Geometry in the Field

If you had been flying over Holland in late May, this is what you might have seen

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These are tulips, yo. Thanks to Scott Rothsten for sending a link to a website with some great pictures from which I found a link to the Daily Mail

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A Gift From A Friend

The first week of 2008, I received the e-mail below from Chris Ashley, a good friend from Oakland (and my writing partner in the now-languishing-because-we’re-both-too-busy blog, Two Artists Talking) to announce an online solo show, I Made This For You, at the Marjorie Wood Gallery. Here’s his e-mail. Pay special attention to paragraph four:

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Each day during December 2007 I made an HTML drawing for my online exhibition I Made This For You at Marjorie Wood Gallery. The final drawing was uploaded on December 31, and all thirty one drawings are on view until January 31, 2008.

The exhibition was reviewed by Timothy Buckwalter for San Francisco public television station KQED's Arts & Culture blog: Art Review : Chris Ashley: I Made This For You.

I'd like to extend special thanks to artist and MWG proprietor Chris Komater for this opportunity, and for taking on daily upload duty.

Special offer: in keeping with the spirit of I Made This For You, I'd like to offer a free 11 x 8.5 inch inkjet print to the first ten people on this mailing list who reply to me with the date of the print they'd like and a mailing address. . . . .

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I didn't read more than that. I got right on line and sent Chris an e-mail, hoping to make it into the lucky 10.

I am a huge fan of these drawings. (I curated his work into a summer show last year for the Marcia Wood Gallery in Atlanta--similar name but different venue from the one that hosted the online show). If you follow Chris’s work, you know that he makes one HTML drawing a day, which he posts on his website. These geometric images are made on computer using code, and originally they were meant to be seen only on a monitor. Eventually they migrated to the wall via inkjet prints. As a painter, I love the tangible as well as the visual, so I was delighted with the way pixels of light became spritzes of ink on paper. When Chris posted his offer, I knew exactly which one I wanted: December 27th.

I lucked out!

My print arrived on February 1. The paper he printed it on is velvety and thick, so the work looks very much like a gouache painting. Two weeks after it arrived, I had a mat cut at the framer. Since then it has taken me some weeks to actually frame the piece, but here it is—in tangible form—in my loft:

A home for Chris Ashley's print; a print for my home.

December 27th, 2007, inkjet print

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Thanks, Chris, for your splendid gift!

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Sol Lewitt in the Street?

Artifice, not art

No, Sol Lewitt was not here, but you're excused for thinking so. These geometric optical illusions are meant to slow down traffic in Philadelphia. The full story is here in an AP story posted July 2 on Newsday.com: Fake 3-D Speed Bumps Attempt to Detract Speedsters.

Thanks to Giovanni Garcia-Fenech for sharing the story.

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Signs of Testosterone Poisoning, Exhibit A

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"Only men are capable of aesthetic greatness."

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This was said in what year: 1600, 1850, 1955, 2008?

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Well, probably in all of them, but this particular quote dates from three days ago. "Women make up 50 per cent or more of classes at art school. Yet they fade away in their late 20s or 30s. Maybe it's something to do with bearing children," says British art critic Brian Sewer, er Sewell, in a July 6 feature from The Independent. .

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Uh, maybe it has something to do with bearing the brunt of art history as it has been taught, with critics and curators following those teachings, and--I hate to say this--with some women curators so eager for a piece of the androgenic pie that they deny there's an issue.

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Not great?

Louise Bourgeois, Maman, shown at the Guggenheim, Bilbao

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Not great?

Mary Heilmann, All Tomorrow's Parties, Exhibition View, Secession 2003

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Not great?

Anything by Joan Mitchell

Not great?

Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Beheading Holofernes

.Great?

Jeff Koons, Sacred Heart, on the Met Roof

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Sol Lewitt at Mass Moca via The New Modernist

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I just found out about the Sol Lewitt Retrospective coming to Mass Moca. I read about it on Edward Lifson's blog, The New Modernist, via CultureGrrl, aka Lee Rosenbaum. On Lifson's June 25 post he shows many, many fabulous pics of the installation-in-progress, Sol Lewitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective at Mass Moca.

Here's one.

At Mass Moca: A Sol Lewitt in progress. Photograph from Edward Lifson's blog, The New Modernist

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According to an online press release from the museum, the retrospective will consist of 100 works . . . covering nearly an acre of wall surface, that LeWitt created from 1968 to 2007.

