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Author: Etty Yaniv

Etty Yaniv works on her art, art writing and curatorial projects in Brooklyn. She holds BA in Psychology and English Literature from Tel Aviv University, BFA from Parsons School of Design, and MFA from SUNY Purchase. In her installation work She is integrating mediums such as drawing, photography and painting to form three dimensional immersive environments. More info at: www.ettyyanivstudio.com
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Bascha Mon’s Life and Journey of Dreaming at Tappeto Volante

In Dialogue
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A Celebratory Retrospective of an Artist’s Life and Journey of Dreaming, Perseverance, Activism, & Unconscious Expression.”

The retrospective of Bascha Mon’s paintings at Tappeto Volante offers a focused look at an artist whose career has been shaped by both creative achievements and personal struggles. Mon first gained recognition in the 1970s and 80s, with numerous exhibitions and critical acclaim. However, her trajectory was interrupted by health challenges that led to a long period of seclusion. During this time, she continued to work from her basement studio in New Jersey, expanding her creative vocabulary across various mediums while remaining largely out of the public eye. In recent years, Mon turned to digital platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Paola Gallio, the exhibition curator and gallery co-founder, describes this phase as “dissolving the physical isolation that had once defined her situation.” These platforms allowed Mon to reconnect with the art community and sustain an active, visible presence. Gallio emphasizes that “Mon’s modest basement studio became a metaphor for boundless creative space,” where the constraints of physical isolation were replaced by the limitless possibilities of virtual engagement. For deeper insights into the retrospective, Gallio’s interview with Art Spiel offers further reflections on Mon’s artistic journey and the significance of this exhibition.

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Dorothy Robinson: Paint Through Space and Time

End of Story, 2022, oil on panel, 48×60 inches, photo courtesy of Bill Massey

Dorothy Robinson’s family moved often during her childhood, starting in rural Iowa, where they farmed for generations and eventually settled in California. After high school, she bounced between colleges before landing at UC Berkeley. Studying art never crossed her mind, but she was drawn to geography, “probably because of its strong visual component—map making, field trips, slide shows,” Robinson says. During an internship, she learned darkroom skills and later worked in commercial photo labs, shaping her sense of color while making color prints. An invitation from an artist friend to join a drawing group was transformative, and started Robinson on the path to a life of making art.

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Divisions: To Be Human Is To Act Humanely

Featured Project

Image at Griffiss International Sculpture Park , Rome, NY

Linda Cunningham – Divisions

… hunger and fear can vanquish all human resistance, and all

freedom … Freedom consists in knowing freedom is in danger.

But to know … is to have time to avoid & prevent the moment of

inhumanity … the infinitesimal difference between the human

being and the non-human being …

————–Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity

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Assembled Worlds: Hannah Höch at Lower Belvedere

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Installation view “Hannah Höch, Assembled Worlds”. Photo: kunst-dokumntation.com, Manuel Carreon Lopez, @ Bildrecht, Vienna 2024

“I wish to blur the firm boundaries which we tend to delineate around all we can achieve,” Hannah Höch once said, challenging the rigid limits that society often imposes on creativity, identity, and social roles. This sentiment resonates deeply throughout the Assembled Worlds exhibition at Vienna’s Lower Belvedere, curated by Martin Waldmeier from the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern. This major showcase of Höch’s work in Austria feels long overdue, bringing together around 80 of her photomontages, alongside paintings, drawings, prints, and archival materials. Together, they offer a vivid glimpse into her groundbreaking contributions to 20th-century art.

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Splendor and Misery at Leopold: New Objectivity in Germany

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EXHIBITION VIEWS “SPLENDOR AND MISERY” © Leopold Museum, Vienna, Photo: Lisa Rastl

”BRUTALITY!

CLARITY THAT HURTS […]

BRUSH AS FAST AS YOU CAN –

TRY TO CAPTURE RACING TIME“

—–George Grosz

Nearly a century after the Weimar Republic’s brief, chaotic existence, curator Hans-Peter Wipplinger presents Splendor and Misery: New Objectivity in Germany at Vienna’s Leopold Museum. This comprehensive exhibition, the first of its kind in Austria, brings together around 150 works—100 paintings, 40 works on paper, photographs, and archival materials—from international museums and private collections. Born from the ashes of World War I, Neue Sachlichkeit offered a stark, unsentimental portrayal of reality, capturing both the hardships and the hopes of the “Golden Twenties.” The show features a lineup of key figures of modernism, such as Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, George Grosz, and Christian Schad, alongside lesser-known artists such as Heinrich Maria Davringhausen, Karl Hubbuch, Grethe Jürgens, Lotte Laserstein, Felix Nussbaum, Gerta Overbeck, Rudolf Schlichter, and others, who each captured the era’s spirit with an unflinching eye.

