Thursday, November 23, 2017

Uproot at Smack Mellon, Brooklyn Riverfront

Patrice Robinson, Reparations, 2016, oil on panel, 24 x 36 inches in Gabriel de Guzman's Smack Mellon curatorial debut, Uproot. Gallery Link

Jes Fan's Soft Goods III, 2017. Digital print, 35 x 24 inches. 
Jon Henry's southside Chicago Pietas, digital archival prints, 30 x 24 inches.

Monika Malewska's waterbased painting (24 x 19 inches) asks the ongoing question what DID happen to Sandra Bland. An eloquent reminder of the many questions that plague us, her paint by numbers and aqueous application reinforcing the instability of legalized criminality, fake news and uprooted notions of justice long held dear.  

Katya Grokhovsky's Temporary Habitat, 2017.  
DaoPe Reo's Ad Astra - To the Stairs, documenting mileage from Uganda to Trump's Great Wall. 
Patrice Robinson's Veiled Ignorance, 18 x 24 inches

de Guzman's love of texture and draping comes clear in this stripped tree bark impression, 

as well as Borinquen Gallo's woven thicket of caution strips and plastic, and 

This laser-cut, hand-painted rendition of US Constitution starting with, "We the People..."


Rebecca Graves' needlepoint, January, 2017

A moving, visually compelling augmented reality comparison between WWII and now. 
Zhiyuan Yang's family fantasies
and realities 

Kenneth Pietrobono, 2017. Choose 3 to keep: which would I choose...Global? Progressive? Democracy?
This artist will give a talk December 3rd at Smack Mellon; Facebook link here: https://www.facebook.com/events/292150191275095/

A barge of communal images and texts for the riverfront
Cecile Chong's Veritas Inverso, 2017 - literally uprooting and upending gravity

Sara Jiminez's tapestry of images and cloth
While clouds hover on the horizon, so too does clarity. Artists grappling with material, working out what they know.

PS. Another show nearby to see is Wendy Klemperer's metal animals at the Humanities Gallery, First Floor, LIU Brooklyn (1 University Plaza).

More November: Prince St. Corridor

On my walks across town, I always make sure to pass Tibor de Nagy and Betty Cunningham's spaces with their generous window views. Jim Butler's six new paintings reflect his practice of blown glass and painting in eery, beautiful ways. Gallery Link






At Cunningham, Graham Nickson, a long-standing favorite, combines his passion for Cezanne, geometric acuity and watercolor-lightness in sumptuous new paintings of seekers in landscape. Gallery Link 






















PS. Derrick Adams uptown



and sweet little Peter Doig paintings uptown