If the imprecision in Todd Chilton’s work (discussed in the previous post) is the result of a slow, intuitive process, the drips and imprecision in Amy Feldman’s work, on view at Blackston through July, have become calculated gestures.
Her punctuated, icon-like abstractions are derived from her drawing practice, and the same seemingly casual attitude is translated from drawing to painting. The images in her drawings, practiced and rehearsed many times over, are studied provocations, decisive and spontaneous –fortuitous indicators for her paintings. Feldman reaches a desired balance in her work. Awkward yet poised, her paintings evoke a toxic-classicism, stunning with their purity and imperfection. (via Blackston)
Feldman’s earlier work uses the same irregular forms, monochromatic format, and drippy paint handling, although on a much smaller scale. At Blackston, her first NYC solo show, Feldman quotes herself, creating large-scale versions of her earlier images, a strategy that reveals, for better or worse, a young artist in the process of creating a brand.
“Amy Feldman: Dark Selects,” Blackston, Lower East Side, New York, NY. Through July 27, 2012.
Related posts:
February round up: Handmade, utopic, urgent and obsessive (February 2012)
MsBehavior in Chelsea (May 2012)
The New Casualists (June 2011)
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"Toxic classicism"; that's a good one.
The Feldman paintings resource Al Held, Ron Davis, Olitski, Morris Louis in a light-hearted mash up kinda way, like color field painting seen thru Pop, without the color and doesn't the irony of that just astound you. Stella Black paintings. She's going to get to her own voice one day, no?
If one makes a small painting bigger does that make it more important?
Toxic classicism sounds great but I m not seeing what's so toxic, other than a tradition hardening into convention, not unlike drapery in Late Antquity Roman manuscripts and murals, fresco's. At some point, the parody of a style becomes so insular as to be labelled out of touch. I mean, not that painting can't be formalist, and certainly painters don't have to be political, but in a time when repugnikans are legislatively assaulting reproductive rights I feel a little disjunctive with a female using a male skeleton to speak.