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RICHARD POUSETTE-DART at Pace

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Richard Pousette-Dart, installation, Pace Gallery, NYC, 2014

Another museum quality revelatory show arrived this week in Chelsea, the exhibition of late paintings by Richard Pousette-Dart at Pace through January 10, 2015. One of the youngest of the first generation New York School painters, Pousette-Dart continued to refine his approach to painting into the early 1980s, creating a body of late work that, more than 40 years later, remains singular and potent. Not unlike the severity and radicality of Rothko's last work, these paintings are an important departure from Pousette-Dart's earlier gestural works, and a tougher, highly simplified elaboration of his more overtly "cosmic" pointillist paintings from the 1960s. Here the artist achieves a full realization of the metaphoric power of elemental form, creating undulating particular surfaces that coalesce into simple geometric configurations, while maintaining the sensation of perpetual flux. As Pousette-Dart worked his way out of the illustrative mindset of surrealism, he began to construct iconic objects that for him embodied pure transcendental energy. If these paintings in their boiled down immediacy look quite contemporary, which they do, they also remind us in their unabashed commitment, just how much courage it took to make them.

Richard Pousette-Dart, Time, Space, Window, 1982-83, 62 x 89 inches, acrylic on linen

Richard Pousette-Dart, Presence Number 3, Black, 1969, 80 x 80 inches, oil on linen

Richard Pousette-Dart, Radiance, Blue Square, 1978-80, 50 x 72 inches, oil on linen

Richard Pousette-Dart, Black Circle, Time, 1979-80, 90 x 90 inches, oil on linen

Richard Pousette-Dart, Transcendental Red, 1982, 50 x 72 inches, oil on linen

Richard Pousette-Dart, Eye of the Circle, 1975, 44 x 83 inches, oil on linen

Some Notable Shows from 2014

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Eve Aschheim at Lori Bookstein 


Alain Biltereyst at Jack Hanley (image from gallery website)


James Bishop at David Zwirner 


Ross Bleckner at Mary Boone 


Frank Bowling at Spanierman Modern (image from gallery website)


Color As Structure at McKenzie - image, Jason Karolak (from the artist's website)


Robert De Niro Sr at DC Moore 


Tomory Dodge at CRG 


Rackstraw Downes at Betty Cunningham (image from gallery website)


Robert Gober at MoMA (image from museum website) 


 Jenny Holzer at Cheim and Read


Chris Martin at Anton Kern 


Matisse Cutouts at MoMA 


Joan Mitchell at Cheim and Read 


Richard Nonas at Fergus McAffrey 


Richard Pousette-Dart at Pace 


Eleanor Ray at Steven Harvey


Pat Steir at Cheim and Read 


Nina Tryggvadottir at David Findlay Jr (image from gallery website) 


Kara Walker at Domino Sugar Factory, and An Audience video at Sikkema Jenkins (image from internet)

2015

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WISHING EVERYONE PEACE AND HAPPINESS IN 2015

Steven Alexander Studio, December 2014

ERIC HOLZMAN at Lori Bookstein

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 Eric Holzman, Afternoon, 2014, 12 x 9 inches, oil on canvas

Eric Holzman is presenting an exhibition of small paintings in the back gallery at Lori Bookstein Fine Art through February 7, 2015. While we might call these works landscape paintings, I would say that they are first and foremost paintings, that take elements of landscape as their subject or starting point. One of the most recent pieces in the show, Afternoon, is almost entirely frontal -- a luscious organic object whose surface undulates with a most subtle umber/ultramarine contrast -- like a lovingly handmade effigy of a momentary memory. Other works as well, particularly the smallest pieces, read from a distance as virtual monochromes, then draw us into a dense amalgam of shapes and spaces that are at once as inviting and as impenetrable as nature itself. Several of the slightly larger paintings feature a heightened contrast between color-saturated sky and silhouetted trees, creating a hallucinatory presence that again emphasizes both the beauty and otherness of the landscape. In their extreme compactness these diminutive paintings all have an intensely worked physicality that creates an aged timelessness that calls to mind myriad art historical references. But while they are of course full-fledged self contained paintings, they are also used by the artist as studies for the fierce and magnificent 8 foot paintings where Holzman is absolutely in a league of his own. 

