SRO Gallery, M. David & Co., ODETTA, Klaus Von Nichtssagend
SRO Gallery
Dozens of warmly chromatic landscapes with hints of fantasy and abstract intrigue are on view in “Unextinguished,” a kind of amuse-bouche of a genre-specific group show that opened at SRO Gallery a couple weeks ago. It features a great many paintings, and a great many relatively literal as well as apparently non-objective takes on landscapes by Sahand Tabatabai, Sheila Lanham , Cathy Diamond , Moses Hoskins, Cathy Nan Quinlan and Cecilia Whittaker-Doe. If you need a respite from the drudgery of winter (I always do), head over to SRO.
M.David & Co., ODETTA
Even in the midst of so many strikingly divergent chromatic and mark-making modes on display in a couple shows that recently opened on the same evening in Bushwick, I found that certain analogous sculptural angularities were still ripe for the noting. See the strange near-parallels in the two images at bottom right, in the sculpted objects themselves, and in some accompanying shadow-play alike. That’s probably meaningless for me to note, but meaninglessness is probably my strong suit. Or maybe it’s too cold for meaning, as if that means anything.
All that aside, “Transubstantiation,” Martin Dull’s solo show at M. David & Co., shows the painter starting to break free from certain formal and personal tendencies by channeling ideas of not only change and transformation, but also of interruption, intervention and interference. The resulting works, robustly while also somewhat weightlessly displayed, scan as most successful when Dull allows their ‘interventions’ to scan in full rather than only in part. It’s also interesting that the space’s greater ambient lighting coming in from outside can do its own kinds of transubstantiation to the works over time, and for every bit as long as the day is long.
Also take note that Dull will be talking about his new work, in conversation with esteemed critic and curator Karen Wilkin, during a closing event at the gallery on Saturday the 23rd.
The other show pictured here is “Falling Into Place,” a group show at ODETTA that might indirectly pose the question of whether or not minimalism added to minimalism as plurally viewable minimalisms can still be considered, in situational sum, Minimalism.
Good question! My minimal answer: Hmmm.
More to the point, “Falling Into Place” is a group exhibit featuring a very quietly colorful but boldly arrayed suite of pieces by Mary Schiliro, Norma Márquez Orozco and Daniel G. Hill— Hill, by the way, being the maker of the sculpture that seemed to this viewer to strike parallels with Dull’s sculpture on view a couple blocks away. (And speaking of parallels, I believe Dull’s middle initial is also G, and maybe that makes it more interesting that the two artists’ names are of the same letter-length, and then the way Hill and Dull both end with… I know, I’ll stop).
Klaus Von Nichtssagend
This show has already closed, but it remains very true that Joy Curtis‘s tattery sculptures recently on view in the front gallery at Klaus Von Nichtssagend , so staid and stoically stilled in a quiet state of monstrous glory, and so poised upright and cleverly aligned like some exhumed procession of corporeally devastated ancient royals, have an aspect of profound immediacy that will loom and linger in your mind — perhaps even if, rather than physically, you saw them only online, as they have that much effective strangeness of presence.
Also still impressed in my mind are several of Jennifer J. Lee‘s oil paintings that were on view at the time, over in the larger main gallery. Among those numerous small works, the one that struck me the most at the opening is the one that left me most curious about its chicken-fingery, turkey-wingedy, jumbo-shrimpety, weirdly pinkishly, mouthfeel-rubbery subject matter, its constituent pieces arrayed in a cleverly cropped compositional bed and seemingly glazed over with thinly blue-cheesy, sugar-buttery icing. It registered as very strange fare, even if I was foolishly exaggerating, and it had me imagining, at the time, something along the lines of a salty-sweet blue cheese dip for Cheetos, Fritos and the like for greater delight at then-forthcoming Super Bowl parties.
Whatever, great painting all the same. Other standout works in Lee’s show were “Infinity Mirror” and, of all unexpectedly sticky images, a depiction of stacked chairs that looked both precisely and imprecisely like the stacked chairs it clearly featured — while seeming, in simultaneity, to be something utterly other.
The occasional “Nota Bene with @postuccio” pieces by Paul D’Agostino are modified versions of selected capsule reviews and other art notes he posts on Instagram. Follow him there for other posts as well: @postuccio.
Paul D’Agostino, Ph.D. is an artist, writer, translator and curator based in Brooklyn, New York. More information about him is available here, and you can find him as @postuccio on Instagram and Twitter.