Mary Hrbacek is an artist and an art critic (Aica) based in NYC. In 2016 she received the Carole A. Feuerman Sculpture Foundation, Eskff Foundation, The Helis Foundation, Financial Grant for her art on view at Mana Contemporary. Her drawings in "Whispers" have been included in the collection of The Museum of Contemporary Art of Crete.
Bradley Rubenstein: These are quite lovely; I did see one of your shows a year or two back at Creon, they had a remarkable clarity, and reminded me of Georgia O’Keefe’s work -- there is a very large O’Keefe in the Art Institute of Chicago, a sky, with strange biomorphic clouds. It is a strange painting, and growing up in Chicago, held my attention for years. I don’t want to get to far ahead of myself here, so let’s start with a little background…
Mary Hrbacek: My appreciation of...
Bradley Rubenstein: These are quite lovely; I did see one of your shows a year or two back at Creon, they had a remarkable clarity, and reminded me of Georgia O’Keefe’s work -- there is a very large O’Keefe in the Art Institute of Chicago, a sky, with strange biomorphic clouds. It is a strange painting, and growing up in Chicago, held my attention for years. I don’t want to get to far ahead of myself here, so let’s start with a little background…
Mary Hrbacek: My appreciation of...
- 11/7/2017
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Brenda Goodman: In a New Space David & Schweitzer Contemporary, NYC September 8 - October 1, 2017
If there is a thread that unites the varied bodies of work that the protean painter Brenda Goodman has produced over her five-decade career, it is the sense of urgency -- in the need of the artist to articulate her thoughts and emotions onto the painted surface, but also a feeling of immediacy in the directness of expression, the painterly "hand" manifest in the work. Even in the Ingre-esque drawings of her work in the 1970s, one senses Goodman's need to capture a moment, a relationship between her psychological characters, and then move on, leaving a generous space unfinished for the viewer to move around in. This restlessness pervades her work, in fact defines it, as she jumps from style to style, figure to abstraction, throughout different periods.
What is most surprising about Goodman’s recent work,...
If there is a thread that unites the varied bodies of work that the protean painter Brenda Goodman has produced over her five-decade career, it is the sense of urgency -- in the need of the artist to articulate her thoughts and emotions onto the painted surface, but also a feeling of immediacy in the directness of expression, the painterly "hand" manifest in the work. Even in the Ingre-esque drawings of her work in the 1970s, one senses Goodman's need to capture a moment, a relationship between her psychological characters, and then move on, leaving a generous space unfinished for the viewer to move around in. This restlessness pervades her work, in fact defines it, as she jumps from style to style, figure to abstraction, throughout different periods.
What is most surprising about Goodman’s recent work,...
- 9/26/2017
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Counterpoints to the Narrative Lichtundfire Gallery, NYC May 31 - June 30, 2017 The exhibition is jointly organized through Lichtundfire and Katharine Carter & Associates, D. Dominick Lombardi, Curator.
The concept of walls and borders has been tossed around with such frequency of late, and with such politically charged implications, it seems almost anticlimactic that artists would address this notion within a primarily aesthetic context. Counterpoints to the Narrative curated by D. Dominick Lombardi, features a group of artists exploring ideas that are simple, yet provocative, visuals of this complex subject matter. Sparky Campanella, Mark Sharp, and Martin Weinstein, two painters, one photographer, whose work, seen in combination is much more than a contrast in method and style; rather, it is a meditation on visuality and viewership. These artists are creating work that explores some of the ideas Rudolf Arnheim has put forth regarding the contrast between "seeing into" a work of art, and "seeing as.
The concept of walls and borders has been tossed around with such frequency of late, and with such politically charged implications, it seems almost anticlimactic that artists would address this notion within a primarily aesthetic context. Counterpoints to the Narrative curated by D. Dominick Lombardi, features a group of artists exploring ideas that are simple, yet provocative, visuals of this complex subject matter. Sparky Campanella, Mark Sharp, and Martin Weinstein, two painters, one photographer, whose work, seen in combination is much more than a contrast in method and style; rather, it is a meditation on visuality and viewership. These artists are creating work that explores some of the ideas Rudolf Arnheim has put forth regarding the contrast between "seeing into" a work of art, and "seeing as.
- 6/6/2017
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Robert Longo: The Destroyer Cycle Metro Pictures Gallery, NYC May 3 - June 17, 2017
Looking at the career of the artist Robert Longo can be a philosophical meditation on style. Style, as opposed to stylization, is a key to understanding Longo’s importance as an artist, both at the beginning of his career with the Men in Cities drawings, through his large charcoal drawings of guns, to his blue-chip Abstract Expressionist paintings, and into this recent, powerful exhibition at Metro Pictures.
A lot of art that we place in the category “Eighties Art” (see this year’s Whitney exhibition, a perfect collection of specimens) rested heavily on stylization, not style. Much of this type of work was paintings that came with pre-fab “movements,” object-sculptures allegedly imbued with some post-modern sensibilities, and, most especially, the adding of “neo-“ before any historical art movement to create a new category. At first, Longo’s...
Looking at the career of the artist Robert Longo can be a philosophical meditation on style. Style, as opposed to stylization, is a key to understanding Longo’s importance as an artist, both at the beginning of his career with the Men in Cities drawings, through his large charcoal drawings of guns, to his blue-chip Abstract Expressionist paintings, and into this recent, powerful exhibition at Metro Pictures.
A lot of art that we place in the category “Eighties Art” (see this year’s Whitney exhibition, a perfect collection of specimens) rested heavily on stylization, not style. Much of this type of work was paintings that came with pre-fab “movements,” object-sculptures allegedly imbued with some post-modern sensibilities, and, most especially, the adding of “neo-“ before any historical art movement to create a new category. At first, Longo’s...
- 5/23/2017
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
C. Michael Norton: When Paintings Awake David&Schweitzer Contemporary, Brooklyn April 14, 2017 - May 7, 2017
There was a time, over a century ago, when the idea of a purely abstract painting, one which referenced only the means of its creation, was a far-off goal, a seemingly unattainable dream. In the following decades this idea was tested, tried, worked, and re-worked until the project engendered many and various permutations. Post-modern, appropriational, deconstructed -- the list of approaches to this idea is legion; yet there endures some compulsion, some drive that seems hardwired, to create paintings of pure visuality. Just when we think we have come to the end of this story we find new characters waiting in the wings, new gladiators wanting into the arena. In C. Michael Norton’s current exhibit at David&Schweitzer Contemporary we see that this project still has viability. Indeed, Norton seems to open new fields of exploration.
There was a time, over a century ago, when the idea of a purely abstract painting, one which referenced only the means of its creation, was a far-off goal, a seemingly unattainable dream. In the following decades this idea was tested, tried, worked, and re-worked until the project engendered many and various permutations. Post-modern, appropriational, deconstructed -- the list of approaches to this idea is legion; yet there endures some compulsion, some drive that seems hardwired, to create paintings of pure visuality. Just when we think we have come to the end of this story we find new characters waiting in the wings, new gladiators wanting into the arena. In C. Michael Norton’s current exhibit at David&Schweitzer Contemporary we see that this project still has viability. Indeed, Norton seems to open new fields of exploration.
- 4/21/2017
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Sarah Davis lives and works in Brooklyn with her husband Millree Hughes and daughter Meriel.
Bradley Rubenstein: What were some of your early experiences, like school, for example, where you decided to become an artist?
Sarah Davis: My radar was, What’s the best thing to be doing when you’re 80? Where are the best-looking old people? And for me, that was obviously painters, or the art world more generally. Maybe I was close to my grandparents, or maybe it came from going to high school in L.A., where the projected end was 30. Still, painting was my identity from about age 8. Every kind of picture book, and there were tons of them, was how I spent my free time. I copied everything and made up my own. Making paintings and drawings was how I socialized, from third grade on.
Br: A lot of your work deals with...
Bradley Rubenstein: What were some of your early experiences, like school, for example, where you decided to become an artist?
Sarah Davis: My radar was, What’s the best thing to be doing when you’re 80? Where are the best-looking old people? And for me, that was obviously painters, or the art world more generally. Maybe I was close to my grandparents, or maybe it came from going to high school in L.A., where the projected end was 30. Still, painting was my identity from about age 8. Every kind of picture book, and there were tons of them, was how I spent my free time. I copied everything and made up my own. Making paintings and drawings was how I socialized, from third grade on.
Br: A lot of your work deals with...
- 4/10/2016
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Erin Smith lives and works in Australia. Her work has been exhibited in New York at solo shows at Amy Li and at a group show at Berry Campbell. She has also exhibited extensively in Australia. This year her work will be exhibited in two group shows in New York. In her own words: "I live in a small wooden house in Australia. I'm an over-excitable Australian — in love with New York City. I have a lot of energy, so if I'm not painting, I'm researching, experimenting, and chatting with other artists, mentors, and galleries."
