Contemporary Art and Culture
Painter Susan Cohen began her artistic journey by depicting the interiors of the places she lived, drawn to the emotional resonance of light and shadow. While that early intensity has softened over time, her fascination with light remains the core of her practice — animating her still lifes, landscapes, cityscapes, and close-up studies of foliage.
Continue reading “Susan Cohen – Engrossed in Egg Tempera”
The paintings in James Gold’s solo show, Infinite Scroll, act as intermediaries between past, present and future. These glimmering grids at Morgan Lehman gallery toggle between his deep reverence for history and his active aesthetic imagination. Talking with the painter about his wider practices in collaged artist books and archeological renderings revealed new means of perception and applications of art-making.
Continue reading “Reinventing the Grid: A Conversation with James Gold”
Jan Dickey moved to New York City during the pandemic by way of Hawaiʻi, where he completed his MFA from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. In New York, he has shown his paintings at My Pet Ram, D.D.D.D., and Below Grand gallery among other locations. Recently he completed a materials-based residency at the Sam and Adele Golden Foundation (2023) and this interview seeks to delve deeper into his unique use of hand-mixed natural painting mediums like rabbit skin glue, casein, egg tempera, and oil paint. Currently he has an exhibition of new work at Bob’s Gallery, an experimental space in Bushwick: “The Generations” on through August 18th, 2024. Dickey is also the newest member of Artcake, an art center in Sunset Park that provides artists with affordable studio spaces and artistic programming.
Continue reading “Jan Dickey with Amanda Millet-Sorsa”Art Spiel Photo Story
The Front room Gallery hosts an online tour of “Aqua/Terra”, the beautiful and evocative solo exhibition of sculpture, installation, photograms, layered egg tempera and encaustic drawings by New York Artist, Beth Dary. The artworks in “Aqua/Terra” explore the power of water throughout natural forms and forces of nature, as a force to shape the land, sustain life, and destroy it. Beth Dary’s work also responds to the effect of human activity on land and water – bubbles of ancient carbon dioxide captured in Arctic ice, the rising tides due to the climate crisis, and fractal patterns formed by the liquid contaminants in urban runoff – in transition due to our culture’s impact on the environment.
Continue reading “Beth Dary at The Front Room Gallery”
Christopher Ulivo, the LA based painter, takes us in his vivid paintings to imaginary places, from time travel to ancestral family spirits to rewritten myths and histories. His worlds are filled with idiosyncratic, wildly imaginative narratives, where you can sense the painter’s presence as a prolific storyteller.
Continue reading “Christopher Ulivo: The Present is Nonsense”In Dialogue with Yvette Molina
Big Bang Votive, Yvette Molina’s collaborative storytelling art installation has evolved over fifteen weeks, utilizing the Mitzi and Warren Eisenberg Gallery at the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey through January 18th, 2021. Yvette Molina creates an immersive audio-visual experience — accompanied by a 30-minute surround sound composition played on a loop, her installation includes three hundred paintings of starry skies, some with votive symbols of delight or love taken from stories gathered from the public, a work-table with the artist’s materials, and an on-going “story catcher” project involving public participation.
Continue reading “Yvette Molina: Big Bang Votive at the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey”During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.
Claudia Chaseling lives in Berlin and Canberra and received a Masters from Udk, Berlin and a Ph.D. from ANU, Canberra. Claudia is known for “Spatial Painting”, site-mutative biomorphic murals that optically distort the familiar geometry of the space, whilst carrying socio-political content. In 2013 she published the graphic novel Murphy the mutant that became an anchor for her work to follow. Her work has been featured at over sixty exhibitions internationally, including X-Border Biennial, Finland, LAB11 Biennial, Sweden, and the Lorne Biennial, Australia. Recent solo exhibitions were held at Art Gallery Nadezda Petrovic, Serbia; Wollongong Art Gallery, and Yuill Crowley Gallery, Australia; Kunstverein Duisburg and Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Germany; and AiB, NYC. “Vfzkt Berlin” published her monograph in 2016. Grants include DAAD, Karl-Hofer Award, Samstag Scholarship, OZCO and artsACT. Residencies include Art Omi and ISCP, NYC.
Continue reading “Artists on Coping: Claudia Chaseling”During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.
Zac Skinner’s work explores geo-engineering, global warming, and the Anthropocene Landscape. His solo exhibitions include Rockland Center For the Arts, West Nyack, NY, Garrison Art Center, Garrison, NY, and Matteawan Gallery, Beacon, NY. Recent group exhibitions include CICA Museum, Seoul, South Korea, Spring Break Art Show, New York, NY; SITE:Brooklyn, New York, NY; WAAM, Woodstock, NY. He was recently interviewed and featured in Lowdown Magazine, Berlin, Germany. He is currently a Lecturer at Ramapo College, NJ, and SUNY New Paltz College. Skinner will have a solo exhibition at Wave Hill’s Sunroom Project Space this October through December, 2020.
Continue reading “Artists on Coping: Zac Skinner”
Altoon Sultan‘s egg tempera paintings depict close ups of agricultural equipment with incisive color and architectural forms. Her paintings consistently reveal inner tensions: the shapes are abstracted and literal, the colors are vivid and subtle, the space is shallow and dimensional. The artist shares with Art Spiel some of her rich experience as a painter, her work process, and her on-going projects.
Continue reading “Altoon Sultan – Luminous Clarity”
Helen O’Leary‘s sculptural paintings are delicate and rough, subtle and raw, literal and metaphoric – they embrace and prick the viewer at the same time. Her current exhibition “Home is a foreign country“ at Leslie Heller indicates not only clear incisiveness and impressive mastery of form, but also a deep generosity- sharing with the viewer her rigorous process of grappling with material: visible jointing, disjointing, bending, folding, knitting. She says that somewhere through the struggle some magic happens. And magic does happen in her artwork. Continue reading ” Helen O’ Leary: No Place for Certainty”