Art Review

On Sense

Millree Hughes — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 02:05:05 +0000

On Sense Millree Hughes February 2, 2025 - 21:05

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David Humphrey: PorTraits

Fredericks & Freise, NYC

Dec. 12 through Feb. 8

Social media and the engines that power its algorithms engage us in a race to the bottom. The stupider depths have worse music, more ill-informed news, and bad ideas.

David Humphrey's wild melange of painting styles was an argument for pluralism. He and other New York artists like Amy Silman and Michael St. John imagined painting as a manifestation of '90s tolerant liberalism. All kinds of things can coexist on the canvas because relationships matter.

In a big, messy, diverse country like America, this all makes sense, but nowadays, I believe that breaking rigid habits of thinking is more important.

In the main room, David's large paintings are made of carefully arranged parts. They seem to be worked out in advance rather than "found," as there is very little reworking going on. The paintings are much less oily than they used to be, and the colors are keyed up. I think a lot of artists are thinking about how their work will be read on the phone, as this is how a lot of painting is experienced now.

Plant Thoughts, 2024 Acrylic on canvas 60 x 72 inches

Is it a good example? The parts are laid out for consideration, and there is plenty of space between them. The conflict of black squiggles to the right on the blue and orange ground has a calligraphic quality. It contrasts with a more Instagram-like selfie head to the left.

Figures are often going through something. Stretched, smooshed, and, in this case, "censored." This one is pixelated, which relates to denying the viewer the ability to read it accurately. She has a plant growing out of her head, which reappears in other watercolors.

I'm reminded of the late Richard Foreman. Watching his plays, I often felt as if I was at the center of a vortex. There was an activity on stage that I couldn't follow. It was occasionally abated by a direct-to-audience speech that didn't really go anywhere in narrative terms.

With Foreman, as with David Lynch's movies, I find it best to adopt a relaxed, alert, but accepting state, just as I would do if I were meditating.

These artists all work within glittering structures made to contain their ideas. Seductive formal qualities make the work more available. Lynch's movies happen in gloriously lit vistas. Foreman's plays are like exquisite clock mechanical ballets, and Humphrey's paintings appear in gorgeous colors. They ask us to be free, despite the obstacles, to be open, even if we are afraid.

Above the pixelated head is a flourish of orange paint. It seems to act as a shadow to the head/mass of black strokes.

This play of like and unlike in unusual constructions is crucial to his work. It's poetry.

The back room of the gallery is like the inside of David's head. There are sculptures on shelves, watercolors, and a video curated by his wife, the artist Jennifer Coates. It's where experiments happen.

Looking at the back room, I saw connections from the sculpture to the sketches and into the video. Humphrey reminds me to perceive associations outside of narrative or familiar perceptual connections. For example, a thing may cast a "shadow," even if unformed. A ceramic cat with a broken face took me back to the first show of his that I ever saw at Deven Golden's gallery in the '90s. It was a show of piles of found broken ceramics formed into new sculptural totems.

A conjunction of yellow balls on a pedestal reminded me of a Cezanne fruit bowl in some kind of flux. The watercolor behind it is an ectopic portrait. An image of the artist sleeping on a sofa seems to be a focal point. Reality reassembles itself in his dreams.

The absurd is a way to open the mind to new possibilities. In the world we live in now, we are constantly being forced to make normal decisions and have normal responses. As I write, AutoCorrect is changing my wurds! Nonsense is a powerful antidote.

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Highly Pitched Colored Narratives

Mary Hrbacek — Wed, 25 Dec 2024 22:16:09 +0000

Highly Pitched Colored Narratives Mary Hrbacek December 25, 2024 - 17:16

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A Midsomer Night's Dream, oil on canvas, 72 x 60," 2024

Katya Leonovich: American Renaissance

Leonovich Gallery 10/1-12/31/24

Leonovich Gallery presents an inaugural show curated by Elga Wimmer of eighteen new large-scale oil on canvas paintings by Katya Leonovich, gallerist, and artist. The gallery is the "new kid on the block" of established and mega-galleries on West 24^th Street in the N.Y. art district for international and world-class artists. The daring and expansive works on view have not been molded to the usual expectations that typically reflect the "New York School" painting style; far from it! Her freely flowing radical painting technique is linked through touch and content to German Expressionism. Leonovich, a former fashion designer, goes all in with rough, textured brush strokes of unusual vigor. Her highly pitched colored narratives do not spare the viewer or seek to please. They are emotionally charged statements that focus on male subjects, accentuating the tension and highly wrought challenges that span the lives of many men in Western culture.

Leonovich paints the figures in loose, vibrant strokes that draw the eye through the fluid musculature of her nude male figures, many of whom express the discord of a struggle with animals that may symbolize the impulses and emotions they are confronting. The bright, uncompromising backgrounds function as metaphors for the aggressiveness, strength, roughness, and unrestrained physicality that is often associated with men. Women, in contrast, have traditionally been linked with the finer feelings of caring, empathy, compassion, and delicacy of manner and behavior. Women sometimes cry when a film has an especially sad ending; I question if men have been sufficiently liberated yet to cry at a sad conclusion!

Earthly Delights, oil on canvas, 72 x 60," 2024.

These are not harmonious colors, they are visually searing, challenging the observer to confront a non-traditional approach to visual expression; their unrelenting power may startle the viewer, until they become accustomed to the force of its impact. Various animals function as foils that engage the male subjects in ferocious physical combat, but some works reflect reconciliation, perhaps displaying mastery over difficult tendencies and feelings. There are around eight works that explore the process of struggle, while another eight display a sense of companionship and shared well-being between men and wild animals that personify their passions and instincts.

