Fecundity: Stopa, Church, Kushner, Parlato

Seen at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston--an astounding Florine Stettheimer composition (Lake Placid), setting the tone for today's post  on fecundity: new combinations that surprise us into seeing differently. Digital file

Jason Stopa in the group exhibition, Breaking the Frame at Hollis Taggart
Gallery Link

Stopa. Interior space, illusion, abstraction, all of the above? Alluding to Mattisse's insouciant Nice paintings,  Patricia  Trieb, Trudy Benson, Howard Hodgkin. I wish there were more, but the show is on for two more weeks, until December 14th.

Two small Amanda Church paintings from her recent solo debut at High Noon Gallery,  Recliners.  Gallery Link 

Similarly to Stopa, Church converges a variety of perceptual forms in new combinations. She does draw from a rich history of posterized figuration, as one way to put it: Roy Lichenstein, Tom Wesselman, John Wesley.

Also Will Barnet.

In unexpected alliance with urban graffiti, wherein puffy letters become body-like.

At DC Moore, By My Window, the recent Robert Kushner show. Kushner is a master of the square and the inversion, both painterly concerns we share. From his earliest P&D performance work to now, he remains a light-hearted virtuoso. This painting shocked me in its immediacy of mark, a fluency of touch that seems almost raw compared to more projected-looking line. 

Robert Kuschner detail

Robert Kushner inversion. He is excitingly painting on fabric, returning to his early foundations.

Pictures don't do these paintings justice: Carolanna Parlatto in Catch and Release, her solo exhibition at Morgan Lehman on through December 14th. Gallery LInk

Mistress of the Pour. Big, blobby shapes that over the past years have increased in nuance to thick and thin, light and heavy weights.

The way we see has changed. Now proportions, weights, color blocks and techniques represent our increasingly fictionalized world. This bodes well for painting.