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A Different Sort of Clarity

Dom Lombardi — Sat, 06 Jul 2024 21:45:57 +0000

A Different Sort of Clarity Dom Lombardi July 6, 2024 - 17:45

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Installation view (all photos courtesy of the Christopher Cutts Gallery)

John Meredith: Last Breaths

Christopher Cutts Gallery

Toronto, Ontario

Through July 13th

The late paintings of John Meridith have a different sort of clarity than his earlier works, where black lines were used to clarify shapes, emphasize movement, and forge a foreground. In the last decade of his life, when Meredith switched “…between cigarettes and bronchodilators, likely with a paintbrush in hand…”, he created more distilled, direct, and meditative paintings. Already an introverted individual, he became even more reclusive in those last ten years of his life, knowing his days were numbered. This was especially true during the onset of his battle with emphysema. This dire reality appears to have pushed the artist toward a more transcendent vision despite any anger he may have been feeling.

Tangiers No II (1990), oil on canvas, 72 x 60 inches

The earliest of his late paintings here are all from 1990, and they are the five most hopeful and brightest works. Only Tangiers No II has any reference to Meredith’s use of black to clarify his earlier visions. At or just after the beginning of most of the paintings here, Meredith placed strips of tape to mask the white or lightly painted ground of the canvas. At some point in the painting process, the tape was removed and, in many instances, painted over a bit – or totally if the artist found that relatively clean stripe to be too imposing or distracting to the overall composition. In Tangiers No II, the artist comes close to suggesting a portrait with strangely clownlike features. Any suggestion of humor that might enter one’s thoughts here is quickly dispelled by the large, jet-black swathes of paint that obliterate any indication of a mouth, while the splashes of paint thinner, probably turpentine, create purple, black, and red drips indicating some sort of distress.

Reclining Figure (1990), oil on canvas, 54 x 65 inches

The most compelling work from the 1990’s is Reclining Figure. To the mostly primary colors of the red, yellow, and blue backdrop, the artist adds wide sweeping strokes of heavily muddied white to suggest a lounging subject that is partially obscured by a wash of ochre over the figure’s legs. The brilliance here is how Meredith utilizes such a heavily contrasted paint application of the figure, as opposed to the rest of the painted surface, to work in the greatly abstracted and simplified human form. Placed just right of center, the figure looks backlit by brilliant sunlight – a visual tour de force much greater than the sum of its parts.

Emperor (1993), oil on canvas, 68 x 48 inches

Then there are two paintings from 1993 that bring back the use of black lines--only this time, it is more about creating a rhythmic upward movement that is both alluring and impermeable in Emperor or a tangled trap of contrasting thoughts in Key Largo. Then, there are four paintings from 1994. The one named Untitled is the most hopeful in palette and approach and reminds me very much of the serene and seductive paintings Matisse made while living in Nice. Conversely, Eroica is the most disturbing work in the exhibition. It consists of two ghostly forms painted over a black ground that interact and look back at the viewer, creating a chilling effect.

Eroica (1994), oil on canvas, 74 x 49 inches

The two Untitled paintings from 1997 show, most profoundly, the way Meredith worked with masking tape. In both works, the tape is used as a tool to create structure and composition. Working within a very shallow space, the artist manages to create compelling spiritual depth. In their clarity and simplicity, these two paintings remind me of De Kooning’s late works when his debilitating illness changed his approach and aesthetic. The one example from 1999, painted a year before his death, features four white-haired feminine forms that intertwine like smoke from one of Meredith’s many cigarettes. A late statement on how life, living, lust, and death are fleeting and beyond our control, like smoke from a fire and Meredith is the flame.

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Color Is The Essence

Kathleen Cullen — Fri, 29 Jul 2022 21:31:03 +0000

Color Is The Essence Kathleen Cullen July 29, 2022 - 17:31

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Grace Wapner - RED 2014 BURLAP, PAPER, ACRYLIC 61.5 X 53

COLOR: THE PRIMARY MATERIAL

If color is the essence of our perception of the world the pairing of Steven Alexander and Grace Bakst Wapner in the Lockwood Gallery show "Color: The Primary Material" makes for an interesting discussion about the conventions of painting, the material used and the oscillation between organic form and minimal abstraction. Both Alexander and Wampler work within a vocabulary of minimalism but with very different approaches. I would like to get to the source of their strategies as I am concerned with the period of probation or conception so I have posed questions about color as the starting point for each of these artists.

Grace Bakst Wapner's work is ephemeral, intimate and delicate and constructs a new way of approaching painting.

Grace, how does the impulse to use color arise?

Color excites me. I play with color in my head, I imagine one color combined with another color and then with a third. I get taken by color combinations I see in other artist’s work, or in a gravel path, or the accident of one color next to another while working, or in an ad for a movie or in the color of a vase. In other words I am always alert to color. The impulse to work with color comes from the desire to see it arranged and juxtaposed in the most interesting and exciting way so that I may see it. The impulse comes from wanting to see it. But then, a most crucial but then, it must inform the content of the piece I am working on, it must make emotional sense, it must be integral to what I am trying to get at. This is the constant struggle. It must illuminate the unknown.

Do you do preliminary design on paper before you begin to make the works Grace?

I often do make preliminary sketches but the work rarely turns out to be what I have initially imagined. A dialogue with what I am working on takes over. It is this back and forth with all the surprises along the way that makes the process compelling. It is the seeing of what comes next, of seeing what it turns out to look like after all, that pushes the work forward until 2:00 in the morning.

Grace Wapner - PINK, BLACK, ROSE 2022 CHIFFON, TULLE, ACRYLIC, THREAD 41 X 28

Grace I'd like to know how the selection for the works on view were made?

The selection of the pieces were made by the curator of the show, Alan Goolman, with some input from me.

During which period in your career where are you the most fertile and immersed in the avant-garde milieu of New York?

I became conscious that there existed a NY Art Scene when I was invited to share studio space with Eva Hesse and Tom Doyle. Before then I had no idea there were galleries or so many artists working that weren’t in museums. It was stimulating to see what people were making, I had always made things in solitude and it introduced me to the world of possibility. To the notion that art could be what you wanted it to be. I had grown up with a love of dance so I began to make installations about defining
space and then about how people interact within space, and then large walls and barriers with openings through which you could or couldn’t see the space beyond. I see now that some of the same ideas that occupied me then persist in the work now.

GRACE WAPNER - BLUE, GRAY, SPLIT 2021 SILK ORGANZA, ORGANZA, ACRYLIC, THREAD 45 X 26

I am sure that people respond well at once to your work's size, with former associations and memory. Can you tell us a bit about your past friendship with Eva Hesse and the influence such friendship may have had on your work?

