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Jeanette Fintz at Carrie Haddad Gallery

In Dialogue with Jeanette Fintz


Installation view

As an abstract artist, Jeanette Fintz has long been interested in the contrast of hard-edged planar geometry (circles, squares, hexagons) existing within an atmospheric field where shapes can float or hold the plane, in a space that appears expansive, transient and increasingly released from the canvas’s edge.Of her newest body of work currently on view through August 1st at Carrie Haddad Gallery in Hudson, NY, she explains “these paintings are about giving structure to something intangible, ephemeral, in-flux or conversely, revealing the dissolving of structure that has been.” The following is the artist in conversation with writer and art critic, Carter Ratcliff, to discuss her influences and process.

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Twenty Twenty Twenty One

Art Spiel Photo Story

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Partial view of gallery installation, photo courtesy Jon Bunge

Twenty Twenty Twenty One is a group exhibit and corresponding artist book created by 18 artists. During the darkest days of the past year, the fellowship this group of artists built became a beacon of hope. The artists initially congregated in early April of 2020, during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, via weekly Zoom meetings launched by artist Mike Sorgatz, that continued through the year and up to the present. Inspired by their camaraderie, in late summer of 2020 they began casually discussing making a book to share artwork loosely relating to themes of community and connection. This book expanded into a corresponding exhibit, with Janice McDonnell generously taking the initiative in early December of 2020 to curate the exhibition at Sweet Lorraine Gallery. 

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Painting the Narrative at the National Arts Club

In Dialogue with Dee Shapiro

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Installation view

In the group exhibition Painting the Narrative at the National Arts Club in New York City the artist Dee Shapiro brings together six contemporary artists who explore content and form of narrative painting ranging from interiors to landscapes, personal to imagined, realistic to fantastic. Featured artists: Jennifer Coates, Laura Karetzky, Judith Linhares, Ernesto Renda, Kyle Staver, and George Towne. The show runs through June 28th.

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Alexander Rutsch, The Voluptuous Eye at Kenise Barnes Fine Art


Sunset, mixed media on board, 36 x 44 inches, 1990s

My first encounter with the work of the artist Alexander Rutsch was through his daughter, the artist Alexandra Rutsch Brock (Alexi), a friend and one of my fellow co-founders of the London Calling Collective. I visited the Rutsch family home in Pelham where she grew up and where her mother still lives. The home, an eccentric, polymathic cacophony of hand-hewn art and embodied life, reflects my experience of Alexi as a passionate and energetic artist, teacher, and friend. A labyrinthine artist’s house- the type that real estate brokers abhor, is brim-full of paintings, sculptures, built-in furniture, object d’art, hand-tiled stone walls, curved nooks, hallways to a warren of rooms, and Alexander Rutsch’s overflowing attic studio, where the work from this exhibition came. I marvel at the fecundity of imagination a childhood in that house must have fostered. This history makes it a special honor to step back and review the exhibition, Alexander Rutsch, a Pop-Up, at Kenise Barnes Fine Art in Larchmont, NY, on view March 4-7 and March 11-14. 2021. The exhibition includes paintings on panel, works on paper, sketchbook pages, and whimsical bronze sculptures cast from industrial materials and found objects.

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Christopher Ulivo: The Present is Nonsense

installation shot

Christopher Ulivo, installation shot

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.

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In Accordion Time, Unfolding : A Pandemic Archive at Ursa Gallery

In Dialogue with Alexandra Rutsch Brock


Patricia Fabricant, Jo Yarrington, Katherine Jackson, Ellen Hackl Fagan, Alexandra Rutsch Brock, Patricia Miranda (missing Josette Urso) – watching President-elect Joe Biden’s victory speech Nov. 7, 2020 – after our gallery reception. Photo courtesy Dustin Malstrom

The group exhibition In Accordion Time, Unfolding : A Pandemic Archive marks the opening of Ursa Gallery, an experimental gallery showcasing contemporary art and design located at the historic Arcade Mall in Bridgeport, Connecticut. This art venue was founded by Cris Dam and conceived in collaboration with Dustin Malstrom. Cris was also cofounder of Dam Stultrager in 1998 – one of the earliest galleries in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Co-curated by Alexandra Rutsch Brock and Patricia Miranda, the exhibition features mail art in the form of accordion-fold books and digital dialogues by the London Calling Collective over the challenging past year. It runs through February 12th, 2021.

