May 042023
 

“Day 11: Flight Simulator”, 2023 Oil, inkjet transfer, enamel, and paper on canvas

“Carousel”, 2023 Oil, inkjet transfer, enamel, and paper on canvas

“Day 5: In Praise of Shadows”, 2023 Oil, inkjet transfer, enamel, and paper on canvas

“Day 3: Janitor”, 2022 Oil, inkjet transfer, enamel, and paper on canvas

Above are some of Ho Jae Kim’s enchanting mixed media works from his exhibition, Carousel at Harper’s gallery.

From the press release written by the artist-

The centerpiece of this exhibition, its namesake painting, depicts a carousel with 31 horses signifying the days of the month. For each of these “days,” I built a unique narrative in honor of liminal spaces, the mundane, and the quotidian. Just as life continues regardless of our psychology, the carousel will turn whether or not there is a rider. While I prepared for this exhibition, I thought of the displacement I’ve experienced by tragic events out of my control. One summer night in 2022, my stepfather committed suicide. He left a brief note for my mother before driving to a nearby railroad where he waited for a train to take his life. Since then, I have been plagued with a vision of the train’s headlights—a magnificent bright light that dissolves the contours of everything in its path. I became a prisoner to this light that exists within my dark fantasy.

We rely on fleeting moments of significance to define life, but the majority of our lives are shaped by non-moments of transition, endurance, and dormancy. For this reason, I chose to create representations of less significant moments in order to build a body of work that can paint a better picture of reality. Luxurious portrayals of life as depicted in movies and pop culture cultivate dreams of becoming a character in a fantasy, but these dreams are quickly shattered by the constraints and circumstances of daily life. We become psychologically displaced and rejected by the fantasies that once served as our vitality. We begin to live in a state of purgatory, caught between reality and our dreams.

In The Divine Comedy, during the transition from the Inferno to Purgatory, Dante turns right to see the light from the east on Easter Sunday, a day of resurrection. With this new orientation, Dante’s purgatory becomes a place of hope, where lost souls can choose to repent or find redemption. The horses on my carousel face to the left, in the direction of the spiraling Inferno, but if the audience chooses to imagine the mechanism rotating, the horses will eventually turn right as they continue their clockwise journey. Similarly, as the halos, arches, circles, and light in my paintings become juxtaposed with the mundanity of the subjects, they transform those quiet non-moments into divinity, and the prisoners of my narratives are granted redemption.

This body of work began as a tragedy, but it has the potential to become a comedy. And just as I wish for my loved ones to see the beauty that is within their souls, I hope that my divine scenes of nothingness can become a vehicle for others to redeem themselves in purgatory and indulge in the beauty that is inherent in every life.

This exhibition closes 5/6/23.

 

May 032023
 

“Sun and Moon Spectrum”, 2022

“Sun and Moon Spectrum”, 2022 (detail)

“Radiant Sun with Trees (Yellow, Pink, Green)”, 2023

“Gingko Trees (Gold and Violet)”, 2023

It’s the last few days to see Amy Lincoln’s exhibition of dreamy paintings at Sperone Westwater.

From the press release-

These large-scale seascapes and landscapes reference atmospheric elements—air, water, light and clouds—and engage concepts of light reflection and refraction. Working in a more expansive format, Lincoln continues her exploration of the cosmos.

Lincoln covers each of her wood panels with acrylic paint in gradations of colors from light to dark to develop a precise perspective and imply the illusion of space. Sun and Moon Spectrum, the centerpiece of the exhibition, measures over 11 feet wide, her largest seascape to date. “This painting moves sequentially through the colors of rainbow, starting at yellow, then to orange, red, magenta, purple and blue,” says Lincoln. “Bands of color progress from and divide the two glowing orbs of sun and moon, shifting from light to dark and back to light again, while also moving from warm to cool colors.” The visual conceit of moving through a color spectrum references Ellsworth Kelly’s work, a nod to the minimal abstraction that has influenced her recent practice.