Eric Holzman, Rest I, 2009-13, 17 x 14 inches, oil on canvas

Eric Holzman, Sleepy Hollow III, 2009-14, 14 x 12 inches, oil on canvas

Eric Holzman, Tree & Car, 2014, 12 x 8 1/4 inches, oil on canvas

Eric Holzman, Forest at Crestwood, 2009-14, 10 x 12 inches, oil on canvas

Eric Holzman, Sleepy Hollow II, 2014, 18 x 14 inches, oil on canvas

Eric Holzman, Late Afternoon/Crestwood II, 2013-14, 10 x 10 inches, oil on canvas

Eric Holzman, Elm, 2008-14, 20 x 16 inches, oil on canvas

Images from the gallery website

New Work at The Curator Gallery

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520 WEST 23rd STREET - NEW YORK, NY 10011


Featuring the work of 
Steven Alexander, Karen Gelardi, Celia Johnson, Lael Marshall, Duane Paluska, and Don Voisine


        Steven Alexander, Palm 5, 2014, 72 x 48 inches, acrylic on canvas

A TRIBUTE TO JAKE BERTHOT by Eric Holzman

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 Jake Berthot, graphite on Xerox (image from Artnet)
PART ONE

A VISIT TO JAKE’S                         

Kazimira and I arrived from Soho,  around twelve oclock. We could see through the front door, Mara, (Mara Held) and Jake were sitting comfortably around Jake’s Kitchen table. Mara signaled through the front door for us to come in. Jake and Mara were drinking tea with local honey.

Jake lived in Accord, upstate NY, in a beautiful home converted from a chicken coupe.

It was opened like a loft, but cozy like a country home, nestled in a beautiful landscape that Jake designed when he moved in. Jake had removed enough trees to reveal the terrain surrounding the house, which was full of undulating, softly shifting slopes, rocky planes and graceful young trees that now populate his paintings and drawings. There had once been a quarry on this spot.


Inside, the walls were covered with beautiful things. There were two Pisarro’s and prints by Cezanne and Renoir. There was a Bill Bailey drawing and a small sculpture by Bruce Gagnier. And there was a small masterpiece by Jake, an earlier abstract painting that radiated a quiet silvery-blue light.


Jake and Mara were already engaged in conversation and we joined right in.  I brought up the Al Held show at Cheim Read and wondered if anyone had written about it yet. Jake said John Yau had. He felt John Yau hadn’t done justice to Al Held’s place in the NY School. It was nice to hear one artist defend the reputation and achievement of another with such affection and reverence, especially since they could not have been further apart in temperament and philosophy. When I read the article myself, it did seem positive. I thought that it went into depth to describe Al’s history and achievement. Al Held was a full generation older than Jake but they had known each other.  I was enjoying my good fortune at being a part of this conversation. Al had been one of my  teachers in grad school at Yale. I spent two years working around Al. I liked Mara, his daughter a lot, and was pleased that we had become friends. 


Speaking more about Al’s show, I related that I had sat on the floor near the big red painting during a panel, held earlier that week at the gallery. As people spoke, I felt Al's presence, that is to say his muscle and intellect, through the force and physicality of the painted surface that was just over my left shoulder.


Mara said she was too shy to say so at the panel, but felt there was more to be said about his color in these paintings and that no one had really gotten to the essence of what that was about.


Kazimira, who of us four, makes work which most resembles Al’s geometric abstractions, spoke in interesting ways of how it was both like and unlike her own work. Jake spoke in some depth about all this also. Then for a while I had the pleasant feeling that although my connection and understanding of what was being said was slipping away, I was still enjoying the music of the conversation. It had veered into the more abstract realms of space, shape, all over formalism, and the metaphysics of the painted surface.


Later, Jake spoke highly of Ivan Karp; a dealer who Jake said had been wonderful to him, giving him a yearly stipend equal to that of his teaching salary so he could be full time in the studio.


Margrit and Bill Jensen entered into our conversation.  They thought perhaps Kazimira and Margrit had gone to the same Catholic school.  Jake and Mara who know Bill and Margrit well, agreed that Margrit was not quite a saint, but close. The conversation switched back to Al. We all agreed that though Al loved nothing more than his own work, his love and commitment to painting in general was monumental. He enjoyed friendships with artists as romantic as Bill and Jake.  I said I could attest to his inclusive nature, remembering my student years when Al made sure I was invited to join nights of eating, drinking and arguing with Joe Santore, Judy Pfaff and Nabil Nahas. These were the nights he stayed over in New Haven between his two teaching days. I don’t remember contributing much during those nights. I was shyer than my friends.