If you have any concerns that a Sol Lewitt won't be a real Sol Lewitt now that he's gone, the documentation will put your fears to rest. Personally, I'd find the job of translating the drawings to be hell on a scaffold, but I'm glad others are up for the task.

They'll be at it for a while. The show doesn't open until November 18, and the installation will be up for 25 years. But you know how these things this go: Put it off and before you know it, it's 2033 and you've missed it.

Update 7.9.09: Chris Ashley has a great image of the Lewitt floor plan

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A New Gig

Past, Present, Future, a retrospective of Anish Kapoor's work at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, up through September 7. This is the topic of my first post for ARTtistics

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Today I begin a new gig as contributor to a new blog, ARTtistics. My fellow bloggers on the site are Lenny Campello and Bill Gusky, both known for their wide-ranging interests and good writing. We three have been given a mandate to write about whatever want. How cool is that? Lenny, based in the D.C. area, and Bill, in Connecticut, have been at it for the past month already.

ARTtistics is sponsored by the art moving and storage company, Mind’s Eye. I admit, I had some initial doubts—I don’t want to compromise my writing—but I appreciate that an art-related business is interested in sponsoring art writing. It’s a nice switch from companies that make money from the art community but never give back. And the freedom to write about what interests me is, well, just like blogging on my own blog, which will continue here as usual.

I will contribute two posts a month to ARTtistics, and I already have ideas lined up through the end of the year. By the way, see that little blue-barred widget on the sidebar, right? It's an index to current ARTtistics article. Use it to see what's there, and just click to access the post.

OK, that's it for the hard sell. Now on to the story, a teaser of which is below:

A Tale of Two Cities: Anish Kapoor in Boston and New York

Overview #2: The distortion of perception is a Kapoor hallmark, and part of the pleasure of viewing his work. The man in the picture is Nicholas Baume, curator of the exhibition and chief curator of the ICA. Both images are from a slideshow on the New York Times website

Although you’ll know a Kapoor sculpture when you see it, describing one does not come close to reflecting what Kapoor sculpture is. A sculpture by Anish Kapoor is monumental, yet it pulls you in close. It defines and reflects space; yet it suggests the topography and orifices of the body. It’s concave; it’s convex. It’s hard and smooth; it’s soft and powdery; it's shiny, translucent, opaque, gooey. The materialty of the forms defines both what’s there and what’s not. Like the blind men describing an elephant by touch, Kapoor’s sculpture is all those things. And more. And less. Read more here

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A Teeny Tiny Rant:

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Olafur Schmolafur.

Your Turn: Color, Geometry and More

Thanks to those of you who responded yesterday and today to my invitation to send in links and images of your color-focused work. Below is some of what I've selected to show. I've placed the images in a visual narrative so that the work can speak for itself, but of course you know I'm putting my two cents in, too.

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(If you're coming to this post now, you are welcome to use the "Comments" section to share links to or pics of your work. And while we're getting all interactive, take a look at what artist and blogger J.T. Kirkland is proposing: "Artists 'Review' Artists"--a project in which you submit a work of yours for review and in return will have your work reviewed. J.T. has the details here. )
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Gary Petersen, Break-Up, 2007, acrylic on panel, 20x16 inches.

See more at www.garypetersenart.com

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I'm a fan of these two painters, above and below. Gary Petersen combines color and geometry in a way I find particularly appealing: It's hard edge but it doesn't slice you up. He works out of a studio at the Elizabeth Foundation in Manhattan. We showed together (along with scores of other artists) at a big, wonderful holiday show called "Punchbowl" at Metaphor Contemporary Art in Brooklyn--and in fact, the picture above is the one in the show, so you can see it in situ.

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I've yet to meet Eva Lake, below, but we're buddies in the Blogosphere. The ambitious work below is from The Richter Scale, shown recently at Augen Gallery in Portland, Oregon. Visually, it's pretty quaky; you can feel the retinal techtonics.

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Eva Lake, installation of The Richter Scale, with a modular detail, below

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Ken Weathersby, whose work is shown below, is new to me. But perusing his resume, I can see that he shows regularly in New York--and that he's in the 183rd Annual: An Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary American Art at the National Academy Museum on Fifth Avenue, just across from the Met. (Congratulations on that, Ken. I'll be visiting the show soon and will make a point of seeking out your work.) Ken is interested in the inner-and-outer, the back-and-front, the skin and structure of paintings, which puts them in the approaching-sculpture category. Those two rectangles are set flush within the surface of the canvas.

