Alex A. Jones
ALEX A. JONES is a contributor to the Brooklyn Rail.
HANNE TIERNEY with Alex A. Jones
| Art
Twenty years ago Hanne Tierney founded FiveMyles, a non-profit art space in Crown Heights. To readers of the Rail who go back a long time in New York, perhaps those have a shared history with Tierney in the SoHo art scene, FiveMyles is a familiar and highly regarded establishment.
Ivy Haldeman: The Interesting Type
by Alex A. Jones| ArtSeen
Since 2016, Ivy Haldeman has been exhibiting erotic paintings of feminine, anthropomorphic hot dogs. These ladylike link-sausages, with pouting lips, svelte human limbs, and Cinderella-heels are seen lounging seductively inside pillowy hot dog buns.
DARREN WATERSTON:
Ecstatic Landscape
by Alex A. Jones
| ArtSeen
These paintings invited the joy that is particular to landscapes, allowing us to experience the panel not as a mere decorated surface, but as an imagined place.
MARY REID KELLEY and PATRICK KELLEY:
We are Ghosts
by Alex A. Jones
| ArtSeen
Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley’s films This is Offal (2016) and In the Body of the Sturgeon (2017) approach the grim mysteries of death with madcap humor.
BLINN & LAMBERT:
New Grey Planet
by Alex A. Jones
| ArtSeen
Blinn & Lambert’s multimedia exhibition New Grey Planet feels as much like a theoretical experiment as an aesthetic experience. Presenting still life and video works that juxtapose the effects of CGI and 3D imaging with material forms, the artists invite us to participate in exercises of perception that complicate the ontology of objects through technological vision.
ANGELA HEISCH:
Resting Position
by Alex A. Jones
| ArtSeen
The thirteen paintings in Resting Position, all completed in 2018, range from 16 to 36 inches square, a modest scale that invites contemplation rather than immersion.
A Wild Ass Beyond: ApocalypseRN
by Alex A. Jones| ArtSeen
Surveying the national cultural landscape of doomsday preppers, survivalists, contemporary homesteaders, and “tiny house” enthusiasts—communities within which notions of self-reliance and apocalypse can appear as driving fantasies—these four artists of color inject a counter-narrative into a predominantly white—and in some sectors overtly nativist—conversation about the nature of survival in “the end-times.
ELLEN BERKENBLIT with Alex A. Jones
| Art
Once a part of the East Village scene, Ellen Berkenblit has been showing in New York since graduating from Cooper Union in 1980. Her earlier paintings had an affinity for the tubular, economical figure-style of vintage cartoons and comics, but have since sharpened, featuring pointy, angular forms and contoured intervals of explosive color.
Ella Kruglyanskaya: Fenix
by Alex A. Jones| ArtSeen
The most revealing painting in Ella Kruglyanskaya's show at Gavin Brown's Enterprise is Painter, Discontented (2018). The seven-foot-tall oil depicts a painter in messy negligee sitting before a canvas, onto which a few marks have been splashed from the brush in her hand.
JONATHAN MONAGHAN:
The Disco Beast
by Alex A. Jones
| ArtSeen
Monaghan’s show investigates the unicorn as a symbolic being, demonstrating in surprising ways its historical richness, multivalence, and relevance to the digital age.
Viktor Timofeev: God Room
by Alex A. Jones| ArtSeen
Upon entering the apartment gallery, the resonant sound of a slowed-down clock pendulum conjures a sensation of time slipping slowly away, similar to the attenuated experience we may associate with waiting.
SUMMER WHEAT:
Swamp Hunters (2018)
by Alex A. Jones
| ArtSeen
This painting appeared in a solo show at Andrew Edlin Gallery called Gamekeepers, a title which refers to those who manage land to ensure proper conditions for hunting wildlife. It is a paradoxical stewardship, nurturing life to prepare for the hunt.
JOHN McALLISTER:
cymbals of sleep uncurtain the night
by Alex A. Jones
| ArtSeen
Despite the humming palettes of pink, orange, violet, and indigo, it feels chilly in these paintings. Maybe it’s because now, in late March, we enter the gallery from the frosty street with ever-more impatience for the turn of season that these images predict.
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