Award-winning blogazine, primarily about painting
Monday, May 13, 2024
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Eva Hesse, as portrayed in Marcie Begleiter�s superlatively penetrating Eva Hesse, sadly but exquisitely zoned in on mortality as the paradoxical stuff of life and art. She was a vexed woman, her life a tragic mid-century opera. She escaped Nazi Germany as a two-year old […]
Contributed by Sharon Butler / Here’s a quote and some images by Philip Guston: “I do not see why the loss of faith in the known image and symbol in our time should be celebrated as a freedom. It is a loss from which we suffer, and this pathos motivates […]
Two years ago the Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation Space Program joined forces with the Walentas Family Foundation, the philanthropic element of Two Trees Management Company (my landlord). Two Trees owns the Brooklyn building that houses the Sharpe Foundation, which since 1991 has provided free studio space to selected artists via […]
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / David Hockney, in Randall Wright�s rather breezy documentary Hockney (at Film Society of Lincoln Center, extended through June 2), appears to be a thoughtful hedonist, in thrall to beautiful moments. He admits to a fairly happy working-class childhood in Yorkshire and seems to have encountered […]
Contributed by Mira Dayal / There is a sense of unease in the series of paintings that comprise of “Espial,” Jane Swavely’s latest show at A.I.R. Gallery. I enter the space — not of the gallery, but of the painting itself. Hovering just inches above the ground, the edges of the canvas become the frame of a doorway, beyond which thick brush conceals a dark forest. But the tall grass of Werner’s Painting (2015) is not entirely still; as Werner Herzog himself says of the jungle, in Burden of Dreams (1982), “There is no harmony in the universe. We have to get acquainted to this idea that there is no real harmony, as we have conceived it. But when I say this, I say this all full of admiration for the jungle.”
In her solo show at Half Gallery, Trudy Benson presents easel-size paintings that continue her riff on the digital imagery of early paint software like MacPaint, SuperPaint, and Painter. Working in layers with pattern and line, and using saturated color, Benson creates abstractions that seem to jump off the canvas. […]
Links to Nicole Eisenman’s shows, Morley Safer’s paintings, reviews of recent abstraction shows, a writing competition, and the paintings being called “anti-Catholic” in Virginia –> MUST SEE: The New Museum has mounted a major Nicole Eisenman solo show, “Al-Ugh-Ories,” and she’s also having an exhibiton at Anton Kern through June […]
For the exhibition “Chemistry: Explorations in Abstract Photography,” curator Karlyn Benson, director of Matteawan Gallery in Beacon, NY, has selected six photographers who push beyond traditional photographic processes in search of new definitions of what a photograph can be. In this exhibition, on display at Garrison Art Center May 21 […]
Adam Simon could best be described as a conceptual painter. Based in Brooklyn, he has been painting and organizing community projects like Four Walls and the Fine Art Adoption Network for more than 25 years. Lately, though, he’s put community projects aside to work in the studio, where his ironically elegant new abstract paintings riff on the imagery of commercial logos.
The formerly mysterious Baltimore gallery Freddy has relocated to an old church in Harris, New York, a small town between Liberty and Monticello of Route 17. I recently received a press release from gallery director Joshua Abelow about the inaugural show, “Bill and Ted,” which features work by Bill Adams […]