You ask about Eva and how she influenced me. She encouraged me to work and took my work to galleries. She told me "decoration is the art sin" which I took to mean never embellish, never add anything extraneous but took me a long while to reconcile with my love of decoration. She taught me a woman could be ambitious. Perhaps she helped me understand you must make work that is close to the bone. She influenced me in many of the unknown ways a close friend does. And does when you are with her when she dies and she is 34 years old and you are 36. But to try and answer your question I think my work has changed and evolved most here in our house in the country surrounded by woods and next to an ever changing moving stream.

Steven Alexander - Reflector 18, oil on canvas, 72 x 60 inches

Steven Alexander's work has much to do with the relationships of color where the washes on canvas and brings you on an adventure -- while drawing on associations from the past.

If color is the primary material with which you work how do you begin. Do you do preliminary work on paper? Is the translucent under painting then over painted with a complimentary color wash?

I have two different ways to begin. First is with small pencil thumbnail sketches in which I develop the basic configurations and value relationships. These are very loose and quick, but allow me to arrive at configurations that present the simplest setting for optimum spatial dynamics as conveyed by the value relationships. The second device is utilizing my rudimentary abilities in Photoshop. I do very basic color studies, experimenting with color relationships, and sometimes using the mechanical software to arrive at unexpected color situations. Then employing the configurations from the pencil sketches, I find various color equivalents for the value contrasts. All of this brings me to a starting point for a painting. Once I begin the actual painting, the preliminary sketches recede, as I build the piece out of paint, and anything can happen. Each decision is an intuitive response to the results of a previous decision. Because colors are applied in thin layers, the under painting affects the subsequent color in sometimes unpredictable ways. The final layers are very thin and translucent, and tend to unify the surface and emphasize the surface/color nuances while slightly reducing the color saturation. Even after almost fifty years, this whole process still feels experimental, and each outcome is surprising to me. I am constantly changing the procedures and materials in various ways in attempts to achieve a more sensual surface and more resonant color situations. But I often feel that, where color is concerned, my sense of control is illusory.

Steven Alexander - Clearing 1, oil on canvas, 50 x 40 inches

What is the source of the color strategies and where do you get the impulse to use a particular color?

My color sources are both art historical and observational -- the ghostly Cimabues at Assisi, the hallucinatory color of Tibetan Buddhist painting, the soft light of Titian and Bellini, the expansiveness of Rothko....and also the startling color events that occur everywhere in nature, and in the urban environment. Often, by starting with one color idea, the painting sort of makes itself as one relationship calls for another. Just as I re-employ certain configurations, I sometimes re-address certain color combinations, always with the intent of getting more out of it, finding some new variation or context. I look for color relationships that are both surprising and inevitable; that might jar your senses and attract your contemplation. I often think of the painting in terms of sound, and I see the layers of color as a sort of tempering, adjusting the timbre of the color with overtones and undertones, creating a scenario that is more than the sum of its parts. The object is of course to engage the viewer's imagination because it is in the viewer's consciousness that meaning resides. So the painting functions much like a mantra -- as an opening in the clutter of reality -- a place where one can slow down, look, and through contemplation experience the present moment.

Steven Alexander - Voice 12, oil on canvas 48 x 72 inches

What are the situations that you hope to set up for the viewer? Transitions and unique color situations? How do you get the majestic gradations? Do you find yourself repeating some of the tones?

Because of the nature of the Lockwood exhibition and space, the works in this show are distinctly intimate, and perhaps engage in a bit different way than larger scale paintings which are more immersive. Many of the works in this show were in fact preliminary to much larger paintings, and were sometimes initial forays into some new material or configuration. So, at least to my eye, there is a tentative or contingent aspect to some of these pieces that I enjoy for its sense of vulnerability.

It is the ongoing research and discovery, the ontological speculation, and the inclusive sensuality that continues to sustain painting as a poetic endeavor for me.

COLOR: THE PRIMARY MATERIAL

STEVEN ALEXANDER and GRACE BAKST WAPNER

SATURDAYS & SUNDAYS 11AM - 6PM CLOSES JULY 30TH

747 ROUTE 28 KINGSTON, NY 12401

info@TheLockwoodGallery.com

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Form and Content = Synthesis

Thalia Vrachopoulos — Wed, 13 Apr 2022 02:37:55 +0000

Form and Content = Synthesis Thalia Vrachopoulos April 12, 2022 - 22:37

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Jong Rim Song, Untitled, 2010, Beads, resin, paper collage, 36.7x36.7"

Circles: Centrifugal and Centripetal

Paris Koh Fines Arts, Fort Lee, NJ

Apropos of a post-Covid social awakening, was the inaugural opening of Paris Koh Fines Arts, a new art space in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Their first was a group exhibition entitled Circles -- Centrifugal and Centripetal: Jose Camacho, Jong Sook Kang, Daru Junghyang Kim, Mikyung Kim, Ran Hwang, Jong Rim Song, Heejung Kim whose seven artists featured the circle motif in their works, a subject that served as the systematizing principle to foil them together as a group.

The gallerist Suechung Koh, who is also a curator of some note, in her press release described the difference between a centripetal force as one moving towards the center that is simultaneously inertial and non-inertial like the one of planet revolutions. A centrifugal circle describes a force imbued with the sensation of moving away from the center like that caused by internal forces. As seen, for example, in Jose Camacho's Untitled, (Sun Chariot) 2020 (enamel, metallic paint, oil, mixed media collage on paper, 17 5/8x14 ½") the large centrally placed circle attracts and repels force both because of its energy and focus, and its dark and light coloration that bring equilibrium.

In Aristotle's view form and matter in physical objects are united to formulate abstraction that can be known via cognition and perception. Whereas in Platonic theory, forms are purely eidetic and stay in the world of ideas rather than the physical realm. In the case of Heejung Kim, Jongsook Kang and Ran Hwang we can as Aristotle's view holds, perceive the circular ideal forms as two-dimensional sculptural works. Moreover, the ideal forms of Mikyung Kim, Jong Rim Song and Daru Junghyang Kim use the circular motif as a contrapuntal figure on paintings and collages. They all utilize the circle but the three earlier artists incorporate and realize it in more concrete and physical formats.

