This Friday in Memphis - Dale McNeil @ Tops Gallery

Dale McNeil
Material Will: Force in Form

Opening Reception: April 3, 6 - 8 PM
April 3 - May 31, 2015

Tops Gallery is pleased to present Material Will: Force In Form an exhibition of new work by Memphis based painter Dale McNeil. This will be McNeil's first solo exhibition at Tops Gallery. The artist offers 19 paintings and works on paper which explores his fundamental material's appetition to form. To produce these works the artist employs a self referential process that begins with degraded photocopies of unique works as a basis for a new image. The decomposition of one image is crucial to the birth of another. Both random and planned actions are used in equal measure to manifest an obscure organization of esoteric symbols veiled by layers of distortion. The result is painted form compromised by disorder and struggling for definition. The works offer few clues to the original source material, allowing the paintings to exist in a transformative state. The dominant palette chosen for these paintings consist of deep blacks coupled with pure, intense colors. The palette along with the paints rough gestural surface illuminates a densely distorted and symbolic vocabulary. Fraught with formal and psychic tension, the paintings remain a static painterly spectacle. Dale McNeil's work has been recently included in exhibitions in New York City, across the United States and abroad. He currently lives and works in Memphis, TN.   For further details on this exhibition, future projects, or Tops Gallery's program, please contact the gallery at info@topsgallery.com. Tops Gallery is located at 400 South Front Street, Memphis, Tennessee (basement level, entrance on Huling), and is open for viewing most Saturdays and by appointment.

Jack Davidson @ THEODORE:Art

Installation view.

 you said something i've never forgotten (left) and trying to get over

From the Press Release:

Theodore:Art is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings and wall work by Jack Davidson.

Retinal Noise.

Everything is related. The community and the arena of life are the boundaries of expression of what, in modern times, we knew as privacy. We have now fallen into a social network which surprises both for its flexibility and for its tendency towards an enormous abyss of meaning.

Painting in this time of the present-continuous cruelly confronts the communicative core of reality. It prefers a direct relationship with the world, one without degrees of separation. It is important to see how an ever increasingly anachronistic medium, with regard to the dictatorship of immediacy, renders us disobedient.

The epidermis of the world’s retina, which is how we can refer to Jack Davidson’s work, is conscious of strangeness and belonging at the same time. Jack ironically sympathizes with already existing images – from record covers to vestiges of his biography – metabolizes them, and then restores them to what is a more open reading, always maintaining a faithful, but never dogmatic, allegiance to the discipline of painting.

This procedure of his is a kinetic-cognitive drift similar to that of the flâneur, someone able to do as many different jobs as there are ways of seeing. He propounds a new artificiality that depends on recognition, because images don’t have a mother tongue, but are an adopted language.

To Jack, music is as much nutrient as information. In our life, the important questions appear as news in the guise of documents; living is thus the dictatorship of information. Jack separates the noise of music from the information prior to painting, but always so he can mix them up again, like an interpreter who doesn’t owe his life to a recognizable score.

On his walks he looks for what is hidden between routine meditations and the slowing down of repetition, therefore we sense almost secret geometries among the painting planes, and difficult and improbable color decisions that are virtuosic without being capricious.

For this exhibition Jack has designed a viewing bench in which he has taken the precaution of leaving the least defined, most open, place for a third person; two people make a conversation,but the third decides the subject. The seat of the bench is composed of his sewn together paint rags. We sit on his corrections, as on the strict materiality of painting.

Javier Peñafiel. Barcelona, 2015.

Installation view.

 back down the goldbourne road we go, 2014, oil and enamel on canvas, 18 x 15 in.

Installation view with i want to lead the sporting life, 2014 (on right).

Jack Davidson: love, mistake, promise, auto crackup, color, petal

Through April 12, 2015

THEODORE:Art

56 Bogart

Brooklyn, NY 11206

RIP Albert Irvin (1922 - 2015)

Albert Irvin by ©Josh Wright

Very sorry to hear of the passing of one of my favorite painters, Albert Irvin -  an incredible painter and by all accounts a wonderful man.

The evocative portrait above is by Josh Wright.

Obituary in the Guardian.

In the Studio with Albert Irvin by Sam Cornish from 2012.

Interview: John Jones London 

Matt Ducklo @ Launch F18

240, 2013, gelatin silver print, 24 x 20 inches.

