ArtSeen
Orrie King and Laurie Sermos
By Shane McAdamsI recently had the chance to see the David Smith retrospective at the Guggenheim and left feeling slightly dissatisfied. After my exit I spent a few hours trying to wrap my mind around the reasons why.
Rob Nadeau
By Stephanie BuhmannRob Nadeau works without traditional narratives. Nevertheless, as his first solo exhibition of abstract paintings and drawings with Mixed Greens makes clear, he is a storyteller at heart.
Al Hansen
By Valery OisteanuQuick first impressions entering the Andrea Rosen Gallery 2: Al Hansen’s works (36 collages and assemblages) feel sculpturally playful, a kind of “outsider” Pop Art, urban-folkloric with a splash of Fluxus anarchy, sensual neo-Dada and post-Surrealist erotica.
Inka Essenhigh
By James KalmYou get it? That “it” is the punch-line to the joke, the plot of the narrative, the moral to the story. With this latest group of paintings at 303 Gallery, Inka Essenhigh wants to make her points clear and tell her stories more explicitly.
Yvonne Jacquette
By James KalmSeeing in the dark is not a simple matter. Because of the physiology of the cones and rods connecting to the optic nerve at the back of the eyeball, in the darkness we have a literal blind spot in the center of our field of vision.
Stephen Ellis
By Michael BrennanEllis’ current show at Von Lintel Gallery picks up where his last show of word-based “Jeremiad” paintings left off. In this new series the words themselves were left off.
Robert Rauschenberg
By Jim Long“Standard lines; no traps, no snares.” The phrase is not from a military manual, it’s from an interview with a drummer, but it suggests the elusive language Robert Rauschenberg often employs as titles for his work.
Eric Heist
By William PowhidaTransforming Schroeder Romero into an Interfaith Center to explore the hypocrisy of organized religion as an increasingly corporate system is not much of a stretch for Eric Heist.
Marci MacGuffie
By Stephanie BuhmannBrooklyn-based Marci MacGuffie works with abstract patterns, not only in a decorative sense, but also as part of a larger observational process. She analyzes physical reactions and mannerisms, which can either refer to actual interactions between her audience and work, or more symbolically, they can refer to renditions of the effects outside forces can have on nature.
Don Voisine and Richard Bottwin
By Michael BrennanOne weekend I visited three different artists’ studios, including Don Voisine. All three are abstract painters, and I noticed that each of them was listening to blues music. Its just a coincidence, but I feel that it is also somehow indicative of our time.
Cai Guo-Qiang on the Roof: Transparent Monument
By Geoffrey Cruickshank-HagenbuckleFour new artworks by Cai Guo-Qiang are now being exhibited on—and above—the Cantor Roof Garden at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art through October 29, 2006. Bringing even the sky into play, “Clear Sky Black Cloud,” three successive explosions each releasing a dark smoke-cloud, will appear over Central Park six days a week at noon for the next six months.
Modernism: Designing a New World 1914–1939
By Hrag VartanianAccustomed to discussing the masterpieces of Modernism, it is easy to forget that Modernism in fact constituted an explosion of visionary movements that changed history forever.
Jules Olitski
By Robert C. MorganJules Olitski’s The Seventies opened at the Paul Kasmin Gallery last month with a flurry of activity. In attendance were some of the preeminent figures associated with American abstract painting of the past four decades.
Irving Petlin
By Carrie MoyerEnthralled with the buzz of “visual culture,” much contemporary political painting seems to emanate from either the bully pulpit of mass media or the tedious podium of postmodernism.
Florence Pierce
By Jennifer RileyFor over thirty years, New Mexico based artist Florence Pierce has been developing richly nuanced, low relief resin and pigment paintings. In their elements of monochrome, experimental mediums, and sense of seriality, these post-minimal, reductive works place her both in the tradition and company of Kasimir Malevich, Wassily Kandinsky, Ad Reinhardt, Agnes Martin, Barnett Newman, Robert Ryman, and Robert Mangold.
Tomas Vu
By Gandalf GavanThe more information our culture provides us with, the harder it becomes to navigate and construct our world. Our current reality is one of multi-channeled voices that present us with simultaneous instantiations of truth.
Miyoko Ito
By John YauWhile the paintings of Miyoko Ito (1918–1983) have been included in most survey exhibitions and books about Chicago art from 1945 to 1995, she still remains under known in Chicago, and all but invisible in New York.
Robert Lazzarini, Drawings
By Thomas MicchelliAnyone who encountered Robert Lazzarini’s “payphone” at the 2002 Whitney Biennial will remember it as an unassuming, blank-faced oddity that somehow managed to upstage everything else in the room.
Report from Germany “For Ermyas M.”
By Barbara Weidle“Being Doomed” is the expression that unites all the faces in Gillian Wearing’s video installation, Drunk (1999). Young and old, alcoholic men and women are seen sitting, standing, looking around, speaking, trying to do simple things, like put on a sweater.
Dan Fischer
By Lauren RossIn this striking and introspective show, Dan Fischer continues his ongoing project of meticulously replicating photographs of famous artists in detailed pencil drawings.
Aporia
By David MarcusAporetic is perhaps the most fitting adjective to describe the show currently on view at EFA gallery.
