Grids and Lattices

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Grids viewed through a grid: Mary Heilmann's Two Lane Blacktop, up through February 21, at 303 Gallery (the gallery has a no-photo policy, but that doesn't extend to the sidewalk). This exhibition follows her fabulous show at The New Museum

If you read this blog even ocasionally, you know I go looking for geometry and grid-based abstraction. But sometimes even I’m astonished by the synchronous appearance of so many really good exhibitions on one theme. I'm a bit late with this post; between Marketing Mondays and Blogpix (see sidebar also) my posting time has been tight. While some of the shows are down, many live on in the galleries' respective websites. Let me connect some dots for you:

Robert Irwin's Red Drawing, White Drawing, Black Painting installation at Pace Wildenstein, up through February 28.

"What I'm trying to do is eliminate the frame . . and put you in direct relationship to the real power, which is your ability to perceive, " Irwin has said

Irwin's work, fluorescent lights in a non-repeating grid installed on large walls, is shown above and below

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Light without the electricity: Susie Rosmarin at Danese.
The show ended February 7, but the wattage is undiminished. Rosmarin's meticulously crafted paintings draw on op art, hard-edge abstraction and even textile pattern

Above: detail of the acrylic painting shown below



Installation view: Susie Rosmarin at Danese

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Thornton Willis at Elizabeth Harris. This is a peek at Willis's upcoming show, March 19-April 18

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Imi Knoebel at Mary Boone Gallery, Chelsea. The show ended February 14.

Knoebel makes dimensional paintings, or planar sculpture, whose inviting hues and slight dimension create an almost cinematic viewing experience.

And how perfect is that architectural echo?

All the works are wall size except these three below:

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Unexpected:

On the way top MoMA, I saw the grid, above, in the subway.

When I got to the museum and looked down into the atrium, there was the grid in progress below. Sol Lewitt channeling Agnes Martin?

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Everything is Illuminated

Other posts about the New York art fairs:
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. Big Black Objects

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. Quirky

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. Painting: Linearity, Angularity, Materiality, Color

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. Peripheral Visionary

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. Painting: Not Always About Size
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. Tangible Poetry

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. Strung Out

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Ai Wei Wei at Mary Boone, 24th Street

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Two views, above and just below, of what looks like a giant chandelier that wafted to earth and fell slightly awry . . .

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This is the last post from the New York fairs. It seems I've saved the brightest for last. To be honest, I wasn't aware of the amount of physical (and retinal) resplendence on exhibition in the various venues until I started sorting through the images. I've even included a few works that weren't in the fair but that were shown in town during the same period, like the enormous sculpture that illuminated the darkened space of the Mary Boone Gallery, above and below. There's no formal theme here except luminosity, which, when you consider the range of ideas and objects on display during those four days at the end of March, is enough of a thematic concept. Do I love everything here? No. But I like seeing it all together.

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. . . I particularly liked looking into the structure of the piece, which suggested something like an interstellar array

Armory Show: Two views of a sculpture from Galleria Massimo De Carlo, Milan

The vertigo of this piece is exquisite, but the reality is that it's about four inches deep

The long entryway into Pulse

Pulse: Tim Bavington at Mark Moore Gallery, Santa Monica

The high-wattage luminosity is purely optical, both above and below:

Danese Gallery, 24th Street: Julian Stanczak

Armory Show: Pedro Cabrita Reis, The Leaning Paintings #4, at Magazzino d'Arte Moderna, Rome

Armory Show: Marxist message or a vodka ad? At Erna Hecey Gallery, Brussels/Luxembourg

Armory Show: John Armleder at Galleria Massimo De Carlo, Milan

OK, so this might be the love child of Morris Louis and My Little Pony. But it certainly holds it own within the parameters of this post

Armory Show: Martin Creed at Hauser & Wirth, Zurich/London

And this about sums it up

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On the Geometric Trail: Part Three

On the Geometric Trail, in Chelsea
On the Geometric Trail, Part Two: SoHo


We’re back on the Geometric Trail. (Previous posts can be linked, above.) This time we’re visiting Danese Gallery, where Warren Isensee has a show up until the 9th of this month.

On the far wall, Body and Soul, 2007, oil on canvas, 78 x 120 inches. Foreshortened at left, Bipolar Express. We'll swing around to a full view of that painting.

I’m not sure there’s a more perfect space for this work than Danese's skylighted aerie. The high ceilings and broad loft expanse create a welcoming environment for paintings that resonate so visually they seem to radiate off the walls and into the the room.

Isensee employs rectilinear shapes that he limns and relimns to create forms within forms. There’s both a textile sensibility (like a Navajo chief blanket) and an architectural structure to the work (columned temples, perhaps) that come together to create intimacy and grandeur at the same time. They’d be hallucinogenic except that the palette is grounded in saturated earthen hues—like Fiestaware without the kitsch. On second thought, forget trippy. Those celadons and ochres, sienas and corals are rubbing up against one another to the point of retinal orgasm. Ahem, chromatic fervor.

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Let's continue our spin around the large main gallery:

Body and Soul, again, leading to . . .

. . . Scenic Overlook, 2007, oil on canvas, 65 x 94 inches. In the small gallery, a peek at High Beam.

You can see all of these works on the Danese Gallery website

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Scenic Overlook in the foreground with New Construction, 2007 oil on canvas, 60 x 60 inches, on the far wall. Just to the right of New Construction is . . .

. . . a wall of framed colored pencil drawings. They're startling, because the are the line-by-line, color-by-color starting point for many of these big paintings. You can see the drawings for Body and Soul and New Construction second and third from left

This is not the best picture of a very fine painting (you can see the color much better on the gallery website), but I wanted to take you back to the starting point of our tour, where this painting was shown in greatly foreshortened perspective. It's Bipolar Express, 2007, oil on canvas, 48 x 72 inches

Part of the visual excitement of Isensee's painting comes as much from the quality of the line as from the juxtaposition of the colors. It looks as if he paints the stripes with a flat brush, sans tape, so the ever-so-slight line variations within each stripe combine to generate many more visual watts than hue or color placement alone could do.

Next time: Ted Larsen's small dimensional geometries at OK Harris in SoHo, and Sol Lewitt's wall drawing uptown at Vivian Horan Fine Art; then back to Chelsea for "Geometric Abstraction," a group show at McKenzie Fine Art.