Raggedy Ann's Foot

Friday, January 31, 2014

Year of the Wooden Horse, 2014 - New Years Day

Happy Chinese New Year!!! The Year of the Wooden Horse, from what my friends tell me, will move quickly and well, if one is decisive. What a perfect year to spend six months in Shanghai!

My hard drive crashed last week, eliminating images from exhibitions on the LES by Susanna Coffey (Harvey), Daniel Domig (33 Orchard), Todd Chilton (Feature), in Chelsea: Josephine Halvorsen (Sikkema Jenkins), Melissa Meyer (Lennon Weinberg), Larry Poons (Ameringer Yohe), Martha Clippinger (Elizabeth Harris), Angelina Gualdoni (Asya Geisberg), Ingrid Calame (James Cohan--with a wonderful artist talk with Fred Wilson, moderated by Isolde Brielmaier), plus group exhibitions Eight Painters, curated by Paul Behnke, including his work, Julie Torres, and Brook Moyse at Kathryn Markel and Clouds, curated by Adam Simon (who has a solo show opening at Studio 10 next week) at Lesley Heller. I'd love to see Franklin Einspruch's exhibition, The Fire To Say: Comics as Poetry at Winkleman's Curatorial Lab, which synthesizes his interests in Asian painting, poetry and narrative with those of his peers, attend Mernet Larsen's book signing today at Vogt, and next week the openings for Deborah Brown at Lesley Heller and the group show Azzetagh at Outlet, Bushwick.

But for now it's to the studio, Chinese drills and Chinese New Year. Gong Xi Fa Cai! Happy New Year!! 恭禧发财!

Sunday, January 12, 2014

Two visions, a preview

Two approaches to form, surface and facture are found in current exhibitions by painters Susanna Coffey and Melissa Meyer. Coffey is exhibiting on the Lower East Side at Steven Harvey Fine Art and Meyer in Chelsea at Lennon, Weinberg. I have followed these artists for a long time; their work reveals many dedicated years of painting. Click the links below to see how each separates and merges form and space, or both simultaneously.

Susanna Coffey at Steven Harvey Fine Art
Coffey catalog pdf

Melissa Meyer at Lennon Weinberg
Melissa Meyer Flipbook

Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Miami Snippets and Farewell to Year of the Snake!

Marc Desgrandchamps at Galerie Zürcher, ABMB

Marc Desgrandchamps also notes that hidden images sometimes appear involuntarily : « Fluidity is a state of instability, of no-control that occasions a sort of lack of control of the shapes. Transparency, with the superimpositions it produces, also reinforces this state and determines these visual disturbances, which exist in the same sense as memory or speech disturbances. »1 (from Galerie Zürcher website, Link)

Carol Prusa's acrylic and silverpoint dome at Zadok, Art Miami. The acrylic domes are programmed with LED lights that cycle through stages of illumination and accompany meticulous silverpoint drawing over pours that have been whitened as a base. Her show of dimensional works made at Kohler opens at Zadoc on January 12th.

Robert Kushner at DC Moore. I am increasingly excited by his work. On DC Moore's website, he says,“I never get tired of pursuing new ideas in the realm of ornamentation. Decoration, an abjectly pejorative dismissal for many, is a very big, somewhat defiant declaration for me. … The eye can wander, the mind think unencumbered through visual realms that are expansively and emotionally rich. Decoration has always had its own agenda, the sincere and unabashed offering of pleasure and solace.”

Jiha Moon - an installation of new ceramic works and works on paper at Ryan Lee Gallery

I loved the small space, altar-like presentation and dimensional images one finds in Moon's work

Ryan Lee is a new gallery on 26th Street and this is their booth at Miami Project

Link to Ryan Lee Gallery

Siebren Versteeg at Emerson Dorsch, Wynwood

Viersteeg begins each new print with a portion of one that came before, replete with dripped sides, reinforcing and denying its painterliness simultaneously.

Detail of Viersteeg's painterly programming

Also exhibiting--Dave Hardy, whose sumptious, tactile works were shown at Regina Rex earlier this fall, where Viersteeg is co-director. The two artists have frequently collaborated, for example their project, Spirit Tours, most recently located at Recess, NY in 2010 (Link), which was featured on this blog in May 2010.

HAPPY 2014!