Katherine Siboni

Katherine Siboni is a contributor to the Brooklyn Rail
Body as Landscape, on view at Sprüth Magers, is the gallery’s second posthumous presentation of Kaari Upson’s work since her untimely death two years ago, at age 51. Upson’s practice was sprawling, privileging mutability over resolution. Put simply, her practice was beset by doubles.
Kaari Upson, Untitled, 2015-21. Graphite and ink on paper,  102 1/2 × 209 inches. © The Art Trust created under Kaari Upson Trust. Courtesy Sprüth Magers. Photo: Robert Wedemeyer.
Bob Thompson, who died weeks shy of his twenty-ninth birthday but was wildly prolific within his short career, painted allegorical, mythological content, modeling his compositions after those of the Old Masters but amplifying them with his fresh rehearsal. During his short lifetime, Thompson worked at the interstice of several contradictions and conflicts fracturing the art world and tearing through the nation.
Bob Thompson, An Allegory, 1964. Oil on canvas, 47 3/4 x 47 3/4 in. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Thomas Bellinger 72.137 © Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY. Courtesy 52 Walker, New York.
Steinbach’s objects, in their adjacencies and juxtapositions, behave like linguistic signs. Their meanings are both inherent and contingent, organized along the structural grammar of figure and ground constituted by his shelf supports. Presented in succession, each item yields new axes for comparison.
Haim Steinbach, Shelf with Nurse, 1983. Painted wood shelf; painted wood doll, 35 1/2 x 11 3/4 x 11 3/4 inches. Courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles. Photo: Pierre Le Hors.
In Jana Euler’s painting practice, the medium’s conventional rectangular format is often acknowledged by the figurative imagery within, and frequently with visible discomfort. In Euler’s treatment, the rectangular painted image is neither illusionistic window nor impenetrable mirror.
Installation view: Jana Euler: Unform, Artists Space, New York, 2020. Courtesy Artists Space, New York. Photo: Daniel Pérez
Cast near the entrance of Matthew Marks, unshielded from natural light, one of three digital projections by Trisha Donnelly repeats on a short loop. A tall, narrow rectangle frames an image—and contains its movement—visually rhyming with the upright and perpendicular marble monoliths Donnelly has installed throughout the gallery space.
Installation view: Trisha Donnelly, Matthew Marks Gallery, New York, 2019. © Trisha Donnelly, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery.

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