Contributed by Sangram Majumdar / Matt Bollinger’s show, “Three Rooms,” on view at Zürcher Gallery through March 2, comprises paintings, maquettes of interiors, and a hand-painted stop-motion animation that runs nearly twenty minutes. He works up the Hudson Valley and has a full-time teaching position in the painting program at SUNY Purchase, so he’s endlessly busy, but we managed to … read more… “Matt Bollinger’s fictional universe”
Farley Aguilar’s screamingly urgent figurative paintings
Contributed by Sharon Butler / Farley Aguilar’s paintings, on view at Lyles & King, are based on vintage photographs of 1920s and ‘30s seaside beauty pageants and images of female Nazi collaborators having their heads shaved after World War II. The contrast is jarring at first but fits into an insightfully integrated sense of powerlessness … read more… “Farley Aguilar’s screamingly urgent figurative paintings”
Maya Brym: Exceedingly magnanimous
Contributed by Sharon Butler / Brooklyn artist Maya Brym’s vivid new paintings, on view at Frosch & Portmann through February 24, invigorate domestic life with a sense of lightness and clarity. Geometric shapes defined by stencils and masks are painted in bright colors with wide, transparent brushstrokes. The shapes conjure water bottles, bowls, fruit, potted … read more… “Maya Brym: Exceedingly magnanimous”
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: Call it soulfulness
Contributed by Matt Mitchell / Reviewers have compulsively apprehended Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s loving images of dark-skinned people as manifestations of black identity politics, despite the artist’s insistence that those issues are not central to her work. And, in fact, her paintings can yield some penetrating insights about the new figuration when the viewer looks beyond race. On view … read more… “Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: Call it soulfulness”
Two Coats Selected Gallery Guide: February 2019
February is a short month, which makes visiting all the shows that much harder, but before the onslaught of NYC art fairs in March (the 6th through 10th), try to visit some galleries, either IRL or online. After all, we can’t spend every minute obsessing over Adam Schiff’s investigations, the House Committee hearings, SC Mueller and the Russia probe, team Trump indictments, impeachment progress, … read more… “Two Coats Selected Gallery Guide: February 2019”
Beyond the legend: James Baldwin at David Zwirner
Contributed by Gabriel Fine / It seems oddly fitting that the exhibition “God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin” begins not with Baldwin’s face but with his eye. Hilton Als, the writer and New Yorker critic who curated this masterful show at David Zwirner, is quick to remind us that the show exists … read more… “Beyond the legend: James Baldwin at David Zwirner”
Fiction (and curatorial statement): THEY’RE MADE OUT OF MEAT
The following short story, “They’re Made Out of Meat,” was written by sci-fi writer Terry Bisson and published in Omni Magazine in 1990. An archly bizarre tale in which two higher-order extraterrestrials marvel at the fact that humans are composed of flesh and blood, it is the inspiration for an exhibition curated by Jennifer Coates at Platform Project Space. This inventive, wry piece of … read more… “Fiction (and curatorial statement): THEY’RE MADE OUT OF MEAT”
Art and Film: The lives of artists
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s film Never Look Away concerns a German painter named Kurt Barnert (the charismatic Tom Schilling), but it is an unabashed interpretation of Gerhard Richter’s life. Its style is seductively elegant and its script at once discursive and oblique – qualities that make the story’s ugly intrigue … read more… “Art and Film: The lives of artists”
EJ Hauser: Innocence and wonder
Contributed by Sharon Butler / In her new painting exhibition “Barn Spirits” at Derek Eller, Brooklyn-based artist EJ Hauser features ungainly, diagram-like landscapes with flat, unmodulated color generated by way of a layered process that conjures screen-printing or crayon drawing. The new imagery, presentational rather than transformative, expands the substantially abstract visual language she introduced … read more… “EJ Hauser: Innocence and wonder”
Catalogue essay: Jennifer Riley’s Machine Series Paintings
Contributed by Sharon Butler / When Brooklyn artist Jennifer Riley began making large-scale abstract paintings using discarded laser-cut pieces of steel, she connected with a century of artists preoccupied with the deconstructed machine. They ranged from post-World War I Dadaists like Raoul Hausmann and Francis Picabia whose images of humans were crafted from machine parts, … read more… “Catalogue essay: Jennifer Riley’s Machine Series Paintings”