Daru Junghyang Kim Reflection-Ripple 01 and Reflection-Lavender 02, both 2016, Oil on Linen, 40x48"

Daru Junghyang Kim's Reflection-Ripple 01 and Reflection-Lavender 02, both 2016 (Oil on Linen, 40x48") are paintings that like Kandinsky's Several Circles focus on the concept of nature and spirituality. Another common factor between these two artists is the pulsating back and forth created by the quality of their layered yet transparent painting style. The importance of circles is key to both painters as it represents 'synthesis of oppositions.' Mikyung Kim's paintings share with the Japanese conceptualist On Kawara, an interest in 'dated' works. On worked on his process- based series of date paintings called Today for 50 years. Kim started working on her series Calendar/Marking Time of which the work Breath of Time/ 8-1, 2019 (pigment, ink, resin on wood panel, 104x48") is part, in 1993. Kim is also very interested in process and gesture. In a sense, Kim, like Jackson Pollock, utilized controlled spontaneity to produce both random and carefully planned compositional elements to produce evocative forms that emerge from misty landscapes.

Jong Rim Song employs clear marbles over resin, and paper collage media to produce variations of color and modification of underlying forms. Song records his own sensations while dealing with optical perceptions that his clear marbles create. He applies round clear marbles on his painted collages that modify the forms underneath producing surprising distortions. Thus, they act as magnifying glasses that simultaneously can clarify and distort vision. As he notes in his statement "instead of judging right from wrong, I express myself by amplifying color and parts of a phenomenon."

Form being equal to disposition, arrangement and order of its constituent parts, can best be found in Jong Sook Kang's wall installation Emptiness #1 (Stoneware, metal wire, highly fired glaze, 16x16x23"). This white ceramic installation on the pristine gallery walls, in its coloristic purity and its fragmentation, recalls the Greek marbles set against the bleached rocky background. Kang's pieces are arranged in a raindrop pattern and are actually shaped like bowls embedded with gold strips of wire. In fact, both Ran Hwang and Kang are very much inspired by the idea of emptiness or the void seen in Kang's bowls, and in Hwang's pieces.

Ran Hwang, Ode to second full moon 2021, Paper Buttons, Crystals, beads, pins on Plexiglas, 75x75Cm

Hwang's title Ode to Second Full Moon, 2021 refers to the June festival celebrated in Asia a day after the moon arrives at the closest point in its orbit around the earth. Hwang's Ode in its hot pink color alludes to the Second Full Moon also known as a Strawberry Moon. Hwang's ongoing métier demonstrates her interest in the yin/female and yang/male attributes of the Tao Te Ching written by Laozi ca 400 BC that expounded the void/solid or opposition and resolution. This Taoist philosophy is demonstrated in her works which show both yin/solid in the buttons and yang/void-shadow/masculine as complementary forces.

Heejung Kim, Sky at Night, 2022,Pins, paper, marker on wooden panel, 12 x 12 x1.5"

Heejung Kim's Sky at Night, 2022 (Pins, paper, paper, marker, wooden pegs on wood panel) and Shooting Stars, 2015-2022 (wooden pegs, paper, marker on wood panel) also relate to the concept of the Taoist yin/solid and yang/void as they are made with wooden nails that project their shadows upon the solid ground. However, Kim's subject matter ostensibly is of a different nature, with an interest in astronomy that focuses on examining the universe and its contents. Kim’s concern with celestial bodies and their operating laws is seen in her use of variously projecting white-painted stars and their trajectories in Shooting Stars. In her Sky at Night, she utilizes more color so that the subtle plums, pinks, turquoises, lavenders, and blues result in symphonies of coloristic variegation. She depicts these planets, moons, stars, and nebulae in a cosmology that examines the universe in order to observe the transiency underlying these scientific principles.

It is important to note that the exhibition helps to define the re-emergence of abstraction that can spark debate, as a refreshing pause from the abundance of political art during our time. There is room enough for many art styles and it is meaningful for artists to feel they don’t need to be trendy to be relevant.

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Living in the Room

Millree Hughes — Wed, 10 Nov 2021 21:10:28 +0000

Living in the Room Millree Hughes November 10, 2021 - 16:10

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Of What Then, 2021, Oil and acrylic on canvas (courtesy of the artist and Asya Geisberg Gallery)

Allison Gildersleeve: A Thousand Other Things

Asya Geisberg Gallery, NYC

October 28 - December 18, 2021

What does the brain look like on "painting?"

Recent studies have analyzed its activity when viewing different kinds of art. Attempting to see what parts are doing what.

One of the ways the brain understands the world is to compare the things in it it to other like objects from some vast inventory.

This is handy when viewing Alison Gildersleeve's glorious new paintings at Asya Geisberg Gallery; they're packed. They show interiors, dining rooms, drawing rooms, filled with chairs, tables, house plants, vases, bowls of fruit. There is a familiarity to these scenes as if they are places that she has frequently observed. And there's repetition, there are many vases, many chairs

In "Sound Check" 2021 a light aqua coloured chair is cut in half. Another casts a long shadow even though it, itself has disappeared. Light comes in at a "window?" But this window is unreliable as what could be steely white curtains turns into a frothy sea of little boats (rendered in a couple of lime green dashes) We're in Raoul Dufy's St Tropez for a moment but under Maine clouds. Gildersleeve tempts our pattern making side and then defies it, requiring the viewer to construct parts of the imagery themselves using internally orientated cognition.

Sound Check, 2021 Acrylic and oil on canvas (courtesy of the artist and Asya Geisberg Gallery)

NMDA receptors situated in the cerebral cortex allow for the transfer of electrical signals between neurons in the brain and in the spinal column. When two neurons are activated at the same time, a phenomenon called "coincidence detection," occurs. Gildersleeve's paintings constantly activate these receptors. Comparing different chairs, plants and so on to preexsisting models. But at certain points rendered space is abandoned and incongruent areas appear.

"Of What Then" 2021, is late summer-y. Oranges and flashes of aqua, a huge palm plant fills the foreground sometimes just outline, sometimes fill. The objects seem to be capitulating to a more abstract idea of hue. Like a movie, where the tonal range of the film and the colour of the players clothes and things in the set, correspond to its content. Here they reflect the independent spirit and parochial perspective of the New England mentality. The love of hearth and home, transposed into the Internationalist ambitions of French modern painters like Matisse.

Because, although they don't look it, these are are experimental paintings. They give a purpose to mixing abstraction into representational work. As if "Abstraction" itself had a purpose. The warper, the dream or hallucination bringer. A force that reorders the painting, bringing other styles, other reads, other narratives into a fairly pat scene.

So many contemporary New York painters have stripped the issue down to its key elements. Katherine Benhardt, Katherine Bradford and Josh Smith for example, make impactful paintings that you can "get" in an instant. Just for your initial read of course. They've emptied out the space to put clearly represented things in.

