Pattern Pulp

Tuesday's Gallery Picks




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This week’s artists explore their creativity in everyday materials and experiences.

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1.Michael Zelehoski takes found three-dimensional objects like pallets and police barricades and restructures them into two-dimensional space via Mike Weiss Gallery
2. Exploring the Rules of Vandalism at Le Paris Urbain
3. In her exhibition Attention Shoppers, Lisa Hoke invites the eye to a smorgasbord of color and form sourced from the printed packaging that contains and advertises processed foods at Pavel Zoubok
4. Kacper Kowalski’s striking aerial photography at The Curator Gallery
5. For Passage, Sophia Allison and Leanne Lee intermixed stained coffee filters and hand-drawn patterns on torn rice paper. In addition to the botanical imagery found in both artists’ individual oeuvre, the piece references landscapes from Allison’s work as well as Korean symbols and motifs common in Lee’s work at San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art
6. Rick Begneaud aptly combines paint, collaged with fabrics to create abstracted, angular shapes pulsating with rich color at Woodward Gallery

Trend: Expressive Body Script




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There’s been a lot of talk about graffiti finding it’s way into high fashion. Miuccia Prada ushered in the conversation last summer with her About Face runway presentation. The latest examples have similarities in their raw essence, but take a bold, expressive typographic turn. We have Evisu, Die Antwood, Comme des Garcons and Dior Homme all using the body or page as a canvas for expressive thought.

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All of these pieces feel connected in some way to the style and vibe of Shantell Martin’s illustrations. Her stream-of-contiousness drawings have been an influential style for a while now, and a stark contrast to the crisp colorful characters and collage work from Fall.

 

Tuesday's Gallery Picks




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Our top gallery picks this week experiment with layers and the spaces where ideas intersect.

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1. Mark Grotjahn employs a palette knife to drag, scrape, and feather densely woven layers of oil paint. Aggressively worked from the center of the painting, the impasto offers a glimpse into the many layers of color comprising the composition at Blum & Poe
2. Askew’s Exodusrefers to the perpetual migration of people within the greater Pacific region. The underlying themes of cultural identity are explored through an experimental style of portraiture, abstraction and graffiti still life paintings depicting traditional Pacific foods at Goodspace Gallery
3. Katharina Grosse presents pictures on canvas which seem as if made for the imposing, lofty space in which they are being shown. Compressed into the two-dimensional, rectangular format of a panel painting, the works point virtually outward, beyond their material bounds at Galerie Johann König
4. Adrian Ghenie’s paintings are all about alienation and the angst that accompanies it at Nicodim Gallery
5. Merion Estes’ Dystopia features new large “tapestry-like” paintings continuing her ongoing body of work exploring the intersection of nature and decoration at CB1 Gallery
6. “The Sound of Creation” is composed of a selection of painted works accompanied by corresponding musical tracks as the result of a creative collaboration between the artist Beezy Bailey, and the composer and music theorist Brian Eno at ArsCulture

Trend: Grids & Motifs




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Grids, motifs and colorways have been finding their way into my social feed as of late. While the theme’s not necessarily a new concept, the minimalist and spatial approach feels quite current. A few favorites weave color, illustration and narrative into an organized grid.

Julia Dault’s Toronto exhibition, Color Me Badd showcases color and form in a highly graphic and flat way. The colors are bright and the shapes are abstract. Next up, is a snapshot I took while in Marrakesh of a Berber rug. While it’s old, it feels on trend for what interior stores are stocking these days.

Then there’s a snapshot by Lesley Morphy from the Canal Street station. I’m forever in a rush when I go left at this visual fork in the road, as it’s the subway stop closest to my office – but always wonder about the story behind the icons – does anyone know?

And the glue that holds this all together, is Vivienne Westwood’s latest commercial print ad. The sticker laden stall compliments the art world, just as it mimics real life.

 

Colors & Summer Brights




1Summer_BrightsSummer’s arrived – especially in Manhattan where the temps are teetering on 90 degrees Farenheit. In acknowledgment and celebration of the season change, I thought I’d share some snaps from the past few weeks.

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It’s been a bit of a travel forecasting whirlwind, and interestingly, it seems like the global color palettes are on the same page. The rose floral clutch is from Selfridges, while the mega leaf was spotted during a wedding weekend celebration in Tulum, Mexico. It truly feels like the Mara Hoffman of plants. I inserted myself in the mix- since the orange and pink play was unexpected, but extremely characteristic of the vibrancy throughout Morocco. That said, this dress is a Balinese print. This was a brief roadside coffee break, enroute to Marrakesh. Hay Design has created a pop up shop at Liberty London, and unsurprisingly, the patterns were fabulous. Here are a few tote bags from their spring collection. The geometric paper is from Pentreath & Hall, an interiors store just off Lambs Conduit Street in London. The folds make the 2D/3D graphics truly pop.

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In putting this together, I thought I’d make a quick print that embodied all of the above, incorporating the colors and mood from each image. I don’t usually share my designs on the blog, but figured it’d be useful to illustrate the meaning behind concept and creation.

 

Tuesday's Gallery Picks




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In this week’s gallery picks, process, pattern and color reign supreme.

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1. Rosson Crow has long been fascinated by history and the psychology of interior spaces, and has addressed subjects as varied as French Revolutionary interiors, New York City graffiti and the films of Alfred Hitchcock in his work. This exhibition represents Crow’s response to the paintings of Florine Stettheimer and debuts a new technique of Xerox transfers layered with painting on the canvases at Sargent’s Daughters
2. Richard Hull calls his recent paintings and drawings “stolen portraits.” His crayon drawings, in particular, are portraits in the form of hairdos, each one expressing a distinct visual personality rather than a representation of a particular individual at Western Projects
3. The bold brushstrokes and swirly shapes in Yayoi Kusama latest works seem to hover between figuration and abstraction; vibrant, animated, and intense, they transcend their medium to introduce their own pictorial logic, at once contemporary and universal. As such, while they continue Kusama’s innovative exploration of form, subject matter, and space, they also represent a connection to her work from the past six decades at David Zwirner
4. In James Little’s new paintings, color and structure are critical fixations that complement his geometric pictorial style.  The edges of his vertical bands are saturated with lucid color as they give way to other patterns – chevrons, rectangles and zigzag designs of varying widths at June Kelly Gallery
5. By folding, tearing, and combining, Yun-Woo Choi obfuscates the meanings constructed in two-dimensional printed material in an attempt to deliver intuitive feelings to the viewer at Open Source Gallery
6. Carlos Estrada-Vega’s paintings are composed of more than 300 blocks of color. Considering each as an individual brushstroke, Estrada-Vega proceeds to compose his paintings intuitively, mounting these pieces onto metal plates using magnets at Margaret Thatcher Projects

Tracking Repetitive + Awesome.
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