Heidi Pollard @ Outpost Performance Space

 Winter Dreams of Summer, gouache on shaped rag board

 Caryatid, gouache on shaped rag board

 Chocolate Snowgal, gouache on shaped rag board

Out of Time, gouache on shaped rag board

Gone Fishing: New Works by Heidi Pollard

Through March 28, 2015

Outpost Performance Space

210 Yale SE

Albuquerque, NM 

Something Naught @ Centotto

Centotto
250 Moore Street #108
Brooklyn, NY 11206

Rosalyn Drexler @ Garth Greenan Gallery

 Romance (Emilio Cruz Could Be Tender), 1991

Acrylic and paper collage on canvas

50 x 36 inches

 Men and Machines V, 1966

Acrylic and paper collage on canvas

30 x 50 inches

 Money Mad, 1988

Acrylic and paper collage on canvas

26 x 30 inches

 Night Visitors, 1988

Oil on canvas

24 x 30 1/8 inches

From the Press Release:

The exhibition and its accompanying publication focus on two bodies of Drexler’s work—her uniquely prescient, Pop collage-paintings from the 1960s and a group of related works created between 1988 and 2014. A pioneer of what would later become known as appropriation, Drexler’s paintings from the 1960s incorporate images culled from a variety of popular sources—newswire photographs, detective novels, movie posters, and advertisements. Unlike her Pop contemporaries, Drexler worked from these images directly—collaging them onto her canvases and painting over them in thin layers. Her subjects are straightforwardly portrayed, usually against monochromatic grounds or simple arrangements of geometric shapes. They appear isolated and bizarrely still—uncomfortable in the narratives into which they have been inserted. Narrative content has always been at the forefront of Drexler’s work. The grotesqueness and vulgarity of our everyday lives—especially those of businessmen, celebrities, and politicians—are the artist’s primary concerns.

Drexler’s recent paintings are more elaborate and open-ended. The backgrounds are more detailed and there are often multiple narratives occurring simultaneously. Her source images are less obvious, as well. Frequently, her subjects wear masks or face away from the viewer. Love and violence—our two most “intimate emotions,” Drexler says—are still their central themes.

Born in Bronx, New York in 1926, Rosalyn Drexler first began exhibiting her work during the late 1950s. Since then, she has had over 15 solo exhibitions, including one at Reuben Gallery (1960, New York), three at Kornblee Gallery (1964, 1965, 1966, New York), and one at Pace Gallery (2007, New York). In 1986, a retrospective of her work—Rosalyn Drexler: Intimate Emotions— opened at the Grey Art Gallery, New York University. Rosalyn Drexler and the Ends of Man, the artist’s most recent survey exhibition, took place in 2006 at Rutgers University’s Paul Robeson Gallery (Newark, New Jersey).

The Misfits, 1960

Acrylic and paper collage on canvas

24 x 30 inches

 Marilyn Pursued by Death, 1963

Acrylic and paper collage on canvas

50 x 40 inches

 Self-Portrait, 1964

Acrylic and paper collage on canvas

40 x 30 inches

 Over There, 1960

Paper collage

2 1/4 x 3 1/8 inches

 Number 3, 1960

Paper collage

1 3/4 x 2 3/4 inches

 Figure Reading, 1960

Paper collage

2 3/8 x 3 1/8 inches

Free Lunch, 1960

Paper collage

2 1/8 x 3 1/8 inches

Rosalyn Drexler: Vulgar Lives

Through March 28, 2015

Garth Greenan Gallery

529 W 20th Street, 10th Floor

New York, NY 10011

Newly Added to the Blog Roll: Nothing But Good

Franz Kline, Herald, 1954. From the blog post Paul Covers / Franz Kline on Nothing But Good, Nov. 15, 2014.

I've recently added a new blog to my Art Blog roll located at the very bottom of this page.

On Nothing But Good invited artists show they stand in a tradition by expressing their commitment to an inspiring, no longer living, predecessor. Nothing But Good Should be Said of the Dead; A collaborative project by Michael de Kok, René Korten and Reinoud van Vught. 

A lot of great stuff so check it out when you get a chance.

Eliot Markell @ Drawing Rooms

Eliot Markell's Red Stencil 

Eliot Markell: Imaginary Sculptures 

A Project Room* solo installation of works on paper.
On view through Mar. 15, 2015.

