Award-winning NYC blogazine, primarily about painting
Tuesday, April 20, 2021
Contributed by Sharon Butler / In the 1960s, Jack Tworkov began to feel as if he had taken Ab-Ex gestural abstraction as far as it could go without repeating himself. Reluctant to keep making paintings in which the once wild and expressive brushstroke would appear a predictable go-to move determined […]
Contributed by Sharon Butler / Martin Kline’s meticulous and thoughtful abstractions, on view at Heather Gaudio Fine Art, are deceptively simple. At first glance, they might appear merely technically accomplished and visually striking. Drill down a little, though, and they recall the action of Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings and the […]
Contributed by Sharon Butler / Mira Schor’s galvanizingly insistent new paintings continue her exploration of self and the disembodied mind. Many painters traffic in purposeful ambiguity, using metaphor and abstraction to leave meaning-making for the viewer. Schor’s work, however, is not mysterious or enigmatic: her intention is to tell us […]
Contributed by Sharon Butler / In “Dream Paintings,” Ken Weathersby’s solo show at Minus Space, the surfaces of his tidy geometric abstractions feature carefully crafted, oddly shaped holes. Handwritten passages of text have been inserted into the voids, as if the painting were an oversized frame for, and possibly the […]
Contributed by Sharon Butler / Danielle Dimston’s sublime watercolor images have an ethereal, other-worldly quality, as if they were the visual manifestations of a deeply meditative state. In her exhibition at Municipal Bonds, much of the work, spanning the last twelve years, focuses on creating the illusion of light through […]
Now that the presidential election is over and 2020 is drawing to a close, we have begun our annual year-end fundraising campaign. Two Coats of Paint began publishing in 2007, and this past year, thanks to your generous tax-deductible contributions and ongoing support from our advertisers, social media services clients, and the Two Trees Cultural […]
Contributed by Sharon Butler / Walking into Michelle Vaughan’s show at Theodore:Art, visitors are confronted with a small oak bookcase, desk, and chair in the center of the gallery. The walls are lined with forty framed portraits of notable conservative women, meticulously rendered in faded pastels on gray paper, that […]
Contributed by Sharon Butler / CNN reported that the official portraits of former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton have been removed from the Grand Foyer of the White House and replaced with portraits of Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. The Grand Foyer, where visitors to the White […]
Does time exist if there aren’t activities and events to fill it up? According to Aristotle and other philosophers, no. Time is inexorably connected to the things embedded in it. While in Covid-19 lockdown, time passed surprisingly quickly. I learned to keep a schedule and relish, really to look forward […]
Contributed by Sharon Butler / Once I finally dragged myself away from political news, there was a lot to learn. Here are links to some stories this month, from Cy Gavin’s powerful painting on the cover of ArtForum, bike riding in NYC, new graffiti, opportunity listings, a two-part online painting […]
Inna Babaeva: Into the sunny void
Inna Babaeva, “This Time Tomorrow,” Underdonk, installation view, 2021
Contributed by Rachel Beach / Sometimes we let the world bury us, if only temporarily. And sometimes we center ourselves, tighten our ...
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 ...
Hanging on for dear life: Ann Craven at Karma
Ann Craven, Woodpecker (and the Moon), 2021, 2021, oil on canvas, 84 × 72 inches
Contributed by Zach Seeger / “It’s in the eyes,” a teacher told me about a Giacometti ...
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 ...
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: The lives of artists
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s film Never Look Away concerns a German painter named Kurt Barnert (the charismatic Tom Schilling), but it is an unabashed interpretation ...
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 ...