Gildersleeve is going in the opposite direction. Instead of reading the painting we enter the space and are reassured by familiar objects. We experience a state called "mind wandering." Viewers apparently find less realistically rendered but still recognizable spaces as in say traditional Chinese landscape painting, more relaxing than accurately rendered landscapes. However, over time, odd and unfamiliar events start to occur.

In "Riptide" 2021 a circular rug starts to whirlpool in hot and cold daubs. Large light green triangles appear stage left and become a canvas of painted sailboats.

But the right side edge drools cubist shapes into the adjoining furniture as if a mid 50s fabric design was attempting a take over.

You can expect the brain on a Gildersleeve painting to be both soothed and aroused. Our NMDA receptors will glow in the hippocampus and cerebral cortex while other neurons will be fizzing up and down the brain stem struggling to make sense of it all.

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Interiors

Millree Hughes — Mon, 11 Oct 2021 13:23:58 +0000

Interiors Millree Hughes October 11, 2021 - 09:23

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In the Metabolic No 5, 2019

Karin Davie

Chart Gallery, NY

Til Oct 30th

Karin Davie has a new show at Chart Gallery. It's her first in New York since 2007 and should not be missed

It's unlike her breakout curvy paintings of the late '90s that described the outside of the body. Neither are they like the huge wild, squiggly paintings that she showed in the early '00s, which expressed a volatile inner state. These paintings represent an attempt to go to the deep interior, to the tissues, to the cell wall itself.

In David Hockney's recent article in The Art Newspaper "Abstraction in Art has Run its Course" he claims that everything Abstraction set out to do has already been done.

Karin's paintings do something that mimetic painting can't do. They use the language of formal abstraction to approach a complicated emotional and physical state. Abstraction can talk about ontology without getting distracted by the petty associations of individual people, places or things.

She makes abstract paintings that employ different devices to talk about a subject outside of itself. The way it is painted. Familiar abstract tropes, like "spot" paintings or "stripe" paintings. Or the shape of the canvas. This approach goes right back to Barnet Newman's "Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue I" 1966 Where the colours became an idea in itself rather than being used to express something.

Downstairs in Chart Gallery there are some vibrating, vibrant Guaches from 2007 that were the beginnings of the new series.

Karin's gouache paint marks are finer and gauzeier. The lines follow the border of the paper on each side. Becoming lighter as they reach the middle. Leaving a square of transcendental light. They bring to mind birth or death or even the light of revelation. They are elusively simple until you imagine yourself actually painting one.

Upstairs there are more physical oil painted versions made more recently. These are powerful paintings. Portals, openings, altered states. Each one with a thumb shaped divot cut out of the bottom of the canvas. I imagine this as a space representing a real thumb, on a hand holding the image up to your face. Or perhaps the thumb at arms length framed by whatever is in sight as is sometimes employed to help gauge distance. But I don't know. Her paintings always have this quality of a magic trick, one where you can never know its secret.

While my Painting Gently Weeps No 2, 2019

My favourite of the new works are the two scalloped paintings. "While My Painting Gently Weeps No 2" is rendered in oceanic greens, in sinewy strokes. The scallops work both as little cup like inlets that capture some stray paint marks. Pretending to be, whether you read the edge as positive or negative space, either dippy cartoon waves or cartoony toes or thumbs.

They are like the sea and of the sea. A woman's body locks in to the cycles of the moon and consequently the tides. They see in the sea a mirror of their own vibrations. In dream analysis the sea is also the mother, the source of all things.

In these new paintings a host of associations flood in at different reads and pool around the central conceit of sea-like bodily-ness. They expand her metaphors so that her painting refers to many things. The body, the sea, her emotional state. And disease. Karin has been struggling with Lyme for twenty years. She is deeply familiar with the workings of her body down to a microbial level.

Beyond that, Karin's stroke is her signature. Oily, tubular, like a thick vein or serpent. The line is slower now, moving in a winding cord from one side of the canvas to the other. A loaded large round brush that may hold the colour she's mixed and pick up others along the way,

They can represent dimensionality but not perspective. They seem to respond to light as if it's cast from above but we are constantly reminded that this is not a representational space. More importantly Karin's paintings have an instant quality. They hold something in, they create tension. So much so that the little flashes of broken strokes caught in the scallops of this one are a relief.

Hockney has said that his work is about "seeing" and the history of representation. He does makes great representational paintings n' all but we’re not being asked us to examine his inner life.

Davie's paintings are about her, about themselves and ultimately about the giant moving parts around us.

Its is a kind of poetry.

Proving Abstraction is still necessary when you want to talk about large, complex, 'abstract' things.

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Thank u Millree for this…

Thank u Millree for this wonderful descriptive insight towards Karins work.
...very fine indeed.

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Back in Beacon, New York

Dom Lombardi — Tue, 20 Jul 2021 12:29:27 +0000

Back in Beacon, New York Dom Lombardi July 20, 2021 - 08:29

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Ying Li, "Cranberry Island #16" 2016, oil on linen, 24 ½ x 30 inches

My interest in the art scene in Beacon goes back twenty years. In April of 2001, I reviewed the "Inaugural Invitational Exhibition" at Collaborative Concepts. This was the first exhibition the collective had in Beacon after moving from Cold Spring, New York, a move prompted by the news that the Dia Art Foundation was looking at the old, vacant Nabisco printing plant nearby. The exhibition included such luminaries as Grace Knowlton, Moses Hoskins, who I have since worked with as a curator in a number of exhibitions, and Kathleen Sweeney.

A little over two years later, in an article also written for the New York Times titled "Renaissance by the River,” I focused primarily on the opening of Dia:Beacon, a now famous 300,000-square-foot museum on 31 acres along the Hudson River. There was so much excitement, so much energy at that time with galleries popping up on both ends of Main Street in Downtown Beacon that it was impossible to ignore. Most importantly, Diane Shamash founded and directed three spaces for her non-profit arts organization Minetta Brook. There was Sara Pasti (at the Beacon Project Space – the first place I had ever seen the work of Carrie Mae Weems), David A. Ross and Bill Ehrlich with the Beacon Cultural Project; and Carl Van Brunt, who opened the Van Brunt Gallery.

The only two exhibition spaces that remain today form 2003 are Hudson Beach Glass, with their converted three-story firehouse operated by its four owners: Michael Benzer, Jennifer Smith, John Gilvey, and Wendy Gilvey; and The Howland Center, the converted library built in 1872 by the Civil War General Joseph Howland.

