Clare Gemima / Analog Diary’s group exhibition “Chromazones” – curated by Derek Eller, Abby Messitte, Katharine Overgaard and Franklin Parrasch – features a wide, intergenerational array of artists. Many works, including Clare Grill’s Plant, Pam Glick’s Cat, Dog, Car, Sky, and Yukine Yanagi’s Chrysalis, are traditional oil paintings. Others utilize unconventional materials, such as glitter, which is found in Chris Martin’s Fireflies, or gemstones, which appear in Alteronce Gumby’s I can’t stop thinking about love. And there are ceramic sculptures, like Peter Shire’s Scozzese and Ken Price’s Iggy. The show confronts viewers with abundant color. While that may be a narrow parameter, here it provides insight into each artist’s approach to material and method of application.

Solo Shows

Mie Yim: Hazardous and barely fictional

Contributed by Clare Gemima / Painter Mie Yim evidently can’t quite understand how exciting she is. “Oh, and by the way,” she said as I had one foot out of her Bronx studio, “one of the paintings in the show will be installed in front of a huge mural.” She seemed convinced of the dubiousness of this idea even though she had landed two solo exhibitions and was preparing for both at once. I thought she would elaborate, but her sentence stopped there. Over the course of our conversation, Yim’s high-energy teasing had me waiting like an excited toddler for “Belladonna” at Olympia – in coordination with “Nightshade” at Simone Subal Gallery – to open.

Solo Shows

Erica Mao’s unprotected souls

Contributed by Clare Gemima / In Erica Mao’s paintings, presented in “Reach Through the Veil” at Rachel Uffner Gallery, figures flee from danger. Yet the artist does not allow her characters access to refuge, or any guarantee that safety has ever been in reach. Mao has thrashed paint, then re-painted, and then thrashed paint again to create compositions of furious journeying, beating rhythmic anxiety into her characters’ faces. Somewhat cruelly, Mao locks her figures in unwarrantedly self-assured moments, knowingly rendered short by liquified cliffs, exotic swamps, ominous caves, and sulking tree trunks.