Tag: Gary Stephan

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

Enzo Shalom’s meandering brush

Contributed by Sharon Butler / On view in the upstairs gallery at Bortolami, Enzo Shalom’s paintings – modest in image and muted in palette – carry a quiet intensity that has felt rare among young New York painters in recent years. At a time when traditional painterly bravado dominates, Shalom takes a different route, making vulnerability seem like a radical act. His work leans into restraint: awkward angles, washed-out tones, and just enough mark-making to read as intentional without seeming overworked. If you can imagine early Luc Tuymans’ bleached-out hues, EJ Hauser’s jagged lines, and Gary Stephan’s off-kilter compositions, you’ll land somewhere near the world of Shalom’s paintings. It’s a subdued, thoughtful space, low-key but deeply engaging.

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Studio Visit

Gary Stephan’s steadfast modernism

Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Gary Stephan has been an abstract painter for over fifty years. His command of that vocation – touch, line, color, concept – is duly acknowledged. But he is far from content. Stephan came of age at what was arguably the extended peak of modernism, when creative people across the board presumed to tackle existential problems for the ages.

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Gallery shows

The upstate line

Contributed by Laurie Fendrich / The Subject is The Line at the Thompson Giroux Gallery in Chatham, New York, is a handsome, beautifully installed exhibition of the work of fourteen established artists.

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