This March day in the Catskills was still cold and wintery, though the snow had mostly been washed away on the weekend by warmer air and rain. Inside we were toasty, the sunlight pouring through the large windows and the wood stove easily heating the whole space. Now we were deeper into the warmth of afternoon light.


The conversation swung back to our personal experiences painting. Jake and Kazimira and Mara spoke of painterly technique and the perils and challenges of scale, the meaning of touch, and how these interrelated. Eventually we realized that hours had flown by and still we had not visited Jake's studio, so we made our way outside.

 Jake Berthot, 1994, oil on linen

Jake’s studio was a nice size, large enough, but not immense, just the right size for Jake's work. It was filled with the stuff of painting. It was orderly, studio-clean, with a prevailing feeling of quiet meditative stillness and of life being lived.

The first things Jake took out for us to look at were three very handsome pencil drawings in different stages of completion. Each exposed the mysterious personal geometry upon which he built his compositions. Earlier he had spoken of this component of his work, its function and its evolution. Honestly, I didn’t really follow his explanation at the time, but upon reflection I have some insights. Since Jake came to landscape painting from a different angle than everyone else, that is abstract painting, I imagine the grids provided a scaffold upon which he could build and construct his compositions. They must have made the space between things seem palpable and real, measurable in some way. With them in place, he could more readily move and feel his way through the warp and flow of form and space. Jake came to the sensuality of landscape and representation not through direct observation, but through abstraction and geometry which was also real to him. I bet he saw, felt or sensed those grids underlying the physical world, connecting and flowing through everything that we inhabit.

Next we looked at a gorgeous sketchbook from the 60s and 70s that was exclusively geometry. It reminded me of the flavor of abstraction in the air at that time among some artists I thought were very advanced.


The first oil painting Jake showed us was the largest we would see that day. When he

had carefully placed it on the wall a surprising thing happened. All the easy talk ceased. We were struck dumb. What Jake had said about his geometry and the structure of his landscapes had been totally realized in this canvas. We all recognized it and felt its presence and depth immediately. It got inside my head. We spent the rest of the afternoon looking at other new work. Slowly, silently, one at a time.


The end of the day was bittersweet. After a meal at Japanese place in town we said our goodbyes, as that cold, kind-of-scary Hudson River Valley winter twilight settled in. There was plenty of that purplish grey color Jake had spoken of earlier in the afternoon, the color of trees in a Catskill winter.


We met up several more times, usually at a museum show that Jake came down to see.  At the Gauguin show at MOMA the beautiful painter and mutual friend, Power Boothe, joined us. It was a show I was prepared to love but didn’t. Jake did. He was already weak, but spoke of, harmony, tone, color and dissonance. There was something in every painting. Jake was opened and easily moved himself into a position of appreciation.


I saw Jake for the last time 2 months ago, and he was dying. He was still a handsome man. His mind and his talk were fresh and sharp. He wanted to die because he didn’t have the energy to paint. He was angry because he did not feel he had finished what he had started.  Still it was a wonderful visit. I must have been there five hours or more. Still, I wished I could have left him more at peace. I was told that soon after my visit, he had gotten back into the studio for a short time.  I like to think I had something to do with that. We had talked a lot about painters and painting and it was energizing and fun for both of us.


Jake was a courageous explorer, an adventurer and since I have known him, a solitary. When I imagine where he is now, I see him fully engaged creatively with his imagination and his curiosity. He is exploring in an infinitely interesting place, an infinite space that we call death.


Jake Berthot, Ashton's Tree, 2010, oil on linen

ON JAKE BERTHOT

I got to know Jake, a few years before he hurt his wrist. My family and I were staying near Accord one summer and I called him out of the blue. We hit it off. He was funny, down home and brilliant. I was very happy to get to know a kindred spirit. Our dark, moody tree paintings resembled one another's, as did our search for resonance, depth and meaning. 


The search for meaning is an aspect of painting we don’t often speak of. It is a slippery slope. I think everyone knows about it, but I will try to say something about what I mean. Hmm, well soul is another word for it, like soul music and soul singer. It’s a funny thing that a lot of great modern artists and writers have made it a point to take everything including soul and spirit out of painting. Amazingly you can actually make great work without it. Maybe the shear force of intention and creative intelligence or playfulness can actually be another guise for what I am calling meaning.  But some work emphasizes the mind primarily while some speaks to the body and soul.