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Paddy Johnson’s VVrkshop: Game On for Artists

Featured Project
Photo courtesy of Barbara Nitke

Throughout her career in the arts, Paddy Johnson, a writer and now founder of VVrkshop, an organization that offers professional development services for mid-career artists, has observed a consistent, disheartening reality: incredibly talented artists creating work for audiences of virtually no one. As she puts it, “It felt crushing that there wasn’t enough prose in the world to bring these artists more attention.” This frustration reached its peak with Impractical Spaces, a collaborative national project, and anthology designed to document defunct and active artist-run projects across the United States. The ambition was substantial: engage fifty cities in fifty states and compile the results into a book charting the national significance of the artist-run scene.

On paper, the project fulfilled Johnson’s vision. “It brought people together, gave exposure to unsung artist heroes, and historicized events I believed needed historicizing,” she recalls.

The reality was far less fulfilling. Outside of the participants, very few people seemed interested in reading the books, and the project lacked a funding model that would make it sustainable. Yet, recognizing the project’s shortcomings sparked a new idea. Johnson realized that connecting people on a larger scale—across states, across disciplines—was not just necessary but possible. This led to the creation of membership for mid-career artists, Netvvrk.

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Paula Modersohn-Becker: Ich bin Ich / I am Me at the Neue Gallerie

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Installation views of “Paula Modersohn-Becker: Ich bin Ich / I Am Me” at Neue Galerie New York. Photography by Annie Schlechter, courtesy Neue Galerie New York

German painter Paula Modersohn-Becker, born in 1876, is relatively unknown in the United States. This is quite surprising, considering she painted the first nude self-portraits known to have been made by a woman. Many of these audacious portraits capture her own pregnancy—another first among Western women artists, paving the way for later figures like Alice Neel. Modersohn-Becker’s portraits of women spanning all ages—bold in their composition, subtle in their detail, and utterly present—strike a powerful note throughout the first major retrospective of her art in the United States, curated by Jill Lloyd at the Neue Galerie New York, and fittingly titled Ich bin Ich / I Am Me.

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Spiritual World at RAINRAIN

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Installation view, photo courtesy of the gallery

Spiritual World, the title of the current group show at RAINRAIN, references Alfred Stieglitz’s Spiritual America, a 1923 photograph of a harnessed, castrated horse. The powerless restrained stallion—a traditional American symbol of unstoppable prowess—symbolized for Stieglitz the loss of spirituality in his contemporary American culture. The organizer of Spiritual World, Theodor Nymark, a Copenhagen-based artist who also shows work in it, brought together seven artists from Denmark, Korea, and the USA to explore how spirituality can exist today outside conservative religious ideals and ultra-liberal new-age paganism. In a text for the show, Nymark specifies further how he sees spirituality—”like a multifaceted metaphor, many-sided, a prism with no central outpost, only imagination. Not just a lake, a mirror. Not just a car, a vehicle.” These notions reflect the overall premise of this show.

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Art Spiel Picks: Chelsea Exhibitions for July 2024

HIGHLIGHTS
Crossings, partial Installation view at Kasmin, photo by Etty Yaniv

Chelsea has multiple exciting shows this summer, ranging from large group shows to solo retrospectives. We will highlight three shows with different curatorial premises. The Swimmer, a large-scale group show sprawling over the 9th and 10th floors of the FLAG Art Foundation, centers around the narrative of John Cheever’s short story from 1964, presenting works that dig into its themes and imagery. Another impressive large-scale group show surveys the increasing presence of weaving, textiles, and embroidery in contemporary art, featuring an international and intergenerational group of artists whose works push the boundaries of these traditional mediums. Lastly, at Pretzel, there is a beautifully curated retrospective of Malcolm Morley, offering a glimpse into the fascinating work of the late artist (1931–2018).

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Bat Ami Rivlin: Functional Narratives

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Untitled (12 tubs), 2023, Socrates Sculpture Park, New York, NY.

Bat Ami Rivlin, who has lived in New York City for over a decade, finds her artistic practice profoundly shaped by the city’s relentless cycle of object turnover. The daily expulsion of waste from restaurants, buildings, and homes onto the streets, followed by the inevitable clear-out, is a stark reflection of urban existence. This phenomenon sparks contemplation on how these transient objects organize our spatial interactions, both during their use and after their disposal.

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