Bradley Rubenstein: It was interesting to see your work in person (at Berry Campbell, NY) after having followed you online for a while. One gets the sense of the physicality of your painting through pictures, but in person they come across far more viscerally. One of the tensions you set up in your work...
Bradley Rubenstein: It was interesting to see your work in person (at Berry Campbell, NY) after having followed you online for a while. One gets the sense of the physicality of your painting through pictures, but in person they come across far more viscerally. One of the tensions you set up in your work...
- 3/14/2016
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
This is the fourth of a series of interviews that focus on Local 829's Scenic Artists’ "behind the scenes" talent who sculpt and paint in a variety of ways the sets we see on television, in movies and documentaries, on theater stages, and in the backgrounds of television and internet commercials.
I first met Bradley Rubenstein very early on in my days in the scenic arts, and it was immediately apparent that he was, and still is, respectfully dedicated to his work as a fine artist. I’ve followed his career closely since then, watching his art delving deeper and deeper into the human condition as he distorts and mutates his subjects. Recently, Rubenstein had one of his warped and mangled human forms in an exhibition titled Head that I curated for the Hampden Gallery at Umass Amherst.
The interview below begins just days before the installation of Head. The...
I first met Bradley Rubenstein very early on in my days in the scenic arts, and it was immediately apparent that he was, and still is, respectfully dedicated to his work as a fine artist. I’ve followed his career closely since then, watching his art delving deeper and deeper into the human condition as he distorts and mutates his subjects. Recently, Rubenstein had one of his warped and mangled human forms in an exhibition titled Head that I curated for the Hampden Gallery at Umass Amherst.
The interview below begins just days before the installation of Head. The...
- 2/3/2016
- www.culturecatch.com
Shaky Ground Curated by D. Dominick Lombardi Lesley Heller Workspace, NYC January 8–February 14, 2016
It is traditionally assumed that the art object is a record of history, whether the history of the artist, of its time, or merely an object left over after the fall of a civilization. While the writing of a period is open to the influence of retelling, interpretation, or the vagaries of translation, the visual object, by its very nature, promises us the stability of meaning inherent in its "objectness." How, then, in an age where perpetual war, disintegrating environmental conditions, and rapidly accelerating technologies, do we expect our artworks to function? What kinds of anxious objects will best represent to future generations our story? D. Dominick Lombardi poses these questions, and a group of artists at Lesley Heller’s Workspace seek to answer them in the exhibition Shaky Ground.
Lombardi’s choice of artists is interesting.
It is traditionally assumed that the art object is a record of history, whether the history of the artist, of its time, or merely an object left over after the fall of a civilization. While the writing of a period is open to the influence of retelling, interpretation, or the vagaries of translation, the visual object, by its very nature, promises us the stability of meaning inherent in its "objectness." How, then, in an age where perpetual war, disintegrating environmental conditions, and rapidly accelerating technologies, do we expect our artworks to function? What kinds of anxious objects will best represent to future generations our story? D. Dominick Lombardi poses these questions, and a group of artists at Lesley Heller’s Workspace seek to answer them in the exhibition Shaky Ground.
Lombardi’s choice of artists is interesting.
- 1/14/2016
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Patricia Cronin's work has been exhibited in solo shows at the Venice Biennale; Musei Capitolini, Centrale Montemartini Museo; Newcomb Art Gallery, Tulane University; Brooklyn Museum; and the American Academy in Rome Art Gallery. Her work has been included in group shows NYC 1993: Experimental, Jet Set, Trash and No Star, New Museum; Watch Your Step, Flag Art Foundation; and Sh(out): Contemporary Art and Human Rights, Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, Scotland. Cronin is the recipient of the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome and two Pollock Krasner Foundation Grants. She has also received support from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, and Anonymous Was A Woman. Cronin's works are in numerous collections including National Gallery of Art, Washington; Perez Art Museum Miami; and the Gallery of Modern Art and Kelvingrove Art Galleries and Museum in Glasgow. She is the author...
- 10/14/2015
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Keltie Ferris Mitchell-Innes & Nash, NYC Through October 17, 2015
A screenwriter bursts into his agent's office. "I have a great idea for a new picture," he enthuses. "We do a remake of The Wiz. Only with white people!" Clichéd Hollywood joke, sure, yet pretty much on point with regard to current trends in art and music. The mash-up, dub, remix, redux, or whatever you want to call it, has replaced the "appropriation" strategies of the 80s. It has morphed into something called Zombie Formalism that for better, or worse, is now seen as a legitimate art movement.
Mitchell-Innes & Nash is showing the paintings and works on paper of Keltie Ferris. These very large, high-keyed, color-filled canvases are warmly inviting on first viewing. Bright reds and blues dominate. The arching motif is brushy passages of paint, checkerboard squares, and general noodling around with the brush over airbrushed planes of color. The press release notes,...
A screenwriter bursts into his agent's office. "I have a great idea for a new picture," he enthuses. "We do a remake of The Wiz. Only with white people!" Clichéd Hollywood joke, sure, yet pretty much on point with regard to current trends in art and music. The mash-up, dub, remix, redux, or whatever you want to call it, has replaced the "appropriation" strategies of the 80s. It has morphed into something called Zombie Formalism that for better, or worse, is now seen as a legitimate art movement.
Mitchell-Innes & Nash is showing the paintings and works on paper of Keltie Ferris. These very large, high-keyed, color-filled canvases are warmly inviting on first viewing. Bright reds and blues dominate. The arching motif is brushy passages of paint, checkerboard squares, and general noodling around with the brush over airbrushed planes of color. The press release notes,...
- 9/30/2015
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Marcy Rosenblat was born in Chicago, Illinois, received her B.F.A. from the Kansas City Art Institute and her M.F. A. from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She has exhibited at Fordham University, The RawlsMuseum, Galerie Berlin am Meer, Smith College, Oresmon Gallery, Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Kouros Gallery, Frumkin Gallery, Art Helix , Centotto, and Bcb Art, Hudson NY. Ms. Rosenblat is an Adjunct Professor of Fine Arts at The Fashion Institute of Technology in New York.
Bradley Rubenstein: Your paintings are really complex, in the sense that you are layering these veils of color, which could end up being very concrete, like a Morris Louis. But there is something in your choices of arrangement, or when to stop, that sets them into play in a way that I find rare in a lot of abstract painting recently. A lot of painters are content letting the paint just be paint.
Bradley Rubenstein: Your paintings are really complex, in the sense that you are layering these veils of color, which could end up being very concrete, like a Morris Louis. But there is something in your choices of arrangement, or when to stop, that sets them into play in a way that I find rare in a lot of abstract painting recently. A lot of painters are content letting the paint just be paint.
- 5/29/2015
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
One Way Ticket: Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series Museum of Modern Art, NYC hrough September 7, 2015
One of the most startling impressions that one takes away from seeing the reunited Migration Series at the Museum of Modern Art is how current the paintings still feel current in a way that Céline still does, or Christopher Isherwood, or John Steinbeck -- documenters of a very specific moment of transition, faithfully recording sensitive observations. Jacob Lawrence’s cycle of sixty paintings on the subject of the Northern Migration is both a landmark work for an artist who was just twenty-three years old when he began it, and it is a work of historical importance in American art of the 20th Century.
Lawrence, who had dropped out of school when he was sixteen, was encouraged by his single mother to take art classes and visit museums. He studied at the Harlem Art Workshop, in the...
One of the most startling impressions that one takes away from seeing the reunited Migration Series at the Museum of Modern Art is how current the paintings still feel current in a way that Céline still does, or Christopher Isherwood, or John Steinbeck -- documenters of a very specific moment of transition, faithfully recording sensitive observations. Jacob Lawrence’s cycle of sixty paintings on the subject of the Northern Migration is both a landmark work for an artist who was just twenty-three years old when he began it, and it is a work of historical importance in American art of the 20th Century.
Lawrence, who had dropped out of school when he was sixteen, was encouraged by his single mother to take art classes and visit museums. He studied at the Harlem Art Workshop, in the...
- 5/20/2015
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Bill Jensen: Transgressions Cheim & Read Gallery Through May 9, 2015
There was a time in modern music when the role of the artist changed from being the custodian of cultural knowledge to something more of an autobiographer. We might choose that moment in the late sixties when Lou Reed abandoned the writing of pop ditties about boys and girls, to focus on his own, more personal interests, like boys and girls and heroin.
