Tag: Equity Gallery

Gallery shows

Linda Griggs and Allen Hansen: Two for the show

Contributed by Riad Miah / Artists often become domestic partners. It’s an iteration of human nature. For one person to be attracted to another who has a similar creative sensibility and lifestyle is normal and sensible. Well-known examples include Robert and Sonia Delaunay, Dora Maar and Pablo Picasso, and Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. While coupledom can be exhilarating for both partners, it can also be tense, competitive, and destructive. Linda Griggs and Allen Hansen had never considered showing together until settling on their current show at Equity Gallery, aptly titled “Feedback Loop.” They appear to have struck a healthy balance between separation and synergy.

Exhibition essay

Riad Miah: My eyes just heard my brain

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.

Solo Shows

Fran O’Neill: Gestural heroine

Contributed by Riad Miah / The eleven oil paintings in Fran O’Neill’s solo show “Left Turn” at Equity Gallery traffic in vivid, vibrant gestures of color that form softly curved, ribbon-like shapes. While they bring to mind artists like James Nares, Karin Davie, and David Reed, O’Neill’s energetic but self-consciously controlled brushstrokes and honed sense of color and light more directly suggest instants of becoming or emergence. Reaching back so full-bloodedly to revisit gestural painting, and to exploit the expressive potential of abstraction and the flexibility of its formal attributes, somehow seems heroic.