Exhibition Review – Page 21

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June 30, 2021July 22, 2021, by Emily Blundell Owers

History’s Shadow Marks the Beginning at Grove Collective

Installation view featuring Mitch Vowles, *Earnie*, 2021, Fruit Machine, Photographs, Water, 175 x 70 x 65cm courtesy of Grove Collective, photographed by Ollo Weguelian

Dibnah in Lights is hard to miss. The name of that legendary Yorkshire steeplejack flashing in red, white, and blue bulbs against the green felt backdrop of a repurposed snooker table is the first piece that greets you as you walk through Grove Collective’s doors. This piece by Mitch Vowles, a sculptor who works with found objects to draw out their cultural and personal contexts, nestles easily amongst Connor Murgatroyd’s pastel-hued still life paintings of anthuriums, signet rings, Sinatra albums and a scaffolders A-Z, and film photographer Alfie White’s hand-printed images of boys at Brixton bus stops, on Tottenham blocks, and playing in Burgess Park.

June 28, 2021June 9, 2021, by Rachel Jeffers

Test Kitchen: Carolyn Case at Reynolds Gallery

*Shadow Sink,* 2021 oil on panel 42 x 50 inches

Test Kitchen, Carolyn Case’s show at Reynolds Gallery in Richmond, Virginia, consisted of 4 oil paintings on panel along with 8 pastel drawings. Hefty brush strokes fill the surface area of the oil paintings. The painterly process involves a buildup of incremental adjustments, the layers of paint applied one by one until the shapes solidify into a kaleidoscopic arrangement; one nudge and the elements will shift accordingly, morphing the image into an entirely new pattern. Each of the paintings gives the impression of a specific time of day, indicated by the character of light and color playing across the space. Monet’s Water Lilies come to mind. But in place of Monet’s serene refuge, Case’s light lingers over a sink full of dirty dishes.

June 12, 2021June 9, 2021, by Sagi Refael

Melanie Daniel – No Man’s Land at Asya Geisberg

*Melanie Daniel, No Man’s Land, Installation view. Courtesy of the artist and Asya Geisberg Gallery, New York*

Melanie Daniel’s fifth solo exhibition at Asya Geisberg Gallery, No Man’s Land, continues the artist’s fascination with creating post-disaster environments, radiating with neon vibrancy and highly dense compositions. Her non-place surroundings are reminiscent of jungle clearings and scorched forests, where the trees are scarred and chopped, the water is acidic and the backgrounds swirl around the central protagonists, whether people or objects, with a restless tempo that leaves no room for the imagined tranquility.

June 4, 2021June 2, 2021, by Iara Pimenta

An Installation to Immerse and Reconnect

Installation view. “To Ripple with Water” at The Border Project Space, 2021. Image courtesy of the artist

In unstable and changing times, haunted by a pandemic and conflicts unfolding worldwide, the installation by artist Bel Falleiros creates an introspective space that allows us to pause and reflect on how we relate to ourselves and the environment. Presented at The Border Project Space and curated by Jamie Martinez, “To Ripple with Water” is an invitation to be present, to disconnect from the frantic times we live in, and reconnect to our bodies and to the earth, in a quietly performative experience.

June 2, 2021May 31, 2021, by michelle weinberg

Down and Dirty at Duck Creek Arts

Installation view, photo courtesy of Gary Mamay

Down and Dirty, recent works by Bonnie Rychlak and Jeanne Silverthorne on view at Duck Creek Arts in East Hampton, NY, is a vaudevillian collection of subtly crafted works that tickle our collective psyche. The narrative of banal objects formed largely from wax and rubber elicits empathy, provokes thought and causes laughter, a complex jumble visually and emotionally. Arranged on the floor in the massive wooden barn, rejecting the hierarchical placement of art on pedestals, the works address a child-sized viewer, or perhaps an imp. They deftly implicate our inner child. The worn wood panels and flooring of the barn are complicit with Rychlak’s and Silverthorne’s works, collaborating to generate an experience in which the “feeling” or “haptic” sense is awakened, enriching the viewing experience. That Down and Dirty also blurs the boundaries between the works of the two artists is gleefully conspiratorial, the word defined here as “to breathe together.” It is a feminist gesture which includes an actual collaborative work titled Grate of Unintentional Consequences.