From the Press Release:

Ducklo has lived and worked in Memphis, Tennessee for the past five years, having returned after a decade in New York City. The photographs on view arose from indiscriminate night drives he began to take in Memphis. Gradually, photographing became part of these excursions turning the open drive into a restless search. Taking advantage of nocturnal stillness to explore the city, Ducklo found a rich topology of light, shadow, and silence, touchstones among the uncanny.

 Against this backdrop, Ducklo shows us varied pictures that include neighborhoods, parking lots, a jail, a school gym, the densely forested city park, a public sculpture, and a bus stop. Many of the pictures presented depict church vans, secured in cages, protected from theft. This recurring signpost of confinement and protection acts as a refrain to the diverse images of a city at night. The language within Ducklo's work reverberates what is known to be true; day follows night, but sometimes tomorrow is a long time.

Matt Ducklo was born in 1973 in Memphis, TN and continues to live and work there. He attended The University of Tennessee (BA) and Yale University (MFA). Ducklo’s solo exhibitions include Eleven Rivington, NY; Bellwether, NY; Elizabeth Dee, NY; and The Power House, Memphis, TN. Group exhibitions include Franklin Street Works, Stanford, CT; Derek Eller Gallery, NY; and The Queens Museum of Art, NY, among others. Matt Ducklo joined Launch F18 in February 2015.

Matt Ducklo: Tomorrow is a Long Time

Opening March 25, 6 - 8 pm

March 25 - April 26, 2015

Launch F18

94 Allen Street

New York, NY 10002

Kazuo Shiraga and Satoru Hoshino @ Dominique Lévy

 Installation view of work by Kazuo Shiraga.

Detail from above.

Detail from above.

From the Press Release:
Body and Matter: The Art of Kazuo Shiraga and Satoru Hoshino is curated by Koichi Kawasaki, former director of Ashiya City Museum of Art and History in Japan. This exhibition places a group of 23 important abstract paintings made over the course of the fifty-year career of legendary Gutai artist Kazuo Shiraga, in dialogue with a series of nine works from the 1990s by Satoru Hoshino, . . . . 

Charline von Heyl @ Petzel Gallery

Artist, Debra Ramsay takes a closer look.

Detail of work (on left) from photo above.

From the Press Release:

Petzel Gallery is delighted to announce the inauguration of our new uptown location with an exhibition of early paintings by Charline von Heyl. The group of paintings assembled was previously exhibited in Cologne and Munich between 1991 and 1995, before the artist moved to New York. This will be the first showing of the work in the United States. The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalog with an interview between Isabelle Graw and the artist.

Cologne in the late 1980s was dominated by a debate about the merits and pitfalls of painting. If there was any point of agreement, it was in rejection of the mythic landscapes of Anselm Kiefer and the gestural marks of the internationally acclaimed neo-expressionists. However esoteric the arguments about painting may seem today, they helped clarify a skeptical position on painterly authenticity that was adopted by artists such as Martin Kippenberger and Albert Oehlen, friends and colleagues of von Heyl.

After studying with Joerg Immendorff in Hamburg, Charline von Heyl moved to Düsseldorf in the early 90s and worked for his studio. Düsseldorf’s geographic location gave the artist enough critical distance to ferment her own ideas away from the quagmire of the Cologne art scene. She began exhibiting her work in 1990, at Christian Nagel Galerie in Cologne. At the time, the gallery’s focus was on conceptual and contextual art. Von Heyl was its only unabashed painter. Her insistence provoked a dynamic and confrontational new dialog about painting in general and her work in particular, apart from the already established painting positions reigning in the Cologne of the eighties.

The paintings for von Heyl’s exhibition at Petzel were selected in light of her most recent show at the gallery in September of 2013. The early canvases can give an insight to her current works. In particular, von Heyl has never distinguished abstract from representational form, rather, she has used all the visual tools at her disposal to lure the viewer into her compositions. The early paintings juxtapose textured fields of color with emblems that have the ability to allude to skin tone, nature, and industrial elements, among other motifs. Now and then her paintings function like a visual oxymoron: funny but not humorous, fluidly painted yet collaged, both experimental and expertly composed. Von Heyl treads into the unfamiliar, finding a place beyond language, discourse and argument that can only be articulated in painting.

Painter James Erikson takes in von Heyl's work from the early 90s.

Installation view.

