Art Review

Anders Knutsson

In his recent exhibition at Van Der Plas Gallery, entitled "Light, Time and Patience," Anders Knutsson spotlights color, the essential element that adds exponentially to the richness and vibrancy of visual art. Without the stimulation generated by hues our senses go hungry. Swedish American painter Knutsson has been exploring issues of color since the mid-1970’s, in dense wax and oil on linen “monochrome” paintings that highlight one pure color per painting. Their delicately modulated surfaces may look deceptively simple, but each piece involves the accumulation of 7 – 12 layers of carefully applied paint that creates luminous transparent depths. A number of the artist’s new works, engendered in 2014 by his joint project with Swedish weaver Hanna Kristine Isaksson, are referred to as "weave-paintings." Incorporating Knutsson's input on threads, fabric and design, Isaksson uses traditional Nordic techniques and patterns to weave linens that generate fresh assertions of light and color on the surface texture.

HEAD: Curated by D. Dominick Lombardi

HEAD, a group show being held at the University of Massachusetts’ Hampden Gallery, is being curated by D. Dominick Lombardi from October 18 to November 12. The exhibition, which features the diverse work of 20 artists, as well as the collaborative work of the twelve artist Outside-the-Line Collective, embarks on a mesmerizing visual tour of the head as an evolving object in contemporary art. A far cry from the arbitrary identity marker of early portraiture, HEAD demonstrates the head as an indistinguishable entity capable of broad symbolic meaning.

Pinned, Stitched, and Glitzed: Challenging Gender Stereotypes

The exhibition entitled "Pinned, Stitched and Glitzed: Challenging Gender Stereotypes," on view at the Anya and Andrew Shiva Gallery, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, explores mixed media in imagery that injects refreshing diversity to an art scene steeped in minimal art, conceptual art, and the enduring New York School. Curated by Thalia Vrachopoulos the show attempts to deconstruct the traditional female gender identification with the finely crafted handwork. The artists on view employ creative methods that transgresses the social expectation that dainty, precise art is the province of women while bold powerful art is reserved for men, including trans-gender and gay men. The show focuses on a variety of wall works and paintings comprised of cumulative segments that contribute to the final unified work. Renee Magnanti, Eozen Agopian, Maria Karametou, Ran Hwang, and Nicholas Moore create art that ranges from abstract wall pieces constructed with pins, buttons, bobby pins, woven and sewn textiles, to figurative paintings with glitter and objects affixed. This extravagant mix of ingenious, skillfully rendered media infuses the show with a jolt of creative inspiration that subtly challenges the usual expected stereotypes.

Patricia Cronin's work has been exhibited in solo shows at the Venice Biennale; Musei Capitolini, Centrale Montemartini Museo; Newcomb Art Gallery, Tulane University; Brooklyn Museum; and the American Academy in Rome Art Gallery. Her work has been included in group shows NYC 1993: Experimental, Jet Set, Trash and No Star, New Museum; Watch Your Step, FLAG Art Foundation; and Sh(out): Contemporary Art and Human Rights, Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, Scotland. Cronin is the recipient of the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome and two Pollock Krasner Foundation Grants. She has also received support from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, and Anonymous Was A Woman. Cronin's works are in numerous collections including National Gallery of Art, Washington; Perez Art Museum Miami; and the Gallery of Modern Art and Kelvingrove Art Galleries and Museum in Glasgow. She is the author of Harriet Hosmer: Lost and Found, A Catalogue Raisonné and The Zenobia Scandal: A Meditation on Male Jealousy.

Keltie Ferris

A screenwriter bursts into his agent's office. "I have a great idea for a new picture," he enthuses. "We do a remake of The Wiz. Only with white people!" Clichéd Hollywood joke, sure, yet pretty much on point with regard to current trends in art and music. The mash-up, dub, remix, redux, or whatever you want to call it, has replaced the "appropriation" strategies of the 80s. It has morphed into something called Zombie Formalism that for better, or worse, is now seen as a legitimate art movement.

The New York Hall of Sciences in Queens presents Sandra Gottlieb's powerful 2013 photographic series October Waves, curated by Marcia Rudy. Twenty-five large scale photographs (30 x 40”) and five smaller scale close-up shots feature images of pristine waves with patterns of foam and strongly moving undercurrents in an homage to the ocean’s majesty and its ever changing inexorable might. Gottlieb documents the especially devastating 2013-hurricane season with shots taken at sunset from the same location, each day in October, with the sun over her right shoulder. Often she enters the ocean in high boots to catch a wave at its peak, before it crashes to her feet; she describes the experience as “dancing” with the rhythms of the currents, where her past career as a dancer enabled her to segue with the ebb and flow of the tides. The show offers a brilliant view of pure nature, undiluted by subtexts, at its most sensory and direct.

Franklin Evans creates painting installations with the artist's studio as his subject. Since 2005, he has had twenty solo exhibitions in the United States and Europe and numerous group exhibitions at venues, which include, among others: MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY; The Drawing Center, New York, NY; and deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA. He will create a new site-specific installation spreadsheetspace at Prosjektrom Normanns in Stavanger, Norway in September and a collaborative installation shelflife with artist Kate Gilmore at Art Production Fund/Cosmopolitan Hotel P3 Studio in Las Vegas in December.

Marcy Rosenblat was born in Chicago, Illinois, received her B.F.A. from the Kansas City Art Institute and her M.F. A. from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She has exhibited at Fordham University, The RawlsMuseum, Galerie Berlin am Meer, Smith College, Oresmon Gallery, Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Kouros Gallery, Frumkin Gallery,  Art Helix , Centotto, and BCB Art, Hudson NY. Ms. Rosenblat is an Adjunct Professor of Fine Arts at The Fashion Institute of Technology in New York.

One Way Ticket: Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series

One of the most startling impressions that one takes away from seeing the reunited Migration Series at the Museum of Modern Art is how current the paintings still feel current in a way that Céline still does, or Christopher Isherwood, or John Steinbeck -- documenters of a very specific moment of transition, faithfully recording sensitive observations. Jacob Lawrence’s cycle of sixty paintings on the subject of the Northern Migration is both a landmark work for an artist who was just twenty-three years old when he began it, and it is a work of historical importance in American art of the 20th Century. 

Performance artist Chris Burden died today, age 69. I think this video would be an appropriate obituary. The song "Joe The Lion" from David Bowie's Heroes album was about Chris Burden's early period performance work. He was known as one of the foremost performance artists of the '70s, often putting his body, literally, into his art.