Today, in the recently named "Upstairs Gallery" at Hudson Beach Glass, you will find a group show curated by Cecilia Whittaker-Doe and Rachel Youens. Exhibition standouts are the paintings of Ying Li and Cecilia Whittaker-Doe. In viewing the work of Li, I could not help but think about the work of Frank Auerbach. With Auerbach, you very often have a portrait that has seen incredible changes over time, painting and repainting, reducing and adding till the colors become muddied, maudlin and the forms macabre, while personal aspects of the subject, the trials and tribulations of their history comes forward. With Yi, it appears every bit of paint that was placed on the canvas remains, much of which is pushed and spread, while late arriving remain relatively untouched from their original form shaped by the tube. These actions, both invasive and additive, seem playful at times, and disturbing at other times, revealing a multitude of emotions that one might feel when the mind wanders in our time of political and environmental stress.

Alisa Sikelianos-Carter, “A Place to Return” 2021, acrylic, gouache, abalone shell and glitter on paper, 30 x 2 inches

Whittaker-Doe focuses on the natural environment, whereby the experience of a walk in the woods is expressed through visually enhanced emotions and memories in multiple media. I am very familiar with her work of the past few years, and most recently had two of her paintings in a show I curated titled "LandX"; as I am continually fascinated by her ability to capture numerous experiences, solid and tangible visions conveyed with fleeting fragments of clarity and pause. Nature has a perfect way of sustaining itself, as long as humans or climate change are kept at bay. Life comes from death, each spring there is renewal, and we should celebrate all of the intricacies, all of the powers of our natural world to evolve and change as we see in the works of this artist.

The newest space in Beacon is the Fridman Gallery. After opening a branch in Beacon from the mother ship in New York City's Bowery, this current, and their second exhibition features eleven very accomplished artists. The exhibition "Time Lapse," the overall space and presentation of the work is very high-end and very much like a NYC gallery. All the works have the proper amount of space and respect, and everything is beautifully presented and installed; a detail that is extremely important when bringing together such an eclectic variety of intentions and media. The highlights of the exhibition are Meg Hitchcock, Alison McNulty, Alisa Sikelianos-Carter and Jean-Marc Superville Sovak.

Hitchcock dazzles with her unique ability to mix media. Using individually cut out letters from a variety of text, she creates readable passages that occupy distinct shapes in the overall compositions. Using paint, graphite, ink and thread, Hitchcock combines beautifully resolved, colorful shapes that fall just on the edge of representation; indications of thought that easily slip into the subconscious of the viewer. The entire effect is one of a place where the spiritual meets the tangible and the conscious becomes a waking dream.

McNulty focuses our interest on the overlooked in a very profound way. In "Domestic Fault 2 (Brittle Response)" 2018, McNulty takes two neighboring pieces of old paint fragments and stitches them back together with her own hair. Here we see a variety of color changes over the years, where the cracked paint that has chipped off reveals a number of previous colors -- which in turn, may indicate the ever-changing family of residents. The tiny holes where the hair is inserted to join the two fragments both adds to and addresses the fragility of the media, while the intervention of the artist's hair, and in essence her DNA, interweaves the artist's own life with the lives the home's previous occupants.

Jean-Marc Superville Sovak, "Am I Not a Man?" 2021, monoprint on archival inkjet paper, 13 x 19 inches

Sikelianos-Carter's use of black, the light absorbing, dullness of the paint she uses as a background in "A Place to Return" 2021, will give most viewers pause. I assume this is the gouache she employs because it is so matte, although I had to look twice because of its depth of presence. Atop this base, Sikelianos-Carter paints a number of arching, floating figures with heads and necks encapsulated in huge holed puffs. Surrounded by earth and tree, and accentuated in weightlessness and movement with a series of painted dashes, one may begin to think about the magical interpretations of aboriginal art, or the work of Richard Dadd and his contemporaries who made paintings of fairies in Victorian times. Mesmerizing is the best way to describe the effect of this work.

Superville Sovak combines prints of 19^th Century, Hudson Valley engravings with images from Anti-Slavery publications. The effect is powerful and heartfelt, as the artist asks questions in his titles such as "Am I Not a Man?" or makes the statement "Between Hell and Hell on Earth." Looking from the outside, not being a person of color, it is impossible to totally understand Superville Sovak or what any person of color must go through on a daily basis whether it is microaggression or out and out racist oppression. What I can feel and say, is that I am deeply touched by this work due its clear and concise way of juxtaposing truth.

If you happen to be in Beacon drop in and see these two exhibitions. And if you have a bit of extra time, and you are a fan of artists who are a fan of Red Grooms or Juxtapoz magazine, stop in at Marion Royael gallery.

"Re-Ordering of Place," at the Upstairs Gallery/Hudson Beach Glass runs through August 8^th. "Time Lapse" at Fridman Gallery ends August 16^th.

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The Seduction of the Apple

Mary Hrbacek — Fri, 01 Nov 2019 23:02:50 +0000

The Seduction of the Apple Mary Hrbacek November 1, 2019 - 19:02

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Adam's Apple/Newton's Apple

Yungtae Won: Something, Nothing, Differential

Elga Wimmer PCC, NYC

Oct. 21–27, 2019

Elga Wimmer PCC presents "Yungtae Won: Something, Nothing, Differential" curated by Paris Koh, is an ambitious thought-provoking series of conceptually based works executed in oil and in lenticular acrylic, a variation of the traditional hologram format. The artist expounds a narrative that probes philosophical, scientific and religious questions that find their focus in the lush, ripe red properties of an apple that functions as the central protagonist of the artist's inquiry. At first glimpse, the conceptual show appears to accentuate the visual luster and sensual appeal of a piece of fresh fruit, but on deeper contemplation the titles, "Adam's Apple/Newton's Apple," awaken the realization that the works delve far deeper than superficial appearances indicate. The ripeness of the singular fruit with its unabashed saturated red hue calls to viewer consciousness a visceral recognition of the indomitable life-force signified by the correlation of blood with the color red. The apple acts as the human equivalent in the show’s equation, as it recalls Newton's Law of Gravity as well as the apple plucked illicitly from the Tree of Knowledge in response to the devil’s temptation of Eve in the Biblical story of Garden of Eden. The artist's queries about reality parallel those of René Magritte, in his iconic visual/text statement "This is not a pipe" indicating that the painted picture of a pipe is only a surface representation, not to be confused with the genuine object. Won paints an apple from a photograph of an apple with the same doubt in mind: "Which is the authentic apple?" Obviously, the answer is "neither," but he feels the question must be raised.

