figurative art – Page 6

May 10, 2020November 2, 2022, by Catherine Kirkpatrick

Artists on Coping: Robin Holder

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.

robin holder in her studio .jpg — Robin Holder

Robin Holder is a 2020 Clark Hulings Fund For Artists Executive Fellow. Her recent exhibit “Access and Inequities. I Hear You. Do You See Me?” featured works exploring identity conflicts. She has presented one-person exhibitions at the Mobile Museum of Art, The NCCU Art Museum, The Labor Museum, and The Spelman College Museum. She was awarded an Individual Artist Grant by The Brooklyn Arts Council as well as a Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Artist As Catalyst Residency. Holder has completed 5 public art commissions, and her work is included in significant collections including the Library of Congress and The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

April 27, 2020April 26, 2020, by Etty Yaniv

Artists on Coping: Patricia Fabricant

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.

Patricia Fabricant, Alexi Rutsch Brock, Beth Dary at the opening for Among Friends, May 2019

Patricia Fabricant is a painter and book designer, from New York City. She received her BA from Wesleyan University and studied painting in Italy. Her abstract paintings have been exhibited widely at such galleries as SFA projects, M David & Co, Front Room, Morgan Lehman, the Painting Center and the National Arts Club. More recently she has worked figuratively, both on a political series, Paper Dolls, and on woven self-portraits, which she began in response to the 2016 election and its aftermath. She is also curating shows. She lives in Brooklyn and shares a studio at the EFA, in Manhattan.

April 26, 2020April 26, 2020, by Etty Yaniv

Artists on Coping: Anki King

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.

A person sitting posing for the camera

Description automatically generated — Anki King courtesy of Grace Roselli. Image was taken as a part of Pandoras Box Project

Anki King creates oil paintings and sculptures of life-sized figures that act as symbols for feelings that can’t be accurately described in words. The viewers meeting with the figure frees the narrative from being contained within subject matter and brings it into the viewing space.

April 5, 2020April 5, 2020, by Melissa Stern

Artists on Coping: Vito Desalvo

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.

:untitled folder:Simple PsychoMS.jpg — Simple Pyscho- Vito Desalvo

Can we ever really know another person? I ask myself that frequently when thinking of the great Vito Desalvo. Though I have known Vito for nearly 60 years, he is still an enigma to me. A huge fan of his work, I tentatively approached Desalvo about this interview. He demanded a carton of cigarettes in return for sharing his thoughts. I then turned to his friend and colleague Stan Klein who graciously agreed to approach the inscrutable Desalvo on my behalf. The following is the result.

December 4, 2019December 4, 2019, by Torey Akers

TRAPS! Ebecho Muslimova at Magenta Plains

Exhibition review by Torey Akers

Ebecho Muslimova, Fatebe Deep Frog Organza, 2019, oil and acrylic on cavas, 60” x 66”, courtesy of Magenta Plains

Human civilization has always maintained an uneasy relationship with female monstrosity—just watch the cavalcade of sirens, witches, harpies and hags that stalk the perimeters of every major mythology on earth, luring hapless men to their deaths. This hyper-visible, oft-storied, but deeply erasive marginalization has long plagued the non-normative woman; however, there’s a certain freedom in the fringes. Take Baubo, the Orphic goddess of chaos and mirth, whose paunchy, wizened appearance belied a frisky bawdiness that ancient Greeks adored. Ebecho Muslimova’s ‘Fatebe’ character, whom she has been drawing since 2011 and features vivaciously in her latest solo exhibition, TRAPS!, at Magenta Plains, New York, builds on Baubo’s cultural legacy with appropriately grotesque panache, taking a wide-eyed, manic approach to the tandem joys and pitfalls of embodiment.

October 19, 2019October 19, 2019, by Katie Hector

Americana Archetypes Frolic Centerstage in Rebecca Morgan’s Solo Show Town and Country at Asya Geisberg Gallery

Image courtesy of Rebecca Morgan and Asya Geisberg Gallery. Photography by Etienne Frossard.

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.

September 23, 2019November 15, 2020, by Etty Yaniv

Rhonda Wall: Survival in Delirium States

Rhonda Wall, “We are Bleeding, the Blue Wave is Coming”, 2018 Paint & collage on board, 48 x 72 in.

Rhonda Wall‘s collaged paintings depict surreal landscapes where the wacky and the tragic co-exist. Her topsy-turvy worlds, in which enigmatic and often over the top cartoony characters go on with their daily business, are idiosyncratic and current. Rhonda Wall shares with Art Spiel her downtown NYC art world experience during the 80s, her work process and ideas.

September 9, 2019November 15, 2020, by Etty Yaniv

Laura Karetzky: The Action of Looking

Laura Karetzky, Embedded Brexit, 2019, oil on wood, 14” x 11”, photo: James Wade

Selfies in domestic interiors, mobile phones, and computer screens are ubiquitous throughout Laura Karetzky‘s paintings. Her fragmented figures inhabit familiar interior spaces such as a bedroom or a work space, resonating altogether the uncanny in our daily experiences in this digital age, where the boundaries between space, time, self and other become increasingly blurred and at times even disorienting. In
this interview with Art Spiel Laura Karetzky reflects on her figurative painting roots, her process, and her upcoming projects.

January 11, 2019May 30, 2020, by Sharilyn Neidhardt

New Narrative Now at M David & Co.

Curated by Michael David and Martin Dull

January 11 – January 27, 2019

Opening Reception Friday Jan 11, 6-9PM

Co-curator Martin Dull pictured with Todd Bienvenu’s painting (left) and Jeffrey Morabito, Kave T-shirt (right)

All images by Sharilyn Neidhardt

The work in “New Narrative Now,” curated by Michael David and Martin Dull at M David & Co. is united by a particularly muscular and aggressive kind of paint handling – unsurprising from a gallery well-known for cultivating abstract expressionist work. The paintings also share lyrical and mythical storytelling qualities. Recognizable figures flicker and bend across these canvases, wading through turgid waters, or wrestling with ropes of paint, or bathing in dreamy color. Animals and toys crowd some canvases, women stretch tortured forms across others. Personal mythologies illuminate and infuse each canvas, casting a mysterious spell for the viewer.

September 24, 2018May 30, 2020, by Etty Yaniv

Melissa Stern – Walking the Line

Melissa Stern‘s artworks depict abstracted narratives with complex emotional layers, projecting altogether an urgent psychological presence. The figures in her drawings and sculptures inhabit an absurd universe which is darkly funny in a deeply felt way. Her imagery is precise, poetic, and overall underscores a close affinity with language – bringing to mind an artist who is both an acute observer and a witty commentator. That said, it is Stern’s sensibility of raw and expressive forms that makes her not only an observant narrator but also an empathetic participant in her own human comedy. The artist shares with Art Spiel her modes of thinking, process of making, and some plans, including her solo show opening on Oct 11 at Garvey Simon Gallery.

Melissa Stern, Red Boots 30 x 8 x 10 inches, Clay, graphite, object, linoleum, 2016

Continue reading “Melissa Stern – Walking the Line”