Award-winning blogazine, primarily about painting
Saturday, May 27, 2023
Contributed by Patrick Neal / Stephen Maine’s abstract paintings, on view at Private Public Gallery in Hudson, NY, hit you head-on with their optically charged surfaces and imposing presence. The gallery, which has a penchant for showing large-scale work, is exhibiting in its main space several of Maine’s signature “residue paintings” – spongy, all-over compositions with gorgeous, saturated colors in acrylic on canvas – that are over eight feet by six feet.
Contributed by Kylie Heidenheimer / I spoke to John Molloy recently about the unusual programming at his eponymous Upper East Side gallery, where his exhibitions often include work by contemporary artists from the New York area alongside antique Native American art, and how studying with Marshall McLuhan at Fordham still influences his perspective. Currently, the gallery is hosting a vibrant three-person show with work by Stephen Maine, Melissa Staiger, and Naomi Cohn called “TECHNIC/ Color.”
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 Sharon Butler / KK Kozik�s novel ICEHOUSE Project Space, located on the quaint town green in Sharon, Connecticut, is an old 10 x 15-foot wooden shed that was once used to store ice from nearby Mudge Pond. Stephen Maine hung his first site-specific painting there this past November. However […]
Artist and critic Stephen Maine sends news that he has curated a show at Alpan Gallery in Huntington, Long Island, “Beauty Marks and Body Parts,” that kicks off the gallery’s guest curatorial program. Alpan, founded by Nese Karakaplan in 1987, is a non-profit space whose stated mission is to support […]
For painters like me, curating group shows, although time consuming, helps articulate more specifically what what we’re investigating in our own work. Here are three good examples of shows curated by painters. Please feel free to leave links in the Comments section if you know of others. “Present Tense,” curated […]
In the NY Sun, Stephen Maine reports that Dieter Roth’s work possesses some of the neo-Dada characteristics of Pop art, but is “as enmeshed with dissolution and decay as his American contemporaries were smitten with antiseptic consumerism. Today, Roth’s greatest notoriety proceeds from olfactorily transgressive works confected of fugitive materials, […]
In his first solo show at Canada, Matt Connors presents a predictably sloppy version of modernism. Although I don’t see the “rigor of an Ellsworth Kelly ” that’s mentioned in the press release (are they pulling my leg?), the awkward color, not-quite geometric shapes and flat-footed paint handling have a […]
In the NY Sun, painter/critic Stephen Maine usually provides an entertainingly illuminating read. This week, Maine considers abstract painters Ruth Root and John Zinsser. “Creative maturation is a tricky business. While no one talks about ‘developing a style’ anymore, many artists do look to refine their approach to core material […]
In the NYSun, Stephen Maine writes that the absence of an artistic vanguard makes everything old new again. “Among the wildly disparate features of today’s art-world landscape, two modes of pictorial thought with venerable lineages have recently re-emerged: materials-oriented abstract painting, and a linear approach to the investigation of the […]
On the UES yesterday I stopped in to see Andrea Marie Breiling’s solo
“Swallowtail” at @alminerech. In the press release the artist says that the paintings are like the swallowtail butterflies in that the closer you get to the work, the more the surface begins to reveal its details, but honestly the details don’t really seem important, overwhelmed as they are by the brash color, the mesmerizing circular action of the mark making, and the mural-sized scale. Natural wonder doesn’t stand a chance next to Breiling’s industrial strength vision, but maybe that’s the point. Love the illusion of depth and the sense of light. On view through June 10.