The use of the apple as the focus of the show conjures sumptuous art historical still life images that display the sensuous abundance of fruit, produce and game to nourish bodies and spirits alike, in a micro and macro scientific art method that mirrors the "invisible and ultimate" concepts driving Buddhist beliefs. In Buddhism, the ultimate goal is to become empty of the "self." Similarly, the scientific lens of macro imagery becomes so vast that no traces of specific qualities or characteristics remain detectable. The field of vision becomes empty. The artist cleverly depicts this state in the "Apple differential I," "Something/Nothing 2," "Apple differential 3" and "Something/Nothing VI," presented in a refreshing curatorial sequence of panels. The micro viewpoint is sensitively illustrated in "Apple differential 2."

In Buddhism, there is no core "self" as it exists in Christianity. The self is deemed to be empty, subject to changing character, depending on who or what the individual is relating to. In these works, Won researches the shifts in essence to be found with various facets of the subject on view. In "Apple differential 2" (pigment and acrylic on canvas, 60 x 72.7" 2019), the apple skin is seen through a microscopic vision to reveal the tiny white dots that are spewed across the surface of the fruit. In a less intense view, in a five-panel pigment and acrylic on canvas work, the fruit's surface appears to have natural ridges, within changes of hue. The work, "Adam's Apple/Newton's Apple I," is intended to be an exact replica of a photographic piece but as there is no way to create a completely precise reproduction, the question "which is the 'real' apple" arises without an easy answer. The two apple works created with lenticular acrylic, to create a kind of hologram, change as one views them by walking from side to side, to shift from shades of gray to tones of bright red; these changes indicate what seem to be variations in ambient light that arises from the inner depths of the pictures of fruit, giving rise to mysterious, inexplicable diffused gray tones that hint at the process of aging in the natural course of time. In the piece entitled "Adam's Apple/Newton's Apple III," 2019, the artist paints the apple from a frontal view at the top to disclose an apparent crevice from which the stem arises, which provides a surprising viewpoint; it suggests that the apple moves toward the viewer as if propelling forward like a thrown ball. In the "Homage to Rectangles I and II," joined with the "Something/Nothing I," the artist investigates the rectangle in a series of views that pay homage to Joseph Albers's famous squares, but seen in deep bright with varying degrees of texture to subtly delineate the rectangle.

Apple differential 2, 2019, Pigment and Acrylic on Canvas, 60 x 72.7"

The artist's use of a single red apple as the key subject of his philosophical and religious probes is at first disconcertingly suggestive of a 17^th century Dutch still life gone slightly awry. In contemporary art the Still Life genre has fallen quite far from favor, to the extent that it is rarely if ever on view. But Won's use of the apple as an example that illuminates through imagery the principal tenets of the Buddhist faith is revealing and enlightening. The ingenious method he uses to examine science and religion through the creative process of image making is a procedure that exudes a sense of purity and wonder that is not usual despite or because of the fact that almost everything has previously been investigated and nailed down. Won raises the question of "which item is the real and which is the replica," or is the apple fundamentally all and none of the views he has taken.

The show is playful yet serious; at first glance the large ultra-red fruit is a bit dominant, yet one becomes accustomed to following the artist's deliberate illustrative permutations as he expounds his ideas via the size and surface of the apple. The apple tree in ancient religion was considered a symbol of knowledge; in Christian art it is a source of redemption for humankind in combatting the evil of original sin associated with the devil's temptation of Eve leading to the expulsion from paradise (1000 Symbols, p. 255, Rowena and Rupert Shepherd). The color red is linked with fire and blood by Australian Aborigines and the Navaho. In Japan and Korea, it is connected to the sun (p.343). Fire keeps us warm but if fire goes out of control it becomes destructive. In ancient times blood was the equivalent for life-force (p.638, "The Book of Symbols," Taschen). These associations are embedded in our unconscious minds only to stir when we reconnect with familiar sources and meanings.

In the exhibition, Won considers the deep-rooted conflict in the West between science and religion, where science is to debunk traditional views of the "self" embodied in the Christian faith, the opposite to the nothingness that is considered the peak achievement in Buddhist religious belief. The ideas presented in "Something, Nothing Differential" are not unfamiliar, yet the freshness and liveliness of the depictions bring renewed force to questions brought forth with the vigor to engage a new generation of thinking artists.

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Seeing, Believing and Understanding

Dom Lombardi — Fri, 25 Oct 2019 18:48:00 +0000

Seeing, Believing and Understanding Dom Lombardi October 25, 2019 - 14:48

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The Writing’s on the Walls, 2019. Housewrap, oil, plastic tubing, razor wire, sand panel, 96 x 144 in.

The Frist Art Museum in Nashville does two things remarkably well. Like other capitol city museums throughout the United States, they present fully resolved, educational exhibitions filled with extraordinary works of art supported by thoughtful text and labeling. Most recently, the exhibition, Monsters & Myths: Surrealism and War in the 1930s and 1940, which features works borrowed largely from two prestigious institutions; The Baltimore Museum of Art and The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, offered a great number of iconic works such as the mesmerizing Europe After the Rain II (1940-42) by Max Ernst. In addition to this, the Frist offers a very special form of community outreach in their programming that speaks directly to the citizens of Nashville, giving a much needed public forum to those with perpetual urgent concerns. One of their current exhibitions, Murals of North Nashville, which closes January 5, 2020, is a strikingly energetic and social-political collection of murals created by local artists. Each participant has, in some very personal way, a deep connection to North Nashville's African American neighborhoods -- areas that are in the midst of great change due to encroaching gentrification. Curated by The Frist's own Katie Delmez, this exhibition sheds much needed light on "both the persistent problems such as displacement, gun violence, and incarceration, as well as positive elements like thriving black-owned businesses, a revitalized art scene, and valued educational institutions."

All nine of the 8 x 12 foot works for the Murals of North Nashville exhibition are installed in the Conte Community Arts Gallery. This is a very important feature of the Frist, since this space in the museum is accessible to all visitors, as it has no entry fee. All of the installed works have very powerful messaging ranging from violence and despair to hopeful progress. Omari Booker's The Writing's on the Walls (above), features a woman in a rocking chair on the front porch of what looks to be a home built during the Arts and Crafts era. The house, which has its outline overtly defined with red razor wire, refers to "redlining," a process used by certain institutions, primarily in the financial and real estate fields, in order to separate out minority neighborhoods for the sole purpose of perpetuating their economic woes. The subsequent encroaching gentrification takes up the entire background of this work, as it is covered with newly placed construction materials, while the somewhat less obvious pink-vest-wearing upscale pooch enters the picture plane from the bottom right corner, a detail that is contrasted by the fiery shaped, dying bushes in front of the porch on the left side of the house. This more than metaphorical battle between the underrepresented and oppressed, and the more privileged "protagonists" in this never-ending drama speaks volumes of the inequities based on wealth, which brings political and private access, and race.

