abstract art – Page 5

February 7, 2024February 7, 2024, by Etty Yaniv

Small Myriad: Sharon Horvath at Bookstein Projects

Installation view, detail, photo courtesy of Etty Yaniv

Sharon Horvath’s paintings in Small Myriad, her current exhibition at Bookstein Projects, create a sense of an alluring universe where dazzling colors, interflowing shapes, and tactile surfaces merge, meander, and as a group form an enigmatic universe unified by a mysterious code. Horvath’s spiraling lines and patterned forms create ebbing and flowing movements echoing Theodor Schwenk’s anthroposophical approach to the unifying principle of all movement and form. In his book Sensitive Chaos: The Creation of Flowing Forms in Water and Air, Schwenk posits that water movements reveal fundamental, archetypal patterns in natural and human-made environments. This deeper order finds resonance in Horvath’s paintings, but simultaneously, her imagery and use of collage also lean toward the enigmatic, paradoxical, and absurd.

December 26, 2023December 25, 2023, by Ágnes Berecz

At the Limits: Elena Dahn at Revolver

Thin, translucent layers of shaped and stretched natural latex are mounted onto walls or wooden boards to extend the limits of painting—these are Elena Dahn’s New Bodies, on view at the Buenos Aires-based artist’s first New York exhibition. Hosted by Revolver, a contemporary art venue launched in 2008 by Giancarlo Scaglia in Lima and subsequently in Buenos Aires and on the Lower East Side, the exhibition is an invitation to rethink the relationship between body and painting, performance and mark-making, space and surface.

November 24, 2023November 13, 2023, by Art Spiel

Patricia Satterlee at Gold Montclair

In Dialogue

SPACELAND. Each Flashe paint and graphite on panel. 12 x 12 in. / 30.5 x 30.5 cm

Patricia Satterlee wrote this concise statement to contextualize the work she exhibits in her third solo show at Gold Montclair:

This work resists the feeling that everything is falling apart. Holding on to a real or imagined moment without the noise. A particular way of being a boat on a stream passes in time. A figuration of forms floating and morphing, rediscovered as they’re painted.

An interview with curator and gallery founder Jennifer Wroblewski gives us more insight into her curatorial vision and the featured artworks.

November 22, 2023November 17, 2023, by Etty Yaniv

Shay Arick: Demons and Fields

Featured Exhibition

A white room with a white floor and a white rectangular object

Description automatically generated with medium confidence

In Demons and Fields, Shay Arick’s solo show in Tel Aviv Artists’ Studios Gallery, most sculptures are made of dried Ficus leaves he collected near his home. The vertical constructions are like linear drawings of delicate figures—they sway gently with the air or rotate in place through an automated mechanism. Each has its rhythm and character, evoking wonder and awareness of life’s fragility. Arranged along an extended white platform reminiscent of a road, these characters appear as if caught in a paused procession—some still move but remain anchored as part of a collective entity, an undefined network, or an intricate matrix. It is a nuanced and powerful metaphor for life’s transience in a complex reality. It is the second exhibition by Shay Arick since his return from New York City to Israel a year and a half prior. The show, curated by Eitan Bognim, opened on October 6^th but was closed the next day on October 7th, due to the devastating Hamas attack on southern Israel and the subsequent ongoing war. The conversation with Shay Arick focuses on his art and his process.

October 30, 2023September 28, 2023, by Art Spiel

Cross-Continental dialogue: Marie-Chloé Duval and Yulia Bas

In Conversation

Yulia Bas, Barcelona 2023 and Marie-Chloé Duval, NYC 2022, credit: Keith Selby

Art’s ability to transcend borders becomes evident as two distinct artists engage in a cross-continental dialogue. Yulia Bas, hailing from the sun-soaked landscapes of Spain, and Marie-Chloé Duval, an artistic force from Canada, come together to delve into the intricacies of their creative processes. This exchange goes beyond cultural distinctions, bridging the gap between mediums. Through their conversation, Bas and Duval explore inspirations, techniques, and the universal language that connects artists worldwide.