A variety of carefully chosen creatures establish the character of the action in each format. In "Crescendo," a large gorilla and an alligator surround a crouching man, hinting at the brutality he may face in his own evolving nature and the strong force of his id/sexuality. In "Universal Manna," the figure tries to extricate his foot from a kangaroo pouch, perhaps to free himself from the overbearing influence of his own mother or of his ancestral roots. In "Lionheart," the cool blue male seen from the back manages to overcome a young lion that he carries on his shoulders; the lion in Mesopotamian reliefs signifies the battle between the creator-mother lion and the male destroyer.

The painting "In Obscurity to Danger" features a seated figure who grips an erect asp while he sits seemingly comfortably on the shell of a large tortoise. In China, the snake is a sexual symbol associated with the male organ, which is a vehicle for lust. Snakes are thought to embody cleverness and duplicity. The turtle is the Native American symbol for the Earth Mother and for the Earth itself. In China, the tortoise encircled by a snake represents the North and Winter, embodying the belief that all tortoises are females who exclusively mate with snakes. "Knockout" is an especially intense image of a fallen boxer who is lying vulnerable in the ring overseen by a triumphant kangaroo. Kangaroos in Australia are known to be both fierce fighters and vigilant mothers who embody ancestral spirits. This image denotes circumstances in which the confrontation with the weaknesses of one's inbred heritage has been lost.

From Obscurity to Danger, oil on canvas, 72 x 60," 2024

These paintings express Leonovich's personal agendas in provocative imagery and contrasting hues. The works recall the ruthless quality that defines the art of Francis Bacon. They spur the viewer to explore their own susceptibilities in response to the artist's concerns. These works are highly original. It is rare for an artist to display such unlimited dynamism with such unfolding vigor. Leonovich explores men's psyches to reveal their inner demons in order to find what lies below the surface of the so-called civilized man. Her investigation is thorough and intense. She tenaciously digs into her content until vital aspects of men’s characters are made visually manifest, employing animal symbolism as the core of her narratives.

Color plays a significant role in her oeuvre. She is not willing to tone down the highly charged feelings behind the brightly contrasting, even clashing colors she freely uses. Her work is not meant to be pretty or restrained, quite the opposite, but it is nothing if not wholly authentic. Leonovich perhaps mirrors in her art the contentious political atmosphere we are experiencing in contemporary America. The painting "Monkey Business" suggests the total folly that engaging in war perpetrates. The show encompasses some political undertones, as seen in "You Choose." Finally, the painting that borrows the title of Johnny Cash’s song "I Walk the Line" visually expresses musical notes played by a naked man in a cowboy hat. Our democracy is on the brink of implosion, just as these figures are, for the most part, on the edge of their inner turmoil, in search of a way through and out of the confusion and angst that will lead some of the subjects to serenity.

Self-taught Russian artist Leonovich has much to say and is unapologetic about how she presents her visions in deeply mythic engagements between man and his inner demons. Her art can be seen as a feminist manifesto that makes men, instead of solely women, the subjects under scrutiny in life's constant battle to break us or strengthen us. Her animal imagery perfectly suggests the impulses that must be overcome in order to find peace, clarity, and tranquility within oneself and in one’s battle for self-understanding and self-control. The darker backgrounds on some paintings seem to imply night, as if some forces are just below the surface of the subconscious mind, waiting to emerge to be recognized and dealt with. One of the most striking aspects of these works is the confident depiction of male anatomy in strong, forceful brush strokes that mold the tendons and muscles to the underlying bodily forms. Leonovich's professional work in men's fashion has strengthened her ability to capture the movement of the male body convincingly.

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Tension At Play

Mary Hrbacek — Sat, 02 Nov 2024 20:23:19 +0000

Tension At Play Mary Hrbacek November 2, 2024 - 16:23

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Ran Hwang: Evanescence & Regeneration

Leila Heller Gallery

10/15 – 12/7/2024

Leila Heller Gallery presents Evanescence & Regeneration, a site-specific exhibition of nineteen new works by Korean artist Ran Hwang that explores traditional forms and themes of Asian culture and art in a highly charged presentation with links to the décor field. Hwang's connection to the imagery of plum blossoms, an almost national treasure in Asia, is articulated by beads, pins, paper, buttons, and nails, which have played a key role in Hwang's work-intensive process for some time. The blossoms signal that life is renewing itself in splendor. They are one of the Chinese "Three Friends of Winter" springing from branches that appear dead. They are among the four flowers that represent a season: Spring. The five petals of the plum blossom stand for the "Five Gods of Good Luck." Hwang's affinity for this flowering tree integrates aspects of symbolism and craft as she hammers pins and nails into paper buttons to affix them in multitudes on shaped plexiglass or wooden surfaces.

The artist immerses herself in the creative process as she strives for a material expression that fulfills her vision and needs to replicate a volumetric aspect of nature. The intricate particles adhere on translucent ultra-modern plexiglass surfaces. She covers a wood foundation with silver metallic paint that suggests machine veneers. Floral petals are amassed into blossoms over the background spaces.

