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