In Artforum, Genevieve Allison calls Graham Anderson’s exhibition at Nice & Fit one of the more intimate and understated shows currently on view in Berlin. The show is titled “New Paintings and Drawings,” though the works emerged over three years, and one was shown in 2008 at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery in Brooklyn, where the artist lives. Anderson’s pace is slow and his rarefied output reflects a considered, delicate process of making choices and execution.
Allison draws comparisons to painters like Gerhard Richter, Luc Tuymans, and David Hockney in their exploration of photography’s influence on painting, noting that Anderson’s pictorial style carries a digital or graphic imagemaking sensibility. His morphing forms, use of motifs, and flattened spatial dimensions evoke cel animation and low-bit computer graphics. A 2009 untitled painting of a lone cloud rendered in scalloped brushstrokes generates tension between the man-made and natural, and points toward oppositions between interior and exterior landscapes, figuration and abstraction, flatness and depth. Like minimal poetry, Anderson’s paintings reflect an economy of means and a restriction of expression.
“Graham Anderson: New Paintings and Drawings,” Nice & Fit, Berlin. Through March 12, 2010.
“Graham Anderson,” Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, Brooklyn, NY. Through March 21, 2010.
