“Daniel Mendel-Black: Naked Paintings,” Modernism, 685 Market St., San Francisco. Through Sept. 1.
Kenneth Baker in the San Franscisco Chronicle: “The juiciness of his paint and his supercharged color make Mendel-Black’s paintings appear almost naive in their exuberance. They look like what we imagine someone might produce if only descriptions of abstract painting survived, no actual examples or reproductions. The irony of Mendel-Black’s performances shows mainly in his use of slack grids to give the paintings a measure of coherence. There and, inadvertently, in the very ambition to make abstract paintings, rather than images, ‘communicate(s) the awkward grace of the living world.’ Mendel-Black does not seem to realize that he participates in one of the great, doomed projects of modernism: to free expression and understanding from mediation.” Read more.
