Eunice Golden: Metamorphosis at SAPAR Contemporary

In Dialogue with curator Aliza Edelman


Eunice Golden painting Metamorphosis #20 in her East Hampton studio. Photo: © 2007 Walter Weissman

The excellent current exhibition Eunice Golden: Metamorphosis at SAPAR Contemporary, rigorously curated by scholar and curator Aliza Edelman, Ph.D., features paintings and photographs by the 93 years old prolific artist from 1979 to 2009. Based in the West Village and in East Hampton, New York, Eunice Golden has made throughout five decades an outstanding and bold body of work with consistent commitment to her artistic vision and to feminism, while keeping her work admirably fresh and urgent all the way. In her later paintings the body is fragmented and anthropomorphized into a landscape, described by the artist as a philosophical and spiritual outgrowth of her earlier radical oeuvre of sexual body landscapes. Golden says on these recent works, “I am concerned with tactility and the sensation of touch, but also of thought on a primal level, where there are no boundaries and where natural phenomenon are blurred by processes of metamorphosis.” In this interview Aliza Edelman elaborates on the genesis of this show and the ideas behind Eunice Golden’s work.

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Artists on Coping: Jane Swavely

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping. This interview includes questions by both Art Spiel and Cultbytes as part of an Art Spiel x Cultbytes content collaboration.

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Jane Swavely. Photographed by Peter Leece. All images courtesy of the artist if not otherwise stated.

Jane Swavely is a painter based in New York City. She studied at Boston University and the School of Visual Arts and was the recipient of a Ford Foundation Fellowship. Previously represented by CDS Gallery, she is currently a member of A.I.R gallery.

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Cartoon in a Cartoon Graveyard at Super Dutchess

In Dialogue with Andrew Woolbright

Installation view of Cartoon in a Cartoon Graveyard. Alex Kovacs, Fernando Pintado, Craig Taylor

Andrew Woolbright, a NY based artist, curator and founder of Super Dutchess, shares with Art Spiel the genesis of this lower east side art space, sheds some light on its key organizers, and describes the philosophy behind it. He elaborates on Cartoon in a Cartoon Graveyard, the 3-person current show that he has curated at the venue, with an upcoming reception on January 10th.

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‘Openings’ at Studio 10

Art Spiel in Dialogue with Larry Greenberg and Kate Teale

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Installation view

Kate Teale and Larry Greenberg have been exchanging art ideas for many years. Recently, their conversations have transformed into a fascinating collaboration, resulting in a two person painting show at Studio 10 in Bushwick. Larry Greenberg, the founder of Studio 10, and Kate Teale, a painter who has showed her work there regularly, share with Art Spiel how ‘Openings’ came about.

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Inside LP Women’s Art Collective

Interview with Founders Jenn Dierdorf and Kelsey Shwetz

LP Event at Sharp Walentas, visiting Julie Curtis Tuyet’s (far left) studio, 2019

The roots of a tuft of wild grass pulled up from the ground form an intriguing network of living fibers, interlaced with earth. This tenacious nest is a fitting visual for the perennial phenomena of women’s grass roots art collectives found around the world. Springing forth in the ‘70s collectives such as SOHO20, Artemisia, Women’s Building, Guerilla Girls, Las Damas de Arte, and WARM have provided support and opportunities for women not otherwise readily available in the staunchly patriarchic art world. In the subsequent decades women’s art collectives have proven to be a fertile, popular and diverse multi-purpose force, although unfortunately mainstream institutions have under-acknowledged their impact. Art Historian Kathleen Wentrack, PhD, observes, “[The] numerous exhibitions devoted to feminist art in the last decade or so [devote] little attention to collectives, and [there is] a lack of historical studies of collectives and their influence on contemporary art practices, which continue to be influential to the present day.” This exhibition, “Slečny od maliarskeho stojana,” which translates as “Ladies of the Easel,” presents an opportunity to document the origins of a thriving women’s art collective called LP (formerly known as Lady Painters) founded in 2015 by Jenn Dierdorf and Kelsey Shwetz in Brooklyn, NY. When conceiving of the show, curator Juliana Mrvová used LP as a resource for selecting work. Paintings by Dierdorf and Shwetz, among others, are included in the exhibition, which is presented from June to November 2019 in four cities in Slovikia: Bratislava (the capital), Banská Bystrica, Trebišov and Rimavská Sobota. As an early and on-going member of LP, I’m pleased to have the opportunity to interview Dierdorf and Shwetz about their motives and goals for the LP collective.

Anne Sherwood Pundyk is a painter and writer based in Manhattan and Mattituck, NY. She stains, crops and sews unstretched canvas to construct her work calibrating the interplay of spontaneity and control. She is a proud member of LP.

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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.

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Linger Still – Kaveri Raina at Assembly Room

curated by Emily Burns

Linger Still, (installation view). Image courtesy of Assembly Room Gallery

Diaspora consciousness is an acute mindfulness of one’s cultural origins post-migration. This awareness can be, “heightened by communication and visits, and is retained in memories, storytelling and other creative forms.” Individuals or families who take the risk to migrate must navigate a series of unanticipated complexities away from the support of their families and communities. For those who choose to leave or flee from their homelands the sensation of “otherness” is a pervasive factor in their quest for opportunities, stability, and safety. This uncanny sensation serves as the conceptual pulse and subtle heartbeat for Kaveri Raina’s solo exhibition “Linger Still,” curated by Emily Burns currently on view at Assembly Room Gallery.

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Nota Bene with @postuccio [ii]


SRO Gallery, M. David & Co., ODETTA, Klaus Von Nichtssagend

SRO Gallery

Cathy Diamond at SRO Gallery, photo courtesy of the gallery

Dozens of warmly chromatic landscapes with hints of fantasy and abstract intrigue are on view in “Unextinguished,” a kind of amuse-bouche of a genre-specific group show that opened at SRO Gallery a couple weeks ago. It features a great many paintings, and a great many relatively literal as well as apparently non-objective takes on landscapes by Sahand Tabatabai, Sheila Lanham , Cathy Diamond , Moses Hoskins, Cathy Nan Quinlan and Cecilia Whittaker-Doe. If you need a respite from the drudgery of winter (I always do), head over to SRO.

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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.

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