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Showing posts from April, 2018

Willem de Kooning and Instinct

De Kooning studying a door painting - Woman 1966. Photo: Dan Budnik DeKooning was 92 at the time of his death. Ibram Lassow: "I remember the times long ago when Bill [de Kooning] and I would wonder what it would be like to be well known. What a strange thing that he became an internationally famous artist, and the irony is that now he doesn't even know. Now he paints and eats, and that's all."  "An instinct begins as a conscious impulse.  If you want anything badly and continuously enough-by conscious choice-the desire will become a habit, and eventually, an instinct. Having become an instinct, it will survive even after consciousness has lost it’s drive. When this happens, instinct now supplies the mind with its meanings  . . . my subconscious is only giving me back what I have already put there.  The ‘instinct’ does not come from the depths of nature or from God or some other mysterious source; it comes from my robot, and I put it there.” p. 72, Co...

New in the Studio

Paul Behnke, Citadel of Faith and Power, acrylic and spray paint on canvas, 50 x 48 inches. Citadel of Faith and Power (detail) Citadel of Faith and Power (detail) Citadel of Faith and Power (detail)

From the Deep Waters of Sleep, a poem by Johanna Adriana Ader-Appels for her son, Bas Jan Ader

Bas Jan Ader,  Fall 1, Los Angeles (Book Set) , 1970, set of ten black and white vintage prints, 3½ x 5 inches. ©2016 The Estate of Bas Jan Ader, Mary Sue Ader Andersen and Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/Courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York and Meliksetian | Briggs, Los Angeles. Bastiaan Johan Christiaan "Bas Jan" Ader (born 19 April 1942 – disappeared 1975) was a  Dutch conceptual artist, performance artist , photographer and filmmaker. He had lived in Los Angeles, California for the last twelve years of his life. [1]  His work was in many instances presented as photographs and film of his performances. He made performative installations, including  Please Don't Leave Me  (1969). Ader was lost at sea in 1975, attempting to cross the   Atlantic Ocean   from the   US   to   England   sailing in the smallest boat with which the voyage has ever been attempted. His deserted vess...

Sluggo + Alan Watts = Enlightenment

Sluggo dreams while awake. Sluggo and Alan Watts (click on video to view or follow the link . . .) "The Tao is that from which nothing can depart . . ." Ernie Bushmiller - The greatest Nancy panel ever drawn.

Sharpe Walentas Studio Program Open Studios

Osamu Kobayashi in his studio at the Sharpe Walentas Studio Program. Photo by Todd Nakano. A studio view of Sharon Louden 's installation at the program. Photo courtesy of the artist. A recent oil painting by Todd Bienvenu . Photo courtesy of the artist.   Sharpe Walentas Studio Program   Open Studios April 28 - 29, 2018 1-6 pm Opening Reception: Friday April 27, 6-9 pm   * All images  © attributed artists and photographers. All rights reserved.

Ronan Bowes: An Expressive Remedy

Ronan Bowes in his studio in Manhattan. Ronan Bowes was born in 1986 in Northern Ireland. And in many ways his work can be read as a response to that particular place and time and all that they entail and conjure. The rough application of paint and jarring color combinations steer Bowes' paintings and sculptures towards urgent expression and unresolved feeling. But to overlook the physical materials (and how they are used and reused) that make up the works is to miss a concept inherent in the making.  Here paint, canvas and wood are fashioned, disassembled and put together again in service of a regeneration, or at the very least a hopeful, urgent utterance, that says, "I can build on this." They Send their Love, 2017, oil on canvas, 60 x 45 cm The Spot, 2017, oil on canvas, 60 x 45 cm Lios, 2017, oil on panel, 60 x 45 cm Site, 2017, oil on panel, 48 x 32 cm She Loved That Yellow Vase, 2017, oil on canvas, 102 x 108 cm From the Ar...

Testing 1>2 At ASC Gallery

ASC Gallery

"Women Can't Paint..." Part One at Turps Gallery

On view through May 12, 2018 Turps Gallery / ASC Gallery Taplow House Thurlow Street London SE17 2UQ

Panel Discussion: Black Artists and the Abstract Idiom

Installation view of Joe Overstreet: Innovation of Flight, Paintings 1967-72 at Eric Firestone Gallery The current exhibition at Eric Firestone Gallery, “Joe Overstreet: Innovation of Flight, Paintings 1967-72” provides a context for examining crucial issues around African American artists and histories of abstraction.  How can abstraction embody experience and identity?  Does the art world make demands of artists of color, in terms of content, that it does not make of other artists?  How does Overstreet’s work address these questions?  These topics will be under discussion in a conversation moderated by LaRonn P. Brooks, with panelists Horace Brockington, Nanette Carter, Lisa Corinne Davis and James Little. Friday April 20, 6:30 - 8:00 PM Eric Firestone Gallery 4 Great Jones Street #4 New York, NY 10012

Sinéad Ní Mhaonaigh at Kevin Kavanagh Gallery

Sinéad Ní Mhaonaigh One of my very favorite painters is opening in Dublin next week. From the Press Release: "We again observe the complete preoccupation with paint itself, with the simple play of colours against one another. Many of the recent paintings pulled out from stacks that afternoon in Bray seemed to follow this logic, canvases filled to bursting with dragged daubs of complementary colours: swampy greens and starchy whites, mauves and greys. Within these busy spaces, something like a pattern emerges, aided along by the imperfect repetition of brush strokes — the natural drag of the hand, perhaps, or the physical impact of brush against the canvas skin. Typically, this patterned plane sits within another, bou nded in by the sharp border of a second limit point. A border within a border, then, again bringing our attention of the weird leaps of fancy made possible by colour and line. Even within this doubly negated space, space and time appear to happen as though b...