I remember a conversation Jake and I had about this. Jake was referring to what he called sensation painters. Cezanne used the same word. Sensation painters evoke a feeling response, in contrast to more conceptual artists. Ironically, Jake said Van Gogh was the first conceptual painter.  He saw Cezanne as his primary sensation painter and I

think he mentioned Giorgione in that conversation. Jake was certainly a sensation painter and a most soulful one. If you didn’t get that from him, you might have missed him.

He left out a lot and didn’t embellish. Some paintings weren’t that easy to love.

Sometimes they seemed as if he had felt his way through the darkness with his fingertips. In fact many of Jake’s paintings reside more in my heart more as a feeling, than as a visual event.

For me, taken as a whole, the work was an expression of faith and philosophy.

It is a treatise on a way of being in the world of consumption and competition.

It is an alternative to irony. Jake's work attempts to build a bridge to another way of being, to the sacred. Sometimes, I think he got deeper into hidden worlds than anyone since Cezanne. For Jake painting was a portal, a transporter to other dimensions where the line between life and death fades.

After his accident, I remember, in an attempt to see something positive in his suffering, I said to him that perhaps his pain had driven him deeper into himself, and that the work reflected this in a positive way. He would have none of that idea. Still I wonder at the role suffering had in Jake’s painting and Jake’s world. I read recently that at this time in man’s evolution, the ‘way of the cross’ is no longer a necessary component to spiritual growth. Jeeze I hope so.

We artists are drawn to our paths unconsciously, by character and personality, even by nature. But at the same time, through trial and error, we make choices about who we want to be and what we want to do.  I thought of Jake as a person of character and I think he consciously became a painter of soul.  I admit that his paintings are not easily understood in modernist terms. However, painters with an emotional and humanist bent who bring warmth, and sensuality, and a measure of peace into our world may be considered among the most modern of painters. They seem to paint with optimism and responsibility toward the future.


Jake Berthot, Skull, 2012, oil on linen

Images courtesy of Betty Cunningham Gallery

SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED at The Curator Gallery

CLARE GRILL at Zieher Smith & Horton

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 Clare Grill, Grain, 2015, 54 x 46 inches, oil on linen

I think anyone who loves painting will be excited to see the exhibition of new paintings by Clare Grill at Zieher Smith & Horton through April 25, 2015. These paintings dive head first into the history of great painting -- the all-over space of Pollock, the shape-making of Gorky and Kandinsky, the playfulness of Klee -- and emerge looking utterly fresh, direct and personal. Grill's touch is completely tuned in to the nuances of the paint and the linen, creating fields of marks and shapes that accumulate to a state of utmost sensuality (that must be seen in person). Her color tends toward the dusty and muted, exploring close-valued contrasts that shimmer, with occasional shots of bright hues or black or white. With these works, Grill has found a zone, an intimate space and a beautifully poetic vocabulary. The paintings seem to have sprouted, fully formed from her hand.


Clare Grill, Grain (detail)


 Clare Grill, Crown, 2015, 63 x 50 inches, oil on linen


Clare Grill, Glass, 2015, 63 x 50 inches, oil on linen 


Clare Grill, Peacock, 2015, 63 x 50 inches, oil on linen 


 Clare Grill, Dent, 2015, 53 x 46 inches, oil on linen


Clare Grill, Dent, 2015, 53 x 46 inches, oil on linen


Clare Grill, Copper, 2015, 63 x 50 inches, oil on linen


Clare Grill, Copper (detail)

New Work at Gremillion & Co Fine Art

JULIAN HATTON at Elizabeth Harris

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 Julian Hatton,Warbler, 2014-15, 60 x 60 inches, oil on canvas


Julian Hatton is presenting an exhibition of lively new paintings at Elizabeth Harris Gallery through May 9, 2015. Working with aspects of observed landscape as his starting point, Hatton builds abstract compositions comprised of many layers of shapes and spaces -- beautiful contrasts of linear and planar dynamics laid out in juicy scumbled color. The paintings evolve and intensify through constant shifts and revisions, ultimately coalescing to a state of ecstatic presence -- a place of deep painterly integration. These works participate in a great tradition of abstraction that began with Kandinsky, and have affinities with Bonnard, De Niro Sr, Per Kirkeby, and Hatton's generational colleague Amy Sillman. They breathe with a joyous love of the medium, and easily pull us into their world of utter sensuality.

