nyc – Page 2 – Art Spiel

February 19, 2025February 21, 2025, by Doug Navarra

Myron Stout: Materiality, Meaning, and the Geometry of Abstraction

opinion

Myron Stout (1908–1987), Untitled, at Peter Freeman, Inc. — *Untitled,* no date, charcoal on Strathmore paper, 25 1/8 x 19 inches, (63.8 x 48.3 cm), PF8230

An exciting exhibition of Myron Stout’s early charcoal drawings is currently on view at Peter Freeman Inc. in the SoHo district of NYC, running from January 16th to March 1st, 2025. This collection of approximately 35 works from the late 1940s and early 1950s offers a glimpse into the evolution of Stout’s personal style as he shifted toward reductive geometric abstraction. Positioned within the broader context of mid-20th-century abstraction, these drawings mark a bold departure from the era’s dominant trends, which often incorporated symbolic, gestural and representational elements.

February 6, 2025February 5, 2025, by William Corwin

Keisha Prioleau-Martin: Recenter at Olympia

Recenter is a delightful return to Impressionism in many ways. Prioleau-Martin chooses for her subject matter decidedly impressionistic themes—moments at home, moments of introspection, and unrehearsed tenderness, all the casual yet poignant subject matter that marked painting’s initial move from the historic and fantastical to the everyday and human in the 1870s. She also employs the paint with a focus to capture the spur of the moment and the unexpected. Her small-scale ceramics, composed on the templates of stock sculptural types—odalisques, Rodin-like romantic poses, and busts, are, by virtue of their Lilliputian size and wit, Impressionist re-interpretations of dry classic forms. They start out as one thing and shift mid-stream into another: this is particularly evident in Prioleau-Martin’s bust Self-portrait (2024) which masquerades as a planter with fabric and wire vegetal tendrils emanating from her cranium along with her braids.

December 23, 2024December 22, 2024, by Etty Yaniv

Heather Cox: Roundels at Hudson Guild

In Dialogue

Artist Heather Cox at Guild Gallery II. Photo by Monika Graff

Heather Cox, a sculptor and photographer, discovered an unexpected medium in snapshots. Years ago, when she had her camera film developed, the 1-hour photo lab often provided double prints. Over time, these duplicates, along with countless other photos, accumulated in boxes. Unable to part with them, they lingered in storage—until the COVID pandemic brought a sudden shift.

October 24, 2024October 24, 2024, by Anna Shukeylo

Carrie Moyer: Timber! At Alexander Gray Associates

photo story

Installation view at Alexander Gray Associates. Photo courtesy of the gallery.

Carrie Moyer’s solo show Timber! is her debut with the renowned Alexander Gray Associates gallery in New York City. Her signature vibrant abstractions shine in the airy rooms of the Tribeca gallery space. Centering around “social and environmental instability,” this new body of work offers greater complexity and a more somber tone than Moyer’s previous work.

October 15, 2024October 14, 2024, by Chunbum Park

Contours and Strokes: Between Traditional and Contemporary Art Forms

Mika Kanemura performing at the gallery. calligrapher: Komei

When one looks at Franz Kline’s Abstract Expressionist paintings involving Gestural Abstraction, they cannot help but read a Chinese or Japanese character in calligraphic form. In fact, a relationship can be established between Kline’s “abstract” lines and marks from the calligraphic strokes of Sumi ink made by the masters of the traditional art form—Japanese calligraphy.

October 7, 2024December 7, 2024, by Etty Yaniv

Dorothy Robinson: Paint Through Space and Time

End of Story, 2022, oil on panel, 48×60 inches, photo courtesy of Bill Massey

Dorothy Robinson’s family moved often during her childhood, starting in rural Iowa, where they farmed for generations and eventually settled in California. After high school, she bounced between colleges before landing at UC Berkeley. Studying art never crossed her mind, but she was drawn to geography, “probably because of its strong visual component—map making, field trips, slide shows,” Robinson says. During an internship, she learned darkroom skills and later worked in commercial photo labs, shaping her sense of color while making color prints. An invitation from an artist friend to join a drawing group was transformative, and started Robinson on the path to a life of making art.

August 13, 2024August 12, 2024, by Art Spiel

Everything Ends Eventually: Precious Objects for Eschatonic Times

featured project

R+R artists’ paths converged during their 2019 residency at Millay Arts. United by their passion for sculpture and approach to life, they became fast friends committed to keeping their long-distance friendship going. E.E.E. is their inaugural project, for which they were awarded an LMCC Creative Engagement Award. Through their curatorial project, they aim to foster community by merging their NY/Miami worlds. As artists, they felt strongly about producing in-person experiences and giving their peers autonomy over their narratives—”Real people, real objects, real connections.” They envision E.E.E. to be more than just a group show. It is a home base where, for two weeks, they host events and set up communal artwork. “We hope the show will be the first step in an ongoing dialogue that does not end when the exhibition doors close,” said the show curators, Rina AC Dweck and Richard Moreno.

July 27, 2024July 27, 2024, by MICHELE JASLOW

Art Spiel Picks: Lower East Side in July 2024

HIGHLIGHT

Installation view, Shadowland, at Marc Straus, photo courtesy of the gallery

Summer 2024 shows in Lower East Side galleries offer many super solo and group exhibitions. We will highlight three that range from an inaugural show at a new NYC flagship gallery, a solo show of a veteran NYC artist, and a group show of Eastern European artists. That Dog in Me at Jupiter Gallery is a solo exhibition featuring seven new paintings by Travis Fish, who continues their exploration of fandom. Susan Eley Fine Art features the work of the late artist James Moore (1938 – 2013) in the second posthumous exhibition, Something Beautiful Happened. The group show at Marc Straus features Eastern European artists of the post-communist era and their responses to the rapid acceleration of technological development.

April 24, 2024April 24, 2024, by Etty Yaniv

This Bitter Earth: Deborah Wasserman at Kuma Lisa

Photo Story

Deborah Wasserman, Rubble, 2021, ink and acrylic on paper, 28″ x35.5″

Rubble, mutated crop fields, floods, scorched earth, and occasional female figures floating or submerged unfold throughout the sixteen landscape paintings in Deborah Wasserman’s current solo show, The Bitter Earth at Kuma Lisa. Though the paintings differ in scale and media—from small acrylic and oil on panels to larger acrylic, oil, and stained clothes on canvas to medium-sized works on paper—they all share the sense of a world where multiple perspectives from different vantage points co-exist. Wasserman’s energetic strokes and searching lines create a rhythmic movement upward, downward, and sideways—reminiscent of the fluidity in Chinese and Japanese calligraphic scroll paintings and the clear, directional lines of a hand-drawn map. These linear dynamos intertwine with a palette of earthy tones, greens, yellows, oranges, blues, reds, and pure blacks, creating multiple vignettes within a layered landscape.

January 29, 2024January 29, 2024, by Melissa Stern

Man Bites Dog Bites Man

John O’Connor at L’Space presented in conjunction with Pierogi Gallery

Noahbot-colored pencil and graphite on paper. 83 x 69.5. 2013. Photo courtesy of John Berens

There is an astonishing amount of information in John O’Connor’s drawings. The work, currently on show in Chelsea at L’Space Gallery, explodes off the paper with words and numbers, names, logos, and dates. It’s information overload, and that is part of the genius of the show.