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The Immigrant Artist Biennial: Yikui (Coy) Gu


Yikui (Coy) Gu, Oriental Flavor. 2019. Gouache, charcoal, acrylic, gouache on photograph, chopsticks. Ramen noodle packaging & flavoring pack on bristol board.

The Immigrant Artist Biennial (TIAB) is a volunteer, female-led, artist-run project. TIAB 2020 launched in March in New York City at Brooklyn Museum, and continues in September through December at EFA Project Space, Greenwood Cemetery, and virtually, presenting 60+ artists. This interview series features 10 participating artists.

Yikui (Coy) Gu was born in 1983 in Nantong, China and emigrated to the United States at the age of seven, growing up in Albany, NY. Yikui (Coy) Gu has a BFA from Long Island University and an MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He has exhibited his work nationally in New York, Miami, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Boston, and St. Louis; and internationally in London, Berlin, and Siena, Italy. His work has been reviewed in the Washington Post, KunstForum International, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Yale Daily News. His work has appeared on the cover of the Lower East Side Review, and in Fresh Paint and Art Maze. He resides in Philadelphia and teaches as Associate Professor of Art at the College of Southern Maryland. He is currently plotting in his South Philly studio, while remaining mostly harmless.

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Tirtzah Bassel in Domestic Brutes at Pelham Art Center

In Dialogue with Tirtzah Bassel

Tirtzah Bassel grew up in Israel, the oldest of eight in a Jewish Orthodox family. Her father is a traditional scribe and her mother, a ballet dancer by training, was the homemaker when they were growing up. Although both of her parents were very creative and the value of making things by hand was instilled early on, she didn’t know any professional artists and had no concept that making art was something she could do as an adult. This changed when she took a night class at the Jerusalem Studio School in her early twenties. She recalls how she was immediately drawn to the intensity of the atelier-style learning environment, drawing and painting from observation, and the methods of the Old Master paintings. She later decided to pursue an MFA at Boston University and subsequently moved to Brooklyn. “Perhaps it was the continuous traversing of worlds – religious and secular, Israel and the US, Hebrew and English – that led me to ground my work in close observation of seemingly mundane situations,” she says.

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Artists on Coping: Margot Spindelman

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


Untitled, 2020 oil and gouache on paper

Margot Spindelman is a painter living in Brooklyn, New York, whose most recent work is an intimate exploration of disorder, rupture, security and loss, expressed in the language of collage, as painted pieces are torn, drawn, reassembled. She has had solo shows in New York at both the Perlow Gallery and Platform Gallery. Her work has been shown in many group shows in New York and elsewhere. Spindelman is a recipient of both a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Painting (2004) and a George Sugarman Foundation Grant (2007). She received her Bachelors degree in Fine Arts from the University of Michigan, and her Masters of Fine Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute. Her work is featured on line by Gibson Contemporary.

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David Rios Ferreira – Catalytic Lines

(detail) Don’t you see I got everythin’ you need, 2019. Photo: Jason Wyche

David Rios Ferreira‘s energetic drawings, paintings, sculptures and installations flirt with cacophony yet manage to stay on the verge, creating an idiosyncratic sense of order out of chaotic turmoils. Through turbulent lines and vibrant colors, his imagery projects a rigorous visual universe where Geo-political and mythical narratives fuse organically. David Rios Ferreira shares with Art Spiel the main ideas behind his work, elaborates on some specific projects, and sheds some light on his prolific curatorial practice. Although our interview process started a few months before the Corona pandemic and the recent global protests related to the Black Lives Matter movement, David Rios Ferreira added his response to the current events, implemented at the beginning of this interview.

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