Viva Chelsea, Part 4

Viva Chelsea, Part 1  

Viva Chelsea, Part 2

Viva Chelsea, Part 3

Marcus Linnenbrink, There Were Songs Before There Was Radio, 2012, pigments and epoxy resin on wood   

This is the last of the Viva Chelsea posts. Next week when I'm in Miami, A Connecticut Afternoon  will post automatically. After that, and through the month of December, I'll be posting from and about Miami.

Here you see two shows: Marcus Linnenbrink at Ameringer|McEnery|Yohe, There Were Songs Before There Was Radio (September 6- October 6), and Matthew Langley at Blank Space Gallery, Atlas, October 11-November 27.

Marcus Linnenbrink's work is about the experience of color. Opaque or transparent, it is layered, scooped or dripped, inviting the retina to seek out variations while basking in the pleasure of pure chromatic vibration. The paintings are sized from human scale, which invites eye-to-eye viewing--especially those scooped out semi-orbs--to monumental, offering the altogether pleasant experience of being immersed in hue.

 There Were Songs Before There Was Radio; and Last Known Surroundings, 2012, watercolor, pigments and epoxy resin on wood

To the right of the long horizontal painting we glimpse Linnenbrink's painted hallway

Below: Looking down the hallway

In the window at the front of the gallery, an enormous sculptural vessel

. . . . . .

Matthew Langley's solo at Blank Space--his first in New York City--is equal parts process and reductive poetry. Langley builds up a gridded image then scrapes it back to reveal a reductive geography of markings. The exhibition's title, Atlas, would suggest that each painting refers to a particular location, but the titles, like The Quiet Time and Velvet Days, refer to places that exist in a private longitude and latitude rather than on a mapped location. What you can't tell  from the images is that the surfaces have a richness that invites slow looking.

Installation view from the entrance to the gallery

Inventory, 2012

View from the back of the gallery looking toward the front, with IUnventory in the center of the frame