April 13, 2021November 2, 2022, by Annabel Keenan

Farideh Sakhaeifar: You Are in the War Zone

Macintosh HD:Users:annamikaela:Downloads:You are in the war zone - 05.jpeg — Farideh Sakhaeifar, You are in the war zone., 2016-17. Gelatine Silver Print, 8 x 10 inches

In her latest solo exhibition at New York’s Trotter&Sholer gallery, Iranian artist Farideh Sakhaeifar invites the viewer to reflect on the human experiences that connect us all. You are in the war zone confronts conflict, war, and social injustice head-on. Presented in partnership with the non-profit arts organization KODA, and curated by Klaudia Ofwona-Draber, the exhibition covers Sakhaeifar’s rich artistic practice, from her performance pieces to her sculptures to her hand and digitally manipulated photographs made over a seven year period. The works in the show underscore the artist’s strong critique of US foreign policy and Western portrayal of war in the Middle East and North Africa, as well as her impactful representations of shared experiences, the subjectivity of the media, and the inevitable distortion of memories and information over time.

March 24, 2021April 12, 2021, by Suzanne de Vegh

Katerina Lanfranco: Nature Poems at Sweet Lorraine

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Description automatically generated — Katerina Lanfranco *Rose Garden*, 2020. Oil paint and mixed media on canvas, 22 x 28”

Art is a refuge both for the viewer and the maker. Katerina Lanfranco’s recent exhibition at Sweet Lorraine Gallery, Nature Poems, offers respite from these strange and unsettling times. The exhibition starts with an exquisite painting titled, Bouquet for You. Its deft placement in the gallery is significant as it presages the story of the entire show in microcosm. Three encapsulated womb-like flower forms grow amid a dense, swirling, chaotic background teeming with what look like sperm cells and luminous spinning orbs. Practically buzzing with a sparkler’s sizzle, this wellspring of life is shot through with skeins of golden paint tracing through and around the orbs. The golden trails recall the rays of golden light falling onto the Virgin in Renaissance Annunciation scenes. Here instead of symbolizing the conception of Christ, Lanfranco suggests the secular, “scientific” conception of the Universe.

March 12, 2021November 2, 2022, by Adam Aslan

On the Beauty of Collaboration – The Border and Home Gallery Co-Exhibition “Last Wash at Midnight”

***“Last Wash at Midnight” at The Border Project Space, installation view courtesy of The Border Project Space, New York***

At a time when one would have to work 78 hours at minimum wage to afford a studio apartment in most of the US, the idea of a rusting laundromat provides a fitting theme for an exhibition to reflect the struggles faced by so many in the US. While the show curated by Jamie Martinez evokes layers of meaning, the sagging laundry machine of Chelsea Nader, provides an ethos for the current state of the world grappling with economic stress in a pandemic.

March 12, 2021March 13, 2021, by Sophia Ma

Belonging to P.A.D. (Project Art Distribution)

A picture containing text, building, outdoor, scene

Description automatically generated — “Popular Jewelry” featuring Arkadiy Ryabin, Johanna Stroebel, Clarissa Hurst, and Ann Treesa Joy, on September 26, 2020, photo credit to Adam Golfer, image courtesy of P.A.D.

The artist-run Project Art Distribution (better known as P.A.D. or @project_art_distribution on Instagram) hosts day-long outdoor exhibitions on versatile packing 72”x80” pads. Set up in Soho, one of New York’s art and retail hubs, the padded surfaces become the metaphorical and physical exhibition space of the usual pristine white cube galleries. Unlike the current Soho rental clientele of luxury brands and gallery spaces, P.A.D. has no walls. Lacking barriers in more than one way, the sidewalk gallery provides the public, the artists, the curators, and the organizational collaborators a welcomed openness to art and discussion. The project creates an ongoing network that ever-expands its community.

February 28, 2021March 1, 2021, by Patricia Miranda

Alexander Rutsch, The Voluptuous Eye at Kenise Barnes Fine Art

Sunset, mixed media on board, 36 x 44 inches, 1990s

My first encounter with the work of the artist Alexander Rutsch was through his daughter, the artist Alexandra Rutsch Brock (Alexi), a friend and one of my fellow co-founders of the London Calling Collective. I visited the Rutsch family home in Pelham where she grew up and where her mother still lives. The home, an eccentric, polymathic cacophony of hand-hewn art and embodied life, reflects my experience of Alexi as a passionate and energetic artist, teacher, and friend. A labyrinthine artist’s house- the type that real estate brokers abhor, is brim-full of paintings, sculptures, built-in furniture, object d’art, hand-tiled stone walls, curved nooks, hallways to a warren of rooms, and Alexander Rutsch’s overflowing attic studio, where the work from this exhibition came. I marvel at the fecundity of imagination a childhood in that house must have fostered. This history makes it a special honor to step back and review the exhibition, Alexander Rutsch, a Pop-Up, at Kenise Barnes Fine Art in Larchmont, NY, on view March 4-7 and March 11-14. 2021. The exhibition includes paintings on panel, works on paper, sketchbook pages, and whimsical bronze sculptures cast from industrial materials and found objects.