Pattern Pulp

Tuesday's Gallery Picks




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This week’s artists display a meticulous methodology in their work.

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1. The new drawings and sculptures of Alex Zecca’s continue the artists obsessive and precise methodology. They are time-intensive, process-oriented works made through a laborious process of accumulating steady inked lines at Gallery 16
2. Breaking Pattern highlights several generations of artists whose works investigate and advance the discourse around pattern, optical, and perceptual abstract painting at Minus Space
3. Mara Held’s energetic yet delicate paintings on linen and paper use swirling organic forms that suggest lyricism and spontaneity, yet her medium of choice requires great dexterity and meticulousness. Held’s ribbon-like, concentric lines in vibrant colors create intricate patterns that evoke varied sources from topography or maritime waves to Japanese Woodcuts and Psychedelic posters at McClain Gallery
4. Aya Uekawa’s Good Girls at Kravets Wehby Gallery
5. Alma Thomas’ original and dynamic style is characterized by large-scale abstractions comprised of rhythmic, repeated marks of vibrant color. Inspired by nature, recent discoveries in the sciences, and her observations of earthly and celestial phenomena, Thomas’ work was devoid of overt political content at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery
6. Jaq Chartier’s paintings—matter, vitalized—are the result, not of romantic or expressionist ecstasy, but orderly, almost scientific investigations into the properties of color at Dolby Chadwick Gallery

March 31, 2015 | By: Shayna Kulik

Tuesday's Gallery Picks




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The art of construction and destruction reign in this week’s gallery picks.

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1.With a relationship to concrete poetry, Katsumi Hayakawa’s 3D works make visual connections between the complex and unseen substructure of the information age and the increasingly dense landscape of modern cities at McClain Gallery
2. Don Kimes’ new works are inspired by the old and blemished paintings that were destroyed by a flood almost a decade ago in the artist’s home. Kimes was fascinated by the outcome, drawing incentive from the way the ruined work looked after the natural incident at Denise Bibro Fine Art
3. Elise Ansel’s paintings are derived from Renaissance and Baroque depictions of bacchanals and figures in the landscape. Her work is about reclaiming, re-visioning and re-presenting paintings that were created at a time when women were seen as objects rather than primary participants in the creative dialog at Pheonix Gallery
4.In Alon Kedem’s paintings, complex entanglements of human beings, x-ray machines, production lines of figures and body parts constitute works full of humor that by their nature elude the expectations created by a theoretical system. They create an attempt – connected with foregone failure – at organization and order.  The works are found in a transition, in an interim world of examination, lack of success, in processes without conclusions at Feinberg Projects
5. The relationship between destruction and creation is an underlying concept in Ori Gersht’s work. “I’m interested in those oppositions of attraction and repulsion and how the moment of destruction in the exploding mirrors becomes for me the moment of creation.” at CRG Gallery
6.Charles Gaines is celebrated for his photographs, drawings, and works on paper that investigate how rules-based procedures construct order and meaning. Working serially in progressive and densely layered bodies of works, Gaines explores the interplay between objectivity and interpretation, the systematic and the poetic at Hammer Museum

February 3, 2015 | By: Shayna Kulik

Tuesday's Gallery Picks




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The shows in this week’s gallery picks explore transitions: in their work, in their selves and in the world around them.

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1. “Chris Ofili: Night and Day” spans the artist’s influential career, encompassing his paintings, drawings, and sculptures. The artist’s diverse oeuvre has taken imagery and inspiration from such disparate, history-spanning sources as the Bible, hip-hop music, Zimbabwean cave paintings, Blaxploitation films, and the works of William Blake. at New Museum
2. Inspired by the notion that “every place is unfathomable, infinite, [and] impossible to describe, because a place…[is] constantly arising and decaying,” Alluvial Constructs provides a visual exploration of the intrinsic, unavoidable and poetic processes of construction and degradation at Octavia Art Gallery
3. The Bruce High Quality Foundation re-imagined the much-fabled Arnold Böcklin painting Isle of the Dead as a stark reality when two members, one clad in a makeshift shroud and the other at the helm of a dinghy, sailed toward a garbage dump with the skyline of New York City rising in the distance. Here, they exhibit silkscreen versions of Böcklin’s first version of Isle of the Dead paired with silkscreen versions of their encomiastic image at McClain Gallery
4. Somewear is a series of self-portraits, which struggles with the idea of identity. Is it possible to isolate our purest self from everything that surrounds us? at Praxis
5. Kent Williams’ acute sense of human anatomy has consistently been a staple in his work throughout his career, yet as we see with How Human Of You, the natural tendency we have to explore, experiment, and transition has lead Williams to fresh ground at 101/EXHIBIT
6. Using simple forms and creating broad swaths of rich texture, Alexis Portilla has mastered the subtle connection between soft and hard-edged abstraction. His surfaces are especially vibrant with layer upon layer of soft, yet rich color at Birman Wood Fine Art

 

November 4, 2014 | By: Shayna Kulik

Tuesday's Gallery Picks




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Using the landscape as a jumping off point for lush abstractions in this week’s gallery picks.

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1. IN MEDIAS RES is a chronicle of José Parlá’s life, beginning with his childhood and including his extensive travels around the world. Through choreographed, painterly works, the artist creates impressions of life-altering moments that have impacted his art making process at Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery
2. David Johns’ work combines fine art training with the traditional teachings he learned as a child and the Dine philosophy of life by which he lives. The symmetry of David’s paintings reflect this harmony and balance; the colors and textures he creates reflect the beauty of the land from which he comes at Zane Bennett Gallery
3. A look into the brief but critical period in Helen Frankenthaler’s career during 1962–63, when she “composed with color” rather than with line, resulting in the freer compositions that came to exemplify her long and prolific career at Gagosian Gallery
4. David Kinsey’s “Cushion of Memory” takes cues from the likes of the Sequoia National Park — near his home on the west coast — to create deep, abstract landscapes at Library Street Collective
5. Angelina Nasso’s presents a new group of oil paintings inspired by the lush forest setting of upstate New York where she lives and works. Her use of vibrant color and abstract forms is a vehicle for her continued study of the notion that all things come about from unity by means of adaption at McClain Gallery
6. Sue Williams’ work has long been known for combining themes of gender politics and the body. The exhibition features some of Williams’ earlier anthropomorphic paintings from the late 1990s leading to current works painted during the last seven or eight years, moving from the untidy, abject visual play on the body and bodily functions, to paintings which address traumatic geopolitical and environmental events at James Cohan Gallery

 

September 30, 2014 | By: Shayna Kulik

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