painting – Page 12

February 7, 2024February 7, 2024, by Etty Yaniv

Small Myriad: Sharon Horvath at Bookstein Projects

Installation view, detail, photo courtesy of Etty Yaniv

Sharon Horvath’s paintings in Small Myriad, her current exhibition at Bookstein Projects, create a sense of an alluring universe where dazzling colors, interflowing shapes, and tactile surfaces merge, meander, and as a group form an enigmatic universe unified by a mysterious code. Horvath’s spiraling lines and patterned forms create ebbing and flowing movements echoing Theodor Schwenk’s anthroposophical approach to the unifying principle of all movement and form. In his book Sensitive Chaos: The Creation of Flowing Forms in Water and Air, Schwenk posits that water movements reveal fundamental, archetypal patterns in natural and human-made environments. This deeper order finds resonance in Horvath’s paintings, but simultaneously, her imagery and use of collage also lean toward the enigmatic, paradoxical, and absurd.

January 31, 2024May 12, 2024, by Saul Ostrow

Harriet Korman’s Brutal Realism

Opinion

a hallway with paintings on the wall — Photo credit: Fernando Sandoval/MW

In Harriet Korman’s exhibition titled Portraits of Squares, the squares in question are either nested within the framework of a grid or stand alone as discreet entities surrounded by blocks of color. Her palette, in the main, is made of secondary and tertiary colors, which for the most part, are applied in an opaque and unmodulated manner — her surfaces tend to be flat and dry. Korman uses color both as a formal element to reinforce her composition’s structure as well as spatially. As one moves around the gallery, there seems to be no logical progression or sense to the paintings’ variations. The canvases, all of the same dimensions, are rectangular and are hung on the horizontal at eye level; their sequencing refuses to surrender an associative, conceptual, or anecdotal narrative. What one is left with is the fact they all, in part, reference squares and that they are all relatively different in approach. Subsequently, it is hard to determine if the “portraits” represent systemic deviations on a singular theme or if each painting was individually intuited. Behind the reception desk hangs a painting from 1979 whose forms are organic, their edges blurred, and whose surface is mottled. This painting stands as a reminder that Korman works thematically, and the present paintings are an aspect of her broader investigation of abstract painting’s various idioms.

January 1, 2024December 24, 2023, by Amy Talluto

Whisperings from the Wormhole with @talluts

Let’s Be Nothing Burgers

Stars in outer space with a bright star

Description automatically generated — Photo of Pandora’s Cluster showing ancient galaxies from the early universe by the James Webb Space Telescope, Feb 15, 2023, Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Ivo Labbe (Swinburne), Rachel Bezanson (University of Pittsburgh)

Recently I was watching a guy on TikTok gently freak out about all the revelations coming back from the James Webb Space Telescope. His panic was so relatable because the images returning from deep space only reinforce how utterly minute we Earthlings are in the cosmos. The JWST is so powerful that, looking from Earth, it can sense the heat signature of a single bumblebee on the moon. And, of course, faced with this, he just shrugged helplessly and said, “We’re a total nothing burger.”

December 29, 2023December 29, 2023, by Paul D'Agostino

Some Great Books

Book Review

I didn’t have a mandate to compile anything along the lines of a ‘Best Books of the Year’ list, so I didn’t. There are plenty of those out there already anyway. Some even feature hundreds of titles. Hundreds! The restraint is impressive.

Nevertheless, I’d be remiss if I didn’t spread the word a bit about some books I really did relish reading this year, so what follows is a short list of standout titles and a few words about each. Limiting my picks to 12 – plus a couple brief extras I couldn’t resist folding into the mix – seemed logical enough, and they appear here in no particular order. My selections run a gamut and include fiction, nonfiction, essays, critical theory, humor, architecture, art, material history, and a charmingly assembled byproduct of social media. Additionally, several of the titles are books in translation, and ‘excellent syllabus material’ for various types of courses, especially interdisciplinary ones, would be a viable subcategory for nearly everything included here.

November 24, 2023November 13, 2023, by Art Spiel

Patricia Satterlee at Gold Montclair

In Dialogue

SPACELAND. Each Flashe paint and graphite on panel. 12 x 12 in. / 30.5 x 30.5 cm

Patricia Satterlee wrote this concise statement to contextualize the work she exhibits in her third solo show at Gold Montclair:

This work resists the feeling that everything is falling apart. Holding on to a real or imagined moment without the noise. A particular way of being a boat on a stream passes in time. A figuration of forms floating and morphing, rediscovered as they’re painted.

An interview with curator and gallery founder Jennifer Wroblewski gives us more insight into her curatorial vision and the featured artworks.

November 18, 2023November 13, 2023, by Art Spiel

Dalit Gurevich: A Memory Interwoven at Amos Eno Project Space

A painting of a pond with lily pads

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Dalit Gurevich’s A Memory Interwoven, curated by Jenn Cacciola at the Project Space of the Amos Eno Gallery, is a vivid exploration of transformation and adaptation through depiction of mixed-media landscapes and cityscapes. The exhibit, now open to visitors, captures the shifts in Gurevich’s life from the confines of a Brooklyn apartment during the pandemic to the liberating nature of Vermont and back to the bustling city life. Her paintings tell a story of seeking space and peace in a time of global uncertainty.

November 6, 2023November 6, 2023, by Amy Talluto

Whisperings from the Wormhole with @talluts

Fear & Philip Guston

A painting of a chair

Description automatically generated — Philip Guston *Head* (detail), 1968 Oil on board, Courtesy of Museum of Modern Art © 2023 The Estate of Philip Guston

Born in 1913, Canadian American painter Philip Guston began his career in the 50’s in New York during the Abstract Expressionist movement. The Ab-Ex-ers were sweeping the country as the next great thing and developing a bit of a swagger. Painters everywhere were ditching representational painting for the new experimental style of pure abstraction, and Guston was no exception. Well-esteemed and well-reviewed, he was a part of the in-crowd. Everyone loved the guy.

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.”

October 25, 2023October 26, 2023, by Anat Or Magal

The Kite Runner from Kfar Aza

מצילומי הלילה של אביב קוץ — Night Photographs, Aviv Kutz

This article was initially published in Portfolio Magazine in Hebrew on October 17^th, 2023. It was translated into English by Sharon Yam Sananes and Ariane Goldberg Davidson and edited by Art Spiel. This publication in Art Spiel is in collaboration with Portfolio Magazine.

The Kutz family had always found hope and solidarity in their ability to create. It was their way of managing and flourishing as a family and as individuals. Aviv, Livnat, Rotem, Yonatan, and Iftach Kutz were murdered in their home. Aviv’s sister, Talya Kutz Shamir—artist and art therapist—talks about the family on her Instagram account, using their art as a jumping-off point for conversation.

October 22, 2023October 22, 2023, by Art Spiel

Anna Shukeylo at James Howe Gallery at Kean

Featured artist

A person holding a child in front of a painting

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The solo exhibition Reflections in James Howe Gallery at Kean University features Anna Shukeylo’s latest body of work from 2022- 2023. Shukeylo has always combined in her artwork private, autobiographical moments inter-spliced with imagined elements. Since becoming a mother, she has documented and deeply explored in her paintings and drawings the chaotic routine of early parenthood, including her attempts to balance her art career and the day-to-day rigors of two toddlers.