From Color Field to Figure: a Friday in Chelsea

Kenneth Noland at an amazing group show on 10th Avenue at Kasmin.

Helen Frankenthaler. Working her stain technique with new-at-the-time acrylic.

Frank Stella. Sumptious, subtle color passages.

Frankenthaler at Kasmin.

Julies Olitski: "paint suspended in air," his vision realized by airbrush.

Morris Louis. The late pour paintings--made in a small apartment. Almost like Chinese painting.

Morris Louis again--at Kasmin.

Detail, Louis, left side.

Translucent detail, upper Louis, right side.

Larry Poons at Lauretta Howard/Danese. Look at those pours upper left! Dynamic marks balance throughout.

What an amazing group of paintings! Poons, following his own path.

A fractured mark reminiscent of Cecily Brown, but pastoral landscape as well.

One feels weather, temperature, density--yet there is no overt image.

Poons works on top of pours, to ravishing effect.

Transition: Shinique Smith at James Cohan: light brushy paintings, almost like drawings, with hanging laundry sculptures.

Charlie Roberts at Kravets Wheby.

Crazy moves but they fall together in a way that feels real.

Lower left corner a ravishing compilation of marks and form.

Peter Williams at Foxy Production. This, a limpid, gorgeous painting--the surface is lovely.

More Williams, opaque and transparent mixing with inventive, almost Imagist shapes.

A new delicacy of touch in Williams.

Taking the biomorphic shapes up front into small, private ruminations in the back room of Foxy Production.

Color miracle--180 from Color Field, yet a spareness and restraint reminiscent of that time.
It was a beautiful day. More images to come.

More Pour

Angelina Gualdoni, Opening the Gates, 2011, 47 x 52 inches

Monday, Pour opened at the FAU Schmidt Galleries in Boca Raton, FL.
http://www.fau.edu/galleries/pour.php
 
Today Sharon Butler published Stephen Maine's essay for the exhibition catalog (Tyler Emerson-Dorsch wrote the other) on her blog Two Coats of Paint.
http://www.twocoatsofpaint.com/2013/02/catalogue-essay-cover-earth-by-stephen.html

Raphael Rubenstein published a review of Roland Flexner's recent exhibition at Chris D'Amelio for the Brooklyn Rail.
 http://www.brooklynrail.org/2013/02/artseen/roland-flexner-2

Pour features the works of Carrie Moyer, Kris Chatterson, Ingrid Calame, David Reed, Jackie Saccoccio, Roland Flexner, Carrie Yamaoka, Angelina Gualdoni and Carolanna Parlato. Carol Prusa and I co-curated the show as a result of a discussion about painting.

Pour

Pour opens in Boca Raton, FL, February 5 - March 23, 2013.

Pour comes to New York in April 2013, opening at Lesley Heller Workspace and Asya Geisberg Gallery April 24 and 25 through May 24, 2013 respectively.

A catalog with essays by Stephen Maine and Tyler Emerson-Dorsch is available.

Pour, Seven Seas

Happy 2013!

2012 brought several major projects to fruition, including Seven Seas (just closed) and opening soon, Pour, an exhibition featuring nine artists who pour paint.

Pour features the work of Roland Flexner, Carolanna Parlato, David Reed, Ingrid Calame, Jackie Saccoccio, Kris Chatterson, Angelina Gualdoni, Carrie Yamaoka and Carrie Moyer.

Click the link to Florida Atlantic University's Schmidt Galleries, where the show opens February 4 - March 18 before traveling to Lesley Heller Workspace on the Lower East Side and Asya Geisberg Gallery in Chelsea April 24-25, 2013. Scott Draft made a trailer for the exhibition. A catalog accompanies the exhibition with essays by Stephen Maine and Tyler Emerson-Dorsch and a statement by each artist about the role pouring plays in their work. As I write, the work is en route to FAU.  I look forward to next week's installation.

 

Pour: FAU Gallery Link
Pour: Trailer

Postscript: the solo exhibition Seven Seas comprised a visual foray into adolescent memories of Rodney Bingenheimer's English Disco, 7561 Sunset Blvd (extant 1972-1974). Rodney's apprenticeship at A&M Records acquainted him with the young David Bowie, who advised Rodney  to open a club in LA featuring the glam rock sweeping the British music scene. High British tax rates and LA's sunny climes beckoned rock stars the world over. The paintings in this show, fueled by spray-painted drywall, mirrored dance floors, the Runaways and later, X, are inspired by Rodney, who continues to dj at KROQ, and the club that opened my world to alternative culture forever.

Seven Seas Video

Chelsea, the Beautiful

Trenton Doyle Hancock at James Cohan: a textural relative of the stylized forms in
Dana Schutz's show at Petzel earlier this year

Hancock, tactile and wild

Surfaces are dense and surprising--hard to know what's on top and beneath. They are a pleasure to behold.

A fine blob on a scrambled pink and yellow ground.

Small kitty painting by Hancock in Cohan's front room.

Keltie Ferris - a handsome show at Mitchell, Inness & Nash
This is featured on many blogs, including those linked here, lower right.

Soft, sprayed color with a small, digitized mark on top.

Barnaby Furnas at Marianne Boesky:  this room looked fantastic.

Jonah and the Whale--see Jennifer Wynne Reeves below for another version of the Biblical tale.
Furnas' palette is so icy and cold, perfect for winter ocean tales.

Drawings by Furnas on a wood panel wall. Straightforward like the paintings, strange mix of Leger and David Bates among others.

David Humphrey, this painting in Fredrick and Freiser's back room.
Like Sue Williams in a way--and then not.

David Brody just reviewed the show for Artcritical.com

Color is skewed on my iPhone but I did love this painting, particularly the caput mortum with brilliant blue and yellow.

Tree language.

Stephan Mueller at Lennon, Weinberg

A most gorgeous example of Mueller, though the crimson surround is compromised by iPhone.
Makes me think of the Met's Matisse armchair painting center of three where the model's arm becomes part of the chair, framing her body.

Stephan Mueller

Jennifer Wynne Reeves at Stux, group show: another Jonah story on coated paper, with a surprising array of textures.
Check her page on FB for better images--these again, are iPhone.

Jennifer Wynne Reeves: another pictorial hybridizer.
These framed works are hard to capture straight on but they are wonderful paintings!

Whale threatening to devour one of Reeve's emblematic paint-figures, with which she has worked for many years.
Reeves is a Guggenheim Fellow this year.

Annie Attridge at Asya Geisberg Gallery

This joyous porcelain work summoned memories of See's Candy Easter Eggs
...with picture windows revealing narratives of a sugar animal kingdom

An adult version of same replete with wood paneling.
The artist also showed drawings and prints of wood grain and the sculpture.

Last gallery of the day: Gary Snyder, featuring the wall hangings of Al Loving.

This museum-quality show will be extended yet again, which is great news for everyone. I first saw Al Loving's work at David Reed's studio, in an exhibition of work from the 1970s after the High Times, Hard Times show.

After this, headed uptown to the Met to see Matisse, In Search of True Painting. What a cap to a splendid day! Paintings paired, sometimes tripled, with repeat motifs through which he "searches for true painting." Through serial photographs and the doubling of works, one encounters the tremendous dedication and drive behind what we perceive as light and simple compositions. Make it look easy?
Matisse Press Release