David Ebony
David Ebony is a contributing editor of Art in America. He is also the author of monthly columns for Yale University Press online, and Artnet News.
Ebony G. Patterson: to kiss a flower goodbye
By David EbonyBathed in subdued light, …to kiss a flower goodbye…, Ebony G. Patterson’s exhibition of three recent large-scale wall-hung assemblage works or “tapestries,” and two framed photo-collage pieces, sets a mood to summon nocturnal reveries. Optically sumptuous and texturally rich, the colorfully embroidered works feature clusters of long strands of pearlescent white beads that ooze from the top of these irregularly shaped, nearly ten-foot-tall compositions, and pile up on the floor.
Wolf Kahn & Emily Mason
By David EbonyArtists, lovers, life-partners, art-world rivals, benefactors, and luminaries, Emily Mason (1932–2019) and Wolf Kahn (1927–2020) were all of these things—and more. Miles McEnery Gallery has devoted each of its two spaces to the first posthumous solo gallery exhibitions for the couple, who died within months of each other after more than sixty years of marriage.
Thomas Woodruff: Resurrection
By David EbonyFor the new series, he developed an eccentrically exaggerated hyper-illusionistic space, while rejecting the conventions of Natural History painting as well as “paleoart.” He aimed to imbue his dinosaurs with human aspirations and emotions.
Julian Schnabel: Self-Portraits of Others
By David EbonyMost of the twenty-five plate paintings by Julian Schnabel in this exhibition, produced between 2018-2020, were inspired by photographic sources and, especially, a cinematographic source—photo reproductions of well-known artworks, and particularly images of van Gogh paintings that appeared in the 2018 film At Eternity’s Gate.
John Ferren: From Paris to Springs
By David EbonyJohn Ferren’s extraordinary biography can sometimes overshadow his achievements as a painter. Born in Oregon in 1905, he spent some youthful years in the 1930s in Paris, where he befriended Gertrude Stein, and was embraced by the Parisian avant-garde.
KIMSOOJA
Works and Process
By David Ebony
To Breathe: Bottari, Kimsooja’s exhibition at the Korean Pavilion, was one of the most memorable presentations at the 2013 Venice Biennale. The Korean-born New York-based artist had the audacity to offer visitors an anechoic—or sensory deprivation—chamber off the main gallery of the pavilion, which served as an antidote to the sensory-overload that is the hallmark of most Biennale installations.
At the Speed of Light:
Larry Poons Paintings of the 1960s
Interview with the artist by David Ebony
The brightly colored, hard-edge dots and lozenge shapes that Larry Poons painted in the early 1960s, against expansive, monochrome grounds of contrasting tones, appear to dance on the surface, flicker and bounce, in primal rhythmic beats.
In Conversation
RICHARD VINE with David Ebony
An art-world murder mystery, SoHo Sins is the first novel from Richard Vine, Art in America’s Managing Editor and an expert in the field of contemporary Chinese art. SoHo Sins is a noir-style crime-story set in the New York art world of the late 1980s and early ’90s.