Becoming Again_ETBF, 2024 Paper Buttons, Beads, Pins on Plexiglass H94.4in x W141.7in (6p) / H240cm x W360cm (6p)

Shape plays a major contributory role in Hwang's art. She uses circular forms symbolically to denote the eternal character of round formats. In the "Ode to the Full Moon," she plays with cycles of unexpected color: bright greenish blue, glittering pink, pale green, and neutrals of black, white, and gray. In this multiplex piece, these cycles speak to the artist's intensive constructive work process, as she creates alterations with new views that are subtly diversified. Except for these few examples, where the flowers take on a bright hue, the blossoms remain, for the most part, white, surrounded by the rough texture of the brown trunks and branches.

Hwang eases into the realm of "Décor" in some of her pieces. The blue screen is an example of a traditional Asian screen with updated variations; these are usually composed of panels delicately covered with water-based paints or inks on paper. Hwang reinterprets this style imaginatively to make the expressive statement stronger, more brightly colored, and surprisingly playful. The striking panels allude to contemporary interiors with the galaxy-like flowers that invoke stars in a vibrant evening sky. Nature here is assertively stated and more boldly expressed.

In "Beyond the Serenity," the entire work is immersed in solid pink, and in "Beyond the Serenity _P," 2024, the piece is saturated in a deeper orange-pink, which has isolated the blossoms in an unvaried world of pink hue. Pink subtly alludes to popular contemporary fashion. The oval shape of "Healing the Oblivious Aqua_OS," 2024, imitates a horizontal landscape format with softened edges. The silver metallic background vibrates with the nails and pins, juxtaposing them with a field of colorful primary hues in the bunched and blown petals. In this work, the artist expands her vocabulary to display a video game quality with pieces of plastic and paper blossoms juxtaposed with the silver ground. Nature is no longer pure or precious; it has become an extension of leisure that is adjoined to life's daily diversions and pleasures. It has become something that is fun to see and think about in leisurely contemplation but is not to be taken overly seriously or imbued with emotions or imaginative narratives. Nature is becoming more ordinary in popular culture.

Healing oblivious aqua_OS, 2024 Buttons, Hanji Paper, Beads, Pins on Wooden panels H78.7in x W141.7in (3p) / H200cm x W360cm

Hwang acts on an inner drive that seems to compel her to hammer materials in place on the surfaces and to shape those surfaces in symbolic ways that imply segments of experience as much as the fullness of expression.

Hwang has spanned the domain of traditional screens, wall hangings, and panels by expanding to ovals, circles, and extra-narrow formats. The artist has been fastidious in her work, hammering prolifically to deconstruct the image and conception of the Asian woman, which is often compared metaphorically to the traditional national flower. Whether consciously or without a clear sense of awareness, the artist is pounding away to undermine the cliché of delicacy whose aura plagues contemporary Asian women. They are in every way anxious to succeed in careers in contemporary art, business, finance, and all arenas of achievement and excellence. The works, including the steel nails embedded in the midst of the flower petals, retain their character with the addition of metal centers to affix them in place, within their firmament of purity in the context of reinterpretation, renewal, and redefinition.

Ran Hwang's powerful yet semi-decorative works express a strong self-assertive link with interior décor. She succeeds in imbuing her solid pink and pink/orange circular formats with a compelling volumetric depth of field that retains viewer interest as it fixes the eye on the dramatically shaped structures. The blend of natural petals and mechanistic nails and pins creates an unexpected, enigmatic combination that asks more questions than it answers. There is a tension at play in the works, in the forceful aura of contrasting elements that hold the viewer's attention. The unusually strong personal take on nature in the exhibition is both rewarding and stimulating. Ran Hwang has integrated Asian spiritual motifs and traditional Asian Interior décor with a trendy take on pop-Western nature perspectives to create an emphatic blend of forces that stir and inspire the viewer.

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Transliteration

Millree Hughes — Thu, 10 Oct 2024 23:19:22 +0000

Transliteration Millree Hughes October 10, 2024 - 19:19

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Kathleen Kucka at The Re Institute

Millerton, NY

Through October 26th

If art is not representing something, if it's not mimetic, what is it? It could be made up of signs or symbols that refer to some system of understanding. At best it might use its lack of plastic objecthood to conjure up something subconscious. It could use actions rather than things to do so.

Kathleen Kucka's new show at the Re Institute shares with an artist friend Janet Stemmermann continues her project of burn-marked canvases.

The space is large, filled with uncluttered light and betrays green folds of New York landscape from large windows. These beautiful canvases need space around them.

They act as a reversal of normal painting as the gesture cuts into the ground to reveal the colour behind. The raw canvas is scored by a hot blade. It's then laid on to a surface coloured by Flashe.

It is a slow read which helps to separate them from the influence of Lucio Fontana whose cuts can appear like a sudden murderous lunge.

Kucka's are sensual. The dyptych "Every-Thing" is exemplary. The marks move across the surface in an undulating pattern. The colour behind rises in a gradation from pumpkin to sign yellow. There is a hint of early Kusama with the same suggestion of the violence of revelation.

The night after seeing the show I dreamed of a favourite painting, Titian's "The Flaying of Marsayas." The metaphor can be the same, whether it's acted out or Represented.
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The Re Institute, 1395 Boston Corners Road, Millerton, NY
Shows are open from 1 to 4 PM on Saturdays or by appointment at 518-567-5359.

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Perception Becomes Surreality

Dom Lombardi — Sat, 24 Aug 2024 14:00:00 +0000

Perception Becomes Surreality Dom Lombardi August 24, 2024 - 10:00

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D. Dominick Lombardi, CCWSI 118, 2022, oil and alkyd on canvas, 15 ½ x 18 inches

Altered Logistics: Redux

D. Dominick Lombardi, Curator

The first exhibition of Altered Logistics was subtitled Contemporary Collage and Appropriation Art. It was co-curated by Max Tuja (aka: Max-O-Matic) and held in 2023 at SUNY Cortland/Dowd Gallery in Cortland, NY. The selection of art back then stemmed from our passion for collage in all of its forms and philosophies, which in turn became the main focus of the original exhibition.