Julian Hatton, Sandwich, 2014-15, 34 x 38 inches, oil on canvas


 Julian Hatton, Trouble, 2015, 60 x 60 inches, oil on canvas


 Julian Hatton, Scrim, 2015, 60 x 60 inches, oil on canvas


 Julian Hatton, Mystic, 2014-15, 60 x 60 inches, oil on canvas


 Julian Hatton, Bramble, 2012, 24 x 24 inches, oil on canvas on panel


Julian Hatton, Trio, 2012-13, 24 x 24 inches, oil on canvas on panel

LAURA DUERWALD at Marywood University

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Laura Duerwald, Template #3, 2015, 60 x 42 inches, mixed media on linen

Laura Duerwald, Template #3, detail

Full disclosure, I have a close personal connection to the artist. But I want everyone who visits this blog to see the paintings of Laura Duerwald, on view through June 5, 2015, at the Mahady Gallery, Marywood University. This is a stunning show to which these images do not do justice.

Laura Duerwald, Telemark X, 2015, 30 x 24 inches, mixed media on canvas


Laura Duerwald, Telemark II, 2014, 30 x 24 inches, mixed media on canvas


Laura Duerwald, Aperture 1, 2015, 10 x 7 inches, mixed media on canvas


 Laura Duerwald, Installation, Mahady Gallery, Marywood University


 Laura Duerwald, Installation, Mahady Gallery, Marywood University


Laura Duerwald, Installation, Mahady Gallery, Marywood University

SUZANNE CAPORAEL at Ameringer/McEnery/Yohe

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 Suzanne Caporael, 688 (Proximate cause), 2014, 54 x 72 inches, oil on linen

The Landscape is the title of an exhibition of new paintings by Suzanne Caporael at Ameringer/McEnery/Yohe through May 23, 2015. It is a theme that Caporael has employed for a long time, but perhaps never before so overtly as to make it the title of her show. Unlike the majority of her paintings in recent years, the new works "read" immediately as landscapes, rather than as abstract paintings distilled from fleeting observations. That is not to imply that they have lost any of their poetic potency. The artist's focus is exquisite, her images reduced to the simplicity of a diagram, or to quietly receding color fragments on the plane. Her surfaces, as always, have the smoothness of flesh with edges at once soft and true. Her color, cool, hazy and dreamlike, somehow evokes late Alain Resnais. These works transcend their vernacular theme, transforming their modest subjects into visual investigations of memory, sensation, and the vistas of imagination.  

 Suzanne Caporael, 689 (Coharie sow farm, N.C.), 2014, 48 x 66 inches, oil on linen


 Suzanne Caporael, 689 (Coharie sow farm, N.C.), detail


 Suzanne Caporael, 700 (The pastoral exultation of Richard Prince), 2014, 48 x 66 inches, oil on linen


 Suzanne Caporael, 691 (Study for a de-populated Darger), 2014, 30 x 20 inches, oil on linen


 Suzanne Caporael, 696 (Glimpse, Valley Farm Rd.), 2014, 36 x 48 inches, oil on linen


 Suzanne Caporael, 696 (Glimpse, Valley Farm Rd.), detail


Suzanne Caporael, 702 (Ride along; Wing Rd.), 2014, 60 x 90 inches, oil on linen

DON VOISINE at McKenzie

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Don Voisine, Narrows, 2015, 40 x 60 inches, oil on wood panel 

One more week to see an exhibition of new paintings by Don Voisine at McKenzie Fine Art (through June 14, 2015). For many years Voisine has worked with variations on his trademark configuration, originally evolved from architectural structures and floor plans. It is comprised of a complex set of vectors, angles, shapes and surfaces, with a central black area that is contained and activated by thin brightly colored perimeter bands. The black of the central area consists of matte and glossy contrasts that create shifting planes when viewed from different vantage points (and make the paintings virtually impossible to photograph). 

