Friday, February 19, 2016

Chelsea Spin: Amy Sillman (1 borrowed image), Eddie Martinez, Jonathan Lasker and Lari Pittman, February 2016

(Photo, Estefania Velez). In the back room at Amy Sillman'sshow at Sikkema Jenkins, she printed gestures on canvas and worked with the found compositions. For images of the show, see Amy Sillman exhibition link
Eddie Martinez also printed on canvas at Mitchell, Innes and Nash, so after viewing Sillman's gorgeous show,  I wanted to see how he'd handle it. For images and press release, see Eddie Martinez exhibition link

Paint, pastel and printing, enlarging sketch into painting

Exuberant combination of materials - a hot sensibility contrasted with Sillman's cooler elegance--tho plenty of psychological heat in her work too--and coded imagery, diagrammed as an image bank in the exhibition booklet she designed for the show.








 Jonathan Lasker's exhibition at Cheim and Reid was a logical next step - a well-practiced medley of gestures co-existing, hand-crafted and excitingly divided.

The Lasker exhibition just closed. See installation photos here: Lasker exhibition link

Detail from a perfectly executed painting. What execution meant when he first began this work and what it means now are two different things--perhaps commentary on disparate but co-existent syntax has become a supreme freedom of gesture.
The large painting




The simultaneous contrast on this painting is not embodied in a photo, but this was alive, buzzing and twitching. A new 'character' emerges on the right, repeating in two new paintings in the show....


 Shifting speed to an elegiac exhibition by Lari Pittman at Gladstone, also now closed: a weird, gorgeous and poignant group of paintings in tribute to Goya's Los Caprichos. There are lines through the canvases like ruled paper adding another layer above the imagery we know. The color and mood of the paintings are dark--unsurprising given the source but for Pittman, muted.
Inspiration: Goya's Los Caprichos (here no. 24)

See installation images at Lasker exhibition link








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