Two Artists' Projects in the Blogosphere

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There are two interesting collaborative artists’ projects (that I know of) now taking place in Cyberspace in which visual artists are writing about art. Both projects involve artists who are geographically and conceptually diverse, and both broaden the conversation about art in a non-hierarchical way.

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Color Chunks

At Color Chunks, known for its images of chunks, bits, slices, balls, discs and sheets of color, artist John Tallman has just introduced his Artists Words project. Tallman has come up with a list of words that interest him and invited artists to write about one as it relates to their own practice. I’m involved in this project—in fact, I’m the first artist whose essay is posted (I wrote about "arrangement") — but I would have noted it anyway. The collusion, perhap collision, of artist and idea is sure to shed some light onto the creative process.

Tallman is adopting a laissez-faire approach to the written material he receives: "I'm more interested in observing how things shape themselves, rather than achieving some kind of coherence from the top down."

Root Temperature Chance Syntax Organization Sponges Posture Mess Transition Practice Temperature Series Correction Strategy

Some of the words from Tallman's list

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Artists Review Artists

Over at Thinking About Art, JT Kirkland launched his Artists Review Artists project on June 30. The idea is to give artists an opportunity to have their work viewed and reviewed by another artist. It’s an interesting concept and an open invitation: an artist submits an image and agrees to have it be reviewed, and in turn will then write a review. The pairings are not reciprocal; Kirkland arranges the matches.

You’ll see a range of work and read a range of reviews. Some reviews are more generous than others (and some, to be honest, are not that well written) but that diversity is part of what makes this project interesting. The project gives artists a chance to have their work considered critically. It's an opportunity for artists to emerge from the safety of their studios and proffer the work for comment--a huge step if you haven't done it before-- and, equally, to step outside the box to put word to image.

Gail Vollrath. Gas, 2007, oil, china marker on paper, 7.5 x 7 inches

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: Spectrum at Metaphor Contemporary

 

At Metaphor Contemporary Art in Brooklyn, Julie Gross (window) and Gabriele Evertz (back wall) pull you in

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A range of visual themes, linked by the use of color, is on exhibition at this show at Metaphor Contemporary Art in Brooklyn. The full title of the show is Spectrum: Four Painters Cover the Spectrum of Style and Color, and the announcement card on the door shows you that range. I am, of course, partial to Gabriele Evertz and Julie Gross, whose color is carried by geometry--or is it the other way around?

Evertz's optically charged paintings, large or small, are rigorous in their execution--technically perfect lines that set up retinal tension as the adjacent colors fight for assertion. The nearly wall-size work at the rear of the gallery was created specifically for this exhibition. Up close, the broad expanse of shimmering, vibrating color calls to you; you could fall into it, like Alice down the rabbit hole. Indeed, allowing yourself to do so--at least optically--results in a pleasant sense of spatial disorientation. From a distance the vibrational tension is muted so that the work exists as a shimmering color field.
Gross's work, with its oozy bubbles and droplets, is as sensuous as Evertz's is austere. The optical agitation in these paintings makes the elements appear to be moving. Are they pushing and squeezing one another or does it just appeat that way? Gross knows her color theory; hop on to see where it takes you.
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The four artists in Spectrum: Evertz, Margaret Neill, Gross and Elizabeth Terhune

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Gabriele Evertz. Four Reds and Ice Blues, acrylic on canvas, on the back wall; an installaton of smaller paintings in the foreground.

In the middle ground, paintings by Margaret Neill. This image from the gallery website
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A view from the mezzanine, above: That's Evertz in the bottom center of the frame. A painting by Margaret Neill is at left

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On the mezzanine, below: Four paintings on vellum by Julie Gross with paintings by Elizabeth Terhune and Neill in the distance. This image from the gallery website

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.Metaphor Contemporary Art is owned and run by two painters, Rene Lynch and Julian Jackson, whose passion for painting and painters is an almost palpable element of the gallery. The gallery itself is a dramatic high-ceilinged white box that opens onto Atlantic Avenue. If you haven't been there yet, go. Directions are on the gallery website. It's open on Sundays. And there's going to be an artists' talk on June 1, the last day of the show..

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Awash in Color

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Color Chart at MoMA: Donald Judd in the sixth-floor atrium

At Metaphor Contemporary, Brooklyn: Detail from Gabriele Evertz painting in Spectrum, up now

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New York is awash in color. Non-objective color. Grid-based color. Color fields. Geometric color. Sculptural color. Maybe it’s the gray economy. Maybe it’s just something in the Zeitgeist. Whatever the reason, these days it’s all about hue.

Just to cover the historical end of the spectrum, there are two big museum shows: Color as Field Field: American Painting, 1950-1975 at the Smithsonian, the first full show dedicated to the color field movement (OK, so the show's not in New York, but it's full of New Yorkers); and Color Chart: Reinventing Color from 1950 to Today at MoMA. Both are examinations of color from a certain time and place, which means that with just a few exceptions they were focused on male (chauvinist) pigment.

I saw Color Chart and reported on it. I have not seen Color as Field, but I bought the catalog and it's every bit as retinally stimulating as I had hoped. The show is in D.C. through the 26th and then goes to Nashville for the summer.

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Here, the only woman in Color as Field: Helen Frankenthaler, Flood, 1967, syntheric polymer on canvas, 124 x 140 inches. Image from the Internet

In Color Chart: Gerhard Richter, left. Ten Large Color Panels, 1966–71/72, lacquer on white primed canvas; 10 panels, each 98 7/16 x 37 3/8 inches.

Sherrie Levine, right. Salubra #4, 2007, oil on mahogany; 14 parts, each 27 x 24 inches

In Color Chart: Jennifer Bartlett. Equivalents, 1970, enamel over grid silkscreened onto baked enamel on steel plates, 116 x 25 inches. These three images from the MoMA website

Fortunately the gender spectrum is broader once you get outside the museum walls. A recent post (Painting: Linearity, Angularity, Materiality, Color) and series ( On the Geometric Trail ), both on this blog, cover a broad swath of color this year. And there's a ton of it in Chelsea right now.

As for the achromatic spectrum, Jasper Johns had Gray at the Met; Christopher K. Ho went gray at Winkleman Gallery; Valerie Jaudon had geometrically patterned white at Von Lintel Gallery.

Jasper Johns: Gray, at the Met: The Dutch Wives, 1975, encaustic and collage on canvas, two panels overall, 51.75 x 71 inches

At the Winkleman Gallery, January 10-February 9: Christopher K. Ho, room-size installation with figure

Valerie Jaudon at Von Lintel, March 6-April 12: Installation view. Image from the gallery website

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But enough looking back. I'm going to post sequentially--with this post as the first one, to retain the narrative.

Meanwhile, since you're on line you might do a little color surfing. Stop in at Minus Space, a site maintained by Matthew Deleget and Rossana Martinez, where you’ll find reductive color in astonishing variety; Geoform, a cyber collection of geometric abstraction, curated by Julie Karabenick; and Color Chunks, John Tallman's utterly quirky view of slab, blocks, chunks and pieces of color, plus his own related work.

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