Contemporary Art and Culture
Yolande Heijnen was born and raised in Luxembourg, and has lived in New York since 1998. She has an MFA in painting from the New York Studio School, has won the Edward G. McDowell Travel Grant of the Art Students League, and is a three-time recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant.
All photos byCatherine Kirkpatrick
Continue reading “BOS Studio Spotlight: Yolande Heijnen“
Peter Gynd is an artist, curator and gallerist whose recent curatorial project is currently on view at Radiator, a solo show featuring new works by the Canadian born and NYC based Jody MacDonald. MacDonald’s sculptural dioramas explore a set of characters on the fringe by merging fact, fiction, and art history. In this Art Spiel interview Peter Gynd elaborates on the genesis of the exhibition.
Continue reading “Peter Gynd – Jody MacDonald: Freaks, Geeks, and Strange Girls at Radiator“In Dialogue with Katie Hector on RSOAA and beyond
Katie Hector is an artist, curator, and writer whose work is currently featured in New Thick at The Royal @ RSOAA . a group exhibition she has also co-curated with Barry Hazard at this dynamic venue for curatorial projects in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. In this Art Spiel interview, Katie Hector elaborates on New Thick, her current show, and the premise behind the RSOAA venue.
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Message in a Bottle, installation view at Ground Floor Gallery, 2019, photo courtesy of Jordan Rathkopf
In Message in a Bottle, the current solo installation show at Ground Floor Gallery in Park Slope, the Gowanus based artist Karen Mainenti transforms the gallery into what at first glance looks like an upscale beauty boutique. Mainenti uses this platform to explore the mechanisms at work in the packaging and marketing of beauty products over time, drawing on her own complex relationship to the products themselves. Much of Mainenti’s work examines the subtle but powerful societal expectations of women that show up in ordinary objects. The delicately cast porcelain replicas of her own cosmetics highlight the way objects can be gendered, even when reduced to their elemental forms. Often using humor as a sly way to invite the viewer in, her drawings of creams, lotions and serums using marketing language from real products highlight the inherent contradiction in the ways we read these messages as absurd, yet suspend that disbelief at the cash register when we buy them. Having visited the show when it opened, I was delighted to have the opportunity to chat with Karen about how this exhibition came together and how the various series within it have developed over time.
Continue reading “Karen Mainenti: Message in a Bottle at Ground Floor“Interview with Founders Jenn Dierdorf and Kelsey Shwetz
The roots of a tuft of wild grass pulled up from the ground form an intriguing network of living fibers, interlaced with earth. This tenacious nest is a fitting visual for the perennial phenomena of women’s grass roots art collectives found around the world. Springing forth in the ‘70s collectives such as SOHO20, Artemisia, Women’s Building, Guerilla Girls, Las Damas de Arte, and WARM have provided support and opportunities for women not otherwise readily available in the staunchly patriarchic art world. In the subsequent decades women’s art collectives have proven to be a fertile, popular and diverse multi-purpose force, although unfortunately mainstream institutions have under-acknowledged their impact. Art Historian Kathleen Wentrack, PhD, observes, “[The] numerous exhibitions devoted to feminist art in the last decade or so [devote] little attention to collectives, and [there is] a lack of historical studies of collectives and their influence on contemporary art practices, which continue to be influential to the present day.” This exhibition, “Slečny od maliarskeho stojana,” which translates as “Ladies of the Easel,” presents an opportunity to document the origins of a thriving women’s art collective called LP (formerly known as Lady Painters) founded in 2015 by Jenn Dierdorf and Kelsey Shwetz in Brooklyn, NY. When conceiving of the show, curator Juliana Mrvová used LP as a resource for selecting work. Paintings by Dierdorf and Shwetz, among others, are included in the exhibition, which is presented from June to November 2019 in four cities in Slovikia: Bratislava (the capital), Banská Bystrica, Trebišov and Rimavská Sobota. As an early and on-going member of LP, I’m pleased to have the opportunity to interview Dierdorf and Shwetz about their motives and goals for the LP collective.
Anne Sherwood Pundyk is a painter and writer based in Manhattan and Mattituck, NY. She stains, crops and sews unstretched canvas to construct her work calibrating the interplay of spontaneity and control. She is a proud member of LP.
Continue reading “Inside LP Women’s Art Collective“
Karen Margolis’s intricate wall pieces and sculptures featured in her current solo show In the Precipice at Foley resemble topographic mindscapes or cosmic maps. The sum of her dense cell-like circular shapes in some works create a sense of condensing inward, and in others exploding outward. Close up it is like taking a journey through a complex network of neurons, galaxies or emotional states of mind. It is enjoyable to identify recognizable fragments such as remnants of old maps with readable places, trace the multiple burnt holes and biomorphic shapes created with a soldering iron, focus on the hypnotizing miniscule dots of paint on circular clusters painted with watercolor or gouache, and then follow a complex net of crisscrossing dark linear threads which create an engaging tension with the curvy forms.
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Riad Miah‘s vivid abstract paintings and bold installations reflect his deep ongoing preoccupation with representation of materiality, time, and light. Riad Miah shares with Art Spiel some thoughts on his own trajectory as a painter. He describes how his painting process has evolved, and elaborates on some projects, including his upcoming exhibition “Magical Spaces, Familiar Places” at Kean College Gallery.
Continue reading “Riad Miah: Moving Pigments“A Review of Michael A Robinson’s Solo Exhibition
The Object as Evidence at SL Gallery, New York
Trekking down 38th Street in the heart of the garment district on a Thursday evening in October, I made my way to SL Gallery where Michael A. Robinson’s solo exhibition, The Object as Evidence, was on view. As I pushed open the large steel door to the gallery I found myself immediately subsumed within a group of onlookers similarly clad in all-black. The artist’s talk had already begun and attention was fixed upon Robinson, a tall slender man with sandy-blonde hair standing beside a projector that cast images of artwork onto the wall behind him. Arms extended and eyes twinkling, Robinson elucidated upon the evolution of his work.
Continue reading “When the Artist Speaks“
Olive Ayhens paints unexpected landscapes in which roaming animals, lush fauna and zooming cars frequently co-inhabit familiar urban environments. In her world you may encounter by a vivid East river shore a Prehistoric animal, utterly oblivious to a dazzling Gotham vista on the horizon. Olive Ayhens talks with Art Spiel about her process, ideas, and “Urbanities and Ur-Beasts” , her upcoming show at Bookstein Projects opening October 30th .
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Rebecca Morgan’s solo exhibition “Town and Country“ at Asya Geisberg offers viewers a subversive and unflinching look into aesthetics of Americana. Panty raiding hillbillies, buxom bonnet sporting milkmaids, and characters engaged in Appalachian revelry scrupulously rendered in paint, graphite, and brass galavant throughout the exhibition. Morgan’s cringeworthy figuration walks the line between portraiture and allegory and highlights the pitfalls of romanticization. Inspired by the sucker-punch illustrations of R Crumb, Morgan’s depictions of rural life speak to notions of voyeurism, power dynamics, and the ubiquity of toxic masculinity within contemporary American culture. The works included in “Town and Country” strike a balance between hilarity and horror and provide a fantastical portal into the American psyche. I had the opportunity to chat with Morgan about her fourth solo show with the gallery and reflect upon her personal fascination with the subjects she portrays.
Continue reading “Americana Archetypes Frolic Centerstage in Rebecca Morgan’s Solo Show Town and Country at Asya Geisberg Gallery“