Brandon Donahue. Rest in Peace, 2019. Airbrush acrylic on panel, 96 x 144 in. Photo: LeXander Bryant

Brandon Donahue's Rest in Peace lists all the names, in various styles of eye-catching graffiti, of all the individuals struck down by guns in North Nashville. What first appears as a joyful and celebratory list of local names ends up leaving viewers with a strong feeling of loss and thoughts of what could have been. Conversely, hope and change comes in the form of energetic children and strong women. Elisheba Israel Mrozik's Unmask 'Em shows the power of women who will lead the way, being best equipped to overcome the many sides of suffering built upon the unfortunate truth that justice is not blind. The central figure in the composition, which is a cross between the Madonna and Child and the Pietá, has an otherworldly feel, while the corruption that surrounds is about to be uncovered by righteous disciples. In the end, there is a path to the Promised Land, once the spoilers of future fairness are eradicated.

Forever, created by the Norf Art Collective, also holds quite a bit of promise, as it features children who will continue the work of all those who have come before, aided by greater opportunity and better education leading to the promise in true equality. The dominating figure, a girl in a yellow dress, runs through the composition as she leaves her tag in ecru paint across a world of blue chiaroscuro painting that clearly defines her path to happiness and success. LeXander Bryant's Opportunity Co$t is a six-stationed stream of powerful graphics and unifying text in red, black and yellow -- all making one think of revolution at first. Only this time, the revolution is about progressive, positive change for people of color; community outreach for all, and the kept promise of a sustainable and sustaining jobs. Additional works by XPayne, Nuveen Barwari, Marlos E'-van and Courtney Adair Johnson round off this field of powerful and compelling murals at the Frist, while other public sites can be found with the exhibition's accompanying map, which locates numerous outdoor wall paintings throughout North Nashville.

Murals of North Nashville Now. Courtesy of the Frist Art Museum

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Build The Wall!

Dusty Wright — Fri, 01 Mar 2019 15:32:32 +0000

Build The Wall! Dusty Wright March 1, 2019 - 10:32

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Popaganda artist Ron English is building a Welcome Wall on the US/Mexico border!

As a street artist Ron has used walls to tell his story. Often the subject of his work is to make people aware of classism, racism, corporatism, and politics. And now he is building what he calls The Welcome Wall.

"A wall is the perfect physical and metaphoric gift from a cult leader to his followers. It positions him as the great protector of his chosen people from the unwashed, unenlightened others!" - Ron English

CONCEPT
The Mexican American Welcome Wall will be a 2000 ft long physical wall along the US/Mexico border, designed by artists and activists to be a conceptual message board for an ongoing discussion about the wall, border, wildlife, and immigration issues. A temporary art installation to fuel the resistance against Trump's racist monument.

TIME FRAME
Ron will start building this spring and the wall will stay up till 2020 Election night. On Election night he will auction the different sections. Part of the proceeds will go to wild life charities, indigenous communities, and non-profits.

DESIGN
The wall is designed to be built in plywood sections of 8' wide by 12' tall. Exactly three sheets of plywood stacked on top of each other. The design was made so that Art can be created off site and easily shipped by means of a flatbed truc. Of course we encourage the artists to come to the site and make the art locally.

Donate to his very modest IndieGoGo campaign today!

(Images courtesy of Ron English.)

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Vir Heroicus Sublimis

Bradley Rubenstein — Sun, 22 Apr 2018 18:08:27 +0000

Vir Heroicus Sublimis Bradley Rubenstein April 22, 2018 - 14:08

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"The first man was an artist." Barnett Newman

Before there were fertile grounds growing olives and grapes, before the ages of kings and kingdoms, and long before the shifting of countries and armies when war defined the Valley, the caves were the locus of the wandering tribes who would one day be called "human."

Star-Watcher, whose bright eyes glistened through patches of matted fur, punctuated by scars and untended infections, watched from the cavern’s oculus as a rag-tag hunting party set out under the rising sun. Moon-Watcher, taller than the others, with his massive brow and a determined set to his eyes and mouth, thought only of the day’s hunt. With the receding of the ice, and the end of the giant lizards, the world had come to look more and more like a giant buffet than a fear-filled world of terror, an alternate world to the safety of the cave. Star-Watcher had once gone along on the hunt. Her spear had brought back the reindeer, rancors, and mynocks that the tribe survived on. The scattered piles of bones attested to her prowess.

Star-Watcher allowed her gaze to linger on the diminishing forms of her cave mates scattering and hiding, awaiting the careless gazelle or dozing nocturnal mynock on a low-hanging branch. She turned back to the darkness of the cave and paused. Drawings of running reindeer and stags, a large cat taking down a buck, and dozens of bison, bears, and large cats filled the great entrance to the cave. Star-Watcher paused before a large etched and colored image of a rancor. The beginnings of a memory stirred. It had been a long hunt. The tribe was tired when they came upon the massive rancor, and the hunting party, which had started out as a group of seven when the sun had risen, returned with the beast as a party of two. Moon-Watcher and Star-Watcher had lived to tell the tale over the fire, then Star-Watcher, still holding a delicious hoof, scratched the beast into the wall of her menagerie.

Snapping back from her reveries, Star-Watcher searched around the cave. She had secreted handfuls of colorful pigment, which she had dug from the cave, from under trees, or from small rocks she had crushed. She knew the importance, though she did not yet understand it, of keeping track of the hunts. How else would they remember it was Long-Tooth that by himself took the giant mastodon? Or that Moon-Watcher had once brought back three mynocks from the frozen tundra, ending a month-long famine?

Star-Watcher turned her attention to a wall of hand-prints. At some point she had realized that the comings and goings of the food-beasts could be more accurately predicted by watching the comings and goings of the Second Sun -- the Second Sun that also brought the blood. For her, each print represented the waxing and waning of the Other Sun and by her calculation portended a good hunt today, or guaranteed a hungry night. She chose a sulfurous powder from a mynock skin pouch and poured it into her hand. Pressing her other hand to the wall she blew on the yellow powder and then removed her hand. The outline stood out brightly on the glistening cave wall. Another hunt, another Other Sun. Star-Watcher did not yet fully grasp the concept of time, or the Suns and Other Suns.