For this latest version of the exhibition Altered Logistics: Redux, I continue the emphasis on collage as it best describes the method of combining previously unrelated elements that form a new message, emotion or narrative. This can be easily seen in eleven of the sixteen artist's works in Altered Logistics: Redux. In addition to these eleven artists, I have selected five artists that focus more on that moment of change, when the cognitive reprocessing of intake and altering strikes. In addition to these two sides of the general concept, "Redux" has both analog and digital examples of art, allowing me to continue the international take on the subject. As a result, this exhibition ends up being a complex visual experience, and one that I hope brings new insights and inspiration to all that see it.

Erick Baltodano, Unremastered #9, 2020, paper collage digitized, 30.8 x 23.2 inches

Beginning with the more collage leaning creators who expand the concept of logistics is Lima, Perú based Erick Baltodano. Baltodano boils down his method and message to its most basic elements while challenging our understanding of just what consciousness entails. Whether it stems from a knockout punch in the boxing ring, or our relationship with the more mundane physical day-to-day world, Baltodano shifts his focus to that transitional space between dimensions, thus shifting our understanding of time-based reality.

Joel Carreiro, B2fz8, 2021, #9, 2020, paper collage digitized, 30.8 x 23.2 inches

New Yorker Joel Carreiro's multicultural menageries of heat transferred images from fine art and design books are a mesmerizing reshuffling of our global visual history. From a distance, Carreiro's art looks like a colorful and compelling mass of minutiae with no specific reference. Up close, snipits of vaunted visuals known and new emerge quickly, blending together to form odd connections and jazzy juxtapositioning that constantly alters our own understanding of reshaped perceptions.

Cless, Palomas y Conejos, 2018-2020, hand-cut paper on a found magazine sheet digitized, 21.5 x 16 inches

Cless, an artist based in Valladolid, Spain, focuses on representing the five senses to create individual portraits that appear to be more alive than any representational image would suggest. Cless attains this by breaking the facial planes in key areas to extend or emphasize their reach. As a result, the Surrealistic aspects of his art enables the artist to introduce multicultural elements, as the once individual portraits now become open ended and more broadly interpreted, depending on the individual viewer’s own experiences.

Don Doe, The Yin of Suspenders, 2024, oil on canvas, 23 x 17 inches

Brooklyn based Don Doe alters his logistics with fractured elements as well, only in this instance the artist is more focused on the pressures and absurdities of body image and gender roles across time. Doe accomplishes these vastly important subjects by collaging together loosely related visual references from a litany of magazines, and finding just the right combination of segmented images. When combined, his art produces a challenging take on society’s built-in tendency to distort and derange.

Yeon Jin Kim, Plastic Jogakbo #14, 2023, Plastic and thread, 42 x 61 inches

New Yorker Yeon Jin Kim puts a contemporary spin on the art of traditional Korean Jogakbo with her stitched together found plastic sheets. Using mostly from shopping bags and decorative packaging, Kim’s art is both visually compelling and socio-environmental, leaving viewers with much to think about regarding the time we live in. Does endless labeling, branding and advertising alter our decision making? Is it sinful/wasteful to fall into the trap of the ubiquitous plastic shopping bag? Or is the artist making a statement about understanding an altered individuality in a time when more and more of us are becoming logistically tribal?

T. Michael Martin, Rat-a-tat-tat, 2024, mixed media collage on paper, 18 x 16 inches

Kentuckian T. Michael Martin draws our attention to the prevalence of the machine, especially the ones that get us from place to place, compute, keep us focused or watch our every move. The time of finding our own way has long been obliterated from all sides as we bounce from point to point like a pinball in a world where we have lost too much control over our own devices. On the other hand, Martin's art puts things into perspective in more ways than one, as he carefully coordinates color and movement in his compelling and contemplative compositions.

Max-O-Matic, Memory (14), 2023, paper collage digitized, 35.5 x 27.5 inches

Based in Madrid, Spain, Max-O-Matic shows an altered state that includes two distinctly divergent worlds crossing paths without canceling the other out. The key alteration is aesthetics, followed closely by the socio-political aspects of today's unleashed mixed-beliefs. As a result, Max-O-Matic shows how a relatively direct method can change the flow of logistics visually as two points of view collide and somehow coalesce, while enhancing the strength and meaning of both.

Kevin Mutch, Legend of St Francis, 2024, digital painting, 36 x 25.7 inches

Hamilton, Ontario, Canada resident Kevin Mutch alters our thinking in a whirlwind of subjects from creationism to creativity. He gets to the heart of each issue with a flair for the dramatic and an understanding of the narrative that may remind some of the art of the Renaissance, while the depth of his imagery, and the presentation of his thought process is more than modern. There is also humor in these works, a feeling that life is a playing field for one's imagination, a way of entertaining oneself. In the end, it is Mutch's unique ability to communicate complex thoughts that move us past logic and belief.

Margarete Roleke, War and Religion, 2016, light box with lenticular and painted toys, 21 x 16 x 7 inches

Margaret Roleke of Connecticut addresses the general understanding of such broad subjects as war and religion, and moves these topics into an arranged state so we can see how they relate. Controlling people's rights and beliefs, and conquering new lands are, of course, a big part of it. With Roleke's art, we are reminded that in order to motivate the masses, one must control minds and bodies to alter the logistics. Wars don’t happen and religions can not be established without the masses, and without the ability to control thoughts and ethics in some way or form.

