Actual and Implied – Gregory Coates at Monica King Contemporary

Gregory Coates, My Big Brown Peace, 2019 deck brushes 76 x 252 x 3 inches

Each of Gregory Coates’s wall-based assemblages in Actual and Implied, the artist’s solo show at Monica King Contemporary, commands the space with its own powerful presence. Altogether, the show features over a dozen new mixed media assemblages made of found objects created with post-minimalist sensibility, for which Coates is mostly known for. It is a bold encounter with the objects of art at first, but the longer you look, the more subtle and fragile it becomes. The seemingly simple monochromatic surfaces from afar transform to complex arrays of color, line and dot from close-up.

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Plastic Expressions in Particularity: Nature Moves in Tracy McKenna’s Shift at Able Baker Contemporary

Elise Ferguson. Pebble. Pigmented plaster on MDF panel, 2018. Photo courtesy of Able Baker.

“Wisdom was the feeling for what is high, great, broad, sharp, even, heavy, bright, light, colorful . . . Wisdom was the feeling for an essentially shared reality, for the mystical, for the indeterminate indeterminable, for the greatest determinacy of all . . . but art is reality, and the reality we share must assert itself beyond all particularity.” Hans Arp, Introduction to a Catalogue

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Julien Gardair: Polyphonic Situations

Julien Gardair, Whole together, All apart, 2019, pigments and acrylic on industrial felt cut in space, 7x20x16ft, BRIC, Brooklyn, photo courtesy the artist

The French born Brooklyn based artist Julien Gardair makes carpets, paper cutouts, paintings, sculptures, video or everything in between. This proclivity for smooth sail between forms in context of specific sites globally paired with his insatiable explorations, make his body of work versatile, whimsical and layered. Julien Gardair shares with Art Spiel his ideas, experiences, and what is behind some of his many projects.

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Erika Ranee – Wired for Bold

Erika Ranee, You’re Your Own You, 2018, ink and crayon on paper, 12”x 12”

The tension between “inside” and “outside” in Erika Ranee’s paintings draw you into an enclosed space with an explosive and rhythmic internal movement. The vibrant colors, organic shapes, and linear marks that link the forms like veins, altogether resonate with living organisms, body, or microscopic landscapes. The artist shares with Art Spiel what brought her to art, her thought and work processes, as well as her current projects.

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The Bold Women of Elvira Bach

Elvira Bach, Untitled, 1982, Acrylic on paper, 88 x 62 cm | 34 2/3 x 24 1/2 in,

In the context of the global feminist art of today there are a few trailblazers who continue to work and dazzle with their exuberance. Immediacy and mastery of visual resolution signal such fast-paced and intuitive artists. German-born Elvira Bach is one of them. Bach has created a striking painterly style that catches the eye and stimulates further contemplation. For a viewer, Bach’s expressiveness establishes an immediate and deep bond with the traditions of the German Expressionism, embodying in her paintings the Expressionists’ core principle – namely, depicting the artist’s inherent conflicts within the society and within herself. For Elvira Bach urgency of expression, empathy, and visual projection of deep inner strength are important attributes.

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Elisabeth Condon – Responding to Contingency

Elisabeth Condon, Plant Life, 2018, ink, acrylic on parchment, 144 x 32, photo Jim Reiman

Elisabeth Condon is a traveler in life and art. Her large scale scrolls, installations, and paintings entice the viewer to join her in adventurous excursions of new and imaginative landscapes. The artist’s innate sensibility for color, pattern, and form, ignited by an insatiable curiosity for cultural intersections, have resulted in an outstanding body of work. For Art Spiel, Elisabeth Condon sheds some light on her dynamic mode of visual quest, and on-going projects.

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Anne Sherwood Pundyk With Art Spiel – Part 3

 AS: What can you tell me about your painting process?

Anne Sherwood Pundyk Mattituck, NY studio exterior
with canvas works in progress summer 2018.
Anne Sherwood Pundyk at work, Mattituck, NY studio spring 2018, photo courtesy The Suffolk Times.

Anne Sherwood Pundyk: To begin, I am alone in my studio out in the country. I clear away the past. I am free. I don’t need to do anything. I have no expectations based on prior work. I wait. An urge eventually calls me toward my materials. My materials are humble drop cloth canvas and house paint. They will be transformed and elevated. I want to make something new. It will affirm a hopeful light. It will hold a dark truth. It will be more than the sum of its parts. It will take whatever size and shape it needs to take. I am there to shepherd its creation. I start by mixing a color that matches my mood. I pour a large quantity of paint onto canvas on the floor of my studio or outside on the lawn. I watch the movement and density of the paint. I pour more paint or water to compose in response to what I see. I work with large heavy pieces of canvas sometimes soaking wet with paint and water, bending, rolling, and pulling. I learn as I go. I extend my body to my materials. The canvas becomes my skin and the paint is a bodily life fluid. Action becomes image.

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Anne Sherwood Pundyk With Art Spiel – Part 2

AS: I am curious why you chose to use the term “manifesto.”

Anne Sherwood Pundyk, “Being Blue,” 2018, 90 x 100 inches, Latex, Acrylic, Colored
Pencil and Stitching on Canvas.

Anne Sherwood Pundyk:I could say, “Artist Statement,” but that feels too passive as a prescription for how and why I paint. I associate the term “Manifesto” with an urgent call to action. Since 2009, my painting has formally become more reductive through three distinct bodies of work each with their own written manifesto .  Respectively, each written piece affirms a new order in a different way. Common to all is my concern with the idea of agency taken together with my on-going re-examination of the tradition of the medium. As my thinking and understanding changes, so does my work.

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Color Matters at Galerie Richard

Color is a function of reflected light and it is intrinsic to everything we see. Color is also freighted with emotion for humans – certain colors can excite or depress us even without our awareness – teases, shouts, whispers, sings. Color can be fugitive or it may sound an alarm. As a painter and former paint-maker, color has been a lifelong obsession for me. It’s also the focus of a new, stunning group show at Galerie Richard on the Lower East Side.

Work by Carl Fudge facing work by Jamie Martinez
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Julia von Eichel – Portraits of Emotional States

Although Julia Von Eichel‘s sculptures appear to be fragile, at times almost on the verge of collapse, they are held together as if against all odds due to their obstinate resilience. Whether mounted on the wall, hanging on a wire, or drawn on mylar, her shapes embody a restless exploration of the dimensional form – how its defined by line and light. In this interview for Art Spiel the artist talks in depth about her thought and work process.

Julia von Eichel, I’ll eat you up, I love you so, 2016, silk, acrylic, wood, thread, plastic, and epoxy, 40 x 30 inches x 24 inches, courtesy of Julia von Eichel

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