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Ken Weathersby, 149 (GdP, 2006, acrylic on canvas, 16 x 14 inches. See more at www.kenweathersby.com

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Bob Barbera, Forward, acrylic on canvas; easel size. See more work on his blog Barbera Grid

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I'm digging the visual connections between and among these works--the crisp geometry, the rectangles, the palette, and the stripes that greate a resonant visual eye-hum. You folks have done a pretty good job of curating your own show here.

Above, Giovanni Garcia-Fenech, Yellow on Red, 2007, acrylic on canvas, 34 x 34 inches. See more at www.unutterable.org

Below, Donna Sensor Thomas, Autumn (Triangles), 2008, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 36 inches. See more at www.embryonicthought.com

I love the transition between Thomas's quilt-like pattern and Tracy Helgeson's glowing structure, below, not only for the quilt-barn association, but because the angles, hues and shading have such strong affinities.

Tracy Helgeson, Leaning Gambrel, 2008, oil on birch panel, 30 x 24 inches

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I pulled this image from The Carrie Haddad Gallery website, but you can see more on Tracy's blog, which combines her art life with her family life, smack in rural upstate New York.

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There are two more affinities, below, with painters who are working square with shapes that tend as much toward the biomorphic as the geometric. The Flash construction of Robert Atwell's site, www.robertatwell.com, didn't allow me to pull images, but it it did let me pull the studio image from the homepage. Actually, it's for the better, as you get to see the relationships of many paintings to one another--and to the studio itself, which has its quirky touches of color (note the poles and pipes). I'm not sure where Atwell is from, but Elise Rugolo seems to be from Pittsburg by way of Wisconsin (things one infers from a resume). Her abstraction is a soupcon Fauvist, n'est ce pas?.

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Thanks for sharing, everyone!

Above, Robert Atwell, Studio View

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Below, Elise Rugolo, Thunderhead, 2008, flashe vinyl paint and collage on birch panel, 8 x 8 inches. See more on her website, www.eliserugolo.30art.com

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Awash In Color: "Boston Color" in New York

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.Entering the gallery: Laura Fayer, Diane Ayott, Isabel Riley

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Because I've been busy in the studio I'm a bit behind the curve on shows, but I wanted to acknowledge the Boston Color exhibition at Kathryn Markel Fine Arts while it's still up, through June 28.

Markel, a generous woman with a small gallery and a big presence (she represents dozens of artists and does many art fairs), visited artists' studios in Boston in the depths of winter and found unexpected wellsprings of color. Her field trip has produced a small, nicely diverse collection of strongly hued, easel-size work that could easily have been called "Boston Pattern," so persistent is the repeated geometry of work in the show.

The seven exhibiting artists are Diane Ayott, Nancy Berlin, Laura Fayer, Isabel Riley, Kelly Spalding, Craig Stockwell and Suzanne Ulrich.

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Diane Ayott: Up close, color fields reassemble into expanses of densely tangled pattern

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Diane Ayott is a friend. I know and like her work and have visited her studio north of Boston. She paints energetic patterns that from a distance look like solid, vibrating hues, but from up close reveal themselves to be a riot of fine-lined, overlapping and jumbled patterns into whose tangle you willingly tumble. Diane uses the phrase "pleasure in the visual" when she talks about her work. I think that's just right. She's also got work in the No Chromophobia show at OK Harris.

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Craig Stockwell's circular logic

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Remember the child's play of using a compass to make circles and then fill them in with color? Craig Stockwell does the artist version of that, creating masses of layered and overlapping spheres. He traces the edges into lyrical sweeps that have you dipping into and out of a flat picture plane. I first saw Stockwell's work at the Genovese Sullivan Gallery in Boston--two solo shows, I think-- and though his imagery has evolved, those circles and their undulating patterns remain a signature of his work.

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An economy of materials creates buoyant collages in Suzanne Ulrich's framed work, right; Kelly Spalding, far wall

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Suzanne Ulrich also works with circles. She makes collages--fabulous little minimalist compostions of geometric pattern. I first saw her work at the Copley Society in Boston about six years ago; there the work was quite small, the imagery was rectilinear, and it was comprised of tickets and other printed material, some of which she had painted over with gouache. Here there are effervescent open circles whose energy is barely contained by the frame of each work.

The other artists in the show I'm less familiar with, but I have seen Laura Fayer's work previously at Markel. Hers are paintings that seem to involve elements of painting and printmaking--fairly reductive imagery for the amount of technical stuff she layers on. Nancy Berlin shows three retinally acrobatic vertical stripes. Kelly Spalding is represented by an installation of stripes and geometries in gouache on linen canvas or dish towels--an odd but interesting combination of materials--while Isabel Riley creates wildly colored architectural compositions from fabric scraps and crocheted bits of cloth (I like everything about them except the little loopy crocheted edging).

