Review

November 22, 2011, 8:20am

Excavating the figure with Bianca Beck

It is remarkable what a single gestural stroke or gouged marking can do towards turning a murkily colored abstract painting into something uncannily figurative, erotic, mortal even. In a long New York weekend, I knew I had to see Bianca Beck's solo exhibition, the appropriately titled Body, at Rachel Uffner Gallery.

Listed under: New York, Review

November 17, 2011, 8:20am

Looking Closer with Josephine Halvorson

Josephine Halvorson breathes life into marginalized and utilitarian surfaces and objects that most of us don't just disregard on a daily basis, we're even oblivious to their very existences. How often have you regarded a steam valve so closely that you could draw it from memory? Does your flat even have steam valves?

Listed under: Review

November 14, 2011, 8:15am

Dissecting Environments with Josh Keyes

I was pleasantly taken aback by Portland-based artist Josh Keyes' (NAP #49 & #67) vividly photo-realistic renderings of fauna in cleaved terrain in Fragment, his debut solo exhibition at Jonathan LeVine Gallery last winter. In one fell swoop, Keyes juxtaposed Audobon-precise animals interacting with textbook-style bisected and angled landscapes overrun with premonitions of global warming, a mix of heady surrealism and acute future reality.

Listed under: Portland, Review

November 14, 2011, 8:20am

Material Worlds: Nola Avienne’s 11.11.11.11

The richness of Nola Avienne’s work invites visual indulgence. Captivating the eye through highly textural, densely composed imagery, her sculptures and mixed media works hover within the classic duality of the beautiful and the grotesque without perpetuating clichés. The Seattle artist distinguishes her work through the use of unusual mediums, best known for her meticulously crafted sculptures comprised of iron filings. Some of these manifest as intricate forms reminiscent of lush, fungal-like organisms; others demonstrate the kinetic potential of their magnetic medium through geometric mechanisms that circulate quietly in slow motion. -- Erin Langner, Seattle Contributor

Listed under: Review, Seattle

November 08, 2011, 8:15am

Andrew Falkowski at Andrew Rafacz Gallery

No More Heroes, Andrew Falkowski’s (NAP #35) first solo show at Andrew Rafacz Gallery, features a fresh body of work broken down into three parts: Napoleon Bonaparte, ransom letters, and geometric abstraction. Though the three bodies of work seem at first to be disparate, they turn out to be more like three Venn diagrams that overlap and inform each other while maintaining their individual properties. This allows for a tension-generating dialogue between source material and formal qualities. -- Read more by Chicago Contributor, Josh Reames, after the jump!

Listed under: Chicago, Review

October 31, 2011, 8:15am

Joan Brown at the San Jose Museum of Art

One of Joan Brown’s first encounters with art was as a Catholic high school student in San Francisco. It mainly consisted of calendar covers in her Christian family living course. She later said of her parochial education: “I [knew] that this was just one tiny bit of what there was, and that I just had to get through this—get old enough is what it was—and get the hell out of there.” After graduating, Joan submitted a few pencil sketches of movie stars to the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute) on a whim, and was admitted in 1955 at the age of seventeen.

Listed under: Review, San Francisco

October 24, 2011, 8:30am

Cinematic Curiosities: Patte Loper’s Still Point of the Returning World

The small row of Patte Loper’s modest, handcrafted sculptures from new exhibition Still Point of the Returning World discretely lines a pedestal in the back of Seattle’s Platform GalleryUntitled (Leipzig) resembles an awkward architectural model of stacked boxes, covered by a bulbous sheet; the nearby funnel created from sticks and cardboard strips stands stagnant in space, like a film prop without a set.  Within the surrounding paintings, however, these foreign sculptural objects explode into complex cornerstones of the artist’s fantastical, painted environments.

Listed under: Review, Seattle

October 19, 2011, 9:05am

Jay DeFeo at Hosfelt Gallery

In 1959 Jay DeFeo and her then-husband Wally Hedrick received a letter from Bruce Conner, inducting them into the Rat Bastard Protective Association, of which he was the President, and suggesting that they start paying dues. Other original members included Joan Brown, Manuel Neri, and Jess Collins. The group of about eight artists exhibited together in San Francisco throughout the 50s and 60s, meeting every couple of weeks at each other’s apartments and studios. They formed at a time when the Beat artists were gaining prominence in San Francisco, and began to be somewhat of a spectacle.

Listed under: Review

October 18, 2011, 9:00am

John McAllister at James Fuentes Gallery

In his fourth solo exhibition at James Fuentes Gallery on the Lower East Side, John McAllister (on Curator Anne Ellegood’s list of recommended painters, as seen in NAP #97) presents a series of medium and larger scale paintings that touch on Modernism, Fauvism, Zen, and interior design.  The works in Damned Sparkling Pomp vibrate with lush color, swatches of pattern and abbreviated paintings of paintings, a la Matisse.  These flatt

Listed under: New York, Review

September 28, 2011, 8:52am

Absence as Catalyst for Social Change – William Cordova at Saltworks Gallery

William Cordova's (NAP MFA Annual 2003) recent show in Atlanta [Saltworks Gallery; September 16 – October 29, 2011] búscame en el torbellion: but also time itself is a complicated knotwork of imagery that potentially provides a rich discussion. - Read the full review by Atlanta Contributor, Paul Boshears, after the jump.

Listed under: Atlanta, Review, Spotlight

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