Materiality and Craft, LES and Whitney Museum

Holly Coulis at Klaus von Nichtssagend on the LES. The images are way more vibrant in life, and you can see them here: Gallery Link

The table top sculptures as a direct translation of the painting feel absolutely right.

The sculptures visualize space as the glimpses of objects when suddenly seen strange.

Hollly Coulis

At Derek Eller, Nicole Cherubini in Full Moon, her debut there.  Gallery Link.

Making is exposed: medallions clamped on vases, stacked pedestals, and 

Chairs, reconfigured as objects of contemplations that leave one inexplicably staring into their inviting recesses, inverting the process of sitting down with looking in at breathtaking glazes.

Like canvas, chairs provide a predictable and familiar format Cherubini upends with her material decisions.  

Diane Simpson, whose solo room on the Whitney's first floor at the Biennial dazzled with its theatrical, yet domestic displays, shows the collograph apron Armour, 1976, in the superb Making Knowing: 1950-1919 on view there now. Museum Link 

Alan Shields

Eva Hesse

Robert Morris 

A femmage by Miriam Schapiro! The Beauty of Summer, 1973-4.

In 1972 she began to embrace the flowers, patterns, and feminine influences in her work. 

Detail

Betty Woodman's Hydrangeas, from 1987

Mike Kelly's More Love Hours Than Can Ever Be Repaid

Thomas Lannigan Schmidt.

Thomas Lannigan Schmidt

Rosie Lee Tompkins, Three Sixes, 1986, quilted polyester double-knit,  wool jersey, and cotton

Jordan Nassar, A Lost Key, 2019, hand embroidery on cotton and wood frame

Kahill Robert Irving, 100s, 2018 - the firing of money

Detail

Liza Lou's epic Kitchen - such a simple idea and a transformative process

All beadwork

Through kitchen window

Then a mirrored piece by Nick Mauss, Images in Mind, 2018

But the real surprise in a different conflation of flat and real space  at the start of Rachel Harrison's survey.

On the LES: Coffey, Greenbaum, Wong

Susanna Coffey, In Her Studio at Stephen Harvey Fine Art Projects (now closed). A simply delicious painting fiesta celebrating artists in their studios, from a master painter. I use the word in all its implications.  Gallery Link

The artist in her studio

In addition to painting others, Coffey also paints herself working amidst enlarged projections of favorite paintings. Here, the conflagration of marks, creamy, colorful paint and imagery enfold the solitary painter in a vivid, almost tropical world.

Joanne Greenbaum at Rachel Uffner, working in glass in the gallery's front room. These exuberant explorations continue her improvisational working process and love of color and material. Gallery Link

Joanne Greenbaum painting from the aptly titled, joyous "I'm Doing My Face in Magic Marker," up through January 12, 2020.

At Karma, Matthew Wong's Blue, in both galleries: gouaches and watercolors in one space, paintings in the other.
Gallery Link

The shows are extended. Roberta Smith's tribute in the New York Times describes Wong's work and artistic rise: New York Times Link 

When we met in Shanghai in 2014, Matthew was working in ink.

In his visit to my studio, preceding his first solo exhibition in Shenzhen late that summer,  we discussed ink painting, swapping references and comparing notes. n the next five years, his work blossomed, and from my perspective, for the fusion of autonomous mark and surface, layering two traditions of painting.