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Nancy Berlin's saturated stripes, foreground

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This post is the last in my "Awash in Color" series but, fear not, color will never be far from this blog.

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Awash in Color: More Friends of Mr. Biv

Click here for "No Chromophobia."

So a friend e-mailed me the other day to ask, "Who is this Mr. Biv?" If anyone is similarly confounded, think back to third grade. It's the mnemonic used to help you remember the spectrum. Remember?

Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Indigo Violet

Since we're discussing Roy (and in the interest of equal representaton, it could just as easily have been Rona, you know), I'd like to show the work of a few more of his friends. Most of these folks I know, a few others I don't. I'm motivated strictly by the chromatic intelligence of their work. For some of these artists, color is not necessarily the dominant element, it's the geometry. But we don't have to take sides, as color and composition are perfect complements.

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Julie Karabenick, Composition 71, 2007, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 30 inches

I curated Julie's work into Luxe, Calme et Volupte last year at the Marcia Wood Gallery in Atlanta. I'm impressed with the intellectual rigor and physical demands of her work. On such a pristine surface, there's no going back and painting over. Decisions made are decisions maintained. This is a breakthrough painting, because there's now a figure-ground relationship in the work, and the color has a chance to interact with the viewer's eye from various points in a visually dimensional space. Julie is the editor of Geoform. You can see her work there, or on her own website, Karabenick-Art.

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Marcia Hafif,TGGT 12: (Red-Gold, Violet), 22 x 22", oil on Canvas, 2006. Image from the Marcia Hafif website

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I've seen her work in person here and there over the years--Larry Becker in Philadelphia, the now-closed Baumgartner Gallery in Chelsea, and a few months ago at a gallery showing at Pulse in New York. Though relatively small--modestly proportioned easel size work--each painting has a huge presence. Her newer work is divided vertically, each section containing a different hue. Considering what she said about painting in 1990, her more current work is positively image laden:

"Having taken into consideration years ago the consensus decision of the art world that painting was no longer acceptable as an art form, it seemed necessary to move my awareness to a second level. Accepting the idea that one could no longer paint in good faith, I thought it would be possible to paint on another level, one providing a certain distance, in order to look at the paint rather than at its subject. It would be possible to paint "as if" one were painting, using the materials and techniques of painting, but without referring to a separate subject. This thinking led me to monochrome. Thus I do not paint with the intention of making a painting as such, but I work from the outside of painting using traditional methods and materials to discover a new image. " (Why Paint: Marcia Hafif from the catalog Marcia Hafif: Red Paintings, Verlag der Galerie Conrads, Neuss 1990 ).

In this relatively newer work, the vertical created by the abutting of two colors creates an image--a "painting as such"--but it does so on Hafif's terms.

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Chris Ashley, Cluny, 2008, HTML image

Chris works in a unique way, creating "drawings" directly on his computer screen using HTML code. They could easily be called "paintings," but I'm using his preferred word. The work is created using, I think, numbers that translate into blocks of color, so it's keystrokes rather than brush strokes that make the work. Lately, the work has made the leap off the screen and into a printed image, which makes me call them "paintings," but I suppose technically that would make them prints. In this new incarnation the saturated color on creamy paper has the look and visual feel of super-saturated gouache on watercolor paper. Visit his website, Look See, to see much more.

BTW, Chris wrote about my work in his blog a couple of years ago. Then I curated him into my Luxe, Calme et Volupte show. (You see how my blog world has very few degrees of separation; but then, that's true for the entire art world, where three degrees will probably take you back to the Cave Painters). In the fall we're going to be in a show called "Calculated Color," curated by the painter Jane Lincoln, at the Higgins Gallery on Cape Cod. Oh, and we're both part of the Geoform.project, along with Lyda Ray, below. Full disclaimer, yo.

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John Tallman, Color Stack, 2007, polyurethane resin, 1o x 10 inch diameter

Tallman is a painter and sculptor for whom materiality is essential. Indeed, you can't disentangle the painter from the sculptor any more than you can disentangle the color from the form. Visit his website and his Color Chunks blog to see what I mean. I don't know him, but when I found his blog I felt an instant affinity for what he's doing.