September 20, 2023September 14, 2023, by Art Spiel

PE Pinkman: Two Solo Shows at Watchung Arts Center

Featured Project

A collage of a couple of images of a person

Description automatically generated with medium confidence — *(l) Mona Brody, Getting Answers, 60” x 48”, 2023, and (r) Anne Trauben, a section of the installation, Step Up on a Stool to Reach the Sky, 2023*

PE Pinkman, the chief visual arts curator and executive director of the Watchung Arts Center in New Jersey, notes that two exhibitions — Mona Brody: Portals, Apparitions, and Other Voices and Anne Trauben: Step Up on a Stool to Reach the Sky — emerged from separate discussions with each artist. For over 45 years, the nonprofit Watchung Arts Center has been a prominent stage, showcasing works from regional artists in New Jersey and New York. Their central mission is to provide visual artists with a platform for engagement, promoting arts education while offering unique exhibition opportunities. At a first glance, both Mona Brody’s paintings and Anne Trauben’s installations appear straightforward. However, Pinkman emphasizes that they reveal deeper layers upon closer inspection. He observes a fascinating contrast: while Brody’s art unveils forms from the shadows, Trauben emphasizes light and shape within a darkened setting.

August 29, 2023August 29, 2023, by Meg Hitchcock

Martha Bone and Janice Caswell: Two Solo Shows at Garrison Art Center

A painting of a snake

Description automatically generated — Martha Bone, Mapping the Invisible #3, 2020, acrylic, aluminum enamel, charcoal, joint compound, pastel on pieced paper, 63 x 88 in., photo courtesy of the artist.

Two artists currently showing at Garrison Art Center use scale, structure, and geometry to examine and reinterpret their respective environments. Martha Bone’s large-scale paintings and assemblages express a sweeping view of the cosmos, bringing the macrocosm within our reach, while Janice Caswell’s small-scale sculptures find the infinite within the microcosm, showing us the vast potential in all forms. Both Bone and Caswell photograph their natural and man-made landscapes, later referring to these images when creating their works. And both artists construct their forms as improvisations inspired by their observations, although neither artist is interested in a literal interpretation of nature. But this is where the similarities end, their distinctive styles diverging toward an expansive contemplation of form and space and an intimate exploration of the fabricated structures that inhabit our lives.

August 2, 2023July 23, 2023, by Eva Zanardi

Tony Smith: Sacred Geometry at PACE

A room with black objects

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At the crossroads of architecture, painting, and sculpture, one encounters the awe-inspiring steel monoliths of Tony Smith (1912–1980). Tony Smith: Wall, New Piece, One-Two-Three showcases the evolution of the artist’s sculptural practice throughout the 1960s and 1970s.

July 18, 2023July 17, 2023, by Matt Moment

Time as Space: Alaina Enslen in The Summer Show at Carrie Haddad Gallery

Artist Profile

A person using a drill to drill a picture

Description automatically generated — Alaina Enslen in her studio in Cornwall-on-Hudson. Image Credit: Matt Moment

Around six in the morning, Alaina Enslen scales the steps of her Hudson Valley home to the attic where she works. Skylights invite brightness into the whitewashed studio. A hotplate rests upon a wax-spattered tabletop; she turns it on, waiting until it reaches about 170°F. After five minutes, the surface is finally hot enough to melt pigmented beeswax, an integral ingredient in her paintings. She collages in an 11-inch by 14-inch sketchbook, teasing out new ideas with pieces of fabric and leftover monotypes. “I set no expectations for the work,” the artist insists. “It’s all about experiment and play.”

June 22, 2023June 22, 2023, by Amy Talluto

Ruby Palmer: Painter with a Kaleidoscope Eye

A person sitting on a couch with a dog

Description automatically generated — Ruby Palmer with dog, “Oscar,” in her studio in Red Hook, NY, Photo credit: Yuko Yamamoto

Ruby Palmer’s new acrylic and Flashe paintings, currently on display in her solo show Shift at Morgan Lehman through June 30, look like colorfully doodled Rorschach tests. Each work is densely populated with swirling kaleidoscopic symbols like flowers, feathers, and geometric shapes, all set over jewel-toned or neutral grounds. At her previous exhibition with the gallery, she showed wall sculptures made up of painted clusters of basswood, and her new paintings seem to take those networks of wood a step further and expand them outward like Hoberman spheres in a big-bang fashion. It was my pleasure to speak with her and find out more about this exciting new direction in her work.