"Texoma", 2011, 84 x 144 inches
Tomory Dodge is an artist based in Los Angeles who is known for his vibrant and active abstract paintings that combine gestural brushwork with a highly tuned color sense. His paintings are simultaneously announcing themselves as paintings and as spaces, each layer fueled by the “endless temptation of finding new forms, new phenomena.” Art-Rated was able to catch up with Tomory and discuss his work and ideas:
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Eugene Lemay standing in front of one of his works.
Eugene Lemay’s solo show, Navigator, opens this week at Mike Weiss Gallery. His large scale monochrome landscapes are seemingly quiet images, reminiscent of the foggy landscapes of James McNeill Whistler. Upon closer inspection their mysterious surface comes to life – the images are built from layering of thousands of individual words and characters. Art-Rated’s Jonathan Beer and Lily Koto Olive were able to talk with Eugene about the work:
Art-Rated: The name of the exhibition, Navigator, comes from your time spent as a navigator in the Israeli army. Are these nocturne landscapes depicting specific locations or landmarks?
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Interview with Nunu Hung, Curator of Borderless Map: Taiwanese Painting Now
Interview between Jonathan Beer, Nunu Hung (translating and speaking for the artists), and Lily Koto Olive
Tabo Tai-Chun Chou
We always have different congnitive
2011, Acrylic on Canvas, 26 inch diameter.
Review of Margaret Evangeline: Shooting Through the Looking Glass (Charta, 2011)
Originally published by The Brooklyn Rail, March 2012, http://www.brooklynrail.org/2012/03/art_books/margaret-evangeline-shooting-through-the-looking-glass
Margaret Evangeline: Shooting Through the Looking Glass (Charta, 2011)
There is something inherently philosophical in the work of Margaret Evangeline. Every project throughout her active career endeavors to examine and reframe her physical and emotional understanding of the world, easily seen in Margaret Evangeline: Shooting Through the Looking Glass. The included texts reveal the wealth of source material that influences her, from film to literature to simply her physical location, yet at a certain point these accompanying texts divulge too much of the mystery, and thus emphasize the over-complication in her oil paintings. The photos and minimal attributions describing the artist’s most streamlined work—the bullet paintings—strike a visual and philosophical sweet spot by showcasing her technical execution and conceptual impetus. Read More
Interview and Studio Visit / January, 2012
Conversation with Jonathan Beer, Trudy Benson and Lily Koto Olive
A painting in progress on Trudy Benson's studio wall.
Jonathan Beer: Your work seems to hang in the balance between abstraction and illusion – it’s full of emblematic fragments, painterly mark, different textures, all coming forming a definite kind of space – How did your work get to this point? Read More
On view at Elizabeth Harris Gallery
February 9 – March 10, 2012
by Jonathan Beer
You are Nature is Brooklyn-based artist Greg Lindquist’s most recent body of work currently on view at Elizabeth Harris Gallery. It is comprised of over 15 paintings completed since 2011, as well as two site specific wall paintings.
Spiderweb (If it's raining, no one can see your tears.) Oil on Linen.16 x 24.5 inches. 2012. (Courtesy of the artist.)
In a departure from Lindquist’s earlier work, this show features pieces more decidedly about painterly exploration than his prior interest in smart picture making. While intellect is surely habitual concern for the artist, the hallmark of this show is his temporary suspension of that theoretical backdrop to find enjoyment and intrigue in the act of painting.
As I viewed Lindquist’s work at the opening I could not help but remember a 1964 interview between Larry Rivers and David Hockney. Rivers asked Hockney which was more important to picture making; making something beautiful or interesting. Hockney replied “Perhaps the most beautiful paintings are beautifully interesting.” In the case of Greg Lindquist’s work I believe this principle holds true. Read More
by Jonathan Beer
Ali Banisadr in the studio.
Since Expressionism artists have used painting to confront the interior world, wrestling to create with what German artist Willi Baumeister called “the self-engendered vision.” Like a prospector, an artist searches through layers of self-made bedrock and sediment, mining for a vein to follow. Many artists are enchanted by this parallel interior place, a zone where the fabric of reality is twisted and altered by the subconscious, intersected by memories and augmented by the imagination. It is a constantly shifting place, populated by things which have no name. There is no guidebook. A thorough investigation of the psychological is found in both abstract and representational work, from the disconcerting worlds of Yves Tanguy and Kay Sage to the imposing paintings of Milton Resnick and Mark Rothko. Somewhere between abstraction and figuration the psychological has re-emerged in the painterly fictions of Ali Banisadr.
On view at PS1 September 11, 2011 to January 9, 2012
by Jonathan Beer
Forty Part Motet by Janet Cardiff, Installation at MoMA PS1
As an atheist, my list of religious experiences is rather short, comprised of events that had a profound effect and that I never could’ve anticipated. I now happily add Janet Cardiff’s ‘Forty Part Motet’ to the list.
On view at Museum of Modern Art – September 18, 2011–January 9, 2012
by Jonathan Beer
On a quiet Sunday morning a buzzing anticipation abounds as museum-goers descend en masse towards the cavernous entrance of the year’s most anticipated show. De Kooning: A Retrospective, on view at the Museum of Modern Art through January 9, has transformed MoMA’s 17,000 square foot sixth floor into a mecca for Willem de Kooning enthusiasts. Nearly 200 paintings occupy every wall, and span every period in the artists’ seven decade career, from his highly technical training at Rotterdam Academy of Fine Arts and Technique to the last paintings of the 1980s.
The exhibition proceeds in a roughly chronological fashion, opening with two early paintings, Seated Man (1939) and Seated Woman (1940), which introduce de Kooning’s continuous journey between the tradition of figuration and avant-garde abstraction. The first room also displays two academic drawings completed as a student at the Rotterdam Academy, irrefutable evidence of the impressive facility he relied on throughout his life. From the onset of his career there are signs of an artist with an endlessly flexible imagination; de Kooning flirts with many styles and subjects, always moving between representation, abstraction, and formal play.
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Metropolitan Museum of Art | April 13 – August 28, 2011
By Jonathan Beer
Ozier Muhammad / The New York Times -- From left, works from 1989: “The United States Courts Are Partial to the Government,” “No Mandatory Patriotism” (center) and “The United States Government Destroys Art.”
Since 1971 Richard Serra has focused on large-scale drawings as an art form separate yet linked to the large site-specific sculpture he is known for. The Richard Serra Drawing Retrospective cohesively collects these 40 years of drawing into one exhibition for the first time. The works in the show offer a special insight into the artist’s thoughts and conceptual process, including pieces created in a variety of formats and materials. Much like his colleagues Sol Lewitt and Cy Twombly, Richard Serra confidently shows the unprecedented and unique results that arise when drawing, sculpture, and installation overlap. He reminds us that when mastered, elements of space, form, and material together can create a transcendent experience.
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