Five Shows in Chicago

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The first weekend of November I was in Chicago, where I took in a raft of gallery shows in River North. Then I visited the new wing of the Chicago Institute, crossing the Renzo Piano-designed bridge from there to Millennium Park, where Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate, aka "The Bean," was attracting hoardes of artists and tourists. In an end-of-year roundup I’ll show you images from those latter venues, but in this post I’m focusing on the gallery shows —five of them, many still up.

My primary intention was to see the new paintings of my good friend Julie Karabenick, editor of Geoform, which I've mentioned numerous times as an international online gathering of abstract geometric art. Her solo of ordered and harmonious geometries is in the small space at Melanee Cooper Gallery, where another friend, Kathleen Waterloo has the main exhibition space. Both shows are up through December 30.

On the way over I stopped into Perimeter Gallery, where Lia Cook’s work held the large front gallery. Then, just around the corner from Melanee Cooper, I stopped in at Jackie Tileston’s show at ZG Gallery (through December 31) and then Eric Blum (through January 2) at the David Weinberg Gallery.

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Jackie Tileston at ZG Gallery
Tileston’s show, Mesocosmos II, consists of paintings, photographs and drawings. The photographs, taken in India, relate to and in some instances appear to have influenced the paintings. The installation reflects these relationships. I’ve written about the Philadelphia-based Tileston before, so here I would just add that her work embraces beauty, mystery and transcendence without ignoring the harsher realities of earthly life.

Peeking into the just-below-street-level space: The Transcendent Who Superintends Reality of the Highest Three Heavens Jade Talisman and Contractual Writ of the Unifying Circlet, oil and mixed media on linen, 72 x 60

Detail below:

Entering the gallery:

Cosmographic Tendency, oil and mixed media on linen, 48 x 60, above; with closer view of the photograph, below
(I love the fiery orange that appears in both images)

Installation view in the second gallery

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Kathleen Waterloo at Melanee Cooper
The Chicago-based artist is on a mission, as the title of her show, Map Quest, suggests. Using her studio as a starting point, Waterloo has Mapquested the directions to some two dozen art museums around the country in which she would like to be shown. Then she created paintings and neon sculptures that incorporated the trail. Wishful thinking, perhaps. But then the journey of 1000 miles begins with one step, doesn't it? Here those first steps are paintings and neon sculptures.

Looking up into the gallery

Below: Waterloo Mapquests her way via paint and neon

Waterloo: BAM (Boise Art Museum), 2009, encaustic on panel, 42 x 48 inches; with Karabenick show in the gallery beyond

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Julie Karabenick at Melanee Cooper

In Just Around the Block, Ann Arbor-based Karebenick’s work has taken a Mondrianic turn. Always rigorous, here it channels boogie-woogie energy but with a meditative palette, so that as you view the work you get a sense of movement in slow motion. The grid is the basis of each painting, which is divided into more-or-less equal quadrants; within each quadrant are shifts in hue and value that ignite a retinally kinetic quality, like lights that blink. My suggestion: pull up a chair and spend the afternoon in this small gallery so that you can experience an ecstatic mind meld with the work.

Above and below: Two views of the gallery with Julie Karabenick's paintings, all from the Composition series

Karabenick: Composition 81, 2009, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 30 inches

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Lia Cook at Perimeter
With Dollface, Cook’s show at Perimeter Gallery which ended on November 14, you think you’re seeing large-scale digital prints. They’re not. They're weavings. But they are digital. Loom technology allows pixels to be translated into the under/over construction of cloth, so that image and textile are one. West Coast-based Cook draws from snapshots and family memories.

Installation view from gallery entrance. All work recent, woven in cotton and linen. (Sorry about the lack of info. I don't have a checklist and the gallery doesn't provide information online)


Closer view of the work on the far wall, above, with a detail:

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Eric Blum at David Weinberg Gallery
In an exhibition titled Infuse (with Hunt Rettig), the New York-based Blum shows atmospheric paintings that capture and diffuse light. Painted with beeswax on silk on panel (don’t ask; I'm not reporting on technique), the works suggest city lights photographed through mist at night—luminous and mysterious, a window into a little chunk of infinity.

N. 578, 2009; watercolor, beeswax and silk on panel, 51 x 77 inches

Detail below:

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GeoMetrics II at Gallery One Twenty Eight

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I spend so much of my time in Chelsea that going to the Lower East Side is like an out-of-town trip. I went there with map in hand. Not that I'm totally unfamiliar with the LES, I just don't have the order of streets in my mind the way I do other parts of the city. Allen? Chrystie? Essex? Orchard? I get confused.

But I do know Rivington Street. Geometrics II marks the third time I have been in a group show at Gallery OneTwentyEight, located at #128. (The first was in 1997 when Harmony Hammond curated Material Girls: Gender, Process and Abstract Art Since 1970; the second was two years later when Sylvia Netzer curated Pieces III, an exhibition of work made with substantially material means.)

These days, Rivington--east of Bowery and right around the corner from the New Museum--is smack in the middle of an area that is chockablock with new galleries: Sue Scott, Eleven Rivington, both on Rivington; Number 35 on Essex Street; Canada on Chrystie; and Invisible Exports on Orchard. Just to name a few.

Looking from front to back, before the gallery filled up

For Geometrics II, curator Gloria Klein selected 12 artists from the Geoform website. Geoform, as I've mentioned in the past, is a fabulous online resource dedicated to abstract geometric art maintained by Julie Karabenick. Gloria and Julie are two of the 12 artists in the show. The others are Steven Alexander, Laura Battle, Mark Dagley, Julie Gross, Michael Knutson, Bruce Pollock, Lynda Ray, Larry Spaid, Lorien Suarez and me. (Specifics on the sidebar, right.)

