Interviews – Page 20

March 21, 2022March 21, 2022

Paul Behnke – a Champion of Painting

Portrait of Paul Behnke in the studio with Gloria’s Guardian, 2020, acrylic on canvas, 62 x 60 inches, photo courtesy of Robin Stout.

Paul Behnke is a champion of painting – and he does it with evident gusto. His paintings come from idiosyncrasies, life experience, and a process that begins as intuitive, mixed with periods of sharp critical gaze. His paintings have evolved from early contained and minimalistic bold-color geometries, to more recent chaotic forms and layered complexity, at times almost explosive.

March 12, 2022November 2, 2022

Entanglement at BravinLee Programs

In Conversation

*Entanglement (Paintings by Cecile Chong, Sculpture by Jack Henry, courtesy BravinLee Programs*

Entanglement is a new exhibition of works by Jac Lahav, Cecile Chong, Jack Henry, and Erik Olson. The work ranges from the psychological to the sentimental with many references to the natural world. Much of the work is dissimilar, like a portrait of Ruth Bader Ginsburg wearing leopard print and a leafy necklace which stands in contrast to atmospheric encaustic paintings referencing Chinese landscape. Together these pieces take us deep into a post-pandemic psyche. The binding theme is plants, using nature as a metaphor for an internal growth many of us have experienced during the past two years. Entanglement opened on Thursday March 3rd and is up at BravinLee Programs in Chelsea New York until April 9th. We sat down with gallerist Karin Bravin and two of the artists to talk about the show.

March 7, 2022November 2, 2022

Terrarium at Ice Cream Social

Featured Project with Curator and artist Jenn Cacciola, and Artist/Owner of Ice Cream Social Matthew Shively

Installation view, photo courtesy of Ice Cream Social.

The inaugural group exhibition, Terrarium, at Ice Cream Social features painting, photography, sculpture, fiber and site-specific installations by 26 artists. Terrarium examines growth of different forms, inside and outside of containment, managed and wild, protected and exposed, as well as growth that sometimes requires destruction or thorny discoveries. The show runs from March 5th through May 6th, 2022.

February 21, 2022January 7, 2022

Landscape Deconstructed at the Hammond: Mimi Czajka Graminski

Part 2: Mimi Czajka Graminski – Interview with Jennifer McGregor

Mimi Czajka Graminski, *Petal Series Rose 1,* 2020-2021, archival pigment print of photograph of rose petals, 10 x 10 inches

Landscape Deconstructed: Mimi Czajka Graminski and Linda Stillman is a virtual exhibition on view at the Hammond Museum and Japanese Stroll Garden website (hammondmuseum.org/virtual-galleries) until June 2022. It is curated by Bibiana Huang Matheis. The opening on September 11, 2021, included a virtual conversation with Mimi Czajka Graminski and Linda Stillman moderated by Jennifer McGregor which has been distilled and reformatted for individual interviews with each artist.

The Hudson Valley artists met in 2011 and were immediately struck by the similarities in their work and have continued a dialogue since then. Landscape Deconstructed is the first time their artwork is presented in tandem and underscores the way that both artists discover elements of their surroundings and reassemble them in ingenious ways. Through distinct processes, they each preserve fleeting moments of beauty in nature while documenting a particular time and place.

February 14, 2022January 7, 2022

Landscape Deconstructed at the Hammond: Linda Stillman

Part 1: Linda Stillman – Interview with Jennifer McGregor

Background pattern

Description automatically generated — Linda Stillman, *Daily Skies: 2020, February 15, 2020 focus*, 2021, archival pigment print on paper, 19 x 13 inches

Landscape Deconstructed: Mimi Czajka Graminski and Linda Stillman is a virtual exhibition on view at the Hammond Museum and Japanese Stroll Garden website until June 2022. It is curated by Bibiana Huang Matheis. The opening on September 11, 2021, included a virtual conversation with Mimi Czajka Graminski and Linda Stillman moderated by Jennifer McGregor which has been distilled and reformatted for individual interviews with each artist.

January 31, 2022January 31, 2022

Judith Schaechter – Native to her Imaginary World

A person painting on a table

Description automatically generated with medium confidence — Judith Schachter at work

Art without craft is blind, craft without art is empty Judith Schaechter paraphrasing Kant

January 26, 2022January 25, 2022

Doomscrolling at Petzel

In Conversation with Zorawar Sidhu and Rob Swainston

Zorawar Sidhu and Rob Swainston, “May 27” (2021), multi-color woodblock print on paper. 57.5 x 42.25 inches (courtesy the artists and Petzel, New York)

The woodblock prints by the artists Zorawar Sidhu and Rob Swainston at Petzel refer to recent harsh events that occurred in the United States and the way we perceive them through iconic media imagery. The prints specifically address 18 moments that took place between May 24^th, 2020 to January 6^th, 2021—marked by the COVID pandemic, the murder of George Floyd, the ensuing protests, and the insurrection at the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. The exhibition is on view at the gallery Upper East Side location through February 12, 2022.

January 24, 2022December 20, 2021

Gabriela Vainsencher: Unfolding Motherhood

Gabriela Vainsencher in the studio with “Mom”, 2021

Gabriela Vainsencher works in photography, video and drawing, while merging all of these forms in her porcelain sculptures. Her sculptures and wall reliefs are as far off the smooth perfection we traditionally associate with porcelain – twisted forms merge into each other or repel, forming a fiery existential dance that sometimes invokes symbiosis and sometimes pulling apart.

January 17, 2022January 9, 2022

Brenda Zlamany – Shifting Historical Iconographies

In Dialogue with Brenda Zlamany

Portrait of Brenda Zlamany with *the Davenport Dining Room Scene*, 2018. Oil on panel. Left panel: 58 x 42 in. Right panel: 58 x 39 in. Photo courtesy of Robert Lowell.

In recent years we have been experiencing a major re-examination of iconographies and narratives portrayed in historical paintings and sculptures—portraits of male figures re-evaluated and removed, portraits of females and people of color, added. Working within the context of historical portrait painting, till surprisingly quite recently, has implied working within a mostly male dominated territory, for both artist and subjects. Additionally, depicting Historical figures requires the artist to develop their own research approach, which typically differs from the process of depicting living subjects. Painter Brenda Zlamany, who has been commissioned to paint several substantial group portraits of historical women, among them—Yale’s First Seven Women PhDs and Rockefeller University’s five women scientists—elaborates on these issues and describes her approach to historical portrait paintings.

January 14, 2022November 2, 2022

Reflections on Humanity Is Not a Spectator Sport

In Dialogue with Caron Tabb

*Caron Tabb, Justice Vessels: Tzedakah Box For Tina (2021), Scorched tree branches, stainless steel, wool roving, thread, 16 x 16 x 22 inches. Photo credit Julia Featheringill.*

In Humanity Is Not A Spectator Sport, on view at Beacon Gallery in Boston from November 5th 2021 through January 17th, 2022 (sponsored in conjunction with JArts), Caron Tabb draws upon her expertise in multiple media to create works meant to provoke and inspire. She leans into the tensions that have characterized the recent past to question her role and culpability as a White woman; where inaction itself is a statement. The exhibition offers an intimately visual response to Tabb’s personal reckoning along with a wealth of programming focused on sparking difficult conversations about race and privilege as well as presenting opportunities to take action. As the exhibition entered its final weeks, I asked Tabb to reflect on some of the conversations the exhibition inspired.