Pattern Pulp

Tuesday's Gallery Picks




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This week’s artists draw inspiration from the comfortable and the insights of their intuition.

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1. Lori Ellison’s paintings and drawings are characterized by dense, pattern-filled compositions executed with a devotional intensity. The work incorporates both abstract geometric motifs and those drawn from nature. Organic motifs found in some of the works were inspired by Ellison’s visits to the recent Matisse exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art at McKenzie Fine Art
2. The work in Chris Oatey’s current exhibition is created through a meditative process. A painting develops outdoors over the course of several days. Falling snow covers the surface and subsequently melts to randomly distribute layers of pigment. The paintings serve as vehicle for later drawings.at CB1 Gallery
3. Created during a very brief period, from 1989 until her early, unexpected and tragic death at the age of 29, Illse D’Hollander’s oeuvre exhibits a highly developed sense of color, composition, scale and surface, through the use of subtle tones and pared down compositions. On her work: “A painting comes into being when ideas and the act of painting coincide. When referring to ideas, it implies that as a painter, I am not facing my canvas as a neutral being but as an acting being who is investing into the act of painting. My being is present in my action on the canvas.” at Ilse D’Hollander
4. Taking the pathetic, melancholic and disillusioned attributes present in daily life, as well as the more mundane, and that which thrills and exhilarates us, Shrigley’s work is both honest and entertaining, contemplating issues such as death, love, insecurities and other emotional traumas in a manner that is quite factual and unapologetic at Galleri Nicolai Wallner
5. From hard-line bands to vivid stains to veils of color fields, Ronnie Landfieldʼs work always reflects his transforming insights on color and life. As the artist said in a recent interview, “I believe the most profound paintings allow people to look at the work and access the ability to see themselves.” at STUX + HALLER GALLERY
6. In Comfort Inn, Matt Phillips paintings simultaneously evoke and employ the deeply familiar architecture of decorative surfaces, textiles and fabrics, suggestive of a habitable yet transient domesticity. Like the Comfort Inn hotel across the street from his studio, his work conjures, as he puts it, “a space that is initially foreign… even artificial, yet somehow becomes a stage for something deeply human.” at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects

January 19, 2016 | By: Shayna Kulik

Tuesday's Gallery Picks




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This week’s gallery picks present the balance of whimsy and precision expressed in lush color.

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1. Robin Rhode’s Breaking Waves, whimsically depicts a young boy surfing in the sea. The illusionistic swell of the waves–articulated by Rhode’s drawn gestures onto a dilapidated city wall–reiterates the boy’s deft maneuvering of the ocean and this type of athletic physicality is echoed in the accompanying wall drawing at The Drawing Center
2. Rhythmic and lyrical, with a combination of pre-ordained structure and improvisation inspired in part by his love of jazz, Stanley Whitney’s square-format paintings are arranged rectangles of vivid, single colors in a deliberately irregular grid, with the close-fitting, many-hued “bricks” or “tiles” stacked vertically and arrayed in horizontal bands in Dance the Orange at Studio Museum Harlem
3. In Plane Figures, artists working in Argentina, Peru, and Chicago are brought together by a shared interest in abstraction as a phenomenological, first-person experience of painting’s two-dimensional plane. In a selection of works that engage the history of geometric abstraction and op art, the artists boldly manipulate or violate the conventions of these styles in visceral ways at The Mission Projects
4. James Kennedy’s abstract paintings feature intricate, completely knitted surfaces that rely structurally on a buoyant tension of line, form, texture, and tonality. Despite the precision of his works, which contributes to their measured and harmonious gestalt, Kennedy’s process is unpremeditated; he does not create preliminary drawings, nor does he make use of referential material at Dolby Chadwick Gallery
5. Vera Paints a Rainbow showcases Vera Neumann’s use of color as means to express emotions through compositions characterized by a colorful palette. The works on view, organized following the rainbow spectrum—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet—emphasize Neumann’s rich use of color, which in her words, “is a marvelous way of expressing emotion.” at Alexander Gray
6.  In response to the complex and elusive nature of color, Maureen McQuillan has created her own chromatic system, one that is both orderly, but also one that would “heat up, break down and short circuit itself in no time.”  at McKenzie Fine Art

July 14, 2015 | By: Shayna Kulik

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