Charline von Heyl: Düsseldorf Paintings from the Early 90s

Through May 2, 2015

Petzel Gallery
35 E 67th Street
New York, NY 10065

Anon, No More Anon

A still of Leonard Whiting in Romeo and Juliet (1968)

Hi Friends,

While I gratefully appreciate all who check out my blog posts and take the time to comment I have decided I will no longer publish comments posted anonymously.

Everyone has been respectful in their remarks towards me and the work and artists I post but frankly, I just think it's polite to let everyone know who we are conversing with.

I realize it's quicker to post an anonymous comment than to sign in to blogger so, even when using the Anonymous option, I will ask that you please sign your post and perhaps leave a link so we can all check out your art or your own blog.

Take care and thanks again for looking!

Walter Darby Bannard @ Berry Campbell

Aqua Same, 1962, alkyd resin on canvas, 66 3/4 x 62 3/4 in.

Walter Darby Bannard: Minimal Color Field Paintings 1958 - 1965

Opening: Thursday, March 19, 6 - 8 PM

March 19 - April 18, 2015

Berry Campbell

530 W 24th Street

New York, NY 10011

Dale McNeil @ Tops Gallery

Material Will: Force In Form
New Paintings by Dale McNeil

Opening April 3, 6 - 8 PM

April 3 - May 31, 2015

Tops 
400 South Front Street
Memphis, TN 38103
info@topsgallery.com
901.340.0134

Juror Lecture: Matthew Neil Gehring @ The University of Southern Indiana

There is a special juror for this year's show, in honor of USI's 50th Anniversary. Matthew Neil Gehring is an Evansville native who graduated from North High School and came to USI on the Robert Carrithers Freshman Art Scholarship, graduating in 1998 with a BS in studio art. After earning his MFA from the University of Delaware, he taught at Humboldt State University, Syracuse University, and currently is the Chair of the Visual Arts Department and Director of the Flecker Gallery at SUNY Suffolk. Gehring maintains an active studio practice in Brooklyn, New York. His work has encompassed ceramics, sculpture, conceptual art, and most recently painting.


University of Southern Indiana 
Forum II, FA2
8600 University Blvd.
Evansville, IN 47712
812.228.5006

Alex Paik and Debra Ramsay @ TSA New York

 Debra Ramsay

 (detail from work above)

 Installation view

From the Press Release:

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.

Alex Paik

 Alex Paik

About the Artists:

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.

Installation view, Alex Paik

Debra Ramsay (detail)

Generative Processes: Alex Paik and Debra Ramsay

Through March 29, 2015

TSA New York
1329 Willoughby Ave.

Brooklyn, NY 11237

David Myrvold @ Mölnlycke kulturhus

Willow, 2014, oil on MDF board, 60 x 56.5 cm.

From the Artist's Statement:

The exhibition is the result of my fascination for different types of landscape depictions. The opera "Atys", which was written by Jean Baptiste Lully in 1676, is one of those sources which served as my inspiration. Briefly, the story takes place at Cybèles holy mountain ( goddess ) and in the final scene Atys takes his own life as a result of the Gods nasty game with humanity. Atys is celebrated and praised by all for his faithfulness and virtue, and his reward is to be reborn as "a tree that never loses its color despite the severest cold, and when it burns, get the brightest flames". Atys was reborn as a pine tree.

The imagery in my paintings tells of an intrusive painting, where the

veins of the leaf, branches and crowns against the sky are smudged or stylized and simplified. The expressions in the various pictures are similar, as if the tree’s own membership in the fauna is

disappearing and becomes reduced to one individual, and/or like a

city overview with our architectural forms.

My work aims to create an artistic dialogue with rendered landscape

descriptions and theories of the landscape, interpretations and use

of cultural propaganda that the landscape can be forced to submit to, during the course of time.

About the Artist:

David Myrvold was born in Sweden in 1976. During and after studying at the Royal College of Fine Art in Stockholm, he made numerous trips to the Middle East to countries such as Syria, Palestine and Egypt. In 2010, Myrvold returned

to his hometown, of Trollhattan, on the west coast of Sweden. In addition to his studio practice, Myrvold holds an appointment as an art educator at a youth culture house.

