Raggedy Ann's Foot: Chelsea Pattern and Joanne Greenbaum

Joanne Greenbaum at Rachel Uffner.
Gallery website

For great information, her interview with Phong Bui:
Brooklyn Rail Interview

In a previous post about Mira Schor's exhibition I'd mentionedt aporia, which happens in Greenbaum's work as well. She's not looking to conclude. It's hard to leave a canvas, but she can really do it.

Surface

Joanne Greenbaum

Jocelyn Hobbie at Fredricks Freiser.
Gallery website

I've followed this work for years and it is great to see again. So cheesy and relentless in its quest for a perfect surface.

The way she handles sheer black material is inspiring.

The full image for the detail below: a cat painting! Posters by Ron Nagle...the 1980s so powerfully revived.

Abrupt change / Marcia Hafif.
Marcia Hafif at Fergus McCaffrey, in a knockout show of Italian paintings from her 8-year sabbatical there.
Gallery website

This was a good sized painting, about 48 x 48

Thin color on light, almost muslin surface with maximum reverberation - not so much in the heat of the color but the fragile balance of elements.

Standing straight in front of this painting had the strangest physical effect, as if a portrait.

Marcia Hafif, Italian paintings

A stunning show by Lee Mullican at James Cohan (Chelsea).
Gallery Website

He places color on the tip of a pallete knife and notches, notches, notches.

My favorite. But they were all good, the abstracted ones. Painstakingly made. Gorgeous paintings.

Detail

The works are inspired by the artist's pre-Columbian and Native American artifacts, such as kachina dolls, Zuni wood carvings, Sious pictographs, Navajo rugs and Rio Grande blankets, according to the press release.

The works were made between the late 1950s and the 1960s.

The paintings astonish.

They're big, and the accretion of marks gains real power.

Lee Mullican: 1919-1998.

Juan Usle at Cheim Reid. Gallery website

Small Usles, showing the thinned material (pigment, dispersion) and methodical application

Translucent color, thinly applied in rhythmic patterns tied to his pulse, according to the press release.

An uncharacteristic work.

Stephen Westfall's Crispy Fugue State at Lennon, Weinberg.
Gallery Link

Loved these. The color was cold, dead--and then it wasn't.

So much slippage in reliable shapes.

Solidly painted - one wouldn't expect such magic to happen.

But it does.

Asya Geisberg: Elysian Redux! From press release: "a vast no man's land of 80s' design minutia." Leah Guadagnoli, whose work I've seen in a solo show on the LES at 247365. I believe the horse is a digital print by Ad Minolti.