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Bill Gusky, Crush, 2007, enamel on urethane, 21 x 19 inches

I didn't know Bill until we we showed together in the Blogger Show, organized by John Morris, in the East Village last fall. That's when I saw this painting and purchased it for my collection. (More no degrees.) I've still not actually met him, so I don't actually know him, but I feel as if I do, partly because I wake up to his painting every morning and partly because I read his blog, Artblog Comments, regularly. Anyway, I like the way Bill combines color and form and material. See more at Bill Gusky.com

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Lynda Ray, Float Copper, encaustic on panel, 14 x 18 inches

I was introduced to Lynda's work when I was looking at images for my book, the The Art of Encaustic Painting. Her slides vibrated right out of the envelope. Like John Tallman and Bill Gusky, above, Lynda mixes color, form (via sensuously slathered paint) and materiality--and she maintains a geometric sensibility as well. See more on Lynda Ray Art.com

I suppose "Friends of Mr. Biv" will become a recurring feature on this blog. Stay tuned.

Awash in Color: "No Chromophobia"

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Updated 6.17.08

I've been gone a while. Sorry, busy (I was directing a painting conference in Massachusetts). But now that I’ve shifted down from warp speed to a more comfortable sub-orbital cruising velocity, I can get back to this series, which is about color.

This post is about “No Chromophobia,” an exhibition of non-objective color on view at OK Harris Works of Art through September 6 (with a hiatus July 12 –September 1). I’m in the show, so consider this an exhibitor’s report.

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Installation view: This is what you see when you walk into the first gallery of "No Chromophobia" at OK Harris. Geometry rules in a cool tonal palette that's more subdued here than in the other rooms. Image courtesy of the gallery

The work of the artists, from left: Cora Roth, Rella Stuart-Hunt, Yuko Shiraishi, Kazuko Inoue, Pat Lipsky

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Above: First gallery, from left. Pat Lipsky, Kazuko Inoue, Rebecca Salter, Marthe Keller

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Below: Keller, Louise P. Sloane

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First of all, it’s an enormous show. All six exhibition spaces are filled with works from 33 primarily mid-career artists who are represented by several works each. (The gallery website features a rotating selection of installation shots, which changes weekly.)

It’s a painting show. If you left the Biennial hungry for, well, anything besides junk in the hallway, this is the antidote.

And by design, it’s a show of work primarily by women artists, so if you left “Color Chart” at MoMA wondering where the other half of the art world was, voila. But let me state flat out that it’s not a “women’s show” any more than Color Chart was a “men’s show.” Still, I like the numbers—and the work—here.

The enormous two front galleries hold the larger work, from Pat Lipsky’s dark-toned geometry to Rebecca Salter’s subtly textured monochrome to higher-key color fields by Marthe Keller and Louise P. Sloane. Sloane's more saturated palette, along with the room's strong sense of geometry, carry you into the second gallery where more highly chromatic work by Sharon Brant, Paula Overbay, Diane Ayott, Rose Olson and others dominates.

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Above: From the first gallery, looking into the second. From left: Mary Obering, Doug Ohlson, Yuko Shiraishi

Below: In the second gallery looking back into the first. Those are Sharon Brant's paintings flanking the doorway in Gallery 2

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Above: This view (image courtesy of OK Harris) will orient you around the second gallery, continued below:

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In the second gallery. From left: Li Trincere, Joan Mellon, Diane Ayott, Mellon again, Mary Obering

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.In the second gallery: Joanne Klein, Rose Olson, Jean Wolff, Li Trincere

There is a visual narrative in the exhibition that takes you from large and minimal to smaller and more compositionally complex, so that by the middle room (ego alert: where my own work is installed) there’s a mix of the two, moving to more compositional abstraction in the smaller back gallery. By the time you reach the large back room, size—small—is the overriding element, with a range of visual expression in evidence.

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Third Gallery: I know this room. From left: a grid of nine of my Silk Road paintings, each 12 x 12 inches, encaustic on panel (I showed earlier work from this series in a small solo show at the gallery last year); Uttar 238, encaustic on panel, 36 x 36 inches; an assembled work on paper by Siri Berg

(A large, fluid composition by Margaret Neill, also in this room, is not shown here, but it's on the gallery homepage, take a look )

Below: My painting, Berg's work, and an installation by Cathleen Daley

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On the wall to the right of Daley's work: fluid geometries by Julie Gross on either side of a poured color field by Kate Beck.

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Steven Alexander, a painter whose work could easily have been at home in this show, wrote cogently about it, noting: “There is a conspicuous absence of irony—these artists are engaged in painting not as pastiche, but as a deeply intelligent exploration of visual and tactile properties. In addition to the focus on color, the show is unified and driven by reductive form, and what could be described as succinct construction— delicate balancing of the analytical and the sensuous— surfaces and objects that are beautifully and specifically crafted, infused with sagacious knowledge of the medium and the language, with absolutely no fluff: direct painting, deceptive in its simplicity.”

