Thursday, September 14, 2017

Early September: Met, Chelsea, LES, Uptown


Lynette Yiadom-Boakye at the New Museum, now down.
New Museum Link

Brushy portraits with an all-at-once feel.

Figures on par with their surrounding when there are surroundings--a world where figure and object  are interchangeable, eschewing hierarchy.

Odele E. Zhang's pop-up at Parasol Projects. She views painting as live action, an act of 'broadcasting' completed in the moment.
My favorite of her works. I met Odele at Shanghai's Saltworks in 2014, where she was live-painting asking for input to complete the work. She takes the position that a painter is a medium, a transmitter.


Parasol Project Link

A wiggly panorama from the Met's Streams and Mountains Without End,  recently open.
Met Link
We begin from the right, streams and mountains separate but harmonious.
Continous activity in front, behind, side to side, up and down, the mixture.
The fusion begins. Clouds and mountains, the antinomy which is breached through water (a hackneyed paraphrase from Francois Cheng).
In another scroll the role of water, nascent at first.
Expanding with time.
Mature 
Tang Di, Southern Song-Yuan Dynasty period










Li Huasheng (1944). Lines of ink cross-hatched on rice paper. Beautiful display of movement, focus, imperfection.
Zheng Chongbin (1961). Ink poured, stamped to create landscape space.

Back to scroll painting. Mo Shilong, Ming Dynasty. Follower of the Don Qichong school of stylized reverence for Yuan Dynasty Masters...here, Huang Gongwang.

Wang Jian, Qing Dynasty, trained by a student of Dong Qigong again paying homage to the venerable Huang Gongwang. 


A primer on landscape painting 




The dragon's back and feet
Ink landscape from the 1980s











Don't miss this show...farewell for now.
Flower and Bamboo, Ming Dynasty - from the Basketry show, now closed. NYT Review
Qing Dynasty, Bamboo Branch with Berries and Birds
Li Kan, Bamboo and Rocks - Yuan Dynasty, my all-time favorite period of Chinese painting 
Xia Chang, Bamboo in Wind, Ming Dynasty--gorgeous! Painting related to calligraphy: meant to be 'read' as much as visualized.



Zheng Xie's Misty Bambooo on a Distant Mountain, Qing Dynasty (four hanging scrolls)
Light touch so well integrated with the basketry!
And another fusion of two and three dimensions.
Here, a dynamic combination of texture...I love its simple, bold forms and use of ink.
Others love a world of gestures too, here late Monet.
And here, Terry Winters and Pat Steir.
Intermission - the beloved Joan Miro!
His beautiful farm painting

Balthus!
Georgia O'Keeffe, quintessential in this moment
To Michael Berryhill's A Window, Adore at Kate Werble.  Gallery Link

















Chelsea - Thomas Eggerer at Petzel. Gallery Link


The show's conceit is that street space is used as living space.

There are some beautiful details...

Lisa Oppenheim's A Durable Web at Tanya Bonakdar. Gallery Link
Photos of textiles. 

Actual textiles.




The show explores themes of alienation from labor--and reconnects  us to textiles in fragments, abstracted, and framed--to be looked at.

At Hauser & Wirth,  a museum-quality Art Povera survey curated by Ingviled Goetz. Above, most of a reptile by Mario Merz. The neon puts me in mind of Mary Weatherford.
Giovanni Anselmo (1934) - Projezione della mia ombra verso l'infinity  at Arte Povera, Hauser & Wirth
Gold-leafed shoe soles
Algihero Boetti's Tutti
Mise-en-scene, triggering beloved memories of Art Povera shows in the '80s...









Michaelangelo Pistoletto.




Auriel Schmidt at PPOW: I Rot Before I Ripen. Gallery Link
Flowers, doodles, adolescence, bawdy humor.

September show...
Flowers, snakes, skeletons, etc. "co-exist in a hyper erotic landscape of sex and death."

There is a beautiful, exuberant world in this show.
Janet Fish, Poppies and Pinwheels at DC Moore  (works 1980-2008)
Gallery Link
I have long loved this artist. The complexity that happens when large forms are broken down under light in paint...her celebration of daily life...her active mark-making.
Kara Walker at Sikkema Jenkins. Gallery Link

Beautiful ink, collaged textures, paint like nappy hair.
And fast painting, to the point, horrific, stomach-turning, breezy.



The show was a shock; hard to handle the imagery--the artist let it loose and there is no holding back.
Mary Corse at Lehman Maupin. We visited her studio in Topanga in my UCLA student years! I have never forgotten her paintings, her use of street divider paint and now, a glittery black, evenly applied but dramatic.
Gallery Link
In their reticence, their almost automatic production, they carry great impact.
Detail from Franklin Evans' paintingpainting at Ameringer McEnery Yohe. 
HowI loved this analogue of Evans' art historical favorites.
Gallery Link


Slicing and splicing art history - the multiple personae within us  externalized in the reprisal of signatures and manners of painting.





Leslie Wayne's Free Experience at Jack Shainman. Detail.
Gallery Link

She speaks of the free-form moment when vision and recognition coalesce, refreshing one's vision as if for the first time--
Through fortuitous hybrids of two and three dimensions
We enter a fourth, an illusory, familiar and unfamiliar terrain
Detail
In which the double take transports us somewhere new.
Excavations and Certainties: Teri Hackett and Shari Mendelson at John Molloy
Gallery Link
Some small Hacketts. Teri Hackett has been building a head of steam for some years, venturing into a jazz-like syncopation of material and surface.
While Shari Mendelson recycles antiquities within elegant new forms.