Tag: Stephen Maine

Solo Shows

Joseph Fucigna: No designated endpoint

Contributed by Richard Klein / The ellipsis in the title of Joseph Fucigna’s current show “In Process …” at G-Town Arts signifies a story unfolding. Known for abstract, biomorphic sculpture made with everyday plastic materials, he has given up sculpture for painting. He had, to be sure, ventured into painting earlier with pieces like Indian Yellow_Green Gold_Black Wash Drip, importing onto canvas gravity-induced sags and drips that occurred in his sculpture. But in newer paintings such as Untitled 2_22, which incorporates scraped and sanded acrylic, he reveled immersively in what materials and labor could produce strictly on a two-dimensional surface. In creating the Pressed and Squeezed series from 2024, he employed monoprinting techniques and controlled accidents, applying acrylic paint to homemade clay board panels and then manipulating them to leave an irregular skin of paint that he then pressed onto the painting’s surface, causing wet paint to ooze through the gaps and tears.

Group Shows

AAA at 90: Keep on looking

Contributed by Leslie Roberts / The exhibition “Abstract by Definition” at Art Cake celebrates the 90th anniversary of the American Abstract Artists (AAA). The show is subtitled “An Index,” but is not one in the usual sense – not, that is, an itemized set of categories, styles, intentions, or formal languages defining abstract art. Curator Saul Ostrow has instead organized groups of several works – usually four. This installation effectively highlights the particular qualities of each piece, and emphasizes the diversity of what we call contemporary abstraction.  

Conversation

Suzanne Joelson: Collecting information into sensation

Contributed by Leslie Wayne / For as long as I’ve known Suzanne Joelson – over 40 years now – she has pushed the limits of painting, much as I have tried to do. In what is now an abundantly expanded field, though, I have wondered whether we have much to push against anymore, which makes the endeavor all the more challenging.

Solo Shows

Stephen Maine’s hands-off abstraction

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.

Gallery shows

Conversation: UES gallerist John Molloy

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.”

Catalogue Essays

Catalogue essay: COVER THE EARTH by Stephen Maine

Curated by artists Elisabeth Condon and Carol Prusa, “POUR,” an exhibition that examines the use of poured paint in contemporary art practice, opens this week at the Schmidt Gallery, Florida Atlantic University, in Boca Raton, Florida. Condon, a painting professor at University of South Florida and Prusa, a painting prof at FAU, tapped Stephen Maine to write the essay, which references Pollock, Kaprow, Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, James Brooks and others.

Hacked

The Thrust is abstraction

“Freeze Frame,” curated by Elizabeth Cooper. Thrust Projects, New York, NY. Through February 17. Artists include Lisa Hamilton, Jasmine Justice, Joyce Kim, Alisa Margolis, Carrie […]