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On the long wall in the back room: Paula Overbay, two small vertical works by Rose Olson, two by Soonae Tark, one of my grids, Doug Ohlson, another by Overbay.

(The installation in the back room has changed somethat since I shot this; check the gallery homepage, and in the rotating images you'll see that it's now Overbay, two by Olson, me, and another Olson)

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The size of this show alone would make it impressive, but the selection is beautifully curated and installed. Viewing this show, I have been introduced to the work of artists whose work is new to me, just as I have had the chance to see new work by artists whose work is familiar. Happily, we are awash in shows about color right now--what little miracle seeded the ether to compel so many gallerists to focus on hue at the same time?--and I am honored to be part of this one.

The show was curated and designed by Richard Witter, the gallery’s long-time installer, and managed by Suzanne Kreps, the gallery manager. The two knew it would be an abstraction show, but the parameters shifted this way and that as they made studio visits and tossed around ideas. The focus on non-objective color sharpened slowly--and independently of all the other color-themed exhibitions.

The idea took a more concrete form a year ago January in the "cold and bleak" dead of winter, recalls Witter: "I needed a shot of Jules Olitski." Instead he purchased two little brilliantly hued gouache abstractions at a small gallery in Chelsea, and that started him thinking about color as subject, as object.

Another parameter was materials. "I knew I wanted traditional tools and supports--the brush, canvas, panels, paint, artists colors," he says. And another: a reductive sensibility. "I wanted [the show] to be a portrait of color." But get close and look at those surfaces--tactile, sensuous, sublime. The art world may be growing younger by the minute, but paint handling like this develops over time.

If the Chelsea sirens have pulled you away from SoHo of late, let the chromatic call of this show bring you back downtown.

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And Now A Rant

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Has anyone see that new document produced by the NEA? Artists in the Workforce 1990-2005.

I was all excited about it, until I got their "executive summary"--a brochure of "key findings." What I wanted was the 135 page PDF document. That's what I thought I was getting (silly me); I guess the gov doesn't want to use the ink and paper any more than I do. Still, it's a pretty expensive brochure, and I’ll bet the PDF printed on cheap photocopy paper would have cost less.

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I wonder how much the survey cost—as opposed to actually funding artists-- because I could have pretty much filled out the "key findings" in the brochure based on what I know of myself and my colleagues. Some facts from the survey:

. Artists remain in highly concentrated urban areas. So do galleries, art fairs and collectors. Quel surprise.

. Artists are 3.5 times more likely than other workers to be self-employed. Well, duh. Unless you’re doing a community mural, or you’re Mark Kostabi, who else is going to be making your art?

And now for some real shockers. Ready?

. Artists generally earn less than workers with similar levels of education. And here you though you were raking in more than your lawyer, accountant, doctor, dentist, or barista. Really, when was the last time your surgeon said to you, “I can remove your gallbladder on Wednesday night or over the weekend, but the rest of the time I’m behind the counter at Pearl Paint.”

. Women remain underrepresented in several artist occupations. The survey is talking about architects and announcers. (Announcers?? Call me out of touch, but since when did “Heeeere’s Johnny” become an art form??) Here’s the real fact that isn’t mentioned: There is a greater percentage of women in art schools, but a greater percentage of male artists go on to have gallery representation, solo shows and critical coverage. That’s "underrepresented." (To be fair, maybe this information is in the PDF, but how do you peruse a 135-page document on line?)

And here are some facts that are just not clear:
. One-third of all artists work fewer than 50 weeks a year. . . . and . . . 28 percent of artists work for less than 35 hours a week. Perhaps that’s because they’re also working a 40-hour, full-time, income-producing job that may or may not be art related; or they’re juggling freelance work or several part-time jobs before they can actually get into their studios to make art? So in fact, I would say that three-thirds of all artists are working closer to 70 or 80 hours a week.

Let me close with a quote from Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts: “From global exports to local investments, the new American economy depends on imagination, innovation, and creativity, and those are the skills that artists develop, nurture, and promote. Isn't it time that the nation notices?”

Bravo! But, dude, put your money where your mouth is. Isn’t it time that the NEA started funding artists again?