In other art forms this sea change was happening -- in comedy, where once jokes were shared, un-authored, between performers in Vegas, the Catskills, and New York City clubs, Lenny Bruce made comedy suddenly personal -- talking about race, politics, cops, censorship, and heroin. It is tempting to suggest that in painting this shift had happened decades earlier, particularly in that sub-category of painting called "abstraction." Once artists like Kandinsky, Rodchenko, Dove, and O’Keefe had looked for...
There was a time in modern music when the role of the artist changed from being the custodian of cultural knowledge to something more of an autobiographer. We might choose that moment in the late sixties when Lou Reed abandoned the writing of pop ditties about boys and girls, to focus on his own, more personal interests, like boys and girls and heroin.
In other art forms this sea change was happening -- in comedy, where once jokes were shared, un-authored, between performers in Vegas, the Catskills, and New York City clubs, Lenny Bruce made comedy suddenly personal -- talking about race, politics, cops, censorship, and heroin. It is tempting to suggest that in painting this shift had happened decades earlier, particularly in that sub-category of painting called "abstraction." Once artists like Kandinsky, Rodchenko, Dove, and O’Keefe had looked for...
- 4/30/2015
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks Brooklyn Museum, NY April 23-August 23, 2015
"Words are all we have." - Samuel Beckett
"I cross out words so you will see them more." - Jean-Michel Basquiat
There are some painters who are born great (Picasso), some who attained greatness due to circumstances of their time (David), and some whose work grows in importance posthumously (Kahlo); Jean-Michel Basquiat is a rare case of a painter who managed to fall into all three of these categories.
He was a prodigious teenager who came out of the gate fast with his graffiti work, which was timely and poetic and achieved meteoric success and celebrity in the '80s. Now, 30 years on, he is an artist whose every sketch, it seems, grows in complexity and meaning through retrospective and deeper readings. Basquiat fused drawing, painting, pop culture, and music with history and poetry to produce an artistic language and...
"Words are all we have." - Samuel Beckett
"I cross out words so you will see them more." - Jean-Michel Basquiat
There are some painters who are born great (Picasso), some who attained greatness due to circumstances of their time (David), and some whose work grows in importance posthumously (Kahlo); Jean-Michel Basquiat is a rare case of a painter who managed to fall into all three of these categories.
He was a prodigious teenager who came out of the gate fast with his graffiti work, which was timely and poetic and achieved meteoric success and celebrity in the '80s. Now, 30 years on, he is an artist whose every sketch, it seems, grows in complexity and meaning through retrospective and deeper readings. Basquiat fused drawing, painting, pop culture, and music with history and poetry to produce an artistic language and...
- 4/11/2015
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Peter Williams: Common & Proper Nouns: The N-Word Novella Gallery, NYC Through April 5, 2015
And when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice speaking unto me, and saying in the Hebrew tongue, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks." - Acts 26:14 (King James Version)
"We have art in order not to die from the truth." - Nietzsche
The paintings of Peter Williams have, for a long time, addressed the nature of the body -- specifically addressing how one might inhabit such a fragile space in such an arbitrary world. Naturalistic figures inhabited landscapes populated with cartoon imagery, combinations rendered plausible through Williams’s skilled, and constantly striving, paint handling. With this background in mind, the paintings, all untitled, and all from 2015, come as something of a jolt -- or, to paraphrase Bruce Nauman, a baseball bat to the back of the head.
And when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice speaking unto me, and saying in the Hebrew tongue, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks." - Acts 26:14 (King James Version)
"We have art in order not to die from the truth." - Nietzsche
The paintings of Peter Williams have, for a long time, addressed the nature of the body -- specifically addressing how one might inhabit such a fragile space in such an arbitrary world. Naturalistic figures inhabited landscapes populated with cartoon imagery, combinations rendered plausible through Williams’s skilled, and constantly striving, paint handling. With this background in mind, the paintings, all untitled, and all from 2015, come as something of a jolt -- or, to paraphrase Bruce Nauman, a baseball bat to the back of the head.
- 4/6/2015
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World Museum of Modern Art, NYC December 14, 2014-April 5, 2015
Between 1942 and 1963 Dorothy Canning Miller was the curator of the influential Americans shows at the Museum of Modern Art. Beginning with Americans 1942: 18 Artists From 9 States and ending with Americans 1963, Miller presented the work of artists such as Hyman Bloom, Robert Motherwell, Jay DeFeo, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Lee Bontecou, and Frank Stella -- artists who would ultimately be the defining contributors to the mid-century American art historical canon. After a gap of nearly a half-century, MoMA once again is reviving this tradition with Laura Hoptman’s The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemoporal World, an exhibition of seventeen painters representing current trends in painting.
In contrast to the U.S-centric exhibitions of the past, Forever Now emphasizes the concept of "a-temporality," a phenomenon of culture defined by the science fiction/cultural theorist William Gibson,...
Between 1942 and 1963 Dorothy Canning Miller was the curator of the influential Americans shows at the Museum of Modern Art. Beginning with Americans 1942: 18 Artists From 9 States and ending with Americans 1963, Miller presented the work of artists such as Hyman Bloom, Robert Motherwell, Jay DeFeo, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Lee Bontecou, and Frank Stella -- artists who would ultimately be the defining contributors to the mid-century American art historical canon. After a gap of nearly a half-century, MoMA once again is reviving this tradition with Laura Hoptman’s The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemoporal World, an exhibition of seventeen painters representing current trends in painting.
In contrast to the U.S-centric exhibitions of the past, Forever Now emphasizes the concept of "a-temporality," a phenomenon of culture defined by the science fiction/cultural theorist William Gibson,...
- 2/25/2015
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
A Tangled Web: D. Dominick Lombardi, Curator Causey Contemporary Through January 29, 2015
The group show is one of those things that can either be done well or becomes an exhibition overwhelmed by variety -- or worse, a clutter of objects that don’t relate to each other without the benefit of lengthy wall texts. D. Dominick Lombardi, a veteran New York curator, has managed to pull together a visually interesting exhibition at Causey Contemporary, which was based on the simple premise of pairing the artists represented by the gallery with an outside artist of Lombardi’s choosing whom he felt complemented the work. What results is a show that is short on theory and long on visuality. He has turned the exhibit into a kind of dance, with one wondering (without looking at the cheat sheet) which artists are waltzing with each other.
To paraphrase the ninth-century Tang Dynasty poet Du Fu,...
The group show is one of those things that can either be done well or becomes an exhibition overwhelmed by variety -- or worse, a clutter of objects that don’t relate to each other without the benefit of lengthy wall texts. D. Dominick Lombardi, a veteran New York curator, has managed to pull together a visually interesting exhibition at Causey Contemporary, which was based on the simple premise of pairing the artists represented by the gallery with an outside artist of Lombardi’s choosing whom he felt complemented the work. What results is a show that is short on theory and long on visuality. He has turned the exhibit into a kind of dance, with one wondering (without looking at the cheat sheet) which artists are waltzing with each other.
To paraphrase the ninth-century Tang Dynasty poet Du Fu,...
- 1/13/2015
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Nicola Tyson was born in 1960 in London, England. She attended Chelsea School of Art, St. Martins School of Art, and Central/St. Martins School of Art in London. She currently lives and works in New York.
Primarily known as a painter, Tyson also works with photography, film, performance, and the written word. Tyson's photographs document the early days of the Blitz Kids and the beginnings of the New Romantic movement -- late Seventies, post-Punk London. Bowie Nights at Billy's Club was a weekly event in a small Soho venue, the brainchild of a young Steve Strange and Rusty Egan. The event quickly became the beating heart of a brand-new scene -- a refuge for disillusioned punks; suburban art school students; androgynous, subversive, creative kids; and (most importantly) Bowie fans, all competing for conspicuousness. Among them were the future stars of Eighties synth-pop: Boy George, Marilyn, Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran,...
Primarily known as a painter, Tyson also works with photography, film, performance, and the written word. Tyson's photographs document the early days of the Blitz Kids and the beginnings of the New Romantic movement -- late Seventies, post-Punk London. Bowie Nights at Billy's Club was a weekly event in a small Soho venue, the brainchild of a young Steve Strange and Rusty Egan. The event quickly became the beating heart of a brand-new scene -- a refuge for disillusioned punks; suburban art school students; androgynous, subversive, creative kids; and (most importantly) Bowie fans, all competing for conspicuousness. Among them were the future stars of Eighties synth-pop: Boy George, Marilyn, Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran,...