For this exhibition, Voisine has expanded his vocabulary to feature a few new elements that perhaps lighten the "gravity" of his previous work, and really offer an alternative relationship to the viewer, giving the show as a whole a more lively cadence. Many of the new pieces substitute intense Cad Red or sometimes shifting whites for the central black area, which causes a dramatic change in the space and presence of the painting. Whereas the black area seems to absorb the surrounding space, pulling the viewer into a deep slow vortex bordered by flickering color; the paintings that feature a red center emanate outward into the space, pulsating and expanding. As do the white paintings, although in a softer, more subtle voice. So as we move through the exhibition, we have a constantly changing relationship to the paintings from one to the next.

Another subtle change in this new work is the introduction of small areas of rubbed out color, where we see through the frontal paint film to the surface of the substrate. This small element is an opening that allows a soft breath to enter the rigor of Voisine's geometry. It is emblematic of the whole show, as the artist explores a broader sensuality within the sharp focus of his vision.


Don Voisine, Staple, 2015, 24 x 24 inches, oil on wood panel


Don Voisine, Porter, 2015, 9 x 9 inches, oil on wood panel


Don Voisine, Grey Line, 2015, 22 x 22 inches, oil on wood panel


Don Voisine, Duane, 2015, 16 x 12 inches, oil on wood panel


Don Voisine, Fold, 2015, 32 x 32 inches, oil on wood panel

All images from the gallery website.

ALISON HALL at Steven Harvey

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Alison Hall, Brooklyn Nocturne XII, Ghazal, 2015, 9 1/2 x 7 1/2 in., oil, graphite, and venetian plaster on panel

In her first solo show in New York, Alison Hall is presenting a group of exquisite small paintings at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects (through July 31, 2015). The exhibition, aptly titled East of Blue, reveals Hall's deep connection to the history of painting -- the materials, processes, systems, and iconography, as well as the ritualized labor of traditional practice. While it might not be obvious to the viewer that each small panel is painstakingly built of many layers of sanded Venetian plaster, what is obvious is the utter sensuality of the resulting surface, and the delicacy and depth of the oil color ground. On top of, or into that ground, Hall uses graphite hash marks and lines to create intricate rhythmic patterns that are at once translucent, physical, and constantly shifting with the viewer's position. Within the obsessive system of each piece always occurs some beautifully unexpected irregularity that nudges the work to take a breath. 

Visually, this work has obvious relations to 13th century Italian frescos, and of course equally, to contemporary geometric abstraction. But it is in the expansive realm of metaphor that the visuality is operating here. Hall is tapping into the ultimate potency of the poetic object. Much more ancient than Giotto, it is a primal impulse that creates visual embodiments of our most fundamental perceptions - inexplicably transforming the ordinariness of the world into magic.

Alison Hall, Sally, 2015, 13 3/4 x 11in., oil, graphite, and venetian plaster on panel

Alison Hall, Relics, 2015, 27 1/2 x 22 in., oil, graphite, and venetian plaster on panel

Alison Hall, Brooklyn Nocturne XIV, My Three Eyes, 2015, 9 1/2 x 7 1/2 in., oil, graphite, and venetian plaster 
on panel

All images courtesy of Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects

Superb Painters: SVENJA DEININGER

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Svenja Deininger, Untitled, 2012, 28 x 21 cm , oil on canvas 

Svenja Deininger was born in Vienna, and still lives and works there. She studied with Albert Oehlen at the Kunstakadamie Dusseldorf, and shows mostly in Europe. She is represented by Marianne Boesky in New York, and will have a show there in October 2015.

One of the most striking aspects of Deininger's work is her sensitivity to the nuances of her materials -- her ability to achieve a wonderful variety of surface and edge within a highly reduced vocabulary. She does this with utmost subtlety, employing soft color contrasts, and shapes and lines that both adhere to and slide away from the grid. Her facture reads like collage, and indeed her paintings seem to be constructed similarly, with the slippages that occur at the edges of shapes offering dynamic punch. Some of her recent work has become a bit more complex and assertive -- perhaps sacrificing some of the delicacy and the brittleness that I find especially beautiful -- but still remarkably sensual. I look forward to her October show with much interest.

