Award-winning blogazine, primarily about painting
Saturday, June 8, 2024
Contributed by Adam Simon / With a solo show at Rosebud Contemporary, work on view at Slag, and an upcoming two-person show at 490 Atlantic, Larry Greenberg is having a moment. After stepping away from the art world to raise a family, now, at the age of 73, he’s back. We talked about why, after a decades-long hiatus, he returned.
Contributed by Mark Wethli / In an artist’s statement about her works on paper, Andrea Sulzer once wrote: “Instead of helping you find your way, these pages will help you get lost.” This notion not only sets aside a common assumption about what some viewers look for in a work of art, but also, in her choice of the word “pages,” connotes a different kind of art object altogether — something we’re meant to decipher, like a book or an atlas. She invites the viewer into a contemplative experience, grounded in uncertainty, that doesn’t purport to have the last word but presents a labyrinth of potential meanings that the artist welcomes us to explore. Like our first inkling of inspiration–what Emerson called our “gleams of light”–Sulzer’s art presents us with visual puzzles that resist logical interpretation but reward us instead with a quickening sense of our own creative intuition. Sulzer’s latest exhibition, “see through simple,” now on view at Sarah Bouchard Gallery in Woolwich, Maine, is a welcome opportunity to explore the work of this important mid-career artist.
Contributed by Margaret McCann / Elizabeth Flood’s landscapes in “Lookout” at Storage Gallery included oil paintings that emphasize realism and expressionistic ink drawings. The latter express vigorous engagement with the outdoors. Gettysburg (Pickett’s Charge, October 9) channels the drama of that day. Stirring energy like that of George Nick’s alla prima work drives the eye deep into a field under a sensational sky. Conversely, mental distance accompanies Flood’s large polyptychs, whose combinations resemble photographic contact sheets, art website layouts, or bulletin board accruals. At their best, artifice is imbued with the existential doubt of Edwin Dickinson or Giacometti. Repetition and variance become metaphors for modern contingency and ambivalence. Multiple views rouse a mix of ennui, curiosity, taste, and choice, like that fueling our daily shuffle through cyberspace.
Contributed by Marcus Civin / The Philadelphia-born, New York-based painter Sedrick Chisom’s gothic, thematically inventive “…And 108 Prayers of Evil” at Clearing is his first solo show in New York. At the entrance to the gallery, a block of wall text sets the scene for Chisom’s mostly large-scale oil paintings and charcoal drawings. The action depicted occurs in the year 2210, when the Greek mythological figure Medusa is in trouble again. Almost comically, various political groups accuse her of listening to whispers in the forest and slipping gangsta rap lyrics to pious youth. A magmatic eruption threatens, and massacres have occurred in a place called Capital Citadel.
Contributed by David Carrier / Alessandro Twombly’s twelve large new paintings, now on view at Amanita Gallery, all employ one basic, immensely fruitful motif: knots of color resembling enlarged floral forms, depicted in high-pitched, gesturally painted oranges, pinks, reds, and blacks on bright turquoise backgrounds. An artist friend nicknamed these pictures ‘Tiepolo in the Sky,” which accurately describes them. Twombly’s abstract images look like drastically enlarged figures you might find in a work by the eighteenth-century Italian painter Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. They are strikingly original yet richly allusive.
Contributed by Karlyn Benson / There are a few exhibitions coinciding with Pride Month this June, including photographs by Fred W. McDarrah at CPW and drawings by Joe Sinness, both in Kingston. Notable exhibitions continuing or opening include Other Realities (Exploring Proximate Mysticisms) at Bill Arning Exhibitions; Jenny Kemp and Cory Siegler at Turley Gallery; Catherine Haggarty, Just Drawing, at Geary; Kathy Greenwood: Catch, Cover, Carry at WAAM; Bethany Collins at Alexander Gray Associates, and Sharon Butler Buildingdrawing at Furnace – Art on Paper Archive. I’m looking forward to the June 2 opening of ‘T’ Space Gallery in Rhinebeck, with an exhibition of paintings and sculpture by Peter Halley and Steph Gonzalez-Turner, and to summer shows at the All Held Foundation (On the Grounds) and the Wassaic Project (Tall Shadows in Short Order). Finally, I’ll be moderating an artist talk at the Garrison Art Center on June 8 with Margaret Lanzetta, Niki Lederer, and David Packer in conjunction with their 3-person show at the Garrison Art Center.
Welcome to the early edition of the Two Coats painting-centric guide to June art exhibitions in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens. Updates are on the schedule for next week, so if you have shows opening in the middle or at the end of the month, and you want us to consider them for inclusion, shoot a note to staff@twocoatsofpaint.com. Please put “NYC Guide” in the subject line. Happy June!
On the occasion of “Heavy Light,” Nate Ethier’s second solo show at David Richard Gallery, Two Coats of Paint invited him to share ten ideas and influences that inform his complex, pulsating abstractions. He is keenly interested in kinetic motion, precision, and repetition, and credits Agnes Martin for the sense of happiness and innocence that suffuses his paintings. Most importantly, he reveals a penchant for close looking: “You can learn a great deal about light and color from a slow walk in the woods.” The show includes twelve stunning paintings and is on view through June 27.
Contributed by Liz Scheer / “Shoot for the Stars,” on view at Swanson Kuball in Long Island City, surveys intergenerational works by members of the Abelow-Kirilloff family, which includes New York artists Joshua Abelow and Tisch Abelow. By presenting the work of siblings, spouses, grandparents, and children, gallery directors Laura Swanson and Greg Kuball raise fascinating questions about the relationship between family and art. Do the formal parameters of a family foster or impede an individual’s creativity? Is a family itself a means of artistic production?
Contributed by Natasha Sweeten / Like a car with its engine left running, Elizabeth Murray (1940–2007) seemed poised to dart in any direction on short notice. On view at Gladstone 64, Drawings (1974-2006), curated by Kathy Halbreich, boasts over 60 works of mostly pen, marker, and/or colored pencil on notebook-size paper (and actual notebook paper). Several are studies for larger works, others are on pages ripped from a binding, most all are imbued with a casualness but also intention. This show offers an enchanting glimpse into Murray’s wildly imaginative, electrified mind. I dare you to see it and not smile.
