From Here, 2019
The Passengers, 2019
Paintings by Lisa Golightly, from her 2019 exhibition at George Billis Gallery in Los Angeles.
Sep 062021
Aug 182021
I Thought Freedom Would Set Me Free (And You Gave Me A Song), 2020
Hey Tomorrow, Do You Have Some Room For Me (Failure Is A Part Of Being Alive), 2021
Currently at Lehmann Maupin’s New York location is Hey Tomorrow, Do You Have Some Room For Me: Failure Is A Part Of Being Alive, the gallery’s first exhibition with New York-based painter Arcmanoro Niles. The painting’s colors are intense and bright and often utilize gold tones and glitter, contrasting with what they depict.
From the press release–
Featuring a series of new portraits, still lives, and a single landscape, this exhibition continues the artist’s critical investigation into the function and form of historically revered genres in painting. Niles is best known for his vivid, brightly-hued canvases that illustrate the seemingly mundane aspects of daily life―a man about to get into his car, a father and daughter sitting on their stoop with their dog, a woman waiting at a bus stop. His subjects are drawn from photographs of friends and relatives and from memories of his past, offering a highly personal record of contemporary life. The paintings, though autobiographical, engage with universal subjects of desire, hope, fear, and failure, while also recalling numerous art historical predecessors, including Italian and Dutch baroque, history painting, Color Field painting, and ancient Egyptian sculpture. For Hey Tomorrow, Niles has created a number of his distinct portraits, but the exhibition also features still lives and interiors that become surrogates for the figure―a cluttered bedside table, a urine test in a doctor’s office bathroom, or a kitchen table littered with liquor bottles and food containers….
…The titular work in the exhibition is the only landscape featured and the first Niles has created in his professional career. The painting, Hey Tomorrow, Do You Have Some Room For Me (Failure is a Part of Being Alive), depicts an idyllic view from the edge of a body of water. The surface is blue and calm, a tree occupies the left side of the composition, and the foreground is marked by a row of rocks. The clouds are a vibrant pink that stand in stark contrast to the pale blue sky. The serene scene is the outlier in the exhibition and offers the viewer “room” for contemplation, self-reflection, a moment of pause in the otherwise dense body of work. In depicting not only people close to him but the places and times they inhabit, Niles creates his own chronicle of life today. Each painting invites us to consider the time in which it was made, as well as our own histories―our struggles, successes, and desires for the future. While most of the paintings represent the past and the present, for Niles, the painting Hey Tomorrow offers space to imagine tomorrow, and what might come next.
This exhibition closes 8/27/21.
Aug 132021
Dolores Coe “Perimeter”, 2019
Dolores Coe, “Borderland”, 2020
Dolores Coe, “Borderland”, 2020 (detail)
Skyway 20/21: A Contemporary Collaboration, is the second iteration of a joint exhibition across four institutions that highlights contemporary art created in the Central Florida region. Artists selected by a jury are from five counties- Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco, Manatee, and Sarasota. The exhibitions are an excellent sampling of the work being made in the Tampa Bay area.
The works shown in this post are from the exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg. I’ve included links for these artists as well as those not pictured.
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Robert Aiosa – Hillsborough
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Dolores Coe – Hillsborough
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Keith Crowley – Sarasota
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Becky Flanders – Hillsborough
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Dakota Gearhart – Pinellas
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Bassmi Ibrahim – Pinellas
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Morgan Janssen – Sarasota
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Ezra Johnson – Hillsborough
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Karl Kelly – Hillsborough
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Savannah Magnolia – Hillsborough
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Jon Notwick – Hillsborough
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Gabriel Ramos – Pinellas
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Lynne Railsback – Sarasota
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Matthew Wicks – Hillsborough
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Janelle Young – Hillsborough
Gabriel Ramos, “Mi Isla”, 2021
Gabriel Ramos, “Mi Isla”, 2021 (detail)
Savannah Magnolia, “Chemical Inhalation”, 2019
Savannah Magnolia “In Big Pharma We Trust”, 2019
Savannah Magnolia “In Big Pharma We Trust”, 2019 (detail)
Savannah Magnolia “In Big Pharma We Trust”, 2019 (detail)
Keith Crowley, “Rain Season”, 2019
Keith Crowley, “Nocturne”, 2020
Bassmi Ibrahim, “Awareness 41”
Bassmi Ibrahim, “Isness 158”
Bassmi Ibrahim, “Isness 158” (detail)
The exhibition at this location closes 8/22/21.
