“ALMOST DELANCEYwith Marina Adams, David Rhodes, and Rebecca Smith,” Hionas Gallery, Lower East Side, New York, NY. Through July 6, 2014. With admirably little fuss, three artists exploit simple materials–thin paint on canvas (Adams), masked lines (Rhodes), and metal strips (Smith)–to generate sharply evocative and eye-catching work. Image at top: Marina Adams, Native Life, 2009, acrylic on linen, 60 x 72 inches.
“Rico Gatson: When She Speaks,” Studio 10, Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY. Through July 13, 2014. Beautifully installed, Gatson’s work continues to mine the territory between politcs and identity, embodying potent abstraction that references both Modernist tropes and African patterns. Studio 10 looks as if it were created just to mount this handsome show. Image above: In this little painting, Gatson is looking very Nozkowski.
“Joyce Robins: Paint and Clay,” Theodore:Art, Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY. Extended through July 20, 2014. Although known primarily for the undulating, disk-like, painted ceramic pieces she has been making for the past few years, Robins started her art-making life as a painter. At Theodore, check out some of her lovely early paintings, like the striking one pictured above from the seventies.
“Colony Room: Zak Prekop, Patricia Treib, Nick Goss,” Simon Preston, Lower East Side, New York, NY. Through August 2, 2014. “Colony Room” presents some of Zak Prekop’s new work (Pictured above: Black with Green/Blue, 2014, oil and ink on canvas, 27 x 35 inches) that utilizes a wider range of color than we saw in his 2012 series of white-on-white paintings. Obliging viewers who like rigorous, carefully executed abstraction, Prekop employs intricate sets of rules to create his layered canvases. In a large painting and several small works on paper Patricia Treib continues her breezy exploration of shape and color, while Nick Goss contributes a tabletop of unpainted plaster figures cast from elaborately folded wooden models as well as one large painting and two drawings, deftly straddling abstraction and representation.
“To Leo, a Tribute, from American Abstract Artists,” Sideshow Gallery, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY. Through July 13, 2014. Small abstract paintings by more than seventy well known artists hang cheek-by-jowl in this AAA extravaganza honoring Leo Rabkin. At 94 Rabkin is one of the earliest practitioners of abstract painting, a longtime president of the AAA group, and a noted folk art collector. Save the date: This coming Saturday, June 21, at 2pm, Rabkin is scheduled to give a talk at the gallery. Image above, left to right: Paintings by Anne Rusinoff, Joanne Mattera and Gilbert Hsiao.
Film Pick: A Coffee in Berlin
In Jan Ole Gerster’s feature debut, Niko, a twenty-something law school drop out, wanders around Berlin trying to get a cup of coffee and meets various characters who symbolize Germany’s relationship with its past. I wouldn’t have thought that a film about Germany’s burdensome history could be charmingly (if bleakly) Seinfeldian, but this one is.
Related posts:
Quick study:Individualists’ edition
Proximity: Thomas Nozkowski and Joyce Robins
Patricia Treib: Pieces
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