- 1/5/2015
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Francesco Clemente: Inspired by India The Rubin Museum of Art Through February 2, 2015 Two Tents Mary Boone Gallery Through December 20, 2014
The original impulse in my life as an artist was to write and to break from writing into image.... Art is the last oral tradition alive in the West. - Francesco Clemente
Francesco Clemente, the nomadic Neo-Expressionist painter and sculptor, continues to pursue his travels and artistic investigations, and, fortunately for New Yorkers this Fall, has brought back the resulting documents to two concurrent shows: Francesco Clemente: Inspired by India, at the Rubin Museum and Two Tents at Mary Boone. Clemente follows somewhat in the traditions set by writers such as Paul Bowles and Christopher Isherwood, or musicians like The Beatles and David Bowie -- artists who used travel both as a metaphor and a seemingly endless reserve of creative energies from which to renew interest in their pursuits.
The original impulse in my life as an artist was to write and to break from writing into image.... Art is the last oral tradition alive in the West. - Francesco Clemente
Francesco Clemente, the nomadic Neo-Expressionist painter and sculptor, continues to pursue his travels and artistic investigations, and, fortunately for New Yorkers this Fall, has brought back the resulting documents to two concurrent shows: Francesco Clemente: Inspired by India, at the Rubin Museum and Two Tents at Mary Boone. Clemente follows somewhat in the traditions set by writers such as Paul Bowles and Christopher Isherwood, or musicians like The Beatles and David Bowie -- artists who used travel both as a metaphor and a seemingly endless reserve of creative energies from which to renew interest in their pursuits.
- 12/19/2014
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs The Museum of Modern Art Through February 8, 2015
In the early months of 1945, Matisse wrote to his daughter that he had gone as far as he could with painting in oil, intending instead to focus his efforts on a large-scale decorative project using the cut-out paper technique he had employed to make sketches and maquettes for his mural and theater projects in the early Thirties ("Red Dancer" [1937-38], and "Two Dancers" [1937–38] for Diaghilev's Rouge et Noir). "Painting seems to be finished for me for now… I'm for decoration -- there I give myself everything I can. I put into it all the efforts of my life." Although he had already been employing this technique for years as an adjunct to his paintings, it was not until the mid-Forties that he turned almost exclusively to cut paper as his primary medium, introducing a radically new operation that came to be called a cut-out.
In the early months of 1945, Matisse wrote to his daughter that he had gone as far as he could with painting in oil, intending instead to focus his efforts on a large-scale decorative project using the cut-out paper technique he had employed to make sketches and maquettes for his mural and theater projects in the early Thirties ("Red Dancer" [1937-38], and "Two Dancers" [1937–38] for Diaghilev's Rouge et Noir). "Painting seems to be finished for me for now… I'm for decoration -- there I give myself everything I can. I put into it all the efforts of my life." Although he had already been employing this technique for years as an adjunct to his paintings, it was not until the mid-Forties that he turned almost exclusively to cut paper as his primary medium, introducing a radically new operation that came to be called a cut-out.
- 12/15/2014
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Sign Language: A Painter's Notebook (Three Rooms Press, 2014) pays homage to the lost art of urban outdoor sign painting, in photos, drawings and words. A mashup of angular skylines, unusual people and unique pockets of the world’s greatest city, woven with poems detailing the danger, fear, and freedom in soaring heights. The author/photographer creates an immersion into a rarified world of danger and beauty, that raises the sense of the importance of moments, and blurs the boundary between public and private space
Although John Paul's new book, Sign Language is largely a collection of poems, it is important to keep in mind from the outset that John Paul is primarily a painter. A painter of lush narrative canvases, portrait sketches, and genre scenes, as well as a painter of billboards and movie scenery, and with language, he is a limner of a life lived in New York City.
Although John Paul's new book, Sign Language is largely a collection of poems, it is important to keep in mind from the outset that John Paul is primarily a painter. A painter of lush narrative canvases, portrait sketches, and genre scenes, as well as a painter of billboards and movie scenery, and with language, he is a limner of a life lived in New York City.
- 10/23/2014
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Margaret Roleke's life has been spent in New York or the surrounding tri-state area except for three years living in London and two studying in Ohio. Her many trips to Europe, Asia, Central America, and South America have informed her practice. Roleke's art has been exhibited widely in the tri-state area, and also in several international shows. In the last year her work was seen at Scope Miami, Cutlog in New York, Fountain Art Fair in New York, and in several group exhibits in Connecticut, Harlem, and Brooklyn.
Bradley Rubenstein: It was great seeing some of your new pieces. I'm not sure exactly what we should call them -- they are a kind of hybrid print. Can we talk a little about them first? There is a show of works by Morris Louis and Helen Frankenthaler up now, and these reminded me of a combination of that kind of colorfield painting,...
Bradley Rubenstein: It was great seeing some of your new pieces. I'm not sure exactly what we should call them -- they are a kind of hybrid print. Can we talk a little about them first? There is a show of works by Morris Louis and Helen Frankenthaler up now, and these reminded me of a combination of that kind of colorfield painting,...
- 9/26/2014
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Gina Magid is a Brooklyn-based painter who creates psychologically and visually layered imagery in paint, charcoal, satin, and other materials. She was the recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 2003 and a McDowell Colony Fellowship in 2004. Magid has had solo exhibitions at Feature Inc., New York; Acuna-Hansen Gallery, Los Angeles; and Artists Space, New York. Her work has been included in group shows at the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Saratoga Springs, New York; DiverseWorks, Houston, Texas; The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut; Exit Art, New York; and Greater New York 2005 at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, New York. Her work is currently at Ana Cristea Gallery, 521 West 26th Street, New York.
Bradley Rubenstein: Growing up on Long Island and being near New York City with all of its museums and galleries, did that have a big effect on you?
Gina Magid:...
Bradley Rubenstein: Growing up on Long Island and being near New York City with all of its museums and galleries, did that have a big effect on you?
Gina Magid:...
- 9/16/2014
- by Dusty Wright
- www.culturecatch.com
Millree Hughes, born in North Wales in 1960, has been making art on the computer since 1998. In the 2000s, he showed with Michael Steinberg Fine Arts. Hughes is currently working with Museum Editions (www.museum-editions.com) in New York City and Polyglot Gallery in Dallas, Texas.
Bradley Rubenstein: Let's start by talking a little bit about Lummox (2010) before we get into the new work. I thought it was hilarious, and at the same time there was a serious aspect regarding cultural mediation that a lot of your work touches on. It also came out before James Franco’s Cindy Sherman show at Pace (New Film Stills, 2014), and all the Marina Abramović performances with Jay-z and whatnot, so it really caught something about our cultural moment.
Millree Hughes: Thank you. I like that you put our documentary in the context of Abramović and Franco -- making the artist a persona...
Bradley Rubenstein: Let's start by talking a little bit about Lummox (2010) before we get into the new work. I thought it was hilarious, and at the same time there was a serious aspect regarding cultural mediation that a lot of your work touches on. It also came out before James Franco’s Cindy Sherman show at Pace (New Film Stills, 2014), and all the Marina Abramović performances with Jay-z and whatnot, so it really caught something about our cultural moment.
Millree Hughes: Thank you. I like that you put our documentary in the context of Abramović and Franco -- making the artist a persona...
- 9/12/2014
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Bradley Rubenstein: I first encountered your work in the late eighties. I remember a painting of yours called Hunters that was quite memorable. It had the impact of something iconic, like an Eqyptian stele or a Barnett Newman piece. The work that you have done in the last several decades has continued to have that effect, in my opinion, and I have enjoyed following along on your trip through painting. Let’s go back, though, for a minute and fill in some of your history. You live and work in Chicago. Where did you study before then?
Wesley Kimler: Alright, well, I left home when I was fourteen years old (and actually if you look on Facebook I posted a bunch of stuff). I grew up in the old South of Market area of San Francisco, living in derelict single-room-occupancy hotels down there.
I didn't go to high...
Wesley Kimler: Alright, well, I left home when I was fourteen years old (and actually if you look on Facebook I posted a bunch of stuff). I grew up in the old South of Market area of San Francisco, living in derelict single-room-occupancy hotels down there.
I didn't go to high...
- 6/8/2014
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Allison Schulnik’s second New York solo exhibition at ZieherSmith, Eager, included a startling array of painting, sculpture, drawing, and film, creating a beautiful, yet haunting world. Schulnik talks with Bradley Rubenstein about her new show, her dance background, the difference between working in New York and Los Angeles, and, of course, cats.
Bradley Rubenstein: I just read that you had originally been a dancer, and after watching the film Eager it makes perfect sense. There is a real sense of choreography in it. Can you talk a little about your beginnings as a filmmaker and painter?
Allison Schulnik: I have a lot of painters in the family, so I was painting at a young age. I think everyone expected me to be a painter, including myself, so I decided to go to film school instead. I didn't really have an interest in going to school for painting.
