Pattern Pulp

Tuesday's Gallery Picks




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The artists in this week’s gallery picks feature portraiture as a means of exploring heritage and storytelling.

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1.In Alex Katz’s new work, rather than filling each frame, the subjects are assigned to the margins with black space occupying most of each canvas. What is striking about these new portraits is both the depth and diversity of the black paint contrasted against the dramatically studio-lit figures. Presented within a ‘widescreen’ format, the figures become both cinematic and theatrical, resembling performers caught mid-motion by a spotlight at Timothy Taylor Gallery
2. Vanessa Prager’s “imagined” portraits cross the border between the figurative and the abstract with diplomatic immunity. “I made this series to tell stories and as with any story, you need to zoom-in to get the details and zoom-out to grasp the larger thematic concerns.” at Richard Heller Gallery
3. The work of painter and sculptor America Martin is informed by both her Colombian lineage and strong affinity for modernism allowing for a dynamic interplay between cultures, styles, and techniques. Her new series explores familiar themes and subjects within Martin’s practice – female nudes, scenes of musicians, and portraits of indigenous peoples – in oversized depictions that are both iconic and enigmatic, inviting the viewer to further inquiry  at JoAnne Artman Gallery
4. Hung Liu’s artistic practice investigates the complex interactions between individual memory and history, and documentary evidence and artistic expression, among other themes. Her richly-rendered paintings are vivid and powerful, their subjects drawn from personal experience, cultural and political events, literature, and photography at Palm Springs Art Museum
5. Lynnea Holland-Weiss’ exhibition Unfold All Over is filled with large figurative paintings full of mood, color and pattern that delve into our human instincts and the mystery of being at Store 1026
6. Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic raise questions about race, gender, and the politics of representation by portraying contemporary African American men and women using the conventions of traditional European portraiture at Brooklyn Museum

February 24, 2015 | By: Shayna Kulik

Tuesday's Gallery Picks




gallerypicks_patternpulp97

Each artist in this week’s gallery picks has cultivated their own unique language of expression in their respective bodies of work.

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1. Constance Lowe’s exhibition, Air to Ground, consists of highly textural geometric collages. These works are all part of Lowe’s Garden City series, 2013 to the present, which, formally and conceptually, evolve from US geological landsat (NASA land satellite) photographs that depict the circle-and-grid-shaped center-pivot irrigation farming patterns that dot the Midwest’s landscape at Ruiz-Healy Art
2. Using the concept of the graffiti tag as a starting point to craft a secret language of symbols, RETNA’s canvasses are messages known to him and his inner circle alone. Each block of text is a sophisticated system of hieroglyphs, calligraphy and illuminated script. “Articulate & Harmonic Symphonies of the Soul” includes RETNA’s most important pieces of recent years and a careful selection of his newest works on canvas by the artist at Hoerle-Guggenheim Gallery
3. Important late works of Serge Poliakoff are juxtaposed with a small selection of works from 1950 and 1951, in order to illustrate the circular nature of his practice at Timothy Taylor Gallery
4. Liz Nielsen’s work in Wolf Moon is a contemporary application of one of the best known and most engaging avant-garde photographic processes, the photogram, whereby an image is created without a camera by placing objects directly onto photographic paper and exposing them to light at Denny Gallery
5. The Musical Box, features two pairings of artists:John Newman and Cary Smith; and Evie Falci and Robert Otto Epstein at Jeff Bailey Gallery
6. On the 20th anniversary of Nancy Graves’ death, Mitchell-Innes & Nash presents work from the first half of her artistic career, 1969 to 1982, and features painting, drawing, sculpture, and film. For Graves, the revelations of contemporary scientific research and the excitement of new discoveries were integral to the artist’s artistic practice at Mitchell-Innes & Nash

February 17, 2015 | By: Shayna Kulik

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