Award-winning blogazine, primarily about painting
Thursday, September 28, 2023
Contributed by Sharon Butler / What conceptual painter hasn�t looked at an Ikea how-to diagram and at least fleetingly thought it would make a fine subject for a painting? David Diao has gone farther, deconstructing a Gerrit Rietveld chair and using the shapes and colors as the subjects for a new series of paintings, on view at Postmasters through March 12.
Stephen Westfall has engaged with geometric abstraction in singularly rich and sophisticated ways for more than thirty years, never complacent but always considered. Last week, I had the opportunity to talk with him at Alexandres new Lower East Side space, where his work is on view through December 22.
Contributed by Sharon Butler / In the 1960s, Jack Tworkov began to feel as if he had taken Ab-Ex gestural abstraction as far as it could go without repeating himself. Reluctant to keep making paintings in which the once wild and expressive brushstroke would appear a predictable go-to move determined […]
Contributed by Sharon Butler / Richard Tuttle, who has lived in New Mexico since the late 1980s, recently got an expansive new studio on Mount Desert Island in Maine. Exchanging mesa views for a perch on the ocean, at the very edge of a country on the verge of a […]
Contributed by Stephen Maine/ On view at the University of Connecticut’s Contemporary Art Galleries through November 29 is “Constructed,” a lively exhibition of seventeen works by five distinguished midcareer painters whose handling of color — as a kind of visual armature — is inseparable from structure. The show’s curator, Museum […]
Contributed by Riad Miah / �Just Hold On,� the title of Gary Petersen�s second show at McKenzie Fine Arts on the Lower East Side, fits the arresting energy of his work, his playful palette, and the rich provenance of his geometric abstractions. Perhaps he is referring to the moment a person […]
The aim of this text, which was originally published as “Facts are Useless in Emergencies” in Peter Halley: Paintings of the 1980s The Catalogue Raisonne, is to provide an in-depth analysis of Peter Halley’s painting as it emerged during the 1980s. I engage Halley’s theoretical writing — which extends his […]
Two Coats Obituaries@_lisa_tan knows how to fill a space. The waiting room entrances with framed prints of Klee, Matisse, etc, the room framing, the large letters, a video viewing room with chairs for an audience @acceleratorsu in Stockholm.
Two Coats of Paint is celebrating National Daughter’s Day by honoring Lena, who some of you may recall was the mastermind behind our Social Media Services Project a few years ago. She has since opened her own business @honeyhomeofbeauty in #OldMysticCT. Love you @lena.alohalani ❤️🏆❤️ Daughter, visionary, and muse.
Image: @meadowflowerphotography #honeyhomeofbeauty @mystic_disc #mysticct
Latest post, link in profile / Elisa D’Arrigo: Between the beautiful and the grotesque / Contributed by Kay Whitney / There is a fundamental paradox at work in Elisa D’Arrigo’s ceramic objects – while they are unmistakably beautiful, they break every standard for what is considered “beautiful.” They are small, shambolic, eccentric objects lacking symmetry; they are not overtly colorful and don’t attempt to please. They are humble, not loudly announcing nor applauding their own appearance; understated and private, the viewer must come to them. Rather than exhibiting the mechanical surfaces of a wheel-thrown or machine-made object, her forms bear the imprint of her hands and in that way reveal the processes of their making. If there is any other artist with whom her work could be compared only George Ohr, the “mad potter of Biloxi,” comes to mind. His small “puzzle mugs” demonstrate the same sensibility — simultaneously humorous and serious, their extraordinary eccentric surfaces and coloration are reminiscent of D’Arrigo’s, exposing a shared aesthetic. Link in profile
@elisadarrigo1 @elizabethharrisgallery @k.whtny #ceramics #chelseagalleries
Image: Elisa D’Arrigo, Making a Move 6, 2023 7 x 6.5 x 4 inches, courtesy of the artist & Elizabeth Harris Gallery
“Something darkly set itself at our senses’ five thresholds without stepping over them,” a cinematic two-person show @bonnierskonsthall with Tulsa Lovell and Sara-Vide Ericson, is a haunting mediation on the past, the future, and the inexorable force of nature. In terms of craft and content, unlike anything I’ve seen in NYC. Or is it? Images are tagged.
@tildalovell @saravidee #swedishartists #konsthall #theatricalinstallation #manvsnature #bonnierskonsthall
Snapshot: Overlooking the Central Baltic Sea from @fotografiska.stockholm. We saw the @shirin__neshat and @therealpeterlindbergh shows — strange combo, but both moving in their own way. The place is dark and loud — more like a nightclub than a gallery. The bar on the top floor is beautiful.
Latest post, link in profile / Inside: Arthouse art house / Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / The set-up of Vasilis Katsoupis’ slickly but somewhat facilely resonant feature debut Inside is deceptively simple. A high-end art thief is helicoptered onto the roof of a luxury Manhattan high-rise and, with the aid of a techie accomplice, hacks into the security system of an absurdly opulent penthouse, owned by a high-end art collector who is evidently away for a season or two. The thief is targeting several of Egon Schiele’s signature vampy drawings and a singularly valuable self-portrait. Link in profile
@insidethefilm #insidethefilm #jonathanstevenson #twocoatsofpaint #filmreview #wilemdafoe #VasilisKatsoupis
Surprise: #PatriciaTreib solo on view in Stockholm @galerie_nordenhake 💥 beautiful paintings, elegantly installed ❤️
Swedish-born and UK-based, artist, activist, writer and eco-feminist Monica Sjöö (31 December 1938 - 8 August 2005) fought for freedom from oppression, but especially for women’s rights. “THE GREAT COSMIC MOTHER” @modernamuseet is her first retrospective. Swipe for the image that was considered blasphemous and obscene in the 1970s.
Rejecting abstract art as a Western male privilege, she asked: “How does one communicate women’s strength, struggle, rising up from oppression, blood, childbirth, sexuality – in stripes and triangles?”
#MonicaSjöö #cosmicmother #modernamuseet #stockholm