Bradley Rubenstein: I just read that you had originally been a dancer, and after watching the film Eager it makes perfect sense. There is a real sense of choreography in it. Can you talk a little about your beginnings as a filmmaker and painter?
Allison Schulnik: I have a lot of painters in the family, so I was painting at a young age. I think everyone expected me to be a painter, including myself, so I decided to go to film school instead. I didn't really have an interest in going to school for painting.
- 4/30/2014
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Susan Bee: Doomed to Win/Paintings from the 1980s A.I.R Gallery Through April 27, 2014
Most paintings, the instant you see them, they become familiar and then it's too late.- William Gaddis, The Recognitions
Life is a series of random events. We are in different rooms, with different people, at different times…in art, this is called having different "styles." - Dr. Hope Ardizonne, Anatomy of Art's Murder
Do you see how black the sky is? I wrote it that way. - Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park
To be Modern was, sooner or later, to become kitsch -- that is, familiar, a cliché, an agreed-upon collective meaning. Clement Greenberg despised kitsch, yet all the most avant-garde of movements, from the Impressionists to the Pop Artists, eventually ended up, to some degree, kitsch decorations. To be "Post-Modern," especially in the 1980s, was a high-wire act, walking a tightrope between aesthetic...
Most paintings, the instant you see them, they become familiar and then it's too late.- William Gaddis, The Recognitions
Life is a series of random events. We are in different rooms, with different people, at different times…in art, this is called having different "styles." - Dr. Hope Ardizonne, Anatomy of Art's Murder
Do you see how black the sky is? I wrote it that way. - Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park
To be Modern was, sooner or later, to become kitsch -- that is, familiar, a cliché, an agreed-upon collective meaning. Clement Greenberg despised kitsch, yet all the most avant-garde of movements, from the Impressionists to the Pop Artists, eventually ended up, to some degree, kitsch decorations. To be "Post-Modern," especially in the 1980s, was a high-wire act, walking a tightrope between aesthetic...
- 4/19/2014
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Maria Lassnig MoMA PS1 Through May 25, 2014
"Man is the measure of all things: of things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not." Protagoras, quoted in Plato's Theaetetus
"Both the motor and sensory homunculi usually appear as a small man superimposed over the top of the precentral or postcentral gyrus, for motor and sensory, respectively. The homunculus is oriented with feet medial and shoulders lateral on top of both the precentral and the postcentral gyrus (for both motor and sensory). The man's head is depicted upside down in relation to the rest of the body such that the forehead is closest to the shoulders. The lips, hands, feet and sex organs have more sensory neurons than other parts of the body, so the homunculus has correspondingly large lips, hands, feet, and genitals. The motor homunculus is very similar to the sensory homunculus, but differs in several ways.
"Man is the measure of all things: of things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not." Protagoras, quoted in Plato's Theaetetus
"Both the motor and sensory homunculi usually appear as a small man superimposed over the top of the precentral or postcentral gyrus, for motor and sensory, respectively. The homunculus is oriented with feet medial and shoulders lateral on top of both the precentral and the postcentral gyrus (for both motor and sensory). The man's head is depicted upside down in relation to the rest of the body such that the forehead is closest to the shoulders. The lips, hands, feet and sex organs have more sensory neurons than other parts of the body, so the homunculus has correspondingly large lips, hands, feet, and genitals. The motor homunculus is very similar to the sensory homunculus, but differs in several ways.
- 4/2/2014
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Jasper Johns: Regrets Museum of Modern Art Through September 1, 2014
The image is dead. The icon is dead. The painting is dead. - Patricia Cronin
Keep everything on the surface, even with the knowledge that the surface fades and can't be held together forever -- take advantage before the expiration date appears in the nearing distance. - Bret Easton Ellis, Imperial Bedrooms
Art asks: How do we know anything about other people? The tension between an artist's public and private roles is a constant preoccupation to the audience. The artist is challenged to dwell within this conundrum and elaborate most fully the questions of how to articulate the private in a public forum, and whether the private life will be able to find an image for itself that can stand up in this forum. - Dr. Hope Ardizzone, Anatomy of Art's Murder
During this test you will be shown a series of inkblot images.
The image is dead. The icon is dead. The painting is dead. - Patricia Cronin
Keep everything on the surface, even with the knowledge that the surface fades and can't be held together forever -- take advantage before the expiration date appears in the nearing distance. - Bret Easton Ellis, Imperial Bedrooms
Art asks: How do we know anything about other people? The tension between an artist's public and private roles is a constant preoccupation to the audience. The artist is challenged to dwell within this conundrum and elaborate most fully the questions of how to articulate the private in a public forum, and whether the private life will be able to find an image for itself that can stand up in this forum. - Dr. Hope Ardizzone, Anatomy of Art's Murder
During this test you will be shown a series of inkblot images.
- 3/21/2014
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Whitney Biennial 2014 Whitney Museum of American Art Through May 25, 2014
"I think of the media as a cannibalistic river… that absorbs everything." Gretchen Bender
"The image is dead. The icon is dead. The painting is dead." Patricia Cronin
"I am a deeply superficial person." Andy Warhol
Fade In
Int. Dining Room/Brant House
Table, Bjarne Melgaard “nude African American female” fiberglass figure chairs, “giant stuffed Pink Panther dolls,” enormous ceramic phalluses.
Hypnotic atmosphere.
Adam Driver, Idris Elba, Ellen Barkin, Heath Ledger, Michael Lee Nirenberg, James Franco, Billy Cyborg, Narrator, [Seven Background/Evening Dresses] stoned on their milk-plus, their feet resting on faces, crotches, lips of the sculptured furniture.
Narrator (V.O.):
“Righty right right,” I say. “So what will it be tonight then?”
Camera Pans Slowly Across Darkened Room [Set Dressing: Vintage Gretchen Bender lighted wall sculptures that flash “Korova,” “Moloko Plus,” and “Moloko Vellocet.”]
Move in slowly to Narrator slumped in chair and:
Narrator (V.O):
Well, there we were: my brothers, that is, me and Billy Cyborg,...
"I think of the media as a cannibalistic river… that absorbs everything." Gretchen Bender
"The image is dead. The icon is dead. The painting is dead." Patricia Cronin
"I am a deeply superficial person." Andy Warhol
Fade In
Int. Dining Room/Brant House
Table, Bjarne Melgaard “nude African American female” fiberglass figure chairs, “giant stuffed Pink Panther dolls,” enormous ceramic phalluses.
Hypnotic atmosphere.
Adam Driver, Idris Elba, Ellen Barkin, Heath Ledger, Michael Lee Nirenberg, James Franco, Billy Cyborg, Narrator, [Seven Background/Evening Dresses] stoned on their milk-plus, their feet resting on faces, crotches, lips of the sculptured furniture.
Narrator (V.O.):
“Righty right right,” I say. “So what will it be tonight then?”
Camera Pans Slowly Across Darkened Room [Set Dressing: Vintage Gretchen Bender lighted wall sculptures that flash “Korova,” “Moloko Plus,” and “Moloko Vellocet.”]
Move in slowly to Narrator slumped in chair and:
Narrator (V.O):
Well, there we were: my brothers, that is, me and Billy Cyborg,...
- 3/14/2014
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Angela Dufresne was born in Connecticut and grew up in Kansas. She studied painting and video at the Kansas City Art Institute and painting at Tyler School of Art. She did residencies at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown in 2002–2004 and 2003–2004 and at Yaddo this year. She taught painting, and culture at large, in various places: Sarah Lawrence, Princeton University, and Rhode Island School of Design (Risd). Dufresne curated several show and video screenings nationally, including Portraiture for the Silicon Enlightenment: (Fuckheads); Negative Joy, a video screening at 443 Pas, New York; and Available, a show about still life at Monya Rowe Gallery. She has exhibited her work in various group shows in museums: The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, the Rose Museum, Mills College Art Museum, Richmond University Museum of Art, and MoMA PS1. She has also had various solo shows nationally and internationally: a project at the Hammer Museum...
- 2/27/2014
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Michel Majerus Matthew Marks Gallery, NY "I create, you copy nature." Pablo Picasso, in conversation with Balthus "In the [19]90s painting didn’t repel criticism; it absorbed it… fake painting created fake criticism." Dr. Hope Ardizzone, The Death of the Death Motif in Post-Millennial Painting "Even the paintings looked dead…" Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale The audience has a taste for shit. The critics have a taste for shit. James Franco, Actors Anonymous "Wie man dem toten Hasen die Bilder erklärt" Joseph Beuys, Action, 26 November 1965 at the Galerie Schmela in Düsseldorf
(image above, depressive neurosis 2000 Acrylic on cotton 102 1/4 x 177 inches; 260 x 450 cm)
James Franco's body was found yesterday in the toilet of a club called Cisboi, so we are at one of the Gagosian galleries tonight sitting shiv and waiting for Marina Abramović and Willem Dafoe to read excerpts from Franco's many books [James Franco: Dangerous Book Four Boys, A California Childhood, Actors Anonymous, Palo Alto: Stories] -- the "we" being Michael Lee Nirenberg,...