But her thoughts had begun to coalesce as her mural grew over the passing years. It was sometimes monotonous work, all this scratching and coloring. She had begun to envision other things, celestial things. As the ices receded, the tribe had found the bones of other creatures, things that no longer walked the Valley. Where did they come from? Where did they go? These questions hung in the back of her mind as she worked. Her handprint firmly fixed and finished, she carefully rewrapped the pouch, dusted off her hands, and stepped back to admire the outline of her hand. It always stopped her, every time, when she had finished her work. Her hand was there on the wall, yet not there. The bison with the running stags were there too, yet they had been eaten long ago. Yes, the beginnings of an idea were forming. But there was always tomorrow, always the bags of stone and color. She was not yet sure what it was that she would paint tomorrow, but that was a long way off, and she would think of something.

****

It is an exaggeration to say that the urge to paint is a primordial one, yet the evidence is there if we really want to imagine it. Abyssinian Kings realized the power of a carefully placed mural of a beheaded foe to inspire uncertainty in a visiting dignitary. And while the tales of Livy and Thucydides could be both exalting and terrifying, their existence depended on that thin thread of the teller and the tale. Paper, writing, printing, and broadcasting have made the word more tangible, but even in the metric age, political discourse is weak compared to, say, the image of President Obama wearing Heath Ledger’s Joker make-up.

Let us digress a bit from the power of the image on the public and look at the power of the image for the artist. What is it about this most archaic form of language that still holds such sway? First there were cameras; they begat the news photo that begat the newsfeed of Instagram, Facebook, et al. Yet the urge to put pigment to the cave wall of canvas remains.

Cy Twombly: Coronation of Sesostris

Gagosian Gallery, NYC

March 8 - April 28, 2018

Several recent exhibitions, though unrelated in terms of style, content, and intent, show the tenacious grip that this art form still holds for painters. Cy Twombly, the Homer of Modern Art, whose cycle on Sesostris is a personalized revision of Herodotus’s account of the Egyptian King, exerts a primal pull on the viewer through its arcane pictorial language of scrawls and smears. It is rare to see the work of a septuagenarian, let alone one who is working at the height of his painterly powers (one thinks of Louise Bourgeois or Picasso in this same company). The aging Twombly replicated some of the idea of Herodotus’s epic travel adventure by painting these works in several locations, beginning in Gaeta, Italy, and finishing the series in Lexington, Virginia, his hometown. Sally Mann, the American photographer and a friend of Twombly, documented the artist for many years -- a sort of Boswell to his Dr. Johnson. We are moved by the power of the images in some small part by seeing the frail artist wrestling with his painterly problems on such an epic physical scale. It is a commonly accepted myth, the artist as hero, struggling with the monumental; it is quite another to see the frail human struggling for real to capture the heroic on canvas. The struggle is often overlooked, however, and possibly unmentioned because many seem to have lost the compassion to look at those human frailties that artists overcome in their desire to create.

Per Kirkeby: Paintings and Bronzes from the 1980s

Michael Werner Gallery, NYC

February 28 - May 5, 2018

Per Kirkeby’s work bears re-evaluation after a fall in 2013 left the artist with severe head trauma and memory loss, which affected his ability to paint. Indeed, one of the most moving passages in cinema is in the opening scenes of Man Falling (2015), a film by Anne Wivel, which documents the artist post-accident. We see him looking blankly at his past work, unable to recall having painted it.

Michael Werner presents an exquisitely curated show of the artist’s work from the 1980s, with massive slabs of color, skittering brushwork-filled paintings, and pounded and torqued bronzes cast from clay. One finds the work monumental, elemental even, and gives little thought to who made it, who brought these things into the world. Indeed, given his interest in geology, nature, and biology (talks with the artist largely revolved around trees), it is not carelessness that causes us to take the works as another part of nature; it was the artist’s intent that we take these works as nature. What Wivel’s documentary shows us is the artist learning to reinvent his work, and reinvent himself as a painter. While a gulf of nothingness separates the artist from his past, he continues to work, re-learning a vocabulary of forms and narratives. Wivel gives us an intimate portrait of an artist’s struggles made manifest through determination; the urge to continue to paint dominates, and though the accident’s tragic pause in the artist’s life pressed “pause,” it is painting itself that pushed “play.” Kirkeby’s running talk of painting through the film is a rare view of the mind recovering things that he still knows.

Mary DeVincentis: Dwellers on the Threshold

David&Schweitzer Contemporary, NYC

April 6 - April 29, 2018

There are other fine examples of making art in the face of adversity. The trials of Chuck Close are fairly well documented. Close’s career is an almost Job-like tale of overcoming physical travail. The dyslexia of childhood pushed him toward image making, though because of the medical condition prosopagnosia, commonly known as “face-blindness,” which makes facial recognition difficult, the artist chose to focus exclusively on portraits, in an attempt to “fix” through art what cannot be cured through medical treatment.

We can also look at the work of Mary DeVincentis. Her paintings at David&Schweitzer Contemporary create a magical realm in her show Dwellers on the Threshold. DeVincentis has a condition called aphantasia, a psychological phenomenon where the subject cannot visualize imagery without external reference. Commonly referred to as lacking “the mind’s eye,” the subject can verbalize memories and descriptions of people and things but can’t “picture” them. In DeVincentis’s work we see manifest the process of a painter creating an external universe of internal thinking. Of particular note are the pictures "Dweller on the Threshold" (2017) (image above), a Rorschach-like cave or butterfly flanked by Casper-like ghosts; and "Under the Strawberry Moon" (2016), with a couple kissing, dwarfed by a yellow moon. Her works possess some of the uncanniness of the best of Francesco Clemente’s imaginary self-portraits, worlds where the internal and external are not so separate.

What these artists have in common, perhaps, is not so special or unique. Medical conditions aside, when viewing the work we are struck by the power of the work, not the strength it took to create it. This, ultimately, brings us back to the fact that this urge to paint is the primordial urge Barnett Newman believed it to be, as he wrote in the essay "The First Man Was an Artist" in 1947. In part it reads, “What was the first man, was he a hunter, a toolmaker, a farmer, a worker, a priest, or a politician? Undoubtedly the first man was an artist.”

Newman begins the essay: "A science of paleontology that sets forth this proposition can be written if it builds on the postulate that the aesthetic act always precedes the social one. The totemic act of wonder in front of the tiger-ancestor came before the act of murder. It is important to keep in mind that the necessity for dream is stronger than any utilitarian need. In the language of science, the necessity for understanding the unknowable comes before the desire to discover the unknown."

Newman was describing a being which, for lack of a better term, was “homo aestheticus,” the next step along the evolutionary line of those bipedal creatures scrabbling over the planet. If these recent shows have anything to tell us 70 years after Newman’s thesis, it is that this form of anthropoid is alive and thriving.