An Interview with Chicago Artist Vito Desalvo

Album cover- Duets For Confused Couples. 12 x 12. Colored pencil. 2022

By opening night the installation of Vito Desalvo’s rare public showing of his drawings was completed and the exhibition opened without a hitch. It will be showing, through December 31 at Greenkill Gallery in Kingston, NY. With the help of Mariah Karson, we were able to present his work in a manner that he found acceptable. My main task other than that was convincing him to attend the opening. After a great deal of bargaining, Vito not only showed up but was also surprisingly charitable in his conversations with guests. No one hurt, no foul. In the weeks following the opening, I was asked to interview Vito about his state of mind and thoughts about his work. Last Monday night after considerable liquid consumption, he responded to my inquiries. Our housemate Leo took the dogs—Tina, Louise, and Jack— out for an extended walk so we wouldn’t be distracted. Here are some excerpts of our chat, flaws and all.

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Fran Beallor – Self at El Barrio’s Artspace

Featured Artist

The artist at work in the studio, arranging the drawings in a month grid photo courtesy of Fran Beallor, 2021

In her solo exhibition at the El Barrio’s Artspace PS109 in Harlem, NYC based artist Fran Beallor shows every one of the 366 self portraits she created in 2020. While drawing a new self portrait each day, a number of sub-series organically emerged, on themes such as the iPhone, Boxes, Gravity, and Shadows. Each brings forth a distinct angle of the pandemic experience. Fran Beallor says, “I make self-portraits to see and interpret my world.”

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Natalie Westbrook: Faces at Zynka

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Natalie Westbrook’s exhibition at ZYNKA Gallery in Pittsburgh features new paintings on canvas and drawings on paper. Westbrook depicts faces as thick lines immersed in saturated hot pinks, greens or monochrome gradations—altogether fluctuating between the monstrous and the angelic, the scary and the pathetic. Sometimes they are solitary and sometimes they indicate twins or perhaps a fragmented self. In her catalogue essay on Natalie Westbrook’s work, Larissa Pham observes that Faces “come for you, leering, grinning, mouths a garish lipsticked rictus of joy, embedded flat against the canvas, their features seeming to emerge from the psychological fabric of the painting itself.”

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Brenda Zlamany – Shifting Historical Iconographies

In Dialogue with Brenda Zlamany


Portrait of Brenda Zlamany with the Davenport Dining Room Scene, 2018. Oil on panel. Left panel: 58 x 42 in. Right panel: 58 x 39 in. Photo courtesy of Robert Lowell.

In recent years we have been experiencing a major re-examination of iconographies and narratives portrayed in historical paintings and sculptures—portraits of male figures re-evaluated and removed, portraits of females and people of color, added. Working within the context of historical portrait painting, till surprisingly quite recently, has implied working within a mostly male dominated territory, for both artist and subjects. Additionally, depicting Historical figures requires the artist to develop their own research approach, which typically differs from the process of depicting living subjects. Painter Brenda Zlamany, who has been commissioned to paint several substantial group portraits of historical women, among them—Yale’s First Seven Women PhDs and Rockefeller University’s five women scientists—elaborates on these issues and describes her approach to historical portrait paintings.

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Artist As Subject at KuBe Art Space

Featured Project: with curator Ysabel Pinyol Blasi and artist Jac Lahav

A couple of paintings on a wall

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(From Left) Yigal Ozeri, Yayoi Kusama – Image courtesy Monira Foundation and Eileen S. Kaminsky Foundation; Yayoi Kusama, Shoes, Image courtesy Eileen S. Kaminsky Foundation

An epic show of portraiture opened in Beacon NY on October 24th. The artists roster reads as a “who’s who” in contemporary art with works from Gerhard Richter, Cindy Sherman, Ai Wei Wei, Yayoi Kusama, Yigal Ozeri, and Jac Lahav. Curated by Ethan Cohen and Ysabel Pinyol Blasi this epic show of over 50 artists explores the nature of portraiture as a springboard for what art can achieve. We sat down with curator Ysabel Pinyol Blasi and artist Jac Lahav to discuss the exhibit.

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Briana McLaurin: Unlearning Portraiture 


Briana McLaurin in front of her painting titled, Hope, Love, and What Else…?, 2020, Oil, pencil, and sharpie on canvas, 40 x 30 in. Photo courtesy of the artist

Briana McLaurin takes on an intimate subject matter in her large scale oil paintings, as her practice primarily consists of painting her family members. Her vibrant portraits serve as a tribute to her own experiences and upbringing, while creating a relatable narrative that celebrates African American presence. The honesty and value of family are extremely present in McLaurin’s recent body of work, where she reflects on her relationships with loved ones by depicting intimate snapshots of domesticity.

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Instituting The Re Institute in Millerton

In Dialogue with Henry Klimowicz, founder and director


The Re Institute empty, 2021, photo courtesy of Henry Klimowicz

The Re Institute is an extension of Henry Klimowicz’s studio, a very large 1960s dairy barn outside of Millerton, New York. About 11 years ago sculptor Henry Klimowicz started the gallery as a response to living in the “center of nowhere”, as he puts it. The artist says that the gallery allows him to have extended working relationships with other artists and their work. “I try not to know what a show will be about before it opens and I get to spend the length of the exhibition becoming aware of all of each show’s nuances,” he says about his curatorial process. A normal season at Re Institute includes 4 to 5 shows, which mostly feature 2 to 3 artists showing in the large space upstairs and another person downstairs. “I try to get each artist to have a specific reason for showing in the gallery outside of the possibility of selling work,” he says. This fits his vision of Re Institute as a non-profit institution. It’s important for him that the featured artists will find reasons to use the space uniquely. “There has to be something in the process of showing an artist that brings depth to the artist’s understanding of their own work or the process of exhibiting their work,” he says. These different ways of interacting with each artist have become the most important aspect of the space for him.

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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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Sue McNally: Learning how to Find

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Jockey for Postition

Sue McNally lives and works in Rhode Island and when life permits, as she puts it, in rural southeast Utah. Her landscape paintings and her self portraits encompass everything in between — the views of nature she has encountered, and her shifting states of being. Sue McNally reflects on her art making and shares ideas on her new body of work.

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