(image above, depressive neurosis 2000 Acrylic on cotton 102 1/4 x 177 inches; 260 x 450 cm)
James Franco's body was found yesterday in the toilet of a club called Cisboi, so we are at one of the Gagosian galleries tonight sitting shiv and waiting for Marina Abramović and Willem Dafoe to read excerpts from Franco's many books [James Franco: Dangerous Book Four Boys, A California Childhood, Actors Anonymous, Palo Alto: Stories] -- the "we" being Michael Lee Nirenberg,...
- 2/21/2014
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Allison Schulnik: Eager
ZieherSmith Gallery, NYC
Through February 22, 2014 And it's a battered old suitcase to a hotel someplace and a wound that will never heal no prima donna, the perfume is on an old shirt that is stained with blood and whiskey and goodnight to the street sweepers, the night watchmen flame keepers and goodnight Mathilda, too.
Tom Waits, "Waltzing Mathilda"
"The Hobo, as a visual trope, represents the last truly transgressive figure in art… kitsch paintings of clown-like characters with bindlestiffs and colorful handkerchiefs camouflage a predatory underclass of thieves, pedophiles, rapists, and murderers."
Dr. Hope Ardizzone, Oblivion and Contingency in Post-Modern Painting
Allison Schulnik's second exhibition at ZieherSmith presents drawings, sculpture, paintings, and installation pieces surrounding and supporting her most recent animated film, Eager (2013). Schulnik, drawing from a variety of sources (Busby Berkeley, Lewis Carroll, her former teachers Jules Engel and Corny Cole, Bob Ross, and Antoine Watteau) choreographs a stop-motion,...
ZieherSmith Gallery, NYC
Through February 22, 2014 And it's a battered old suitcase to a hotel someplace and a wound that will never heal no prima donna, the perfume is on an old shirt that is stained with blood and whiskey and goodnight to the street sweepers, the night watchmen flame keepers and goodnight Mathilda, too.
Tom Waits, "Waltzing Mathilda"
"The Hobo, as a visual trope, represents the last truly transgressive figure in art… kitsch paintings of clown-like characters with bindlestiffs and colorful handkerchiefs camouflage a predatory underclass of thieves, pedophiles, rapists, and murderers."
Dr. Hope Ardizzone, Oblivion and Contingency in Post-Modern Painting
Allison Schulnik's second exhibition at ZieherSmith presents drawings, sculpture, paintings, and installation pieces surrounding and supporting her most recent animated film, Eager (2013). Schulnik, drawing from a variety of sources (Busby Berkeley, Lewis Carroll, her former teachers Jules Engel and Corny Cole, Bob Ross, and Antoine Watteau) choreographs a stop-motion,...
- 1/17/2014
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Julian Schnabel: The Walk Home The Brant Foundation Art Study Center Opened November 11, 2013
“Must we learn again the simple, forthright experience of actually seeing a painting?” William Gaddis
“In the end, we cultural theorists are the coroners of history, writing our forensic reports on a marble slab table about a murder victim—painting.” Dr. Hope Ardizzone, Cultural Theorist/Author
One might arguably make the case, after viewing Julian Schnabel’s retrospective at The Brant Foundation Art Study Center, that he is the heir to Barnett Newman’s painterly legacy, for no artist since Newman has placed such importance and urgency on the act of painterly gesture. Possibly a stretch, though Schnabel has never shied away from the grand gesture or statement, but given (or despite) the expansiveness of Schnabel's thirty-year career he does come very close to Newman’s ideal of an Artist.
Newman believed that to create oneself...
“Must we learn again the simple, forthright experience of actually seeing a painting?” William Gaddis
“In the end, we cultural theorists are the coroners of history, writing our forensic reports on a marble slab table about a murder victim—painting.” Dr. Hope Ardizzone, Cultural Theorist/Author
One might arguably make the case, after viewing Julian Schnabel’s retrospective at The Brant Foundation Art Study Center, that he is the heir to Barnett Newman’s painterly legacy, for no artist since Newman has placed such importance and urgency on the act of painterly gesture. Possibly a stretch, though Schnabel has never shied away from the grand gesture or statement, but given (or despite) the expansiveness of Schnabel's thirty-year career he does come very close to Newman’s ideal of an Artist.
Newman believed that to create oneself...
- 12/30/2013
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Michael Williams: Paintings
The Canada Gallery, NYC
Through December 8, 2013
Int. Bellylaffs Comedy Club - Evening
House Band [Jay-z/Kanye West]: I ball so hard muthafuckas wanna find me, first niggas gotta find me / Tha shit cray / Tha shit cray / Tha shit cray / Ain’t it, Jay?
Music Fades.
Sidekick [Tracy Morgan]: Give it up for Jay-z and Kanye West, Ladies and Gentlemen… and now, you have probably seen his recent special It Ain't Gonna Suck Itself [Applause]…Bellylaffs is pleased to present one white boy who really does ball hard…
Host [James Franco] - enters stage right]: Thank you Tracy! Thank you! [Applause] Thank you! It’s true, I really do ball hard. Very hard. Mostly by myself… [Laughter/Applause]… Thank you…
Host: So this guy, who has never been sick a day in his life, calls his boss. He says, "I can’t come in today, I’m sick." The boss says, "No problem, take the day off.
The Canada Gallery, NYC
Through December 8, 2013
Int. Bellylaffs Comedy Club - Evening
House Band [Jay-z/Kanye West]: I ball so hard muthafuckas wanna find me, first niggas gotta find me / Tha shit cray / Tha shit cray / Tha shit cray / Ain’t it, Jay?
Music Fades.
Sidekick [Tracy Morgan]: Give it up for Jay-z and Kanye West, Ladies and Gentlemen… and now, you have probably seen his recent special It Ain't Gonna Suck Itself [Applause]…Bellylaffs is pleased to present one white boy who really does ball hard…
Host [James Franco] - enters stage right]: Thank you Tracy! Thank you! [Applause] Thank you! It’s true, I really do ball hard. Very hard. Mostly by myself… [Laughter/Applause]… Thank you…
Host: So this guy, who has never been sick a day in his life, calls his boss. He says, "I can’t come in today, I’m sick." The boss says, "No problem, take the day off.
- 11/30/2013
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Lester Johnson: Dark Paintings Stephen Harvey Fine Art Projects Through November 17, 2013
To create oneself through the process of making an object is an ethical act of decision making and passion, thought the painter Barnett Newman, who in 1947 outlined this philosophical position in a short essay titled "The First Man Was an Artist." Newman wrote that early Homo sapiens had become something more, something human, by asserting themselves not through the making of objects for some use, but through the creation of objects for poetic, aesthetic expression, which he said was the purer, superior act. "Man’s hand," he said, "traced the stick through the mud to make a line before he learned to throw the stick as a javelin." It is therefore more human, from Newman's point of view, to draw a line in aesthetic wonder, as it demonstrates Man's tragic separateness from others in the world through so doing.
To create oneself through the process of making an object is an ethical act of decision making and passion, thought the painter Barnett Newman, who in 1947 outlined this philosophical position in a short essay titled "The First Man Was an Artist." Newman wrote that early Homo sapiens had become something more, something human, by asserting themselves not through the making of objects for some use, but through the creation of objects for poetic, aesthetic expression, which he said was the purer, superior act. "Man’s hand," he said, "traced the stick through the mud to make a line before he learned to throw the stick as a javelin." It is therefore more human, from Newman's point of view, to draw a line in aesthetic wonder, as it demonstrates Man's tragic separateness from others in the world through so doing.
- 11/14/2013
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1970, Larry Krone was raised in St. Louis, Missouri, and now lives and works in New York City's East Village. He has been exhibiting his drawings, sculptures, installations, and videos since the early 1990s. Some of the museums he has exhibited at include the Whitney Museum of American Art Philip Morris Branch and the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, which in 2006 presented Larry Krone: Artist/Entertainer, a ten-year retrospective of Larry Krone's visual and performance work.
As a performer, Larry has appeared at music and art venues in New York, including Joe's Pub, Ps 122, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Larry's costume design and fabrication for his own performances has led to the creation of House of Larréon, his line of custom gowns and stage costumes. He outfits cabaret performers, dancers, and rock singers, including Bridget Everett, Neal Medlyn, Adrienne Truscott, and Kathleen Hanna. Larry is a 2013 Millay Colony fellow,...