@alminerech @andrea_marie_breiling #futurism #contemporarypainting #LAPainting #LAArtist
Latest post, link in profile / Ethel Schwabacher: Canon-adjacent? / Contributed by David Carrier / Revisionist arguments about who should be counted among the artistic elite, whether they be old masters or modernists, provide essential stimulus in the art world. They proceed in an established manner. Some reasonably influential figure contends that a significant artist has been unjustly excluded from a particular art canon. Commentaries are published and shows organized making the case for supplementing it. The recent amendments to the predominantly white male Abstract Expressionist elite have proven especially tricky, as issues of gender and race enter the picture. Does Alma Thomas belong? Norman Lewis? What about Ethel Schwabacher? With “Woman in Nature (Paintings from the 1950s)”, Berry and Campbell argue energetically, though not entirely convincingly, that she deserves a place. Link in profile
#davidcarrier #ethelschwabacher @berrycampbell #womenpainters #1950spainting #abstractexpressionism @carrier3909 #twocoatsofpaint
Spread across two floors at Magenta Plains, Jennifer Bolande’s solo, “Persistence of Vision” is as compelling as it is enigmatic. Downstairs, Bolande captures images of fragmented scenes and objects (perhaps from dusty road trips in an old muscle car?), a series of moments that manifest deeper meaning. The work upstairs focuses on the handmade. Rachel Kushner, are you out there? Through June 17.
@magentaplains #jenniferbolande #rachelkushner #lesgalleries #magentaplains #persistenceofvision #contemporaryphotography #plastersculpture
This afternoon I spent some time @platformprojectspace talking with artist (and curator for this show) @franklinevansart and gallery director @elizabethhazan during the last day for “Philosophicalinvestigations” a lovable group show that included faded images of exhibitions past and work by artists who are showing for the first time in the space. It has been a glorious celebration of Platform’s first five years 🎉😀🏆 Congratulations Elizabeth and Franklin. Great show.
#philosophicalinvestigations #franklinevans #elizabethhazan #platformprojectspace
Latest post, link in profile / Rita Ackermann’s alternative dimension / Contributed by Jeffrey Grunthaner / Currently on view at MASI Lugano in Lugano, Switzerland, Rita Ackermann’s solo show, “Hidden,” offers a rare melding of museum-oriented historicism with gallery-style directness. Occupying two cavernous rooms in the museum’s bottom floor, the exhibition comprises four bodies of work, ranging from early sketchbook collages prefiguring Ackermann’s iconic “nymph” paintings of the 1990s to more visceral canvases that explore erasure and disappearance. It culminates in three monumental paintings from Ackermann’s most recent series, War Drawings, which recall murals while also resembling magnified pages of an exploded notebook. Link in profile
@ritaackermann @masilugano @shadowblockedthoo #figurativepainting #ritaackermann #jeffreygrunthaler
Shout out to Salon Zürcher, a satellite fair of Frieze New York, for their 28th Edition of “The Women of Spirit” series, on view through May 21. Artists in this iteration include Bettina Blohm, Petey Brown, Sue Collier, Fukuko Harris, Nancy Manter, Victoria Palermo, Sacha Floch Poliakoff, Jo Ann Rothschild, Sonita Singwi, Jenny Tango, April Vollmer
Images are tagged. Sorry I didn’t take more!
@bettinablohm @__petey.brown__ @Sue_Collier @hukuharri @nmanter2 @victoriapalermostudio @sachaflochpoliakoff @jo_ann_rothschild @sonitasingwi #JennyTango @aprilvollmer_artist
#zurchergallery #womenofspirit #friezenewyork @zurcher_gallery @friezenewyork #twocoatsofpaint #womenartists
Psychedelia reigns @frosch.and.co with JOE WARDWELL’s solo “Present Company Excepted.” These wild layered paintings are harder to read in person than they are in JPEGs. The extra-bold texts all focus on American political divisions and pandemic/post-pandemic anxieties. Through May 28
@joe_wardwell @brandeis_finearts @frosch.and.co #joewardell #froschandco #chinatowngalleriesnyc @uw_paintingdrawing
Jonathan Ryan’s surreal, beautifully-executed landscape paintings remind me of “City,” Michael Heizer’s sprawling land art project built on a desolate outpost in Nevada that looks like a bomb site. Or post-extinction landscapes. Or a miniature golf course on another planet. On view @hesse_flatow through Saturday.
#jonathanryan #hesseflatow #landscapepainting #michaelheizer #miniaturegolfpaintings
Latest post, link in profile / John Walker: Invisible dimensions / Contributed by Lisa Taliano / You need to be in front of a John Walker painting in order to get it. Its luminous qualities, the movement, scale, and touch of the brush...link in profile.
@alexandregallery @ltaliano @johnwalkerpainter #JohnWalker #alexandregallery #twocoatsofpaint