Lydia Viscardi, Social Climate, 2021, acrylic and collage on wood panel, 84 x 42 x 1 ¾ inches

Lydia Viscardi of Connecticut brilliantly mixes metaphors that both dig deep and expand exponentially. Using both the familiar and the otherworldly, Viscardi presents a new take on how we develop as human beings, how we cope with life’s ups and downs, and where we are and what we may believe in. In the end, it’s about that sweet spot between heaven and Home Depot, being grounded or lost, or pining for some place just out of reach, where fantasy and reality coalesce.

Cecilia Whittaker-Doe, Looking Everywhere, 2023, oil on panel, 12 x 16 inches

Brooklynite Cecilia Whittaker-Doe reinvents the concept of the landscape, altering color, proportion, placement and logistics. In so doing, she reveals a multi-dimensional field where fractured vistas are repositioned in a semi-kaleidoscopic way that alters any sense of gravity or physics. Like a dream, we are presented with a disjointed narrative that is somehow pulled together by a thread, edging in continuity and clarity.

Serdar Arat, For Piranesi, 2019, acrylic on wood, 35 x 15 x 5 inches

From the experience of change, or when the moments of cognitive processing of space and time strikes there is Serdar Arat of New York. His art alters our conception of flow that architects depend on, and how we perceive our own movements in both familiar and foreign lands. In Arat's wall reliefs there is also that distinctive spiritual side that comes from the element of antiquity, especially in the displaced details. It's that familiar feeling of the passage of time, that experience of seeing, breathing in and touching an ancient or past world for that matter, that sticks with us forever, altering our understanding of just who we are in the grand scheme of things.

Vincent Dion, Step One, 2023, acrylic and aggregate on wood panel, 84 x 48 x 2 inches

Connecticut artist Vincent Dion uses a very familiar symbol, the Color Vision Test, to get his message across. From the intense written reality of "I ADMIT I AM POWERLESS OVER ART AND MY LIFE HAS BECOME UNMANAGEABLE" to the benignly humorous "COLORFIELD," Dion informs us that being an artist is both a blessing and a curse. And like artists who have used text in the past to make their thoughts known, Dion relies on the viewer's own personal experiences and the thoughts that ensued to be tapped and adjusted, altering minds away from the preconceived to the angst of the artist.

Paul Loughney, Pandering Spirit, 2022, collage on panel, 11 x 8 x1 inches

Brooklynite Paul Loughney's logistical bent is more about seeing and processing, and how we may alter our conclusions given change in circumstance. Loughney's art reveals the different ways we "see," and how those sights seep in solid then, dispel into the far reaches of space. There is also the presence of the collective unconscious here, or maybe it's just how we process seeing as we filter and form visual information moment to moment, day to day and year to year.

Creighton Michael, Frequency, 2011, oil, acrylic, digital transfer on convex panels, 24 x 72 x 2 ½ inches

Creighton Michael of New York brings us directly to the point of perception, that nano second when light and dark first enter the retina and are translated by the brain. Light comes in waves, the processing of that information has to be deciphered and compartmentalized otherwise we can not function successfully. So we must alter and logically implement what we perceive around us and Michael's art reveals those subtle changes that are normally imperceptible, showing us the beauty of what we are missing.

In my own work (image at top), there is a fascination with the theme of the exhibition, and how that may change the appearance of the person who is experiencing Altered Logistics on the brain. Done in a Pop Surreal, dark comedic way, I tend to lean aesthetically, more toward the strangeness of Lowbrow art to get my point across. I also rely heavily on mental image flashes that I believe come from the collective unconscious. I am based in New York State.

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Altered Logistics: Redux will be featured at the Clara M. Eagle Gallery, Murray State University, Murray, KY, from August 26 to September 20, 2024.

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The Poetics of Time

Dom Lombardi — Sun, 11 Aug 2024 14:00:00 +0000

The Poetics of Time Dom Lombardi August 11, 2024 - 10:00

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Dahlia Bed, Afternoon and Evening, 2018, acrylics on multiple acrylic sheets, all images courtesy of Cross Contemporary Art

Martin Weinstein: Looking Through Times

Cross Contemporary Art

Martin Weinstein’s art is time-sensitive. No, not the anxiety-producing, stressful, or expiring type. His art is more in the realm of the poetics of time—what we experience most often subconsciously when connecting with the time/space undercurrent encountered during times of heightened awareness.

Time, a human construct, was designed to give us organization and to present the concept of the past, present, and future, which some see as virtually nonexistent. Weinstein takes a very close look at that last part, dividing his paintings into separate, physical, overlapping transvisual layers. The resulting effect of his nontraditional approach precipitously changes the way we perceive two standard genres in painting: the landscape and the portrait, bringing renewed wonder and appreciation to these most familiar types.

Within his paintings, there is this shuffle between near and far, the time of day, and the changes throughout the seasons or years. Going beyond the preconceived, Weinstein changes the way we process visual information by breaking it down to selective details that jostle and float in space--real-time triggers that occur when one is immersed in the experience of life. And despite the fact that Weinstein works with acrylic paints and panels, his art puts forth a very organic and fluid vision well beyond the fixed and familiar. In the orchestration or the illustration of time, the artist pushes beyond the limits within the realm of the painted surface--a challenge that Weinstein solves by angling and overlapping the painted clear acrylic sheets.

