Thursday, May 31, 2012

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Björn Meyer-Ebrecht: Bushwick Open Studios

Studio view courtesy of the artist.

Björn Meyer-Ebrecht will be participating in this year's Bushwick Open Studios. Meyer-Ebrecht's studio will be open on Saturday and Sunday, June 2 and 3 from 12 - 7 PM.

1182 Flushing Avenue, 2nd floor
Brooklyn, NY 11237

You can also catch Meyer-Ebrecht's work in two shows during BOS...

Actual Wood a group show 
June 2 - 3, 12 - 7 PM
Outpost
1665 Norman Street
Ridgewood, NY 11385

Usual Suspects a group show curated by Jon Newman
Opening Friday June 1, 8 - 10 PM
Brooklyn Fire Proof East
119 Ingraham Street
Brooklyn, NY 

For more information on what to see during Bushwick Open Studios check out Jason Andrew's guide here.

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Carl Moore & Melissa Dunn @ L Ross Gallery

Carl Moore (above) and Melissa Dunn



Carl Moore and Melissa Dunn: I Can See Your House From The Highway
June 1 - 30, 2012
Opening Reception: Friday, June 1, 6 - 8 PM
L Ross Gallery
5040 Sanderlin Ave
Memphis, TN 38117



Hex @ Janet Kurnatowski Gallery


Hex
curated by Joelen Mulvaney
June 1 - July 1, 2012
Opening Reception: Friday, June 1, 7 - 9 PM
Janet Kurnatowski Gallery
205 Norman Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11222

Deborah Brown @ The Active Space

Deborah Brown, Freewheeling, 2012, oil on canvas, 70 x 80 in.
courtesy of Lesley Heller Workspace


Deborah Brown: Freewheeling
June 1 -  July 1, 2012
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 2, 7 - 10 PM
The Active Space
566 Johnson Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11237

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Charting The Not @ Centotto

Gili Levy, 2012, Untitled, gouache on paper, 11 x 15 in.


Charting the Not
Featuring works by Austin Thomas, Meg Lipke, Josh Willis, and Gili Levy
Opening Reception: Friday, May 25.  7 - 10 PM
Open during Bushwick Open Studios, June 2 - 3. 2 - 7 PM
250 Moore Street
#108
Brooklyn, NY 11206

Monday, May 21, 2012

Monoliths Or Monuments: A Studio Visit With James Erikson




Recently I had the opportunity to visit the studio of Philadelphia based painter, James Erikson.
Erikson makes quiet, yet insistent paintings - process oriented, oil on canvas, works that linger in the mind of the viewer, demanding interpretation. In the same way a passage of music can seem familiar, though it has never been heard, Erikson's paintings stir underlying thoughts and feelings that are more race memory than personal experience.
The resulting works are august, influential forces that are hard to define but easy to know.














James Erikson in his studio. Piladelphia, 2012.

From the Artist's Statement:

I make nature-based abstractions with special attention given to layering and surface variety. The imagery is a dialogue between organic and geometric. I use natural colors, carefully chosen color relationships with nature-influenced light.
I want to see the physicality of the process but still retain a mystery as to how the painting transpired. The surface is worked, reworked, and scraped down.
My paintings are abstractions in the sense that at some point in the painting process I’m abstracting from nature, whether consciously at the beginning or through some experience or memory I bring into the studio during the evolution of the painting. Sometimes the painting reminds me of something, a particular mood or memory of a place and it won’t go away -- that becomes the subject of the painting for me.
My goal is to make relevant contemporary paintings while paying close attention to art history, to find something new within the tradition of abstract painting. I am drawn to the simple forms of monuments and monoliths but also to their deep connection to life and death. My paintings aren’t about particular monuments or monoliths but I do want them to function on a similar, basic human level emotionally. They are reflective of the contemporary human experience.

For my latest series I have been using Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet novels as a bouncing off point. The last few years I have made contemporary Modernist abstractions that connect to human history and emotions through ancient art and artifacts: the capacity of art to connect to death and memorial.
What drew me to the novels was the telling of an event through different characters. It reminded me of Claude Monet’s paintings of the same scene in differing light and weather. How as humans we read the same story or look at the same abstract painting and come away with a whole different take on it.
Another reason for my interest in the Alexandria Quartet is Durrell’s success at synthesizing history with the contemporary. The exotic backdrop and cultural history of place permeates throughout the book; and the climate, dust, and language function as other characters as well.
For my Quartet series I have been using resource imagery from Coptic Christian art, the architectural and cultural backdrop of Durrell’s novels. My use of resource imagery is a lot like how I imagine a Chinese scholar’s rock functions: a special  object in one’s possession that can connect an artist to nature and human history.














To view more of Erikson's work visit his website here.



*All images © James Erikson and the blog author.


Friday, May 18, 2012

Gary Hume @ Matthew Marks Gallery






From the artist's statement:

I painted them as history paintings, the killing of Osama Bin Laden. That moment, that one second, in American history. One is of Obama. Another is of Angela Merkel; another one of George Bush, but they don’t look like them at all; another one is of a ‘Z’ that looks like a bit of a barn door. One day I’m in the studio looking at them thinking, you’re absolutely kidding me. This just looks like a bunch of balloons going across a field. When I was painting them I was thinking of Rembrandt and Franz Hals, and the paintings have got nothing in them of Rembrandt or Hals. I’d finished with the painting of the horse. I’m looking at the seven paintings thinking I like them but they’re all rubbish, because I’ve set out to make this vast history painting suite and it just looks like anxiety, and a horse. Anxiety and the horse. That’s exactly what they are. That’s all right. Then the paintings could live.






Gary Hume: Anxiety and the Horse
Through June 23, 2012
Matthew Marks Gallery
523 W 24th Street
New York, NY 10001

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Chantal Joffe @ Cheim & Read










From the Press Release:

Joffe’s use of fashion, while loaded conceptually (i.e. its negative associations with female objectification and the “male gaze”), derives from an honest and innocent appropriation of fantasy: Joffe chooses images that she finds most alluring, especially in terms of sparking imaginative narrative, and is driven by a love for and identification with the female form and its accessories. Further, the rich compositional elements fashion provides—texture, color, pattern—complement Joffe’s fluid and technically accomplished painting style (see Woman in a Red Flowered Dress or Blonde in a Shell Chair (both 2012)). Abstracted forms and saturated surfaces bring attention to the lush materiality of paint itself, a focus that has dubbed Joffe a “painter’s painter.” Though her work is loosely executed, it is also, in contrast, almost obsessively observant, capturing the unique qualities and details of her subject.






Chantal Joffe
through June 22, 2012
547 W 25th Street
New York, NY 10001