The Lois Dodd Report: love poem to Brece Honeycutt

Lois Dodd, a remarkable survey at Alexandre's new space at the old James Cohan, 291 Grand St. Oh this painting! In the middle of the first big room. Slashes of blue-grey surrounded by white canvas--the whole composition an at-speed study until you get to the clothesline up front.

Two works side by side, showing the motif's evolution throughout the years. I believe this is from the '60s.

Also from the '60s. According to the excellent catalog history by Faye Hirsch in what is to date Dodd's definitive monograph, it is revealed that she studied textile design at Cooper Union in the 1950s! and owes the flattening and close-to orientation of her compositions to urban life. 

A beauty from 2021, a veritable haiku to winter, where she's currently residing in Maine.

The paintings are on wood panels. They are blocked in and the foregrounds often elucidated further.

Two autumn landscapes. Seeing these in life, the shifts in light and season come clear.

From the first, quotidian life and geometry play their roles in Dodd's work. She was friends with Alex Katz and through him, knew Fairfield Porter's work well. She was also a co-founder of Tanager Gallery, with then-husband Bill King.

This is such a great painting! In the reals, the slivers of green daylight glimpsed in the washy interior jump toward you, in just the way they would were you to walk in that barn right now. 

Flower architecture.

Dodd insists nature is her inspiration, and she does not invent, but paints directly from life, in situ. And here is how such observation surprises: the shocking clapboard shadows amidst sunny yellow washed shapes.

Fog on a window. This work reminds me of Catherine Murphy, another realist whose interest in daily life involves windows, exteriors and close observation. 

Front room at Alexandre. Hasten to this beautiful exhibition of an outlier artist who remains more relevant than ever. 

 

Carrie Moyer and Sheila Pepe at MAD

A beautiful Sheila Pepe, more vivid IRL in Tabernacles for Trying Times at MAD .

This is a wonderful, even intimate show, documenting the life, times, and travels of a duo comprised of two experienced artists working together in various places and, we can say, historical epochs, as time moves as fast as an on-switch.

Three ink and gouache images from Opera Buffo, a series of 26 drawings on view made at Civatella Raineri in 2019. Really great to see the thinking behind color and shape so directly in another medium.

Sheila Pepe, American Bardo 2.0, repurposed parts from a Chinese table to create a kneeler for bodies to enter the suspended space and transitional time of prayer and spirituality. 

Created on the Joan Mitchell Foundation residency, a playful printed sculpture that, like Opera Boffo, gives insight into how both artists' thinking intersects.

Opera Buffo to left of a forest-like environment, with perches.

Carrie Moyer's large translucent pour painting.

A Moyer created expressly for this show, combining impressions of Italy. Her recent exhibition Analog Time continues the fusion of recognizable and abstract landscape elements.

Who knew this painting derived from a ceramic work that Moyer loves? It was included in the exhibition, but I did not photograph.

Open seating area beneath hanging fabric shapes.

Just This Corner, for 2020, 2021--paracord, yarn, rope. Pepe and Moyer approach abstraction as inclusive, embracing alternative or overlooked materials and populations in their installation.

Some collaborative works

An early Moyer from her Canonical exhibition in 2011. Following her work through the years, the growth and expansion of her language comes clear.

 

Yuskavage/Nozknowski: The New Classics

                                Lisa Yuskavage, New Paintings, through October 23rd. Gallery Link

A lot of play in these images unseen by iPhone. A gun replaces the non-mouths of Bad Girls from the 1990s.

Detail from the big red painting in the back room

Treating cords like strands of hair

Scroll down to see the small study of this painting

As well as this one

Full view of red painting in back. The slicing of space by screen-like backlighting is a new development in the work

For many  years, perhaps forever, Yuskavage works up small studies in larger compositions. These studies have an informal sense about them and a looseness in the paint that is compelling, as is the color.

Another small study. 

At Pace, the late, and great, Thomas Nozkowski's The Last Paintings

These paintings contain Nozkowski's language but don't take the final step in squeezing the image full pitch. The paintings don't suffer for it.

Deliciously weird nests of lines

A sense of release, simplification