In this new series, Lincoln also utilizes as subject matter botanical and forest imagery (for example, Radiant Sun with Trees (Yellow, Pink, Green), 2022). Like the waves in the seascape paintings, the fir and gingko trees repeated throughout the foreground and background serve to enhance depth and perspective. “This creates an overall simplicity and focus on color, pattern and space,” says Lincoln. “I also didn’t want to be too dependent on the seascape imagery as a formula. I wanted to apply the inventive approach to color I had learned in making the seascapes to a different set of imagery.”

This exhibition closes 5/6/23.

May 022023
 

 

Currently on view at Bortolami is Tom Burr’s excellent multimedia exhibition. With new discoveries around every corner, the show keeps you engaged, at times even on an emotional level.

From the press release-

Once more Burr has assumed his dual role as artist and exhibition maker, relocating the act of making from the traditional studio space into the gallery. An architectural intervention of four walls defines the show, a deconstructed box whose contents have been scattered both in view and out of sight yet remain connected on levels of materiality, memory, biography, and history. Moving through the gallery, the viewer is directly confronted by Burr’s work, activating the artworks and the physical space created for them. As the interconnectivity of the different facets of the exhibition comes into view, not only here and now but in its connection to the entirety of Burr’s career, we begin to understand this as not merely an assortment of objects as artworks, but on a larger scale as a total artwork.

Four new wooden panels populate each makeshift wall, continuing the signature plywood sculptural series begun in the 1990s. Each painted a different color, the artist loosely utilizes the shipping crate motif, a point of interest for Burr. Adhering stainless steel and brass plates to each panel, the images portray the artist himself as well as his own simulation of stereotypical “faggy gestures,” as he refers to them, creating an intersection of public expectations of artistic sensibility, identity performance and exposure.

Also on view in the main gallery are a series of furniture-based sculptures. Set behind the walls, each work draws the viewer into the constructed architectural space as they grapple with themes of legacy, memory, and biography. Pulse utilizes various items once belonging to the “lounge” at Burr’s project space in Torrington, Connecticut—a disco ball, a couch, a lamp, a wool blanket — the disco ball being a relic from American Fine Arts, the legendary SoHo gallery run by Colin de Land where Burr exhibited throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. Accompanying the work is a wall text listing the various academic definitions of the word “pulse,” while the last line, a new addition by the artist, is a reference to the infamous shooting at the gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, a signal to both the individual and communal meanings associated with the word. Similarly, the artist has gathered various items belonging to his father to create Johns (my father’s chest)—a chest of drawers, long johns, a metal storage box, and a handkerchief— evoking the same ideas of legacy and biography.

A new photo series entitled Capricornus I, II, III, and IV lines the outer walls of the main gallery. Depicting Burr in the three public bathrooms of his Torrington space, he is in the midst of various movements—lounging, laying down, reading. In a string of associations from Bruce Nauman to Francesca Woodman, as well as nods to his own past work, here the studio becomes a stage as Burr equates the everyday banal and artmaking.

Occupying the small gallery space, Floor Model (adolescent), is the most recent continuation of the artist’s series His Personal Effects, while in the office Burr has installed a series of new collages made in homage to Stefania Bortolami. The Visit, I, II, III depicts images of a visit by Bortolami to Burr’s space in Torrington, CT, as well as images of plant foliage from Burr’s seminal work, Construction of An American Garden, currently installed in the Torrington space. In the words of scholar and curator Blake Oetting “the body of the dealer emphasizes the commercial system that supports Burr’s work and translates it into exchange-value, a framework, he reveals, that often moves beyond the physical boundaries of the gallery.”

This exhibition closes 5/4/23.

Apr 282023
 

“My Gut”, 2022, acrylic, ink, marker, wax crayon, paracord, thread on canvas

“My Gut”, 2022 (detail)

“Bodybuilder”, 2023, acrylic, ink, wax crayon, paracord, thread on canvas

Annie Bielski’s dynamic mixed media paintings from her exhibition, Agita, are currently on view in Rachel Uffner Gallery’s upstairs space.