David Myrvold: Atys

Through April 25, 2015

Mölnlycke kulturhus

Biblioteksgatan 2

Mölnlycke

Brenda Goodman @ Life on Mars Gallery and The American Academy of Arts and Letters

Brenda Goodman with her painting Stone Memories, 2014. The work is currently on view at the American Academy of Arts and Letters as part of the institution's annual Invitational.

Brenda Goodman has been making absolutely rock solid, furiously alive paintings since the 1960s. She has poured out her soul and spilled her guts into every single work. And though she has been known by many for years to be shimmering skilled and tough as nails, she only recently for the first time sold out an exhibition. Now, on the occasion of her solo show at Life on Mars and simultaneous inclusion in the American Academy Invitational, let this be the occasion for some serious Brenda Goodman momentum. No one around paints like her, with such unapologetically personal stakes . . . Goodman’s body of work stands apart, invaluable, unique, pushing above the canopy, its roots digging deep into the soil, its twisting branches drooping with amazing new fruit.

- David Brody, from his catalogue essay on Goodman's current work

Brenda Goodman

Opening Reception: March 20, 6 - 9 PM

*A full color catalogue will accompany the exhibition with an essay by critic David Brody

March 20 - April 19, 2015

Life on Mars Gallery

56 Bogart Street

Brooklyn, NY 11206

And currently on view: 

Brenda Goodman's work can be seen in the American Academy of Arts and Letters in their annual Invitational exhibition on view through April 12th. 

Brenda Goodman, Untitled D4, 2012, oil on wood, 72 x 68 inches.

Currently on view at the American Academy of Arts and Letters

*all images courtesy of the artist and Life on Mars Gallery. 

Introducing the Paintings of David Pollack

A Tree for Peter, 2013, oil on panel, 12 x 11 inches.

Into December: Red Hook, Brooklyn, 2014, oil on panel, 12 x 11 inches.

October's End, Red Hook, Brooklyn, 2014, oil on panel, 12 x 11 in.

Late Winter: Red Hook, Brooklyn, 2014, oil on panel, 15 x 20 inches.

David Pollack is a Brooklyn based painter and musician. From his studio in Red Hook he paints encrusted works that are much more sublime than that adjective implies.  His surfaces can be gemlike or move towards the monochrome but both evoke the light and élan found in the  glistening  seasons and environments that inspire them.

Framed Winter Paintings, 2014

Into September: Red Hook, Brooklyn, 2014, oil on panel, 9 x 8 inches.

From the Artist's Statement:

If an artist comes to nature quietly and humbly, he will always walk

away with the answer. To me, that is the secret of painting (and making

any kind of art for that matter). 

So, I'm back to painting, two years now, after a twelve year break. 

Stopping was organic. In that time I played a heck of a lot of music and built

a lot of cool stuff. If there was ever a time to come back to painting, now

is an incredible time. Folks seem to be embracing it again. When I left

the art world, it was being taken over by fashion . . . . ok, enough about the old days . . . . 

If I have a "modern" starting point, it is probably Monet and Pissaro. 

I come back to them constantly.

I came from the last generation taught by Hofmann students.

Plastic space is dogma. 

For process, Giacometti, Auerbach (and the other English mud painters),Sol Lewitt and the post minimalists.

For soul, Andrew Forge's voice is always telling me to slow down and John

Walker's is always telling me to find the beauty in the mud. Marjorie

Portnow little landscapes taught me small paintings can be just as engaging as a huge canvas. 

- David Pollack

For December: Red Hook, Brooklyn, 2014, oil on panel, 18 x 16 inches.

Edge: Red Hook, Brooklyn, 2014, oil on panel, 18 x 16 inches.

These last Days of March / Spring's Whisper, 2014, oil on panel, 15 x 14 inches.

David Pollack at work in his studio in Red Hook, Brooklyn.
Photo by Heather Bunch

Rite of Spring, Red Hook, Brooklyn, 2014, oil on panel, 24 x 23 inches.

Vermont, Winter, 1999, oil on panel, 24 x 18 inches.

Studio view with Hiro, 2014 (top left), Red Hook, Brooklyn.

*Studio portrait of the artist by Heather Bunch.
  All other photographs courtesy of the artist. 

Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Sol LeWitt @ Paula Cooper

 Installation view with Sol LeWitt and Carl Andre

 Sol LeWitt

 Installation view

Dan Flavin

Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Sol Lewitt

Through March 7, 2015

Paula Cooper Gallery
534 W 21st Street
New York, NY 10011