Drawing Rooms

180 Grand Street

Jersey City, NJ 07302


*Also on view: 
Nine solo exhibitions in drawing, painting, print and installation, featuring

Terri Amig: Mercury and the Little Mysteries, Enrico Gomez: Paper Works, Lisa Ficarelli-Halpern: Chamber Pieces, Eileen Ferara: Estuary, Jaz Graf: In Other Words, Carol Radsprecher: We’ve Escaped the Studio!, James Prez: Bird(s) on a Wire, and Max Velez: Faces.

Jason Rohlf @ Judy A Saslow Gallery

Judy A Saslow Gallery

Appreciating Hofmann - An Essay by John Hoyland

Hans Hofmann: Late Paintings

Copyright © 1988 The Tate Gallery

cover image: Flowering Swamp, 1957, (detail)

An Appreciation

by John Hoyland

I first saw the paintings of Hans Hofmann in 1964 at the Kootz Gallery in New York. Clement Greenberg the American critic had kindly offered to show Paul Huxley and me around some of the New York galleries. It was our first visit to the USA and I remember he introduced us by saying 'I've got a couple of sharp shooters here from London'. I found this flattering (but I don't know if it was meant to be). We went initially to the Andre Emmerich Gallery and looked at paintings by Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland, both were slightly familiar from an article Greenberg had written for Art International in 1961 and Louis had shown at the ICA in 1959 and at the Knoedler Gallery in 1963, but I had not seen very many. I was keen on both but had more trouble agreeing with Greenberg on the quality of all the Nolands. Clem said, characteristically, 'Look again'.

Next we went to the Kootz gallery. Hans Hofmann, who was completely unknown to me, had not been included in the exhibitions of the New American painting at the Tate in either 1956 or 1959. Two small paintings were produced and I thought immediately that they were terrific. I did not know at the time that Clem had already written a small book on Hofmann in 1961 (which is probably the best book to date). Hofmann was still alive and lived for another two years, finally dying in Provincetown, Massachusetts at the age of 86.

Hans Hofmann in San Francisco, 4 April, 1964

Photograph by John Haley

After this first encounter I gleaned what I could on Hofmann's work. This was mainly from reproductions, or from seeing occasional paintings on subsequent visits to the USA.

During those years, the early sixties, we were regularly bombarded by American Art and we awaited each new installment like food parcels to a half-starved community.
I had been fortunate to meet Motherwell, Rothko, Reinhardt, Newman, Frankenthaler, Noland and Olitski, both here and in the USA; and was very much in awe of them, particularly the older generation. They were my Gods and seemed to be remote and unreachable, with the exception of 'Barney" (Newman) as he was known to his friends. He loved being with people and especially young ones. Hofmann however was by this time something of an outsider, living in Provincetown.

In 1960 an exhibition took place at the RBA gallery in London: its title was Situation, an exhibition organised by artists (and, as it happened, mainly for artists). No one was represented by commercial galleries. I was a late-comer and was lucky to be included. These artists, under the critical leadership of Lawrence Alloway, were anxious to separate themselves from the landscape-based painting of the St Ives group. We were trying to make a new urban, more uncompromisingly abstract, art based on rational thinking and visual perception. Until the end of the fifties, we had felt starved of an intellectual and perceptual raison d'être for our work and were reacting against what we saw as the quasi-romantic English tradition; what we saw as compromise and also the violent excesses of post de Kooning abstraction. I felt, as did many others, that the most uncompromising new art of the time was the work of Rothko, Still, Newman and Motherwell. It was powerful, huge, overwhelming and mysterious, and for those of us who had a passing interest in Zen, Zen calligraphy and the Beat Poets had a spiritual content we had not experienced before. It must be remembered that all but a few in Britain after the war were familiar with what had taken place in Paris and most who knew either hated it or didn't tell. There were few magazines, or catalogues, and no such thing as slide libraries: nor did people make frequent trips to Paris and New York.

As history has now shown, Rothko and Newman (and this does not detract from their importance) led painting towards conceptual art. It was left to Motherwell to leave the doors open - that is how it looked to me at the time. Morris Louis had prized open a few cracks in those luminous voids but had died prematurely.

