Tag: Greene Naftali

Solo Shows

David Diao: Impeccable touch

Contributed by Adam Simon / Sometime in the early 1980s, a mural appeared on West Broadway between Spring and Broome streets in New York City, declaring in multi-colored capital letters, “I Am The Best Artist” signed, René. This, and other versions of the mural, were generally considered an embarrassment in the local artist community. I thought the mural, by René Moncada, was an interestingly unsubtle parody of artists’ competition and quest for uniqueness. I thought of this mural while viewing David Diao’s solo exhibition, On Barnett Newman, 1991-2023, on view at Greene Naftali. The exhibition comprises twelve paintings dedicated to the work of another painter, including works that look like an archivist’s inventory.

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Solo Shows

Michael Krebber: The poetry in painting?

Contributed by Sharon Butler / I used to think about beginnings, doubt, and irresolution. Lately, though, in my own work and that of other painters, I’ve come to appreciate more rather than less paint on the canvas. It appears that Michael Krebber, now painting in oil, has evolved in a similar direction. In his eighth show at Greene Naftali, two large diptychs, Doll in Pink and La Poupe, look to question his once emphatic emptiness, manifesting more pronounced back-and-forth between layers, edges, shapes and color, more varied brushwork, and, overall, a more intense engagement with paint and brushwork.

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Solo Shows

Peter Halley: The new unreality

Contributed by Sharon Butler / In his first solo show at Greene Naftali, Peter Halley contends with the new American reality of an increasingly shameless and authoritarian state under which, despite the best efforts of an overstretched free press and an embattled political opposition, the difference between fact and fiction has become increasingly obscured. Halley has outfitted the cavernous gallery with metallic floor-to-ceiling digital prints, tweaked lighting, a handful of his signature paintings, and intermittent sound emissions to create a disturbing sense of unease and “topsy-turvy disorientation. In the back room, as a mordant coda, Halley has included one of Robert Morris’s 1978 sculptures made of classical architectural fragments and a distorting fun house mirror.

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Remembrance

Günther Förg’s late work

German painter Günther Förg died this week, at 61, of cancer. Bruce Weber writes in the NYTimes: Günther Förg, a German painter, sculptor and photographer whose work exemplified, toyed with, tweaked and commented on — sometimes all at once — the broad artistic movement known as modernism, died at his […]

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