Dahlia Bed, Afternoon and Evening, 2018, acrylics on multiple acrylic sheets, oblique angle photo by the author

Overall, Weinstein’s numerous works are Installed to hint at the sequential process of a graphic novel, moving the viewer through various vignettes that begin with an introduction to the lead characters in the form of portraits. From there, the installation moves us through individual, variously connected vistas where a windy and weightless thread begins in Italy with Venice, Stormy Evenings (2019) and Venice, Stormy Mornings (2021), soaring to a peak of intensity in mid-exhibition with Dogwoods and River, One afternoon Over another (2021), May Evening, One Over Another (2021) and Snowy Evenings, One Year Over Another (2021).

Venice, Stormy Mornings, 2021, acrylics on multiple acrylic sheets

Weinstein’s loving embrace of seasonal change is most profound in the spring and summer when the fireworks of exploding blooms reach their various peaks in warmer weather. In these instances, the artist gives that distinctive airiness to his painting technique and places it in the petals of the flowers. Often painted at close range, this series of floral delights is a continuous celebration, clearly recorded in the stunningly alluring Roses and River, Late Evening over Early Evening (2020), Irises and River, Evening Under Afternoon (2021) and Peonies, Three afternoons (2021). In these works and others like it, we experience the endless cycle of the earth through its most brilliant and colorful stars.

May Evenings, One Over Another, 2021, acrylics on multiple acrylic sheets

Weinstein’s portraits have a similar mix of persistence versus impermanence as we see more than one view of the subject. One immediately gets the feeling that these paintings, whether it is Syd (2015-2015), Katie (2022), John (2022) or the artist’s partner Tereza, April (2020), are individuals that are close in heart, mind and spirit to the artist. And as subjects, they also become integral but less overbearing elements than your standard portrait type, as they are absorbed directly into the artist’s fluid process. As a result, these portraits maintain the aura of each person, the spirit of the individual, placing them in an altogether different realm than the usual portrait type, just like the artist has done in his interpretation of a landscape.

Syd, 2015, acrylics on multiple acrylic sheets

Lastly, there is the Inside Over Outside series, which consists of a number of captivating works that move the viewer right through solid spatial boundaries. Walls dissolve, near and far intermingle, and what we understand as here and there blend together in a dance of visual delights. Add to the mix timeless cities like Rome and Venice, and the outside under the inside takes on even more import, giving the entire materialization of the narrative a chilling vulnerability.

Rome, Stormy Afternoons, Outside Under Inside, 2023, acrylics on multiple acrylic sheets

Take, for instance, Rome, Stormy Afternoon, Outside Under Inside (2023). Here we see the heavens intermingling seamlessly with the ceiling structure while landmarks encroach and interior furnishings hang in the balance. In Rome, Stormy Afternoon, Outside Under Inside, and the many works that take on that same challenge of traveling through tangible barriers that demarcate space, there is Weinstein’s unique take on the plotting of time, a vision with far more layers of meaning than the ones recorded in paint. What remains is a very tangible substance well beyond mere representation. Landscape and portrait painting has been thoroughly resuscitated, revived, and brought back to its once compelling place in the works of Martin Weinstein.

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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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Shifting Light & Color

Kathleen Cullen — Wed, 03 Jul 2024 14:00:00 +0000

Shifting Light & Color Kathleen Cullen July 3, 2024 - 10:00

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mixed media

Fog Swept Cargo: Art from the Faroe Islands

Scandinavia House, NYC

For those who want to escape from the City heat, I recommend you take in the Scandinavia House exhibition Fog Swept Cargo on through the 6th of July which features seven contemporary artists, each different in their approach to artmaking. Curated by Kinna Poulsen exhibition includes seven versatile visual artists whose works range widely in terms of expression, media, and technique: Hansina Iversen, Rannvá Kunoy, Tóroddur Poulsen, Hanni Bjartalíð, Randi Samsonsen, Alda Mohr Eyðunardóttir, and Jóhan Martin Christiansen. By including a broad range of media from graphic art, abstract painting, textiles and installation, the viewers get a sense not only of the visual arts on the Faroe Island but what it is like to be there. There are 40 works of art displayed that talk about the weather and the fog. The fog contains both elements of light and of darkness, reduces the visibility of objects, and provides us with several threads of meaning.

It is Poulsen's hope that the viewer notices a great joyful light, especially light in the dark, but also a melancholic feeling of volatility and exposure and a sense of being alert to what is approaching on the horizon. Fog Swept Cargo exhibition begins with a wall poem by Tóroddur Poulsen along with one of his works from the STEINPRENT (the Faroese word for stone lithography) the workshop where international artists congregate to produce printed works.

The first words were:

"ship" "papa" and "greenland"

then I started saying

"dirt" "sand" and "rocks"

and gave shape to the world

of my toy cars

i wasn't allowed to play with one day

because I had to hear about

"god" "angels" and "hell"

emptiness was the song

I heard most after that

but i tried to give it another verse

filled with dirts sand and rocks

so i could once again

dream of ships and play with cars

while papa and god fished for angels in greenland

and then hell didn't really exist anymore

Hansina Iversen, Purple Rain 2023

The intense cool white of the canvas behind the lightly washed color of Hansina Iversen (above) ethereal has the scale and feeling of the New York School of Painters who pushed size as much as they could. Iversen's organic forms move back-and-forth within the canvas, pushing the medium towards the immaterial.

ranna kunoy 2023

Ranva Kanoy's shifting symbols, signs, numbers and shape also create new forms of immateriality with shimmering pigments that are constantly changing color. The enigmatic shapes glisten and change with the direction of the lighting.

