Intermission

Pleased to be a MacDowell Colony Fellow through October 23rd. Will surface for my solo show Effulgence, which opens at Emerson-Dorsch Saturday, October 12, 6 to 9 PM. See you there! Gallery Link

Super-fast BOS

En route to Brooklyn Wayfarers, a quick stop to see Leslie Jane Roberts in a wonderful group show, Secondary Sources, at Tiger Strikes Asteroid. Gallery Link 

And Lauren Portado's foliage paintings in Night Blindness at Transmitter: Gallery Link

Osamu Kobayashi in a two-person with Elisa Lendvay at Underdonk. Lendvay recently exhibited with Sargents Daughters. Gallery Link

Kobayashi--technical feats of performative mark making.

1717 Troutman: a work on from Cynthia Lin's Venus series. These are reminiscent of Lee Mullican's abstractions shown at Cohan 26th St. location some years ago (show before last), but they have a different, more ephemeral physicality as they are oil on mylar, not canvas, and the marks lighter throughout.  Artist Website

Camilla Fallon at Simone di Laura's Peralyne Projects pop up, 1717 Troutman:Artist Website 

Simone di Laura's painting of swimmers. Artist website

Blossoming Seeds of Vision at China Institute

Fragrance of Peonies by Nancy Cheung in Blossoming Seeds of Vision at China Institute. Gallery Link

The exhibition of student work attended by Mo and her friend.

Joyce Thompson's As the Sun Lingers/Twin fish glide through/ the muddy pond.

Theresa Beyer and her landscape homage.

Joyce Thompson with Nancy Cheung.

Sungsook Setton, painter, China Institute instructor. Her works below:

Gay Lee's Dragonfly on the Lotus Pond.
Congratulations to All!

Out and About

Huang Hai-Hsin's Blondes, 2018, 40.25 x 50 inches at Eli Klein, Paintings from Taiwan.Gallery Link 

Liu Chi-Hung's Lintou, 2018, 27.5 x 39.3/8 inches. This painting shows the lively attention in brushwork endemic to a calligrapher.
This show was reviewed by John Yau in Hyperallergic, but I dare not read it, or it may impact my post. Here's the link for you: Hyperallergic Review by John Yau

Hsiao Chin's Due Universi, 2004, approx. 55 x 43 inches. 

Yang Mao-Lin's Wanderers of the Abyssal Darkness. Crestfish L 1904, from this year. 85 x 57 inches. Worlds within worlds...

Su Wong-Chen's Chinese Valentines Day, 2017. Such delicacy inside the movement of paint : true in most of the works on view.

Chou Tai-Chun's Bck to Pandora, 2017, acrylic on canvas grommeted to the wall--a dynamic composition  celebrating the tension between internal and external forces.

Hu Chau-Tsung's Home -Private Island, 2015, and

Hu Chau-Tsung's Progressing-4, 2018. Hu seems to speak to a mediated landscape of his own invention, collapsing memories and images in ways they are actually remembered. The landscapes are also wild and civilized, collapsing the epic terrains of scroll painting into camera-ready views.

Quick takes from You are So Loved and Lovely at Fridman Gallery: Here, Wura-Natasha Ogunji's  Lagoon, 19.5 x 24 inches, embroidery, ink, graphite on tracing paper. Gallery Link

ruby onyinyechi amanze, detail, at the same time or in coexistence with, 2019, ink graphite, photo transfers, metallic enamel, 31.5 x 55 inches the whole drawing.

Ridley Howard, from Light Paintings at Marinaro Gallery. Gallery Link

Billed as paintings that "navigate a space between American scene painting, cinema, poster design, and graphic abstraction," these works summon the Patrick Nagle 1980s with stunning artificiality.  

The surfaces are delicate, edges soft, and paint creamy to belie the graphic shapes.

My LA childhood embraces these simultaneously shallow and withdrawn images, essentially dreaming machines. 

Space for projection.

This morning, Debra Jenks told me about the William Pope L's crawl, entitled Conquest.