From the gallery’s press release-

Annie Bielski makes works that are big washes of feeling, then she goes in and fills in the shapes. The volumes need to be filled—satiated. Going over and over them with crayon or oil stick in repetitive gestures. This is to say that her paintings are both records of the artist’s bodily limits (the paintings go as far as my arm) and examples of the limitless potential of materials left to their own devices (the oil stick is cakey and glossy lipstick falling off and crumbling and being smooth). The drawing ends when the stick is worn down and there is nothing but residue left on your hands.

The result of this dialogue is evident in the forms that she generates. Each form is an organ: it has a specific function, processes in its own way the work’s shared fluids and biles—but compacts to mass when crammed together in the cavity of the canvas. The material challenging the body to collapse into its most erratic gestures, the body wondering if the material might ultimately generate some kind of meaning. Everything is always taut, ready to burst.

What happens next? Eating a hotdog from a cart in Central Park (beginning a painting) when suddenly the agita rises (heartburning) and the world immediately becomes askance, shifting off its axis to accommodate room for your pain. How do I make this okay?? / When will the painting be finished?? Needing to take off every thing that constricts you; unbuttoning your pants, loosening your bra, unwinding your braid, then going to lie down. A body would be sexy but it’s the byproduct of spasmodic internal combustion. Classic.

For her, the conditions that painting creates are tragicomic. This understanding is traced in wavering—moments of gravity or self-seriousness are transmuted into a bunch of bananas or a floral motif. But each little disaster is kept in check by a kind of logic, perhaps provisional, a pact with the inherent nature of all unruly things to meander. It is ultimately a win-win contract between generosity and flexibility, a willingness on her part to accept the mess of point A to point B.

The result is a series of works that are bright and unsettled, grotesque and pulsating, alive with the pure tension of compromise. Rachel Uffner Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new paintings and drawings by artist Annie Bielski. The show is titled Agita, and if you know, you know.

This exhibition closes 4/29/23.

Apr 282023
 

Leo Villareal’s exhibition at PACE, Interstellar, consists of fifteen mesmerizing, colorful sculptures that are a joy to watch.

From the PACE website-

Villareal’s practice is part of a lineage of artistic engagement that explores the connections between nature, technology, and human experience. The artist’s upcoming exhibition with Pace in New York will feature wall-based sculptures, including works from his new Nebulae series. Emitting hypnotic, diffused light, the Nebulae sculptures are informed by celestial imagery and evoke the dynamism of space through interplays of color and shape. Villareal creates unique and specific sequencing for each artwork through code that is generative and visceral, like nature itself. As such, no two sculptures are the same.

This presentation at Pace in New York will also include works realized at a scale that Villareal hasn’t explored in nearly a decade: two-foot square wall-mounted sculptures. These intimately scaled artworks, paired with their glass enclosures, encourage focused readings of Villareal’s abstractions. Like his larger works, the two-foot pieces invite viewers to consider the boundary separating physical and digital worlds.

This exhibition is on view until 4/29/23.

Apr 282023
 

Installation by Molly A. Duff

Work by Trinity Oribio (left) and Manon VanScoder (videos on right)

Currently on view at The USF Contemporary Art Museum is SOMEDAY YOU’LL HAVE TO SAY IT OUT LOUD, an exhibition of eight students graduating with MFA degrees from the USF School of Art and Art History.

The artists included are Molly Duff, Kai Holyoke, Caitlin Nobilé, Trinity Oribio, Rachel Treide, Manon VanScoder, Alicia Watkinson, and Willow Wells.

For the artists’ statements about their work, as well as more information on the exhibition, the museum has produced this PDF.

The show will be on view until 5/6/2023.