TÓRODDUR POULSEN, Wavelengths 2023

There is humor and irony in the dots and patterns or Toroddur Poulsen whose images are created in such a way that they create a new form of critique patterns.

There is a certain humor, and also poetry in Poulson's prints who often works with figures that are repeated in such a way that they create new patterns. Also produced in the graphic workshop STEINPRENT, the focal point for a large part of the development of contemporary art since it started years ago.

HANNI BJARTALÍÐ, Untitled 2023

Like a contemporary memento mori, Hanni Bjartalíð reminds us that we cannot take everything with us to the grave in his humorous and loving look at the fragility of mankind with their love of possessions.

Randi Samsonsen, DROP DEAD GORGEOUS BALLS 2021

Randi Samsonsen's "Drop Dead, Gorgeous Balls" hanging sculpture combines the seriousness of the sculptural form and the abstract materials, associations, with the humorous poetry of the titles of the work. It's all about the material and the associations, the material evokes in the viewer on the one hand soft dangling sensuous fabric while at the same time they are clearly anchored in a serious and dark tone by noose-tied rope.

Alda Mohr Eyðunardóttir', to change what was intended

Alda Mohr Eyðunardóttir's large work "to change what was intended" just blows me away with its materiality and melancholy. There is a shifting light and color created by the various elements of stone, wire, wool and silk. Look long enough at the work and there is a surprise- what the form really invokes in its shadows is the landscape, a longing for home and the culture of the Faroe Islands.

Fog Swept Cargo was curated by Kinna Poulsen and organized by Scandinavia House in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Industry and Trade of the Faroe Islands. Scandinavia House is grateful for additional support for the exhibition provided by Ellen Braestrup Strickler and the Bequest of Birgitta Dill. The exhibition is open through the 6th of July.

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The Floating Magic Eye

Millree Hughes — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 00:35:40 +0000

The Floating Magic Eye Millree Hughes June 24, 2024 - 20:35

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abstract expressionism

Sharon Butler: Buildingdrawing
Furnace Art on Paper Archive
Falls Village, CT 06031
June 1 - July 6th

Familiar art movements: Abstract Expressionism, Surrealism, and American Realism are all back in the New York Art World, but in tidier packages. Maybe I'm going to the wrong galleries, but I rarely see any experimentation in how a show is hung anymore. So it's great to see Sharon Butler's show at Furnace Art on Paper in Falls Village, a quiet spot in an increasingly lively part of Connecticut.

The gallery's owner, Kathleen Kucka, is an exciting artist and open to new approaches.
Butler uses the familiar shapes of Early Modernism—rectilinear, triangle, spots—as her subject. But she has always questioned every part of formal abstraction. How the work is mounted, the stretcher bars, the canvas, the frame—every aspect is reformable.

In this show, the given that is being challenged is the presentation. How do you hang a show?

Small, unframed watercolors hang on clamps and chains from three black metal-wheeled clothes hangers similar to those in museum coat check rooms for holding bags and coats. Familiar objects hang next to them: a potato masher with a squiggly metal press and black plastic handle, a used hand truck has a delicate piece hanging by large circular chains from its handle, and objects from the kitchen and the studio: a mug, a stapler, a colander.

The artist's making double-sided pieces originally motivated the unmooring of the work from the wall. These have been contained in Perspex sleeves that allow you to see studies on both sides of the paper. They jut out perpendicularly, like hospital signs meant to designate room ordinances.

From there, she began to imagine multiple ways of seeing the work from different viewing points, eventually hanging them and placing them on moving carts.

It's as if El Lissitzky's sketchbook is scattering shapes. They fall like blossoms in new ways and new colors. In connection with a surface, they disrupt or dissolve. Or blend with something that was there before.

As I walked away from the gallery the first time, I imagined I could see the pieces suspended in a frozen vortex without the walls, the objects, or the trolleys. It reminded me of a camera technique from the late '90s that became a staple of martial arts movies: the players would leap into the air and stay there while the camera was free to move around them. I felt like Neo waking in the Matrix.

Perhaps I was light headed because the way art is exhibited in a gallery is usually so fixed. This arrangement is so unfamiliar.

The pieces are small rectangles with perhaps a patch of color—spots of color that have been used to monoprint another piece—or a single-stroke pencil-drawn triangle. They have a Paul Klee feel, although even lighter and less definite. They're beautiful in a way that makes choosing one over another very difficult.

Just as they are Casualist, they are equally Causalist.

Each action precipitates another effect. The values change when there is water on the surface of the paper. All of a sudden, geometrics are not stable. Pencil lines can create space or limit it. A brush with open separated tines traces a swathe of green across the paper.
But the old art adage of doing something, doing something to it, and so on has led to dissipation. Are they falling apart or is their evanescence due to their reaching for transcendence through revelation?

Either way, their fugaciousness is contrasted with the lumpen solidity of the objects and the trolleys.

There is Surrealist poetry to the use of everyday objects. The watercolors act like the formal aspects of poetry—syntax, meter, and scan. The objects are verbs/nouns, things that do things. The dots in the colanders, the hole punch, and the curving handle of a staple gun are part of the associations. However, they are doubly redundant; they have not helped to make the artworks, and they can no longer do their jobs.

Sharon Butler's work is familiar, and perhaps a return to art styles that once worked is happening because a moment of reconsideration is needed.

