My New Best Friends

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Joanne Mattera, Diamond Life, 2010, encaustic on panel, 17 x 17 inches

See an installation shot here (scroll down until you come to it)

I am really excited about my diamonds. No, not those shiny compressed carbon things. My new paintings. Of course I was aware of the shape (Noland's canvases are classic), but it's something else again when you take your own work, skew it, and see how the visual energy changes as those corners start pushing into the space beyond their borders as well as reorienting your attention to the field within in.

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And wouldn’t you know that as soon as I turned my square 45 degrees, I started to see a ton of other art out there with the same skew, as well as rhomboids with varying degrees of elongation. I love when that happens.

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Say hello to some of my gems and a few of my new best friends.

Working installation on my studio wall, of Soie, gouache on Arches 140 hot-press, each 22 x 30 inches, with a few individual shots below:
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Soie 14


Soie 4


Soie 22

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I saw most of the following works in a span of a couple of days while I was making my rounds in Chelsea, but to curate the post more fully I photographed a Brancusi and a Mondrian while at MoMA, pulled two from the Internet, and went back into my archives for another.
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Brent Birnbaum, from the exhibition Used Books, organized by Ryan Frank, at the Curatorial Research Lab at Edward Winkleman through October 9
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Polly Apfelbaum, Off Colour, an installation at D'Amelio Terras, through October 23.
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James Lahey, installation view of Guido's Rhombus, at J. Cacciola, through October 31.
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Sol Lewitt at James Cohan (it's been up in the back gallery for a few months)
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Ken Sofer, Twaek, 2010, acrylic on wood, 29.5 x23.5 inches at the Howard Scott Gallery 25th Anniversary Exhibition, through October 16.
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Larry Zox, acrylic on canvas, in the back gallery at the Stephen Haller Gallery
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Don Voisine, Weave, 2009, oil on wood, 16 x 26 inches, via the McKenzie Fine Art website (Read my report of the artist's 2009 solo here.).


Brancusi, Endless Column (Version 1), 1918, oak, at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City
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Grace DeGennaro, gouache on okawara paper, from her exhibition Return to the Source at the Clark Gallery, Lincoln, Mass., last year. (Read my report here)
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Ken Weathersby, 179 (twn L and R), 2010, acrylic paint film with removed area over wood scaffold over linen, each 24 x 19 shown together
(I shot this photo during a recent studio visit which will be the subject of a future post. Click here for better images on the artist's website)
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Julie Karabenick, Composition 92, 2010, acrylic on canvas, 45 x 45 inches; image from David Richard Contemporary Art, Santa Fe.

Mondrian, Tableau 1: Losenge with Four Lines and Gray, 1926, oil on canvas, at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City

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