John Hoyland, 1984. Portrait by Tim Mercer

© Tim Mercer

In this context I felt immediate kinship with the two small paintings by Hofmann. They were fresh, a seemingly new direction but one that I felt I understood. It was much later when I realised why. Many of the best painters in Britain had confronted the problems throughout the fifties of how one could make paintings which were both abstract and figurative at the same time; to name but a few: Ben Nicholson, William Scott, Prunella Clough, Keith Vaughan, Ivon Hitchens, Peter Lanyon, Patrick heron, and Terry Frost. Others, the more seemingly uncompromising, took the other branch of the tree via Mondrian, Constructivism and architecture, including Mondrian's Utopian concepts of a new society and the search for new materials. My student loves - Rembrandt, Van Gogh, the Fauves, Monet, Cezanne, Matisse with Munch, German Expressionists (and a touch of Synthetic Cubism lower down the list) led me on to de Staël and Poliakoff in Paris, whose work I had seen at the Whitechapel. Then Soutine and Rouault, to whom I was drawn more than say, to Bonnard or Vuillard. This group for me was the melting pot, seeing Hofmann was confirmation. Here was a master living in the USA, but exemplifying in his art a new exuberant openness with strongly visible European roots. I felt we had loved the same heroes. Hofmann had reopened the possibilities for art with a brave reaffirmation of the greatest achievements of 20th century art and its rich history. Europe had laboured under the Titians: Picasso, Matisse, Mirò and Mondrian. Picasso had pulled back from abstraction after Synthetic Cubism, Mondrian had left us in a cold white light; Mirò was still painting in his own wonderful private symbolic language and Matisse had died leaving the doors open to abstraction with his paper cut-outs. Hofmann seized the initiative from Mondrian's division of the canvas into rectangles and inspired by Matisse's palette marked an art full of reverence to the masters but unfettered by their towering achievements.


-Hoyland's essay is reproduced here in it's entirety from the catalogue (pages 9, 10):

Hans Hofmann: Late Paintings © 1988 The Tate Gallery. Designed and published by Tate Gallery Publishing and printed by The Hillingdon Press with color reproductions by PJ Graphics Ltd.

Back to the Future Part II @ Life on Mars

Amy Sillman, Williamsburg Portraits, 1991 -92, ink, gouache, pencil on paper 11 x 8 in. each

From the Press Release:

During a recent studio visit with Katherine Bradford, we were looking at her work for our upcoming exhibition and discussing our frustration about how painting was not represented in the recent survey show at the Brooklyn Museum, entitled, “Crossing Brooklyn: Art from Bushwick, Bed-Stuy and Beyond”.  We looked at each other and said (I don’t remember who said it first), “Brooklyn is the painting capital of the world”. Yep, there it is, it’s out there. During one of our conversations, Irving Sandler toldme that at this moment there are more painters and more painters with serious studio practices in Brooklyn than in any place in the world, and many of the most important contemporary galleries and museum shows feature works by Brooklyn painters.

Part II of Back to the Future will focus on some of the painters who were working in Williamsburg in the early 1980s (many of whom were friends): Peter Acheson, Katherine Bradford, Rick Briggs, Bill Jensen, Margrit Lewczuk, Chris Martin, Joyce Pensato, James Siena and Amy Sillman, who are also among the most influential and critically-acclaimed painters working today. They influenced the next two generations of Brooklyn painters, which layed the groundwork for the area to become this nexus, this hotbed - the center and focus for painting in the 21st century, while continuing to attract painters from all over the country and the world.

These painters all had different career trajectories, but their work has constantly developed and continues to evolve, even during decades when painting was not considered relevant in many art-world circles. Their painting practices are built on the authentic and uncompromising love of painting; the life it creates, the process of personal discovery revealed through the work, and the commitment, sacrifice, and discipline required for its practice. This commitment has produced work of great power, beauty and originality, which simultaneously embraces the history of painting and extends its language going forward.

We are grateful for their support and participation and to be part of this painting community. 

Michael David

February 2015

Back to the Future II

with work by: Peter Acheson, Katherine Bradford, Rick Briggs, Bill Jensen, Margrit Lewczuk, Chris Martin, Joyce Pensato, James Siena, and Amy Sillman

Opening: Friday, February 20, 6 - 9 PM

February 20 - March 15, 2015

Life on Mars

56 Bogart Street

Brooklyn, NY 11206

Dapper de Kooning

Willem de Kooning at the exhibition "Modern Art in Advertising" sponsored by Container Corp. at The Art Institute of Chicago, 1945, with The Netherlands, 1945

Photographer: Gordon Coster

© Time & Life Pictures/Getty Archives

Willem de Kooning at the Sidney Janis Gallery, June 15, 1959, leaning on Lisbeth's Painting, 1958

Photographer: Arnold Newman

© Arnold Newman Properties/Getty Images

 Willem de Kooning at the Sidney Janis Gallery, June 15, 1959

Photographer: Arnold Newman

© Arnold Newman Properties/Getty Images

 De Kooning at Black Mountain College, 1948

photographer unkown

Shaping the Indeterminacy and Abstract Strategies @ Galerie Schütte

Jan Holthoff: Shaping the Indeterminacy and
Abstract Strategies (curated by Jan Holthoff)


Opening Friday, March 6 , 7 PM

March 6 - April 19, 2015

Galerie Schütte

Generative Processes @ TSA New York

Work by Alex Paik (left) and Debra Ramsay

From the Press Release:

Tiger Strikes Asteroid New York is pleased to present Generative Processes, featuring the work of Alex Paik and Debra Ramsay. The exhibit highlights shared elements within their practices and cites the particular manifestation of each. The work operates on an intimate and humble level, combining the abstract and cerebral with grace and humor.