It could work, but only if the questions and the motivation for asking them are as new as they are.

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Shining Seas

Dom Lombardi — Fri, 14 Jun 2024 14:00:00 +0000

Shining Seas Dom Lombardi June 14, 2024 - 10:00

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Shining Seas, Installation View @ C24 Gallery, (All Photo Credit: Daniel Krieger)

Shining Seas: Works by Eleen Lin

C24 Gallery, Chelsea, New York City

Over the past twelve years, artist Eleen Lin has looked to Herman Melville's classic novel Moby Dick for inspiration, in the production of her long running series collectively titled Mythopoeia. With great and expanding depth and detail, Lin takes every angle, including "the idiosyncratic mistranslations between English and Mandarin versions of the book," up to today’s lesser-looked-at undercurrents of homoeroticism and multiculturalism to guide her layered narratives. As a result, this stunningly beautiful and curiously complex solo exhibition stands as a must see show for art lovers and artists alike.

In Shining Seas, Lin reveals in exquisite style and varied technical transitions of color and clarity a mystical world in a slightly upturned space that slowly builds in detail and thickness of paint. Here, viewers are left with an expanding experience with surprising clarity that at times crackles and glows in works like The young philosopher (2015), where the ship’s decorative railing, or what is left of the bulwark from the Pequod, appears to protect a nest of eggs perched atop a dangerously damaged deck. Then there are the secondary and tertiary objects like the Chinese yo-yo that hangs from the main mast, the clothespins and the plastic bag attached to one of the cross ropes, the classic red and white life preserver in the distant seas and the large looming "shape of water" woman that bounds up on the horizon. All these components point to both a playful and purposeful approach, adding personal history and global environmental concerns that seep into our subconscious.

The young philosopher (2015), oil and acrylic on canvas, 70 x 84 inches

Born in Taiwan, raised in Thailand, and now living and working in New York City, Lin carries with her three distinct aesthetic influences that produce surprisingly clean color, a flair for the striking narrative, and a pliable use of metaphor. The central moral of the story that has inspired Lin all these years is the dangers of unrelenting thoughts of revenge. In the novel, all the characters die except the novel’s narrator Ishmael, who survives by using his good friend Queequeg's coffin as a flotation device. In this presentation of the series, the sense of the fruitlessness of revenge moves from the central theme, allowing the artist more range to explore the novel’s after-effects on her personal past and present.

Crow’s Nest (2015), oil and acrylic on canvas, 28 x 36 inches

As the Mythopoeia series has evolved and expanded over the past dozen or so years, Lin continues to push the narrative both inwardly and outwardly, resulting in visual spaces that pull you into the action, tweaking the viewer's awareness of the natural trajectory of life. This sensation is especially felt in the two larger works, The Young Philosopher (2015) and Life Folded Death; Death Trellised Life (2024), and the medium-sized Crow’s Nest (2015).

Life folded Death; Death trellised Life (2024), oil and acrylic on canvas, 72 x 96 inches

Of the three works mentioned so far, Life Folded Death, Death Trellised Life is the one that takes place on what looks like a stage set made to look as if it is completely underwater. Technically speaking, this painting clearly shows the artist's process, working first with thinned layers of acrylic paint applied to a stretched, unprimed cotton canvas, which, in this instance, sets up a prismatic background that dazzles the eye. A second layer of thin paint is applied with edgy details revealing large leaf flora and shoots of bamboo rendered just enough not to take attention away from the main subject in center stage, the great sperm whale’s complete skeleton. From there, it looks like Lin switches to oils, painting in the precisely rendered whale remains emerging from the confines of a large net, with its head adorned with peacock feathers. Animated as a puppet hanging from several thin black strings, the whale performs on a stage that has curious details, including a computerized light source that periodically changes color.

Meet. Greet. Fleet. (2018), oil and acrylic on canvas, 72 x 96 inches

Meet. Greet. Fleet. (2018), one of the first paintings you will encounter when entering the exhibit, is one that addresses the homoerotic aspect Lin finds in Moby Dick. Here we see two fishermen meeting in the open sea in multi-colored boats set against a colorful rainbowed sky. Like the preliminary painting method previously mentioned, Lin begins with a stunning wash of bright colors across an unprimed canvas. Over this, the artist adds a swirling sea populated by a feisty swordfish that pierces the checkered side of one vessel as it fights for its freedom. The many-colored rope that winds around the fish to its imperiled state spools out from a box in the boat on the left, and the fact that the attached fish is nosed nicely into the adjacent boat on the right links the two men together in an extended virtual embrace. An embrace that portends to end in a more personal encounter, as signified by the unseen sperm whale that spouts water up and into the point where the two men touch.

Eleen Lin: Shining Seas, Installation View @ C24 Gallery

What I find most telling in Meet. Greet. Fleet. (2018) is the thickly textured clouds in the sky. Using plaster or perhaps modeling paste in the acrylic paint, Lin attaches weighty clouds that seem to suggest trouble ahead, even though both Thailand and Taiwan had or were debating protections for same-sex couples at the time of this painting. Then there are the intricately painted hats and shadows that obscure the men’s faces. Perhaps it is a prophetic reference to the middle of the Trump era, as we see so clearly today, how certain politicians and Supreme Court judges are trying hard to turn back the sands of time.

The exhibition Eleen Lin: Shining Seas features paintings, drawings, watercolor, gouache, and graphite on paper by Eleen Lin and runs through July 19 at C24 Gallery in Chelsea, New York City.