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2.23.2012

Hold the Color

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Harry Roseman, Enfold at Nancy Margolis Gallery, Chelsea; ended January 14


Continuing with the black-and-white theme from last week’s story on the photographs of  Vivian Maier, I’d like to show you work from several recent and current exhibitions. The unifying element is their achromatic palette.
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We start with an installation at Nancy Margolis Gallery in Chelsea by Harry Roseman. His show, Enfold, touched on themes of particular interest to me right now: the illusion of cloth, or the use textiles to create painting and sculpture. (This is the theme of Textility, my current curatorial effort, and when I saw Roseman’s work, all I could think was, “Damn, I wish I’d known about this work for the show.”) Roseman created a theatrical site-specific wall drawing, which is what you see in the opening photo above and from a different angle below, as well as a plywood sheet carved to suggest draped fabric, and draped fabric printed to look like plywood.
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Another view of Enfold

Next, in Dialogue with Light, we have what look to be large-scale photographs by the Norwegian artist Anne-Karin Furunes at Barry Friedman Ltd., also in Chelsea. They’re not photographs. Nor are they paintings, drawings, prints or tapestries in any conventional sense, though perhaps they touch on each of these disciplines. Furunes perforates black canvas with holes of various sizes. What’s not there creates the images as much as what is. So if anything, they’re like reverse rotogravure or halftone printing, with the white wall becoming part of the image. Their darkness, and the direct gaze of her subjects are compelling in equal measure.

Anne-Karin Furunes, Dialogue with Light, at Barry Friedman Ltd., Chelsea; ended January 14

Detail below


Extreme closeup: This geometry of dots creates a small section where hair meets cheek in the full image below
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 More installation views .
Below: Portraits of Archive Pictures IV/V, 2011, acrylic-painted canvas, perforated; 78 x 63 inches and 78 x 44 inches, respectively


I'm going to continue now without narrative, just showing you a range of work I found interesting:

Matt Duffin, Bright Ideas, 2010, encaustic on panel, 22 x 20 inches; at Arden Gallery, Boston; through February 28

Connie Goldman at OK Harris, SoHo; ended January 21
The small middle gallery provided a meditative space for this is quiet show of reductive paintings, geometrically shaped with planar dimension

Arena XIV, 26 x 26 x two depths
Detail of top right, below.


Margaret Evangeline, Cry Baby,  2011, oil on canvas, 90 x 114 inches, at Kim Foster Gallery, Chelsea; ended February 4. Click here for gallery info about the show

Detail below


Tom Burr, Sentimental Suture, 2011, wool blankets and steel tacks on wood, 71.5 x 71.5 inches; in December, group show organized by Howie Chen for Mitchell-Innes and Nach; ended January 21. Click here for images from the show

Detail below


Nancy Natale, The Black One, 2011; tar paper, book parts, treated aluminum, oilstick, tacks, encaustic on panel; 36 x 36 x 1.75 inches; at the Bing Arts Center, Springfield, Mass., through April 7

Installation view below


Gerald Ferguson, Work, a career survey, at Canada, Lower East Side; ended February 19. Click here for gallery images of the show

Above: Untitled, 1969, enamel on canvas, 57 x 68 inches
Detail below

Peter Liversidge, Where We Begin, at Sean Kelly Gallery, Chelsea; through January 28

Ai Weiwei, Sunflower Seeds, at Mary Boone Gallery, Chelsea; ended February 5

Related to the exhibition at the Tate modern in 2010, Sunflower Seeds was a five-ton field of tiny porcelain sculptures, each hand painted. There was no walking on the seeds here, however; it was strictly view-from-the-perimeter. As with most of Ai's work, this installation was political in nature. Let me quote from the press release:
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"The sunflower, with its destiny to follow the sun, became a common metaphor for The People during China’s Cultural Revolution. At the same time, the seeds of the flower provided sustenance at all levels of society, and the ubiquitous discarded husks provided evidence of an individual’s existence. Ai Weiwei demonstrates that a staggering quantity of individual seeds may produce a deceptively unified field. The work is a commentary on social, political and economic issues pertinent to contemporary China: the role of the individual versus the masses, and China’s long history of labor-intensive production and export."  Click here for additional info about the show.

Detail below

6 comments:

harold hollingsworth said...

when I was in NYC in December I saw the Harry Roseman show, fantastic stuff! Simple and well done! Love this post, wonderful highlights and great to focus on what I always think of as the founding blocks of any work, being able to reduce it to black and white.

Nancy Natale said...

Thanks so much for including my work in your post, Joanne. You put it in great company with some fascinating and innovative pieces.

ska said...

All were fascinating; so much diversity within such black/white parameters,, wow. Where do you find the time and energy to put this together? Thanks for bringing NY to Richmond. All this art expands my horizons and challenges me as an artist.ska

Stephanie Clayton said...

Fascinating. Sometimes it's refreshing and calming to have a break from color - something I do from time to time with my own work.

Kesha Bruce said...

The Harry Roseman work makes me wanna break out a box of crayons and Evangeline paintings are so lush they make me happy to be a painter.

Thanks for sharing!

Arden said...

Thank you for these fabulous images. I would have liked to see all of this work in person. So glad to be made aware of it.
- Zola Solamente