Aug 062021
Calvin Marcus’ Los Angeles Painting, 2018, was part of the 2019 Whitney Biennial. The next one is postponed until Spring 2022.
Marcus’ current work can be seen in Beverly Hills at Clearing until 9/3.
Aug 052021
hic manebimus optime, 2021
Ave Maria, 2019
Resolute in Privation, 2021
The Temptation of Christ, 2020
The Courtier, 2021
Currently at Matthew Marks Gallery in New York is Julien Nguyen’s first one person show at the gallery, Julien Nguyen: Pictures of the Floating World.
From the press release-
Nguyen is known for his deftly rendered paintings that combine elements of art history, science fiction, and contemporary subjects. His interest in worldbuilding can be seen in several new paintings that use biblical and classical themes as a starting point, including Ave Maria (2019), a take on the Madonna Enthroned, and St. John the Baptist (2020), a reworking of Caravaggio’s John the Baptist featuring one of Nguyen’s friends as the model.
The exhibition also highlights Nguyen’s recent emphasis on portraiture, with depictions of friends, lovers, and fellow artists painted from life. He has said of his art, “Reality occurs only in the intimacy of understanding and being understood.” The Los Angeles studio where he lives and works can be seen in several paintings, including one that presents the view from a second-story window in a depiction as thoroughly detailed as it is inventive.
The exhibition’s title refers to the visual art of Edo-period Japan, a decadent period of flourishing culture. An enthusiast of history, Nguyen uses the past as a lens through which to view, analyze, and reframe our present moment. As Zack Hatfield has described in Artforum, “Some declare the end of the world; others make new worlds. Julien Nguyen does a bit of both.”
If Nguyen’s work looks familiar, it may be because he also collaborated with Ottolinger on its fall 2020 collection, which was then worn by several celebrities.
This exhibition closes on 8/13/21.
Aug 012021
Act Up, 1992
Arse Injected Death Syndrome,1993
Jul 282021
Texas Louise, 1971
Where is Lucienne?, 1971
Where is Lucienne? (detail), 1971
Where is Lucienne? (detail), 1971
Frank Bowling’s incredible paintings are currently on view at two of Hauser & Wirth’s locations, London and NYC, reflecting the artist’s time living in both cities. The paintings above are from the New York location.
From the press release-
The exhibition charts Bowling’s life and work between the UK and the United States. Born in Guyana (then British Guiana) in 1934, Bowling arrived in London in 1953, graduating from the Royal College of Art in 1962. He later divided his time between the art scenes in London and New York, maintaining studios in both cities. London is the city where Bowling trained as a painter and achieved early acclaim. New York is the city that drew him to itself at the height of the Civil Rights movement, where he became involved in discussions of Black Art – New York was a place of fresh energy and ideas for an artist in search of new ways to make paintings.
Bowling’s transatlantic orientation reveals itself in a shift from his early engagement with expressive figuration and pop art, to an immersion in a uniquely poetic abstraction that continues to evolve even today. Visible in his work are the legacies of both the English landscape tradition and American abstract expressionism. Developing in and between two cities over the course of decades, Bowling’s exploration of light, colour, and geometry can be understood as profoundly influenced by the two great rivers of his life: he has maintained studios close to The Thames in London and the East River in New York, absorbing the brilliance of the rivers’ light into his vision. Bowling would often begin a work in one city and finish it in the other, merging the atmospheres of both. In his own words, ‘I would just roll the lot up and move. And I knew that when I got to the other end, I could roll them out again and continue to work.’
