In the Precipice – Karen Margolis at Foley

Karen Margolis, Separation Anxiety 2019, 24×36, Watercolor, gouache, thread, map fragments on Abaca

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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When the Artist Speaks

A Review of Michael A Robinson’s Solo Exhibition

The Object as Evidence at SL Gallery, New York

Michael A. Robinson, The Origin of Ideas, 2013, found lamps, tripods, and electrical cords, 6 x 6 x 9 ft,, Image: courtesy of SL Gallery

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.

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Rosa Valado: The Feeling of a Space

Rosa Valado, Time, detail, mixed media on paper, 8′ x 16′, 2017 , photo courtesy of Rosa Valado

The Spanish born NYC based artist Rosa Valado has prompted in her immersive installations multi-layered sensory experiences, utilizing diverse approaches, from the smell of burning wax and music to architectural elements and engineering problem solving. Throughout her body of work which includes besides installation, drawings and paintings, she has been exploring notions of space and time by engaging with ideas on architecture and light. Rosa Valado shares with Art Spiel some of her formative art experiences, her process, ideas, and projects.

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Elizabeth Velazquez: All Realities

Elizabeth Velazquez, Cigar Factory Final Exhibition, 2019, installation view- 2 of 4 rooms, photo courtesy Sakeenah Saleem

Elizabeth Velazquez makes powerful installations in response to the history and geography of a site. While her work often unleashes dark secrets from a hidden past with particular sensibility to social injustice, it also elevates our gaze upwards, conjuring an essence of spirituality out of the materials she is using. The artist shares with Art Spiel the ideas and process behind her recent body of work.

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Nota Bene with @postuccio [viii]

Microscope, Underdonk

Microscope

“Scrapbook Performances” is an admirably extensive, broadly politically engaged series of evenings of performance art programmed by Microscope Gallery in relation to their current group show of video art, “Scrapbook (or, Why Can’t We Live Together).”
Performances have been scheduled for basically every Monday and Friday for several weeks already, and there are still several more weeks of gatherings to come.

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Kate Teale: Landscapes of Void

Kate Teale, Going Dark 15x12x8” paintings, on graphite wall drawing 120″ x 164″, Grand Rapids MI, 2018, photo courtesy David Henderson

No matter what subject matter Kate Teale’s drawings, installations and photographs depict – a house, a sleeping couple, bed sheets, a Tsunami – her images always lead us into an urgent psychological landscape, prompting us to pause and reflect on what we are looking at. Precise like poems and complex like dreams, her subtle and highly focused artworks take diverse forms ranging from works on paper to tromp l’oeil murals. Kate Teale shares with Art Spiel some concepts behind her work, process, and thoughts about her evolution as an artist.

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Ground Histories at PS122

Installation view of the East room: (right) david Goodman, (mid) Will Crowin, (left) Heidi Lau, photo credit Tommy Mintz

The grouping of mostly floor-bound sculptures in “Ground Histories”, the current group show curated by Will Corwin at PS122 Gallery, not only pulls our attention to the ground, but also makes us aware of what is underneath its surface – archaeological artifacts, graves, excavated memories. In the east room a triangular layout consisting of Will Corwin’s altar-like sculpture, Heidi Lau’s arched-shape ceramic sculpture sprawling, and David Goodman’s forte-like structure, create a sense of both tension and connectivity. Made of plaster and sand, painted with terra cotta and white tempera hues, and tied with rough ropes, Corwin’s “Jaw” is a rectangular free-standing sculpture that draws literally upon teeth and invokes the idea of the archaic – an architectural ruin from an unidentified culture, or an archaeological artifact with an enigmatic ritual significance. The tooth, a pivotal element in both forensics and bioarcheology, can be read in Corwin’s sculptures as a loaded metaphor for what it means to be human.

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Ribbons Become Space at SL

Elizabeth Riley, Structure from Light, collaged sculptures, inkjet-printed video stills on paper

At the end of “Dragons of Iceland,” a video the NYC based multi-media artist Elizabeth Riley made throughout her SIM residency in Reykjavik, the dragon protagonist is determined to escape the societal constraints and limitations placed on women when the artist was growing up. The dragon flies into a gushing waterfall which for Riley symbolized finality. But later-on, after she returned from the residency, Riley has both deconstructed and reconstructed this video into a sculptural installation, and throughout the process of art making, the dragon’s route shifted from a fall into the abyss to a portal into a different artform. Elizabeth Riley’s solo show, “Ribbons Become Space,” at SL invites us to experience an exuberant journey. The journey starts as you enter the front gallery space with a 2011 video installation “Dragons of Iceland,” continues throughout the back gallery space with two related large-scale wall works made recently for the SL Gallery, then loops back as you exit, leading us back to the video installation with a new perspective.

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Nota Bene with @postuccio [vii]

The Chimney, Ulmer Arts, Transmitter, Century Pictures, CLEARING, Superchief

The Chimney

The Chimney has two strong exhibits for you to visit sooner or later. One is on-site at the Chimney’s home outpost, the other not too far away in an outpost you might call new or newish — historical emphasis on -ish.

At the gallery’s home space is “Twilight Chorus,” where a duo of cleverly brick-niche’d, collaged-in assemblies lingering in the circumstantial hinterlands scan as a scrapbook-like index of the trappings of street art, potentially hinting at rather immediate exteriors. Objects elsewhere place you in the landscapes and atmospheres of paintings by many a surrealist. Works tucked into yet other nooks unfurl in extended intimacies, and chromatically order, reflect and unfold like mascara compacts and make-up tables. 

Many objects rich in reference and reminiscence in this also somewhat quietly rambunctious group show. Taken all together, it’s like an immersive diorama à la Miró. 

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Nancy Bowen: The Story of Objects

Nancy Bowen, Princess T, ceramic, turtle shell, metal stand, mixed media,, 48 x 20 x 20 inches

Nancy Bowen‘s layered sculptures, installations, and collages coalesce stories of different cultures, of past and present. Her objects bring to mind a flavor of unidentified myths, archetypes and rituals, often involving images of the female body. The artist talks about her art making process, projects, and the way she sees her role as an art educator.

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