Joanne Mattera Art Blog: February 2013

2.24.2013

Canvasing the Neighborhoods:

Giorgio Griffa, Fragments 1968 – 2012
and Sharon Butler, Precisionist Casual

Giorgio Griffa, detail of Linee orizzontali

Sharon Butler, detail of Vent

This is a tale of two solo exhibitions representing two continents, two artists of different generations, two time periods, two different scales and two New York City neighborhoods. What unites them is the way the artists use their canvas—unprimed and largely unstretched—and the linearity of their work.

Installation view walking into the gallery, with Obliquo foreground and Strisce orizzontali

We start with Giorgio Griffa’s Fragments at Casey Kaplan, up through March 2. Back in October, Griffa’s show was up all of one day before the flood waters rose. It is heartening to see the gallery in pristine condition again and the work back up on the walls. I could be flip and describe this 72-year-old Italian artist as the lovechild of Agnes Martin and Morris Louis, but they were all contemporaries and he was doing the work of his time, the late Sixties and the Seventies, as he painted acrylic onto unprimed canvas.
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I love the provisional quality of the presentation: the grid of the folded canvas against the handpainted stripes, the loose threads at the edges, the way the canvas pinned to the wall stretches slightly at the top corners. Of course “provisional” wasn’t the term when he was making the work, but the term translates well to now and his paintings from that time feel contemporary in a way that Louis's do not. (Martin is, of course, timeless.)

Strisce orizzontali (Horizontal Stripes), 1976

Installation view in second gallery, with Strisce orizzontali in the distance

In this panoramic installation view, we move counterclockwise to focus on Linee orizzontali, center

Below: Isolated view of Linee orizzontali (Horizontal lines), 1973 . . .

. . . and the Louis-esque corner detail repeated from the image that opens this post

Back in the first gallery, heading out, with Linea spezzata at left

Below: Full view of Linea Spezzata (Broken line), 1974. Image from the gallery website

While Griffa’s practice has been consistent (he describes it as “constant and never finished”, adhering to “the memory of material”), to my eye, the newer work, more gestural—see it on the website—doesn’t have the power of his oeuvre from the Seventies. But go see for yourself. The exhibition is up through March 2. And if you can’t get to the gallery, visit it online.

View from the street of Pocket Utopia on the LES

From Chelsea we move to the Lower East Side to view Sharon Butler’s Precisionist Casual at Pocket Utopia. The exhibition, now over, features similar provisional ideas in brand-new work (all dated 2013) in smaller scale by an American artist of the generation after Griffa. Stretchers are visible, the canvas stapled but not actually pulled taut. Selvedges, frayed edges and wrinkles insinuate themselves into the work, not so much in defiance of painting’s conventions but as an extension of them.

Butler’s subject matter is urban and industrial, combining the linearity of grids with the shapes of geometric abstraction. If Griffa is related to Martin and Louis, I’d describe Butler, author of the well-read Two Coats of Paint, as Rauschenberg’s headstrong daughter, forging new paths in not-unfamiliar territory.

I'm going to take you around the galler clockwise. The work at far left in this image is the one you see in the window, above, and in the full view below

Egress, 2013; pigment, silica binder, staples on linen, 12 x 12 inches. Image from the gallery website

Casual grouping on the gallery desk as we continue around the room

Working our way to the back wall . . .

. . . and continuing around toward the front of the long narrow space. The blue light of late afternoon coming in through the window hits against the gallery's yellower illumination. Individual works from this wall are shown below

Yellow and Silver HVAC (stencil), 2013, pigment on canvas, 24 x 18 inches

Orange and Silver Vent, 2013; pigment, silca binder and staples on laundered linen

Vent, 2013; pigment, silica binder, staples on laundered inen, 12 x 12 inches

Soacked (Hurricane), 2013, pigment and silica linen tarp, 18 x 24 inches

You can see all of the images in the exhibition here.

2.20.2013

Suzan Frecon: "Paper" at David Zwirner

Orange and Purple Composition, 2011, watercolor on Indian ledger paper

There's something appealing about seeing small work in a large space. The individual pieces are dwarfed, requiring you to move in close. Intimacy in a large space seems like an oxymoron, but Suzan Frecon's watercolors--reductive compositions on Indian ledger paper--simultaneously assert themselves while letting you in.

The last time I wrote about Frecon's work, she was showing large paintings. Her reductive swipes and near monochrome palette are familiar, but these watercolor-on-paper works feel more contemplative. The gallery radiates a beauteous calm.

Suzan Frecon: Paper is up through March 23 at David Zwirner, 525 W. 19 St.

View into the main gallery with Orange and Purple Composition second from left

Below: Dark Red with Vermillion, 2010, watercolor on Indian ledger paper, at far right in photo above

View looking back toward gallery entrance

Orange b, 2012, water on Indian ledger paper, shown at right on center wall

Small gallery off the entrance. The painting on the far wall is shown below

Cathedral Series, Variation 10. 2012

This is one of three small paintings in the exhibition, oil on wood panel. I'm pretty sure the paint is mineral pigment suspended in oil, which gives the surface an almost enamel hardness and gloss

Below: Painting Plan Drawing for a Large Painting, 2004

2.05.2013

Looking at Blogs

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Yeah, yeah, I know I haven't been my usual prolific blog self lately. Sometimes life gets in the way, so today I'm aggregating a few blog posts I read regularly. But this is an interactive post. I also want to know what blogs you read--or which posts from these blogs you particularly liked.

Updated 2.12: Scroll for links to additional blogs provided by readers

Studio Critical
Author: Valerie Brennan
Description: "This blog is about process, practice and getting to know a little bit more about what painters get up to in the studio."
Current post: New York Painter Leslie Wayne
"I generally have around 5 or 6 panels going on at a time, but they don’t all require the same amount of focus and deliberation. Some paintings simply need another layer of color applied and left to dry, where others call for some sort of resolution."
Image: Leslie Wayne, Untitled (yelloworangeteal),2013, oil on wood; here, detail

. Mario Naves and Brett Baker at Elizabeth Harris Gallery
" Where Naves paints thin and elegantly hard edge, keeping his lively images on the surface, Baker goes thick and clotty, creating small-scale blocks of abstraction, seemingly squeezed directly from the tube. Baker's paintings are darker and more obsessive than Naves, and they suggest that he is entertaining a philosophical question, trying to convince himself that, despite all practical evidence to the contrary, meaning resides in the process. And so he continues--we all do."