Bowling’s restless innovation on the painted plane endures in his latest works. He continues to break ground through the use of thick impasto textures, acrylic gels, collage, stitched canvas, and metallic and pearlescent pigments. The complexities of his upbringing in Guyana and his constant journeying between London and New York have only served to activate the richness of the different influences of each location. His paintings are a celebration of life lived in varying lights and colours.
Jul 282021
Houses of the Holy, 2021
Houses of the Holy, 2021, detail
Rain Rereleases, 2021
Rain Rereleases, 2021, detail
Rain Rereleases, 2021, detail
Currently at Miles McEnery Gallery are Tom LaDuke’s incredible layered paintings. The more you look at them, the more the details emerge.
From the press release-
Tom LaDuke’s paintings are painstakingly constructed, offering multiple layers to absorb, with their own references and meanings. In his essay on the artist, Spaulding asserts, “hard-to-describe forms occupy a spatial netherworld that is neither entirely here nor there: neither entirely on the flat of the canvas, nor entirely in the spatial grid of post-Renaissance perspective.” LaDuke’s paintings situate the viewer in an illusory middle dimension, suspended between many levels of imagination.
Forms tend to be screened, stacked, and occluded among layers of fused, brightly colored impasto brushstrokes. “Art grows from the gallery like a tree from soil, in which strange tubes, tree-like structures, rock-like protuberances, proto-figures, or miasmatic nebulae of color precipitate from the atmosphere.” The complex abstract layers are set against the industrial lighting and airy architecture of the art gallery.
This exhibition closes on 8/13/21.
Jul 202021
Hartley, 1966.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is currently showing Alice Neel: The People Come First, the first museum retrospective of the artist’s work in twenty years. It’s an impressive body of work covering a wide range of subjects, focused predominantly on her portraits.
From the museum’s website-
Alice Neel: People Come First presents Alice Neel (1900–1984) as one of the twentieth century’s most radical artists, a champion of social justice whose long-standing commitment to humanist principles inspired her life as well as her art. “For me, people come first,” Neel declared in 1950. “I have tried to assert the dignity and eternal importance of the human being.” In keeping with the ethical foundations of humanism, Neel dedicated herself to painting what she called “pictures of people.” The artist focused especially on individuals who had experienced injustice as a result of sexism, racism, and capitalism as well as those who combated it. Democratic and inclusive, Neel painted people from many different backgrounds and walks of life.
New York was Neel’s greatest muse and the stage for a human drama she began capturing in the early 1930s. Neel’s life and art were inflected by the tumultuous events of the twentieth century, including the Great Depression, the rise of Communism, and the feminist and civil rights movements. For this reason, she described her work as a kind of history painting. Mindful of the formal and sensuous possibilities of paint, Neel applied her incisive eye to all her subjects, whether people, urban landscapes, or still lifes. Her riveting portrayals of life in New York, whose gritty beauty persists even in precarious times, make Neel’s art even more relevant in 2021.
Below are a few selections from the exhibition, but it’s worth going to the museum’s website (even if you see the show), where all the paintings and their descriptions can be found.
Robert Smithson, 1962
This painting of artist Robert Smithson is worth noting for the detail Neel put into depicting Smithson’s skin condition, and her decision not to shy away from showing these aspects in her portraits.
The Black Boys, 1967
The New York Times has an interesting story about Jeff and Toby Neal, the boys from the picture above, and the search for the painting they sat for so many years ago.
Jackie Curtis and Ritta Red, 1970
Ginny, 1984
This moving portrait is one of her last paintings, and captures Neel’s daughter-in-law Ginny’s grief after her mother’s passing.
107th and Broadway, 1976
Black Bottles, 1977
This exhibition closes August 1st, 2021.
Jul 122021
Michael Majerus‘ what looks good today may not look good tomorrow, 2000, currently on view at Museum of Modern Art in NYC.