Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Fifteen years ago, Jason Andrew was one of relatively few adventurous impresarios and gallerists who together established Bushwick as a New York art community and destination. For nearly five years, his project space Norte Maar was a steady source of the neighborhood’s sublime, funky buzz of possibility for aspiring, often young, artists. Andrew and Norte Maar have moved on, but he has not forgotten Bushwick. After a ten-year absence, he has returned to curate the relentlessly energetic and eclectic group show “Causality” at M. David & Co.
Tag: Jason Andrew
CounterPointe: Dances with artists
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Last weekend in Brooklyn, for the tenth time, Norte Maar presented its unique and superlative CounterPointe dance-and-art performances. Each included seven dances, each of them a collaboration between a female choreographer and a female visual artist. Interpreting the programs is doubly subjective given that two main variables – dance and visual art – come into play.
5 images + 5 questions for Letha Wilson
Contributed by Jason Andrew / Letha Wilson’s work reflects her persistent intention to unite two sometimes antagonistic processes: photography and sculpture. Over the last decade, she has expanded my (and no doubt others’) understanding of the potential visual and physical convergence of these two mediums. On the occasion of her completion of a Windgate Artist Residency at Purchase College and a solo exhibition at Higher Pictures, I asked Wilson five questions about her past and process.
Twyla Tharp and Picasso
Contributed by Jason Andrew / That a work of art can mean something from generation to generation, that it can continue to reflect not only the time in which it was made but also make us think years later, is what makes it a masterwork. Seldom in the realm of dance, the most ephemeral of art forms, is a work appreciated across disciplines, its worth acknowledged by a broader audience than originally targeted. We are lucky that at any time we can wander into a museum and stand face-to-face with a masterpiece by Picasso, Matisse, or O’Keeffe. We can’t do this with dance. Perhaps as virtual technology continues to expand, we will be able to experience the great dances of our time as if breathing the same air of the performers. Until then, we must wait. It’s been sixteen years since I last saw In the Upper Room by Twyla Tharp.
Frank Owen, trailblazing innovator
Contributed by Jason Andrew / I first came to know the work of Frank Owen over two decades ago through the sculptor Joel Perlman. I stepped off the elevator at Perlman’s studio on West Broadway and immediately encountered an Owen painting. It seemed fitting to discover such a physical painter as Owen through a sculptor. Only recently I learned that the title of that painting was Augmented Position, also fitting insofar as Owen has challenged and changed the way one can experience painting. The proof is in his current show “Retrospection,” on view at Nancy Hoffman Gallery.
The protean paintings of Zachary Keeting
Contributed by Jason Andrew / Whatever strategies an artist employs to express their art intellectual, psychological, or mythological it must be first and foremost visually striking. In his first solo exhibition in New York, painter Zachary Keeting clears a high bar with a stunning set of ten paintings, on view at Underdonk through March 27.
The new theatrical space of Amy Lincoln
Contributed by Jason Andrew / Amy Lincoln�s soaring trajectory has locked in the natural world, the phenomena within it, and the epic world of myth. Ten new paintings now on view at Sperone Westwater embrace these pervasive elements while exploring a bold new theatrical space.
Pam Glick’s code theory
Contributed by Jason Andrew / Artists often have generative strategies for jumpstarting a work. The AbExers had their automatism and the minimalists had their procedural arrangements. For her new paintings, on display at The Journal Gallery in their rotating Tennis Elbow series, Pam Glick seems to embrace both the automatic and the procedural.
Joan Snyder: Painting from the inside out
Contributed by Jason Andrew / In a 1976 Cincinnati Enquirer review of Joan Snyder�s paintings, the reviewer, Owen Findsen, surmised that she had �picked up a little of this, a little of that � and made it all uglier.� While he found her work offensive, even questioning it�s validity, for […]
The objectness of Rachael Gorchov
Contributed by Jason Andrew / There is a long history of artists expanding the objectness � that is, the sculptural dimension � of painting. Picasso and Braque introduced this concept in their assemblage works; Vladimir Tatlin broadened it in his �counter-reliefs� alongside Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoventhe, the �Dada Baroness�. For the […]