As a performer, Larry has appeared at music and art venues in New York, including Joe's Pub, Ps 122, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Larry's costume design and fabrication for his own performances has led to the creation of House of Larréon, his line of custom gowns and stage costumes. He outfits cabaret performers, dancers, and rock singers, including Bridget Everett, Neal Medlyn, Adrienne Truscott, and Kathleen Hanna. Larry is a 2013 Millay Colony fellow,...
- 10/31/2013
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Bradley Rubenstein: Saints Creon Gallery Through September 30, 2013 Bradley Rubenstein: Drawings (curated by Lucio Pozzi) Palazzo Vivaldini Carra Grioli, 46, Mantova Italy Through September 28, 2013
Children are innocent, we are told, existing in a state of unperturbed self-sufficiency and looking at the outside world with unlimited trust. They share this ideal condition with the objects of their affection, such as cats, dogs, or other pets. When disaster strikes and this peaceful existence is disturbed, some natural law seems to have been violated. As in much of contemporary horror, the shock effect of evil deeds and ghastly events is greatly enhanced if unleashed on the pure and simple in spirit or invading a seemingly picturesque locale and cheerful ordered communal life. The supposedly asexual and immaculate bodies of pre-pubescent children are the primary site of artist Bradley Rubenstein's investigations into the changing conceptions of identity and the state of ethical, social,...
Children are innocent, we are told, existing in a state of unperturbed self-sufficiency and looking at the outside world with unlimited trust. They share this ideal condition with the objects of their affection, such as cats, dogs, or other pets. When disaster strikes and this peaceful existence is disturbed, some natural law seems to have been violated. As in much of contemporary horror, the shock effect of evil deeds and ghastly events is greatly enhanced if unleashed on the pure and simple in spirit or invading a seemingly picturesque locale and cheerful ordered communal life. The supposedly asexual and immaculate bodies of pre-pubescent children are the primary site of artist Bradley Rubenstein's investigations into the changing conceptions of identity and the state of ethical, social,...
- 10/17/2013
- by ChristophGrunenberg
- www.culturecatch.com
Cary Leibowitz: (paintings and belt buckles) Invisible Exports Through October 13, 2013 "In the beginning was the Word…" John 1:1 "On our way to a single pictorial audience! We are the Plan, the System, the Organization! Direct your creative work in line with Economy!" El Lissitzky, Unovis street flyer, 1919 "So funny it just occurred to me I haven't thought about suicide in weeks" Cary Leibowitz
In or around 1920 or '21 the painter and propagandist El Lissitzky painted a small, unassuming gouache picture for reproduction in a magazine or journal with the words "Rosa Luxemburg" lettered in, then painted over, to make a once-declarative statement (political solidarity with the case of Rosa Luxemburg) instead a quiet, self-effacing comment, though unintentional, about the absurdity of making art a weapon or tool of politics. El Lissitzky knew even back then, in another century, before Wikileaks or Edward Snowden, that he was trafficking in shit way above his head.
In or around 1920 or '21 the painter and propagandist El Lissitzky painted a small, unassuming gouache picture for reproduction in a magazine or journal with the words "Rosa Luxemburg" lettered in, then painted over, to make a once-declarative statement (political solidarity with the case of Rosa Luxemburg) instead a quiet, self-effacing comment, though unintentional, about the absurdity of making art a weapon or tool of politics. El Lissitzky knew even back then, in another century, before Wikileaks or Edward Snowden, that he was trafficking in shit way above his head.
- 10/12/2013
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Bradley Rubenstein: Let's get the background stuff out of the way -- the rest will be more interesting. You are from Ohio. Was starting out there influential in any way other than making you want to leave?
Sean O'Connor: I started out experimenting in my hometown just out of high school and was heavily influenced by the music scene at the time. There was a little art scene booming in Cleveland at the time, and there still is, but I was really into artists like Derek Hess and other illustrators like that.
I almost flunked out of high school completely because I just didn't want to do any of the work. I was smart enough and able; I just didn't give a shit. I would skip class, go to the art room, dig through all my teachers' supplies, and just work on my own projects. My parents were...
Sean O'Connor: I started out experimenting in my hometown just out of high school and was heavily influenced by the music scene at the time. There was a little art scene booming in Cleveland at the time, and there still is, but I was really into artists like Derek Hess and other illustrators like that.
I almost flunked out of high school completely because I just didn't want to do any of the work. I was smart enough and able; I just didn't give a shit. I would skip class, go to the art room, dig through all my teachers' supplies, and just work on my own projects. My parents were...
- 8/19/2013
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Bradley Rubenstein: I want to talk about your work, but first I want to mention your writing. I totally fucking love your daily, aphoristic pieces. You use Facebook like your own personal Little Red Book. You wrote one about your approach to the art world, I think, but it probably applies to pretty much everything: "If you aren't invited to the table, bring a chair. If they don't serve you, pack lunch. When the bill comes, wash the dishes." It's like a manifesto.
Dylan Neuwirth: Yes, this is this idea. I'm pretty sure it reads like a tweet-length thought, since that's where I spend most of my digital time. I also follow a fair amount of people no one has ever heard of who trade these kinds of thoughts. Within the beautiful limitation of 140 characters we can convey the most perfect idea without the trappings of aesthetics or decoration...
Dylan Neuwirth: Yes, this is this idea. I'm pretty sure it reads like a tweet-length thought, since that's where I spend most of my digital time. I also follow a fair amount of people no one has ever heard of who trade these kinds of thoughts. Within the beautiful limitation of 140 characters we can convey the most perfect idea without the trappings of aesthetics or decoration...
- 8/4/2013
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Paul McCarthy and Damon McCarthy Rebel Dabble Babble Hauser & Wirth Gallery Through July 26, 2013 Paul McCarthy Ws Park Avenue Armory Through August 4, 2013
James Franco is finishing a joke. "Natalie Wood…get it? What kind of wood doesn't float?" Everyone is very hung over this morning, but fortunately Franco sent his Maybach Landaulet and driver to whisk us to Chlamydia, the new Bobby Flay café in Chelsea, where we are drinking revivifying Bellinis and an assortment of other smart cocktails with Vito Schnabel, Slavoj Žižek, Natalie Portman (or possibly Keira Knightley, or Keira Knightley's body double), Sasha Grey, Heath Ledger, Michael Lee Nirenberg, Lena Dunham, Chloë Sevigny, and a Thai/Puerto Rican pre-op transsexual Franco introduces as "Pinball."
We are all sweating slightly and staring at Billy Cyborg passed out in a bowl of muesli. Inexplicably, the table is cluttered with untouched Chinese take-out containers and bottles of Evian, and there...
James Franco is finishing a joke. "Natalie Wood…get it? What kind of wood doesn't float?" Everyone is very hung over this morning, but fortunately Franco sent his Maybach Landaulet and driver to whisk us to Chlamydia, the new Bobby Flay café in Chelsea, where we are drinking revivifying Bellinis and an assortment of other smart cocktails with Vito Schnabel, Slavoj Žižek, Natalie Portman (or possibly Keira Knightley, or Keira Knightley's body double), Sasha Grey, Heath Ledger, Michael Lee Nirenberg, Lena Dunham, Chloë Sevigny, and a Thai/Puerto Rican pre-op transsexual Franco introduces as "Pinball."
We are all sweating slightly and staring at Billy Cyborg passed out in a bowl of muesli. Inexplicably, the table is cluttered with untouched Chinese take-out containers and bottles of Evian, and there...
- 7/9/2013
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Karen Heagle: Battle Armor Churner and Churner Gallery Through June 22, 2013
Heraclitus wrote, "Nothing is constant but change," illustrating succinctly his philosophy of the nature of the universe; with her current exhibit, Battle Armor, Karen Heagle illustrates this adage, with paintings that show that old motifs can have new life breathed into them, in the right hands. In the past, Karen Heagle has made reference to heroic figures in her paintings, including the Incredible Hulk and Xena: Warrior Princess; in her recent show of paintings on paper at Churner and Churner in New York, she revisits some of the same themes, and sense of the heroic, through her choice of subject matter -- primarily medieval armor -- and combines it with a painterly style that draws from great nature morte and vanitas artists such as Hals, Chardin, and Soutine.
When asked how she would describe her recent work and its progression,...
