Award-winning NYC blogazine, primarily about painting
Thursday, April 15, 2021
Contributed by Paul Laster / Blurring the boundary between abstraction and figuration, Ilana Savdie makes colorful canvases that take the eye on a rollercoaster ride through splashes of paint, flesh and body parts. A recent Yale MFA grad who has continued to work in New Haven over the past year […]
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / In the 1940s, Philip Guston noted that the problem with figurative art was that it “vanishes into recognition.” By 1960, he was griping about the conceit that abstract art was “autonomous, pure and for itself.” The tension implied by these two conflicting but evidently valid […]
By Laurie Fendrich / Critics have been lavish in their praise of the Brown, queer-themed figurative paintings by the Pakistani-born Brooklyn artist Salman Toor, currently on view in the Whitney Museum’s first-floor lobby gallery (free of charge to the public). And rightly so. Toor’s pictures touch the heart, and his […]
Contributed by Elisabeth Condon / I’ve been stalking Deborah Brown’s paintings on Instagram, excited about a new series of still lifes. As far as I can tell they originated with #selfportraitwithzeusandpeacockscreen, posted on August 3rd. The painting features dramatic black and white, pushes color out to the sides and flings […]
Contributed by Rebecca Chace / Julie Heffernan is primarily known for her large-scale figurative paintings that seamlessly merge a rococo sensibility with contemporary content. Since “Hunter Gatherer,” her 2018 solo show at PPOW in New York, she has been working on her first graphic novel, fusing drawing with memoir and […]
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / The Trump administration has tried to physically cordon off Mexico from the United States, and presumably would just as soon exclude the country from America’s cultural orbit as well. From that perspective, the Whitney’s judiciously conceived exhibition “Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art” is […]
Contributed by Sangram Majumdar / I have known Gideon Bok’s paintings from before I knew Gideon. Like many of his musical idols, he has an unusual cult following that eagerly awaits the twists and turns in his work, which manages to maintain a thematic focus while, at the same time, […]
Contributed by Sharon Butler / Susan Rothenberg’s invariably forceful and confident paintings have a beguiling twitchiness, created out of layers of agitated brushwork from a restless hand. In her latest solo at Sperone Westwater, she continues to embrace a non-serial approach, presenting paintings and drawings of various objects and animals […]
Contributed by Adam Simon / One of the under-appreciated aspects of art viewing is the way that a given work establishes a certain relationship with a viewer. Mark Rothko famously claimed that “lots of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures.” He may have been trying to […]
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / For a while it looked as though William Powhida might be painting himself into an existential corner. His mission was to sensitize his audience to the hypocritical churn of the art market – to the reality that what made producing something putatively nobler and loftier than […]
Rebecca Purdum: Touch, tactility, materiality
Contributed by Carol Diamond / In very good art, stark opposites like life and death, night and day, and pain and joy co-exist in harmonious juxtaposition, eliciting the powerful fusion ...
Two Coats Selected Gallery Guide: March/April 2021
James Cohen: Elias Sime, TIGHTROPE: ECHO!?, installation view
Brooklyn
Kentler International Drawing Space / Joanne Howard: Skid Marks / 353 Van Brunt St., Brooklyn, NY / April 10 to May 30
Peninsula Art ...
Foraging and Landing: A conversation between Angelina Gualdoni, Fabienne Lasserre, and Sangram Majumdar
Angelina Gualdoni, installation view at Asya Geisberg
Fabienne Lasserre, installation view at Turn Gallery
Contributed by Sangram Majumdar / I think I met Angelina first through a mutual friend Karla Wozniak when ...
Poetic Pursuits: The Truffle Hunters
Left to Right: Birba (dog), Aurelio Conterno in The Truffle Hunters. Image by Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw. Courtesy Sony Pictures Classics.
Contributed by Paul D'Agostino / A few foragers gathered in ...
Kathryn Lynch: Allusive places
Installation view of Kathryn Lynch’s "Between the Streets" at Turn Gallery on the Upper East Side (All photos courtesy of Turn Gallery)
Contributed by Patrick Neal / Sometimes we see something ...
Art and Film: Painter-Spy in Bridge of Spies
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Bridge of Spies begins and ends with a painting. Steven Spielberg’s latest film is a penetrating and affecting consideration of the Cold War, based on ...
Ilana Savdie: Carnival abstraction
Ilana Savdie, Low pitch complicity, 2021, Beeswax, oil, and acrylic on canvas stretched on board, 38 × 48 inches
Contributed by Paul Laster / Blurring the boundary between abstraction and ...
Gallery crawl: Miller, Grabner, Pincus-Whitney, Boyle, Otero, Pope.L, Nelson, Arcangel
Allison Miller at Susan Inglett Gallery
Contributed by Sharon Butler / I stopped by James Cohan on Grand Street to see Michelle Grabner’s beautiful show of small-scale paintings and panel pieces, sized ...
Art and TV: Professor T, an extraordinary burst of mind
Koen de Bouw as Professor Jasper Teerlinck on Professor T
Contributed by Laurie Fendrich / Boy did the otherwise on-the-mark Guardian television critic Lucy Mangan get it wrong. In her 2017 ...
Lauren Luloff: Absorbed into color
Lauren Luloff, F, 2020, dye on silk, 96 x 87 inches
Contributed by Erin Yerby / Lauren Luloff’s semi-transparent panels of silk, in their very stillness, betray a slight flutter of ...