Installation by Molly A. Duff, another view

Alicia Watkinson, “Notations in Passing II”, 2023, plywood, lightbulbs, ceramic bases, timers. Duration of light set daily according to the previous day’s activities and observations

Alicia Watkinson, “Notations in Passing II”, 2023 (detail)

Photo transfer on glass by Rachel Treide

Still from video by Rachel Treide

Caitlin Nobilé, “The gap in the door”, 2023 triptych, acrylic on wood

Willow Wells, “Whispers”, 2023, oil painting on panel

Trinidad Oribio “Untitled”, 2023 oil on canvas

Trinidad Oribio, “La Trinidad”, 2023, archival pigment print

Video installation by Manon VanScoder

Manon VanScoder, “each day is an endless scroll”, 2023

Kai Holyoke “Paradise Lakes”, 2023

Kai Holyoke “Paradise Lakes”, 2023

 

 

Apr 262023
 

“Nancy Reading”, 1963-1964, Oil on canvas

“60 T-Bird”, 1964, Oil on canvas

“60 T-Bird”, 1964 (detail)

“Potrero Table”, 1994, Oil on canvas

Gladstone Gallery is currently showing an exhibition of captivating work by the late Robert Bechtle. The show includes paintings, watercolors, and drawings.

From the press release-

In Bechtle’s works, classic cars, urban and suburban streetscapes of his native Bay Area in California, and portraits of himself and those close to him are transposed with a candor and familiarity that allows the viewer to absorb quotidian scenes with a heightened and sharpened awareness. Formally flawless, the artist captures every detail, shadow, and reflection to further draw the viewer into each quiet scene. While many of his works are depicted with realist precision, others are portrayed by employing a looser, Impressionistic technique, demonstrating the artist’s fluid ability to memorialize moments in time without one set approach. Beyond these physical attributes, Bechtle has an astute aptitude for bringing to life the unseen facets of an instance in time: isolation, emptiness, contemplativeness, and the passage of time and light are transformed from invisible characters to palpable features that seem to become secondary subjects of the works. Through an unmatched ability to depict light and details with the exactitude of a Renaissance painter, subtle details, and textures, these overlooked, everyday vignettes are transformed into significant life moments that tell a deeply personal story of contemporary life.

Another important component of this exhibition are a series of significant portraits and self-portraits made throughout his career. In Potrero Table (1994), Bechtle depicts himself and art historian Whitney Chadwick, his second wife of nearly 40 years, sitting at the dining table at their house in Potrero Hill. With astonishing clarity, the artist meticulously captures every detail of the late-night scene. Frequently turning the lens back onto himself for the entirety of his artistic practice, Bechtle’s self-portraits lay bare the process of aging, and the physical and psychological changes that come with the lived experience. These tender and honest chronicles are essential clues to understanding Bechtle’s overall artistic oeuvre, the care he had for Whitney, and highlight his ability to separate from the constantly moving and evolving world in order to pause and reflect on his surroundings with clarity and rigor. Through intense concentration and sensitivity, Bechtle’s wide-ranging body of work chronicles a remarkable life, filled with the beautiful, overlooked, and often discarded instances that make it so special.

This exhibition closes 4/29/23.
Apr 252023
 

It’s the last week to see the Gerhard Richter exhibition at David Zwirner. The show includes a group of Richter’s last paintings from 2016-17, two of which are pictured above, as well as a new glass sculpture and recent works on paper.

From the press release-

Celebrated worldwide as one of the most important artists of his generation, with a career spanning from the 1960s to the present, Richter has pursued a diverse and influential practice characterized by a decades-long commitment to painting and its formal and conceptual possibilities. The artist has consistently probed the relationship between painting and photography, engaging a variety of styles and innovative techniques in a complex repositioning of genres. In Richter’s work, dual modes of representation and abstraction fundamentally question the way in which we relate to images.

The exhibition will bring together a significant group of Richter’s last oil paintings, made in 2016–2017, a number of which will be shown in New York for the first time. Richter stopped making oil paintings in 2017, and the final work on canvas he made will be on view in the exhibition. Part of the artist’s Abstrakte Bilder (Abstract Paintings) series—a cornerstone of his practice since the 1970s—the works on view exemplify Richter’s investigations into chance occurrences and the painted medium’s historical and material properties. With their highly worked and intricately stratified surfaces, the last paintings foreground the sheer physical presence of paint and color, enacting a mode of composition that is aleatory yet deliberately planned.