Heraclitus wrote, "Nothing is constant but change," illustrating succinctly his philosophy of the nature of the universe; with her current exhibit, Battle Armor, Karen Heagle illustrates this adage, with paintings that show that old motifs can have new life breathed into them, in the right hands. In the past, Karen Heagle has made reference to heroic figures in her paintings, including the Incredible Hulk and Xena: Warrior Princess; in her recent show of paintings on paper at Churner and Churner in New York, she revisits some of the same themes, and sense of the heroic, through her choice of subject matter -- primarily medieval armor -- and combines it with a painterly style that draws from great nature morte and vanitas artists such as Hals, Chardin, and Soutine.
When asked how she would describe her recent work and its progression,...
- 6/20/2013
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Gutai artists (various) Gutai: Splendid Playground Solomon R. Guggenheim Through May 8, 2013 "Discarding the frame, getting off the walls, shifting from immobile time to lived time, we aspire to create a new painting." Suburō Murakami, Osaka, 1957
"Kick out the jams, motherfuckers!" MC5, Detroit, 1968
The Guggenheim Museum's Gutai: Splendid Playground presents the work of Japan's most influential avant-garde collective of the postwar era. Founded by the visionary artist Jirō Yoshihara in 1954, the Gutai group was legendary in its own time.
Its young members explored new art forms, combining performance, painting, and interactive environments, and realized an "international common ground" of experimental art through the worldwide reach of their exhibition and publication activities.
The Gutai Art Association (active 1954-72) originated in Ashiya, near Osaka, in western Japan. Spanning two generations, the group totaled fifty-nine Japanese artists over its eighteen-year history. The name "Gutai" literally means "concreteness" and captures the direct engagement with materials...
"Kick out the jams, motherfuckers!" MC5, Detroit, 1968
The Guggenheim Museum's Gutai: Splendid Playground presents the work of Japan's most influential avant-garde collective of the postwar era. Founded by the visionary artist Jirō Yoshihara in 1954, the Gutai group was legendary in its own time.
Its young members explored new art forms, combining performance, painting, and interactive environments, and realized an "international common ground" of experimental art through the worldwide reach of their exhibition and publication activities.
The Gutai Art Association (active 1954-72) originated in Ashiya, near Osaka, in western Japan. Spanning two generations, the group totaled fifty-nine Japanese artists over its eighteen-year history. The name "Gutai" literally means "concreteness" and captures the direct engagement with materials...
- 4/23/2013
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Bradley Rubenstein: Can you give me a little of your backstory? I know you went to Yale for painting, but you have also been a sign painter and worked in movies and TV, and you are also a musician. How has all of that informed your work?
John Paul: In St. Louis I had solid training, and at Yale exposure to cutting-edge thinking.
The St. Louis years were dominated by the importance of Max Beckmann, who taught there after the war until the Fifties. His canvases were a part of a student's daily diet, lining a corridor between the schools of art and architecture.
In New Haven the lesson given was freedom! -- through hard work within the canons of modern art. Jack Tworkov and Al Held were the proponents -- and Knox Martin, a dynamic mind in the unlocking of intuitive power.
After a brief stint in teaching in New England,...
John Paul: In St. Louis I had solid training, and at Yale exposure to cutting-edge thinking.
The St. Louis years were dominated by the importance of Max Beckmann, who taught there after the war until the Fifties. His canvases were a part of a student's daily diet, lining a corridor between the schools of art and architecture.
In New Haven the lesson given was freedom! -- through hard work within the canons of modern art. Jack Tworkov and Al Held were the proponents -- and Knox Martin, a dynamic mind in the unlocking of intuitive power.
After a brief stint in teaching in New England,...
- 4/14/2013
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Susanna Heller Phantom Pain Magnan Metz Gallery Through April 20, 2013 Susanna Heller's recent paintings present visually stunning landscapes that are layered with both strata of gestural paint and rich, subtle nuanced meaning. Heller uses the vocabulary of Expressionism, wielded with great skill, to create paintings that are rooted in nature and a gritty urban reality of lived experience.
On first encountering Heller's work, one might be tempted to compare her views to Cormac McCarthy's ruined landscape inThe Road, a post-apocalyptic, science-fiction tale that is also a harrowing yet deeply personal story. In McCarthy's world an unnamed catastrophe has scourged the landscape, which is inhabited by the last remnants of mankind and a small number of surviving dogs. The sky is perpetually shrouded by dust and toxic particulates; the seasons are merely varied intensities of cold and dampness. Trees have become extinct. Bands of cannibals roam the roads and inhabit what...
On first encountering Heller's work, one might be tempted to compare her views to Cormac McCarthy's ruined landscape inThe Road, a post-apocalyptic, science-fiction tale that is also a harrowing yet deeply personal story. In McCarthy's world an unnamed catastrophe has scourged the landscape, which is inhabited by the last remnants of mankind and a small number of surviving dogs. The sky is perpetually shrouded by dust and toxic particulates; the seasons are merely varied intensities of cold and dampness. Trees have become extinct. Bands of cannibals roam the roads and inhabit what...
- 3/27/2013
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Susan Bee is a painter, editor, and book artist who lives in New York. Bee is represented by Accola Griefen Gallery, New York, where she will have a solo show of new paintings from May 23 to June 29, 2013. Criss Cross: New Paintings will be accompanied by a catalog with an essay by art critic and poet Raphael Rubinstein.
Bradley Rubenstein: Susan, I just saw this piece by Roger Denson in the Huffington Post: "Mira Schor and Susan Bee, the Thelma and Louise of the Feminist Painting and Crit set, pose the biggest threat to male domination of the medium and criticism of painting in that they are critics as wellas painters, and editors to boot, whose joint imprimatur has been pulsing out the feminist-left political art journal M/E/A/N/I/N/G since the mid-1980s." (Huffington Post, May 1, 2012)
I thought that was really great. It ties...
Bradley Rubenstein: Susan, I just saw this piece by Roger Denson in the Huffington Post: "Mira Schor and Susan Bee, the Thelma and Louise of the Feminist Painting and Crit set, pose the biggest threat to male domination of the medium and criticism of painting in that they are critics as wellas painters, and editors to boot, whose joint imprimatur has been pulsing out the feminist-left political art journal M/E/A/N/I/N/G since the mid-1980s." (Huffington Post, May 1, 2012)
I thought that was really great. It ties...
- 3/16/2013
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Peter Williams Foxy Production Through March 23, 2013 "Art should not have to be a certain way." -- Willem de Kooning
For Peter Williams's first solo exhibition at Foxy Production, he is showing work from two distinct but interconnected bodies of work:large figurative paintings depict fanciful, fractured narratives that mix cultural and personal histories with fields of pattern and color; and a set of smaller paintings that distil and intensify visual moments from the larger works, magnifying and expanding them. Williams's paintings tell entropic tales, with figures caught in moments that show their fragility -- scenes of everyday life, both seen and imagined.
Williams’s painting process begins with drawing. He focuses first on shape and then color to create depth and volume in seemingly flat spaces. Contrasting with the fields of the background, the figures he paints engage in surreal, humorous, and disturbing relationships. His open-ended visual stories combine a...
For Peter Williams's first solo exhibition at Foxy Production, he is showing work from two distinct but interconnected bodies of work:large figurative paintings depict fanciful, fractured narratives that mix cultural and personal histories with fields of pattern and color; and a set of smaller paintings that distil and intensify visual moments from the larger works, magnifying and expanding them. Williams's paintings tell entropic tales, with figures caught in moments that show their fragility -- scenes of everyday life, both seen and imagined.
Williams’s painting process begins with drawing. He focuses first on shape and then color to create depth and volume in seemingly flat spaces. Contrasting with the fields of the background, the figures he paints engage in surreal, humorous, and disturbing relationships. His open-ended visual stories combine a...
- 3/8/2013
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Bradley Rubenstein: You are known primarily for your film work, but this show, Robots, is paintings. Is painting a new venture for you, like an extension of filmmaking, or something new?
Amos Poe: I am a filmmaker and have been making various art objects for years; the similarity is that they both take over my conscious and subconscious, and I'm compelled to get them out. Painting is a new discovery, or at least the pleasures of it are new. A new love. I started having dreams of robots in May of 2012, and the first painting came about a week later. I've been painting these robots since then, and the dreams still come regularly. I think everyone should have a robot in her or his life.
Br: You are a seminal New York filmmaker, so it almost seems beside the point where you are from, or studied, or whatnot...
Amos Poe: I am a filmmaker and have been making various art objects for years; the similarity is that they both take over my conscious and subconscious, and I'm compelled to get them out. Painting is a new discovery, or at least the pleasures of it are new. A new love. I started having dreams of robots in May of 2012, and the first painting came about a week later. I've been painting these robots since then, and the dreams still come regularly. I think everyone should have a robot in her or his life.
Br: You are a seminal New York filmmaker, so it almost seems beside the point where you are from, or studied, or whatnot...
- 2/26/2013
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
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