While their color palettes generate an immediate sense of relationship, Paik arrives at his intuitively, while Ramsay’s is system-based. The artists share a generative process of making, a cultivation of a standardized element that is repeated and worked. In Alex’s case, it’s a geometric form, a unit that he multiplies and folds, orients or otherwise uses again and again to make the work. Debra walked a specific trail, collecting colors every hundred steps via photographs, once each season, generating a palette of 72 distinct colors that were worked in a variety of ways. Both artists consider the element of time. Paik’s work changes as you change your viewing angle; Ramsay documents color change at one location over the year, as an absurd time keeping device.

An accompanying catalog will feature an essay by Carl Belz, Director Emeritus of the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University. The catalog will be available for sale at the gallery. A PDF version is also available HERE.

Alex Paik was born in 1981 in Oxnard, California and currently lives and works in Brooklyn. His work has been exhibited recently at The Painting Center, Millsaps College, Space 4 Art: San Diego, Nancy Margolis Gallery, and Parallel Art Space. Recent solo shows include Paper Constructs at Guest Spot @ The Reinstitute, and Recapitulation Bop at Gallery Joe. Paik’s work has been in several art fairs, including Drawing Now: Paris, Amsterdam Drawing, Pulse:New York and Miami, artMRKT San Francisco, and Texas Contemporary. He is currently represented by Gallery Joe in Philadelphia and is the director of Tiger Strikes Asteroid New York, an artist-run exhibition space in Bushwick.

Debra Ramsay works in the disciplines of painting, drawing and installation. She maintains a full time studio practice in New York City. Ramsay was awarded a 2016 Residency at the Albers Foundation, a 2013 Residency at the Golden Foundation in New Berlin, NY and in 2012 a Fellowship at BAU Institute in Otranto, Italy. Ramsay’s 2014 exhibitions include Hansel and Gretel Picture Garden Pocket Utopia in Chelsea, Visual Arts Center of NJ, Summit, NJ, and The Bruce High Quality Foundation, NYC. In 2013 she had a solo show titled MAT/tam, curated by Lucio Pozzi at Palazzo Costa, in Mantova, Italy.

Generative Processes

Alex Paik and Debra Ramsay

Opening Reception: Friday, February 20, 6pm-9pm

February 20 - March 29, 2015

TSA 

1329 Willoughby Ave. #2A

Brooklyn, NY 11237

William Corwin @ PUCCS Contemporary Art

From the Artist:

A week and a half ago I visited two paleolithic caves in the Dordogne, Font-de-Gombe and Les Combarelles.  The artists in those caves had created their images by utilizing coincidental outcroppings and recesses in the caves that looked like forms they wanted to paint or carve--a bump in an overhang became a bison's head or a horses haunch.  At Puccs I started pulling casts from the space itself.  I felt that by making objects that derived from the textures and spaces of the gallery, I might draw out the beings or entities that resided in the place itself.  I then started going into the pieces, carving them or painting them, in an effort to move past the pure formalism of the shapes and their process.  On the largest freestanding piece I carved the face of a bison I had seen in Font-de-Gaume, itself a series of lines and circles that thad been inscribed in a round piece of stone in a cave.

Will Corwin is a sculptor based in New York City. He has exhibited at the Clocktower Gallery, chashama, Aferro Gallery, and LaMama in the New York area; internationally he has exhibited at the George and Jørgen Gallery in london, FRISE Künstlerhaus in Hamburg and Red Gate Gallery in Beijing. His work has been seen and written about in Sculpture Magazine, Rooms Magazine, Art Monthly, The New York Times, Time Out Beijing, The Vogue blog, Art 21 blog andThe Brooklyn Rail. He has a radio show on Clocktower Radio and his first book Broken Rooms, a collaboration with poet and author Ellis Avery, was published this year by Crumpled Press.



William Corwin: Motorhead

Through March 15, 2015

PUCCS Art Space
Víg u. 22
1084 Budapest, Hungary