Centrally featured will be 3 Scheiben (3 Panes) (2023), a new glass sculpture that continues Richter’s exploration of human perception and the built environment. Comprising three sequential rectangular panes of transparent yet reflective glass—each one positioned upright and measuring almost ten feet in height—the installation invites viewers to look at, through, and beyond its surface, revealing the inherently subjective and situational nature of perceived reality. Richter has consistently created glass and mirrored works since 1967, often presenting them alongside his paintings and drawings and placing them in the larger context of their surrounding architecture. Crucially, while sculptural, these free-standing glass works are also positioned as a literal reflection on painting and image-making; they respond to the art-historical notion of the painting as both a mirror and a window, while also acting as a powerful corollary to the blurred effect of Richter’s photo paintings, which the artist began experimenting with in the 1960s. As critic Hal Foster notes, “The felt analogy between a composed painting and a contemplative viewer is so fundamental that we are not aware of it until it is interfered with. And this is precisely what the glass pieces do: our reflection, in the sense of our mirrored image, disrupts our reflection, in the sense of our contemplation.”1

An expansive suite of new works on paper from 2021–2022—some made with ink and others with graphite and colored pencil—will also be on view. Richter’s drawings constitute a significant element of his practice, allowing him to explore another aspect of the role of the artist’s hand in the creation of a dynamic and abstract pictorial narrative. Many of these works feature passages of cloudy graphite rubbings juxtaposed with equally hazy semi-erased portions. The artist embeds a sparse network of crisscrossing arcs and lines amongst this backdrop, forming an enigmatic topography that seems to map out the very possibilities of image-making itself. Other drawings on view are composed of abstract monochrome washes of ink and graphite, taking on a decisively painterly appearance; as Richter describes, these works on paper chart out a parallel but complementary path to his painted oeuvre, much like that of “a poem and a novel by the same author.”2

Also on view will be mood, a group of inkjet prints that relate to a recent series of colored ink drawings by Richter, both of which debuted at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel in 2022. Part of the artist’s extensive career-long experiments with the iterative translation and interplay of mediums, these vibrant prints are almost indistinguishable from their ink counterparts, revealing Richter’s continued fascination with the possibilities of image reproduction.

This exhibition closes 4/29/23.

Apr 222023
 

cabeza güera, 2019 Glazed ceramic and crochet cotton

“encuero”, 2022-2023, Crochet leather and copper; “gotitas”, 2023 Agate, glazed ceramic, plasma cut metal, steel, onyx, palm, and seed podand; “telaraña de cobre”, 2020 (web in upper corner)

“trastes ceramica”, 2023 Glazed ceramic, gourds, crochet copper wire, and limpet shell

There’s only two days left to see ektor garcia: esfuerzo at James Fuentes. The enchanting sculptures inspire curiosity and encourage the viewer to imagine the story behind the work while also admiring their construction.

From Art Daily about the exhibition-

Each of ektor garcia’s exhibitions are more like a marker of a moment of pause in his work, rather than a presentation of something complete or discrete. In this way his works are evidence of a continual natural progression, as things build on top of each other, evolving. In relation to the specific time and place of this newest exhibition; it marks a cyclical continuation of the garcia’s presentations at the New Museum in 2017 and Sculpture Center in 2019—both of which moments in the artist’s life when he was traveling a lot, largely moving between Mexico, being on the road, and New York, specifically. This is the case once again, today:

For this show garcia traveled from his studio in Mexico City, suitcases filled with materials, to occupy the basement space below the gallery at 55 Delancey St in the lead up to the exhibition’s opening to the public. He has also retrieved objects previously exhibited or in storage—for example a 15-ft copper link piece recently exhibited at the Henry Art Museum has been broken into smaller pieces, added to and reconfigured into a new work(s). The exhibition title, esfuerzo translates to effort; as in a big push, like a birth, which feels apt for what the artist does. Pieces come together little by little over a long period of time; and the work comprises many small parts that each reflect his esfuerzo in making them. Another translation for esfuerzo could be output; and, shortened, fuerza means strength. Via his artistic practice, garcia is the conduit or vessel through which that life-force runs, resulting in an output that is this body of work. garcia is constantly making, hands always moving; this is simply part of how he lives his life. The work therefore isn’t made toward constructing a larger conceptual conceit; instead, its making is its meaning, the working is the work. Its presence in the space is evidence of all this; making room for it to be approached and even interceded, we inherently take part in the work’s life cycle, even potentially changing its course by entering this domain.

This sense of force, therefore, isn’t tied to garcia’s hand only, but relates externally as well. One piece in the show, cochinilla (2022), is woven from wool dyed red from the shell of the cochineal insect. Last year it was installed on the exterior of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Monterrey, Mexico, and upon taking it down garcia’s realized it had become sun bleached unexpectedly. With other pieces he more deliberately pushes, forcing change, for example by using a blowtorch against copper to catalyze an oil-spill patina. Over time, crochet has been one constant; a crocheted piece needs time, and then it meets time. In his words: “The materials are vibrating back and forth, taking turns. That is how they evolve.” And so although the works reference the past they do not prioritize it; likewise the future. Rather, in the style of the ouroboros, they are cyclical, perpetual, and most generous about the present.

Artist Cy Gavin wrote this piece to accompany the exhibition, which is worth a read as well.

 

Apr 212023
 

“Star study, portrait of my mother”, 2023

“Night reading (garden path, a pear halved, portrait of my mother, two birds)”, 2023

“Page unfolded (stoneware vase with peony scroll)”,2023

“Night studio (kingfisher, bone comb, moon through clouds, ink lily)”, 2023

“Night reading (moonscapes, garden window)”, 2023

Margot Samel is currently showing Perimeter, a series of dreamy, personal paintings by Olivia Jia.

From the press release-

Painted in what the artist has described as a ‘nocturnal’ palette, these works have a somnambulant quality, appearing as if scenes encountered in a state between sleep and waking. Each is constructed around a tableau that the artist has arranged, often incorporating material collected by herself, or in the possession of family members. Ideas of kinship and heritage – in this instance informing Jia’s own diasporic identity, as the child of Chinese immigrants to the United States – are negotiated through the constellations of elements she gathers together in her compositions. Staged in a studio workspace, depicted either late at night, or in an imagined facsimile of that location, these paintings act as tools with which a greater degree of self-recognition might be arrived at.

It could be said that our sense of belonging is partly understood in relation to our belongings, and the belongings of those closest to us. This is a principle that Jia employs to reconcile personal narratives with broader cultural dynamics. Artifacts resembling family heirlooms, lost during periods of political upheaval, are sought out in the annals of art history. Genres, be that of the Still-life, Huaniaohua, the Chinese tradition of ‘Bird and Flower’ painting, or American Naturalist illustration become prospective frameworks to be infused with anecdote or biographical allusions, and mined for accidentally shared motifs. What is being honed in these paintings is an iconographic system, one that reflects on the points at which individual experience intersects with collective accounts.

Images, carefully folded for storage, and books left open at resonant pages, frequently act as framing devices within Jia’s compositions. These devices draw our attention to the mechanics of printed reproduction, and its capacity as an authoritative repository for knowledge. What they also highlight, however, is how affect can be produced through combinations of such factual information. The sombrely lit surfaces upon which these objects and images are depicted are at once tabletops or pinboards upon which objects might be placed, and psychic spaces onto which desire might be projected. Here, the act of painting itself is presented as analogous to the nature of Jia’s arrangements of collected material: as it too constitutes an archival structure in which the objective properties of documents and the subjective nature of memory are able to coalesce.

This exhibition closes 4/22/23.