Awash in Color: Karl Benjamin on Geoform

Karl Benjamin, #6, 1990, oil on canvas, 48 x 60 inches. These images courtesy of the artist and Louis Stern Fine Arts, via Geoform

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Karl Benjamin, a founding father of geometric abstraction, is the subject of a newly posted, long and in-depth interview with Geoform editor Julie Karabenick.

"Quite early on, I began to develop a strong sense of shapes and the areas in between them," says Benjamin early in the interview. A lively discussion ensues, along with five decades' worth of images--including one of his studio as seen from his home. Look for it. ("I've alway been able to see my paintings through windows in my house, says the artist. "I'd keep a light on in the studio so I could see the paintings any time I needed to settle down.")

"He is simply the most wonderful, generous man, " writes Karabenick in the course of an e-mail correspondence with me. "He has helped so many younger artists, as well as having an amazing art career. I have a very deep respect for him and am glad to see he's starting to get more recognition on the East Coast--of course, he's an icon on the West. "

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A recent portrait of the artist in front of I.F. Big Magenta with Green, 1959, oil on canvas, 40 x 50 inches.

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Awash in Color: Roy G. Biv and Friends

Philipp Otto Runge's Farbenkugel

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I came across this nice post about color wheels and globes in Steven La Rose's blog. He showed a great image and provided a link to a German-language site about historical color systems which I followed, thinking I'd pull a different image for this post. Well, Steven selected the best one. And I'm not going to settle for second best, so I've pulled the same one. I love how the artist conceived the color wheel as a globe, with the true colors at the equator moving toward tints and tones at the poles.

Here are a few others images:

Two color pyramids: Tobias Mayer's Farbendreieck, above

Johann Henrich Lambert's Farbenpyramide, below, tints you dimensionally toward white as the pyramid reaches its apex

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Wilhelm von Bezold's Farbentafel is more conventional, but still quite lovely

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While we're talking Roy G. Biv, let me show you images of several contemporary artists for whom color is the primary element: Steven Alexander from Pensylvania, Kate Beck from Maine, and Rose Olson from Massachusetts. Consummate colorists all, whatever theory they learned was absorbed long ago, and what emerges now is its pure intuitive application. (See more on their own websites and blogs, accessed by the live link on their names.)

Steven Alexander, Slave To Love, 2007, acrylic on canvas, 72 x 54 inches

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Kate Beck, Canyon. Red, oil on canvas, 46 x 46 inches

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Rose Olson, Falling Sky, 2005, acrylic on bird's eye maple plywood, 35 x 22 inches

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What, and you thought I wouldn't include my own work here? Roy G. Biv is a close buddy of mine, too. These are two new small paintings from "Silk Road," an ongoing series of small grid-based color fields. I wrote about "Silk Road" in my first post for this blog. The work has developed incrementally over time, but my thoughts about it have not. It's always about hue.

Joanne Mattera, Silk Road 106, above, and Silk Road 103, below; both 2008, encaustic on panel, 12 x 12 inches

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Awash in Color: Sotto Voce and Music of Silence

"Through color I identify completely with space. I am really and truly liberated." --Yves Klein

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"Sotto Voce" at Yvon Lambert, through June 7

Above: Lucio Fontana, Concetto Spaziale, Attese, 1964-65; and Yves Klein, IKB#171, 1960

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.Shhhhhh is the theme for this post. The color at Yvon Lambert is "Sotto Voce," Italian for under one's breath. The show is about monochromatic work. Yves Klein's blue is not exactly quiet and neither are some of the other works in the show, but in a strong season of dashing color worked forcefully hue against hue, monochrome--even as insistent and saturated as Klein's--comes across as understated. A palette cleanser, so to speak.

The Yvon Lambert gallery on 21st Street, now a beautifully illuminated, museum-like space, features an exhibition of works related to the idea of one color as object and presence. Some of the works are by artists long gone--Fontana and Klein, for instance--but other works were created in 2007 or 2008 specifically for this show. Looking around the gallery, I'd say that the works are not so much in conversation with one another but engaged in compatible monologs. I've posted a few installation shots, but the show is up through June 7, so you have a chance to see it for yourself.

