op art – Art Spiel

May 28, 2025May 27, 2025, by Andrew Fish

Art Spiel Picks: Boston Exhibitions June 2025

Highlights

*Lucy Kim: Pigment Spells* at Praise Shadows Gallery, Brookline, MA. Photo by Dan Watkins, courtesy of Praise Shadows Gallery

Several wonderful exhibitions are on view in Boston this month and many more are scheduled for the summer, along with artist talks, performances, and events. Boston’s Public Art Triennial kicked off with a ribbon cutting and a party to celebrate the arrival of several new public art installations around the city for art goers to enjoy throughout the summer. The schools are getting ready for summer break but many of their galleries remain open with dynamic shows. Whether you visit the city, the Cape, or the Islands over the next few months, there is always something to see. Here are a few highlights to consider.

December 2, 2024December 7, 2024, by Etty Yaniv

Louise P. Sloane: Optically charged text-ures

From an early age, Louise P. Sloane has been compelled by an intense fascination with how color and texture influence mood. “I was one of those art nerd kids who went nuts each time there was a new color crayon from Crayola!” she recalls, describing a childhood shaped by a relentless curiosity about different mediums and textures. Making art quickly became the dominant force in her life, guiding her on a creative journey that has spanned over fifty years.

October 26, 2023October 26, 2023, by Etty Yaniv

John Avelluto: Impasta Handbags at Stand4 Gallery

Photo Story

A plate of food on a white surface

Description automatically generated — *Cannoli Ultrasound* | Acrylic paint on panel | 9” x12” | 2023

The details in John Avelluto’s delightful paintings—thin strands of hair, tiny droplets of perspiration, chunky gold chains, or hyperreal food items—are uncanny in their realism. Avulluto is a trickster. Through all the paintings featured in his third solo show at Stand4 Gallery he convinces us that we are looking at the “real” thing, but in fact, each piece in Impasta Handbags is made solely of acrylic paint. Curator Paul D’Agostino says in his essay that “no matter what viewers think they’re looking at in Impasta Handbags—marble, paper, wood, or gold; skin, hair, sweat, or jewelry; cookies, cakes, fritters, cannoli, or sprinkles; ravioli, penne, ziti, parsley, pizza, pomodorini, mozzarella, mortadella, salsiccia, soppressata–what they’re actually looking at is paint. In turn, since the objects at hand, however sculptural, are crafted from paint, then all these things viewers are looking at are, simply put, paintings.”

June 7, 2023May 12, 2024, by Saul Ostrow

Re-evaluating Ellsworth Kelly at 100

opinion

Ellsworth Kelly, *Spectrum IX*, 2014, acrylic on canvas, twelve joined panels, © Ellsworth Kelly Foundation, Photo: Ron Amstutz, Courtesy: Matthew Marks Gallery

Ellsworth Kelly (1923-2015) is one of those artists whose status I’ve never understood. While he is held in high esteem by many, I’ve always questioned his significance. Don’t get me wrong, I like his work, but liking it doesn’t necessarily make it significant. His work is elegant, refined, and smart, and yet even in the 1950s-70s, it seemed conservative against the backdrop of Abstract Expressionism, Pop, and Minimalism. What made Kelly different from his peers was that when he was living and studying in Paris after World War2 on the GI Bill, while many of his fellow artists from the States were exploring lyric abstraction and L’informale, Kelly was looking at Art Concrete and had begun to make multi-canvas paintings.

February 25, 2021February 23, 2021, by Etty Yaniv

Julia Kunin at Kate Werble Gallery

In Dialogue with Julia Kunin

Running through March 4^rd, Julia Kunin’s exhibition Mechanical Ballet at Kate Werble Gallery features ceramic wall reliefs and caryatids that create an imaginary narrative of sexually charged figures. “They are at once fortresses in themselves, a merging of body, machine and architecture, ready to become weaponized,” the artist says. The works draw from the hard-edged geometric rhythm found in Art Deco objects and the relentless patterns pay tribute to Art Nouveau and Op-Art. Her most recent large wall pieces are made up of multiple sections, with the potential to be re-arranged and taken apart. Julia Kunin refers to them as sculptural drawings in clay, that vibrate with iridescence — “the destabilizing psychedelic color enables the figures to change and move in their ever-shifting narrative frieze,” she says.

March 22, 2018May 30, 2020, by Etty Yaniv

OnEdge at The Painting Center

“OnEdge” at The Painting Center features ten contemporary painters who interpret the notion of ‘edge’ in their abstract paintings, conversing with mid-20th century abstraction sensibilities like Op Art and Washington Color, or early Mondrian. Patrick Burns, Anthony Falcetta, Astrid Fitzgerald, Lori Glavin, Celia Johnson, Julie Karabenick, Richard Keen, Scot Sinclair, Audrey Stone, and Jennifer Woolcock-Schwartz explore the tension between separation and union with color and line. In her curatorial note, Susan Post says that the shift between separation and union triggers the sensation of being ‘on edge’ – a prevalent state of mind at the moment. Continue reading “OnEdge at The Painting Center”