Contributed by Sharon Butler / Katie Butler (no relation to me as far as we know) creates vivid still life paintings that dive into the fraught realms of American politics and economics, riffing ironically on the “kitchen-table” and “bread-and-butter” issues affecting average people that political figures are supposed to address. While she establishes a journalistic sense of authenticity by sourcing her imagery from White House archives and the Ohio Statehouse, the discrepancy between reality and painted presentation raises burning questions about the veracity and integrity of the sources.
Tag: Hesse Flatow
Elizabeth Hazan: Playful visionary
Contributed by Patrick Neal / Elizabeth Hazan’s exhilarating oil paintings, on view at Hesse Flatow gallery in Chelsea, marry old-school color field abstraction and loopy, gestural shorthand. Her medium-sized and large-scale canvasses fluctuate between recognizable landscape formations and patchworks of chromatic passages. In a style that is seriously playful, elemental motifs like trees and lakes are rendered as simple squiggles and glyphs straddling blocks of heightened color combinations. The paintings feel worked but never labored, and unleash the uniquely expressive power of color, line, and scale.
Annette Hur: Painful, elegant mortality
Contributed by James J.A. Mercer / There is an undeniable lushness to the paintings and textiles in Annette Hurs solo show Watching from the Other Side at Hesse Flatow in Chelsea. Elegant shapes shine through dappled light and leaves. Oils blur, drip, or dive across the surface at wild angles. But discolorations and deformations suggest that something is unresolved, something is in process.
Devra Fox’s eccentric realism
Contributed by Jonathan Goodman / Devra Foxs thirteen graphite drawings on view at Hesse Flatow in Chelsea, two blue and the rest gray, depict structures organic in presentation but with an eerie resemblance to manmade objects such as furniture.
Carl Dalvia’s Wry Subversion
Carl DAlvias show at Hesse Flatow, “Sometimes Sculpture Deserves a Break,” is a playful, irony-laden take on the hyper-masculine minimalist sculpture canon.

