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.Foreground at Yvon Lambert: Pierre Soulanges, Peinture, 2007, acrylic on canvas, 103.54 x 71.25 (there are subtleties here, and the gallery website shows them)

Far wall: Enrico Castellani, Superficie Bianca, 2004, and Superficie Rossa, 2007; both acrylic on canvas, 59.06 x 59.06 inches

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...At Yvon Lambert: Christopher Wool, one of several Untitled works from 2007, silkscreen ink on paper, 72 x 55 inches; and Gunther Uecker, Quiet Voice, 2008, white paint on nails on canvas on wood

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I love the irony of Uecker's Quiet Voice, above right. The painting consists of nails hammered into a wood substrate. Gives new meaning to "deafening silence," no? From a distance, when I believed I was seeing just dots, I thought I was seeing a work by Kusama. She's also in the show, but I don't have an image, and the gallery website's Flash system doesn't let me pull any images. But you can see Kusama's work, plus that of the other artists in the show who are not included in this post--Brice Marden, Francois Morellet, Robert Morris and Lee Ufan--and installation shots on the gallery website. This is a show that invites sustained looking. I wish there were more benches to allow it.

Continuing the monochrome theme, we move uptown to Galerie Mourlot on East 79th Street, just off Fifth, where Susan Schwalb has a small solo show, "Music of Silence: Metalpoint Paintings and Drawings," up through June 21 (had been May 31; now it's extended for almost another month).

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...Susan Schwalb at Galerie Mourlot: Music of Silence V, 2007, acrylic and silverpoint on wood, 24 x 24 x 2 inches

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Schwalb has a similar agenda but a different effect. It is the contemplation of listening that seems to have motivated these works. And while we are contemplating Schwalb's expression of sound, there is, of course, much to see. Horizontal bands sit lightly atop a more or less monochrome surface, beneath which are revealed layers of color, some surprisingly strong. The bands suggest the cadence of music but also the strata of things, an effect heightened by the way the color is sanded to reveal the underlayers. There's a nice tension between the tranquil surface and the glimpses of what appear to be anything but. Maybe I'm reading too much into the work; formally these are beautiful compositions in which slight variations in the horizontal create pianissimo and fortissimo with the volume turned low.

Schwalb works in acrylic paint and silverpoint, so as she sands away the acrylic surface, she also adds to it via the veil-like ribbons of metal she lays down--silver, copper, bronze or gold. Simply dragging a small bar of metal across the surface will deposit an ephemeral layer of the stuff. Silverpoint, used conventionally for drawing (lead, too, is a metal) here becomes something like a brush.

You can see more of Schwalb's work on the Galerie Mourlot website, or on Schwalb's own website where the catalog is available as a PDF file.

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Awash in Color: Carlos Estrada Vega, Olaf Nicolai

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Entrance to Carlos Estrada Vega: Compostions and Drawings at Margaret Thatcher Projects, April 10-May 17

Below: a topside view of the cube, Carlitos, 2008. Estrada Vega has been mining the colored grid in low relief, but this is the first time I've seen him take it into three dimensions so dramatically

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The two shows I'm reporting on today--Carlos Estrada Vega at Thatcher Projects, and Olaf Nicolai at Carolina Nitsch Project Room--are now over. In a strong season of color, both offered some of the strongest, most saturated hues from totally different perspectives, yet each artist offered viewers the opportunity to interact with color in a tangible way--Estrada Vega through the sheer materiality of this work; Nicolai through the physical act of handling it.

Estrada Vega, whom I've written about in the past (Playing with Blocks in the now-dormant Two Artists Talking), creates paintings that are in fact low-relief sculptures. He paints tiny, canvas-covered cubes with wax paint --not encaustic, but something waxy and painty called "oleopasto"-- attaches a magnet to the bottom of the painted cube, and then affixes the magnetized cube to a metal plate. His paintings thus consist of hundreds, possibly thousands, of cubes so affixed. Presumably compositional decisions can be made during the process of affixing the cubes, so that "painting" becomes something like a game of chess. I like everything about this work: the geometry of the grid, the pulse-quickening sensuousness of the color, the intense materiality of each work, and the energy that surrounds it--not only the force that holds each compositional element to its substrate, but the almost palpable energy that remains from the process of painting and placing, painting and placing.

Two closer shots of the views visible from the entrance:

Above: Marzo, 2008, and Junipero, 2005; Below: Maceo, 2005

At the Carolina Nitsch Project Room, color was a tangible, touchable object: a book. Hundreds of books, 400 to be precise, in hundreds of chromatic combinations. White cotton gloves were laid out, so you could don them and (carefully, very carefully) leaf through the pages. Because they were books, I experienced right-brain color in a kind of left-brain way. In other words, I had a whole-brain experience. Never has conceptual art been so concrete. And so sensually satisfying. Oh, the title of the show was Considering a Multiplicity of Appearances in Light of a Particular Aspect of Relevance. Or: Can Art Be Concrete. So it can.

Nicolai, who was a name new to me, used Iris