Sunday, November 24, 2013

Nature in Chelsea and LES

Julie Heffernan, painting detail from "Self Portrait as Emergency Shipwright," 60 x 84 inches, from her recent solo at PPOW, "Sky is Falling." Typical in her work, close views reward surprises.

Heffernan conflates grand visions of nature with pessimistic perspectives on where it is headed, described in a HuffPost interview here: Heffernan HuffPost Interview Link

In this detail, an encapsulated version of the show's dual palettes

Warm, gnarled, fleshy trees ground the eye from cold, turbulent tides

Color temperatures wend through dystopias and utopias

Historical sites groaning under their own weight. A monument to patriarchy, perhaps? We witness the conflagration from shore.

In the side room, new works by Katherine Kuharic

Displaying her penchant for fine detail and logos in several clean, bright, sizzling hued paintings


Heffernan's Self Portrait on the Brink, 2013, 54 x 66 inches, a detail

and the full painting--circles upon circles, advancing, and surrounding the fortress

Collaboration with Brooklyn-based artist Virginia Wagner that contains the small worlds of Heffernan's paintings as dimensional resting points of hope and redemption within the larger cacophany

Glowing crystal tree trunk

Chinese rocks show three faces--side, back and front--here, writ in color, western style

The painting in full

as context for the tree
Charles Burchfield at DC Moore

DETAIL

Landscape made of gestures: an aficionado of Chinese painting.

Simultaneous worlds and mark making systems

continue to amaze

Greg Kwiatek at Lynch Pham on the LES. Gouache, 9 x 12.

These were beautifully installed. See images here: Lynchtham link


The gouaches are all 2013 and 9 x 12, painted in Maine.

July, 2012, 54 x 60 inches. Filled with the suffused heat of summer and the flicker of coolness one finds as a respite.

Sky III, 2013, 20 x 22 inches. So delicate. There were three of these.

August Moon 1, 2013, 20 x 22 inches. One can see the artist reaching for the perceptual truth of it, head craned back, eyes on the alert and hand, painting it down.

Installation views. These and all images were provided by the gallery, good thing as the gouaches were especially hard to capture in their display case on the iPhone.

From the back of the gallery's front room

and front to back, the beautiful Cloud series with July

Julie Evans at Winkleman. Installation views from the gallery website, photos by Etienne Frossard. At the opening, too much going on to photograph. Evans' previous work, which referenced Indian painting techniques studied on a 2003-4 Fulbright Research Grant, has morphed into looser, more organic pours on mylar that are meticulously collaged and mounted on panel or straight to the wall

The exhibition runs through Wednesday, November 27 has been extended to December 7th!


Julie Evans, Bloodshot, 2011-12
As temperatures dip and winds howl, these shows remind us of the delicate transitions in warmer climes.

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Meditations on Black and Silver

Lester Johnson, in Dark Paintings at Steven Harvey Fine Arts Projects

In situ

Blue used here, and also Ad Reinhardt's Black Paintings at Gagosian and the Wool retrospective uptown...

Lester Johnson: a small portrait in the back room

Christopher Wool at the Guggenheim: DETAIL of the paintings that used incised, decorative rollers for cheap decor.

The text works

Some of the work conjured Donald Baechler's collage drawings
The stammering quality of the black letters, created by white-outs, remains powerful

To edit, and go back, and layer, creates a dense surface that speaks of the compulsion to review one's actions
Palimpsests and echoes of previous attempts

The gestures are printed and painted on again, creating a synthetic feeling
So that the gesture is both photographic and real.

Doorway, Chrystie St.





A mysterious sign at 57 Orchard beckoned on a chilly night

Psyche, it read.

By Lucas Zallman for the exhibition Comfort Zones, curated by Wills Baker in a popup space. The work shown here, from the checklist, is part of the psychic refrigerator series upstairs, "Rewrite with German Silver," 2013. 

Situated in an artist's loft, Zallman's presence is recorded by a working table and large-scale, automatic writing/work on paper. Image from checklist.

Zallman spent several months in New York preparing sculpture and works on paper. Here, "Tension and Relief," 2013.

Made with the aforementioned German silver in a new version of silverpoint: "Harmonic Reaction: Negative," 2013.

View of the first floor.
And in Chelsea, Sharon Louden's front room installation in the exhibition "Community" at Morgan Lehman, which extrapolates colors from, and reflects, a video and wall works that surround it. For sumptuous images, click here: Morgan Lehman Gallery Website