Svenja Deininger, Untitled, 2012, 65 x 50 cm, oil on canvas 


Svenja Deininger, Untitled, 2012, 28 x 21 cm, oil on canvas 


Svenja Deininger, Untitled, 2012, 28 x 21 cm, oil on canvas 


Svenja Deininger, Untitled, 2012, 28 x 21 cm, oil on canvas 


Svenja Deininger, Untitled, 2013, 28 x 21 cm, oil on canvas 


Svenja Deininger, Untitled, 2015, 40 x 45 cm, oil on canvas 


Svenja Deininger, Untitled, 2015, 50 x 40 cm, oil on canvas

Images from gallery websites

In the Studio

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Steven Alexander, 2015, 60 x 42 inches, acrylic on canvas

On Painting

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Paintings are specific visual events that accrue significance by their persistent ability to engage the viewer through time. Built out of color and substance, they create places for the viewer’s consciousness, where unexpected resonances may occur, and where the stuff of life and love has corporeal presence – potential states of being, embodied in paint.

Steven Alexander, 2015, 16 x 12 inches, oil on linen

KELTIE FERRIS at Mitchell-Innes & Nash

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 Keltie Ferris, La Estrella, 2015, 80 x 80 inches, acrylic & oil on canvas


Only a few more days to catch an exhibition of new paintings and body prints by Keltie Ferris at Mitchell-Innes & Nash (through October 17, 2015). The new paintings continue and build upon Ferris' established process of layering brushed and sprayed shapes in high intensity colors, creating undulating hallucinatory spaces. In the new pieces, she is opening up her process a bit, working in broader strokes, sometimes with larger shapes and simpler compositions. The surfaces are more raw, with the various layers of activity left visible -- a sense of casual confidence permeating the best paintings.

The newest elements in the show are the body prints, where Ferris has made direct impressions in paint on paper. These works, while of course referencing the figure, are not about the figure, but rather, about the body -- and about a process of image/energy transferrence that is central to Ferris' intention as a painter. They are less related to Klein's infamous body prints, and more to those of Jasper Johns -- not as much a record of a process as an act of physical transposition of body and image. These works inform the paintings by enlarging our sense of the artist's aspirations for her work -- her desire to inhabit the spaces she creates, and for them to inhabit her.

 Keltie Ferris, Cleopatra, 2015, 96 x 130 inches, acrylic & oil on canvas


 Keltie Ferris, W(A(V)E)S, 2015, 96 x 130 inches, acrylic & oil on canvas


 Keltie Ferris, [P]y[X]i[S], 2015, 30 x 30 inches, acrylic & oil on canvas


 Keltie Ferris, Story, 2015, 90 x 80 inches, acrylic & oil on canvas


 Keltie Ferris, Ray, 2015, 40 x 26 inches, oil & powdered pigment on paper


Keltie Ferris, Facade, 2015, 40 x 26 inches, oil & powdered pigment on paper

Studio Visit with PAUL PAGK

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Paul Pagk, 2015, 70 x 70 inches, oil on linen

My sincere thanks to Paul Pagk for a wonderful visit to his Tribeca studio to see a group of magnificent new paintings, and snoop around his rich environment. It was great to see works in progress, and get a close look at his sumptuous oil surfaces. It was also nice to see a wealth of small paintings and drawings scattered around the studio. Paul makes his own paint with ground pigments to achieve extraordinarily nuanced color. The entire space and its contents reflect Paul's relentless visual, intellectual and intuitive explorations - probing painting's endless possibilities.

Paul Pagk, 2015, oil on linen


Paul Pagk, 2015, oil on linen 


Paul Pagk, 2015, oil on linen (detail) 


Paul Pagk, 2015, oil on linen (detail) 


Paul Pagk, 2015, oil on linen (detail)


Paul Pagk studio


Paul Pagk studio 


Paul Pagk studio


Gonçalo Ivo, Paul Pagk, Denise Ivo

Studio Visit with MICHAEL VOSS

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Michael Voss, 2015, oil on linen

It was a real pleasure and privilege to visit Michael Voss in his Bushwick studio. As with most paintings, but especially with Michael's, images do not come close to capturing the delicacy of color and surface he achieves in his small potent works. Sometimes built with many layers, sometimes more immediate, his paintings are comprised of soft contrasts and understated drama. The intuitive configuration of each piece arrives at a moment of perfect poise and is preserved there by restraint. These are quiet objects of pure feeling and extraordinary visual poetry.

Michael Voss in his studio


Michael Voss, 2015, oil on linen 


Michael Voss, 2015, oil on linen


Michael Voss, 2015, oil on linen 


Michael Voss, 2015, oil and graphite on linen 


Michael Voss, 2015, oil on linen


Michael Voss, drawings


Michael Voss studio
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