Volunteers representing a cross-section of New York were chosen by the artist to execute a crawl across the city, starting in the west village, moving through Washington Square Park, and ending up in Union Square.

As Pope L. took the stage, I began to reminisce about the crawls, and to project what the volunteers might encounter in their day. 

And at the time of posting, what was just beginning here has completed. This project was funded by Public Art Fund , in coordination with MoMA and the Whitney for Pope L's upcoming exhibitions.

Chelsea: Landscapes for Troubled Times

A painting from Julian Hatton's Bewilderness at Elizabeth Harris Gallery. Gallery Link
This is a really small painting, not included in the exhibition catalog (with essay by Karen Wilkin). It's an easy painting to like, friendly, reminiscent of the early American painters.

The chances, the moves, and color, in the 24 x 24 inch "finch" get interesting.

The older "oso dormido" (sleeping bear) (2017-18), strongly recalls Elliott Green's swiped paintings, Pierogi's October show. It is clear why this painting is included, though, it is limpid, whole, and beautiful. 

A larger work on canvas, 60 x 60 - flatfootedly titled "streaming" - takes the lovely Chinese compositional device of breaking a path three times so we metaphorically complete the journey on our own.

Wishbone Point, 60 x 60, starts getting crazy in the way Hatton's work can do, sounding every possible note through his paintbrush, so that we know that space is a construction. Yet it's the chances he takes in these that also get our attention: "no!" I exclaim on the hokey flowers up front, yet still traverse the setup.

Tamarack Creek is overwhelming, yet conveys such a lovely mood of dusk. The brushwork is so loose, so physical, it is a joy to dwell in the world of pure paint.

Marco Maggi at josee bienvenu, an unexpected stop and great surprise. Here, Maggi's obscure  visual language, taken from abbreviations such as NYC and later, OMG, is created of small fragments, viewable by flashlight.

Gallery Link

The delicacy and care of the installation invites slowing down.

Works on paper in back, treated the same, meticulous, even obsessive way.

Anni Albers at David Zwirner, 20th St., an exhibition of her amazing textile designs and weavings, too.

Gallery Link

Detail of above

Seen close to 

Also at Zwirner, a Paul Klee show from 1939, the year before his death. His renowned grids give way to subtle transformations that speak to the upset of leaving Germany for his native Bern, Switzerland, and the illness it caused.

Yet the loose brushwork, the segments that are not divided by line yet implied, and the drawing approach is exciting.

This could have been done today. Paul Klee, 1939. Gallery Link

Sarah Sze: "In the age of the image, a painting is a sculpture." Gallery Link

Quoting Zadie Smith's The Tattered Ruins of the Map, Sze queries, "After the rupture, after the apocalypse, amid the ruin of cables and wires, someone might ask: what was the purpose o all those images within and through which we lived?"

Upstairs, a smaller f image transmission from computer to projection, combining the stuffs of the  artist studio and all sorts of wacky, hand-made technologies.

Really curious to see Brian Alfred's show at McEnery, as I've been listening to his podcast  http://www.soundandvisionpodcast.com preparing my own exhibition.

Alfred masks his paint, letting loose in increments. High Rises and Double Visions

The view of the New Museum on the way to my studio becomes iconic.

A small painting in the back. Textural tremors among knife-sharp edges.

Gary Hume at Matthew Marks, enamel surfaces unfurling themes of destruction. Gallery Link

The odd color is inspired by news photographs of classrooms destroyed in Middle Eastern conflicts.

But the thrill to me is the pouring, the chances taken with each painting--teetering on the edge of ruin itself.

The heavy enamel, its reflective presence and flawless surface, pull the eye in like fire, and yet the color is so odd, so matt, and dense.

The world is reflected in it, and in this it reflects the world.

Jenna Gribbon's debut exhibition at Fredericks Freiser, featuring personal narratives and young girls wrestling. She is an agile painter, but my favorite part about her work is how the atmosphere supports the figure. Here, the painting looks back. Gallery Link

Monkey by Calder in the grand, new Pace. Gallery Link

Catherine Howe's Pleasure Garden at WinstonWachter: direct pours speak to a world run amok. Gallery Link