I'm not sure what drove Gloria's selections--because the work ranges from hard edged and mathematically inspired to intuitive and more organically developed, and from maximal to minimal--but you can see from the installation that it works. All the paintings are modest in size, in keeping with the gallery's modest (well, shoebox) proportions. Given the economic downturn, there was something comforting about the scale, though at one point artists and friends were packed in pretty much check by jowl.

You can see more on the gallery's website, and read an opinion of the show at Chris Rywalt's blog, NYC Art. So here just let me say that I loved the installation, and I'm delighted to be showing with these hard-working and accomplished mid-career artists.

The view as you enter: Counterclockwise, my two paintings, Vicolo 35 and Vicolo 36; Gloria Klein's mathematically complex and visually mesmerizing crystalline composition, Beach Umbrellas; Steven Alexander's ordered color blocks, Calypso Rose; Lynda Ray's two small patterned geometries, Float Copper and Driftway

The image above moves you around the gallery

Below, continuing counterclockwise: Bruce Pollock's almost monochrome circles within circles, Red Square Cluster; Michael Knutson's organic and mathematic composition, Crossing Oval Coils XII, which is so energetic it almost gives off sparks; Mark Dagley's 16-point circle, Distressed Orb; and Julie Gross's sensuous circles, Mirro-B

Two more views

Above: Following the counterclockwise movement from Lynda Ray's two paintings, there are two framed works from Larry Spaid, and Lorien Suarez's intersecting circles, Wheel Within a Wheel 28. (I think "intersecting" characterizes the curator's selections, as there are many points of connection between and among the works.)

Below: Julie Karabenick's Composition 78, 2008, acrylic on cancas, 30 x 30 inches, at far left, the last work as you swing around counterclockwise from the front door

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Curator Gloria Klein standing in front of her painting, Beach Umbrellas, 2007, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 30 inches



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Three of the artists from the show, above: Steven Alexander (in leather jacket), Michael Knutson barely visible behind him, and Larry Spaid. Foreground: painter Binnie Birstein with her back to the camera; background, sculptor Richard Bottwin



Curator Gloria Klein with her back to the camera. (The camera is looking to the front of the gallery.) .

Blogpix, The Show

Marketing Mondays will return to its regularly scheduled slot next week

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Click here for first Blogpix post

Click here for first Armory post, Show Me the Money

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Today and this week, I'll be posting pics from the Blogpix panel and reports from the various New York fairs.
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If you didn't attend the Blogpix opening, below is your first look at the show. I took these installation shots before the artists and their curators arrived for the opening on Thursday evening, March 5, at Denise Bibro's Platform Project Space. Denise, Almitra Stanley and the awesome Olympia Lambert, organizer of the show, installed the show wonderfully.

The opening itself has been posted on Vernissage TV.

It's also been picked by Art Cat and reviewed on NYC Art

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Let's enter the gallery and look left, shall we?
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From left: two by Julie Karabenick; two by Ben La Rocco (more below); and two (and a fraction) by Steven Alexander
Karabenick: Curator, Mattera

La Rocco: Curator, Vartanian

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. Continuing around: Steven Alexander's large painting, The Primrose Path; a bay of small paintings on panel by Sharon Butler (see below) and framed paintings on paper by Christopher Davison
Alexander and Butler: Curator, Mattera
Davison: Curators, Roberta Fallon & Libby Rosof
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. Above: Cosmically inflected geometry by Ben La Rocco in the alcove
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Below: Continuing around clockwise, Steven Alexander and a better view of Sharon Butler's five angular abstractions.

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Continuing around the gallery: Christopher Davison's mysterious dark narratives and his stuffed sculpture; Reese Inman's scintillating mathematical geometry (closer view at bottom)
Inman: Curator, Mattera
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Below: we swing around visually past the gallery entrance and end where we started, with Julie Karabenick's energetic grids


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Reese's paintings open the video on Vernissage TV, so I'll end this post here
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Blogpix at Platform Project Space

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After several months in the planning, blogpix opens tomorrow night, Thursday, March 5, in New York City at Platform Project Space . All the info is on the sidebar at right, and on the Platform website, including information about the artists (Steven Alexander, Sharon Butler, Christopher Davison, Reese Inman, Julie Karabenick and Ben LaRocco) ; the curators (Roberta Fallon and Libby Rosof, Hrag Vartanian, and myself); the organizer, Olympia Lambert, and the gallery, Denise Bibro Fine Art, whose Platform Project Space is hosting the event.
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So here, let me just show you a few artists' images:

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Reese Inman, Remix III, 2009 (curator: Mattera); Christopher Davison, Black and White Sculpture, 2006 (curators: Fallon and Rosof)

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Julie Karabenick, Composition 76, 2008; Steven Alexander, The Primrose Path, 2007 (curator: Mattera)

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Ben La Rocco, Void, 2009 (curator: Vartanian); Sharon Butler, Siding 3, 2008 (curator: Mattera)

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I made my curatorial choices based on the theme of the show, which is the blogosphere, cyberspace, and the whole concept of ones and zeros. Reese Inman creates algorithms that the computer uses to produce the dot matrix of her paintings. Julie Karabenick uses the computer to develop her perfectly calibrated geometric compositions (she's also the founder and editor of Geoform, an online curatorial project focuses on geometric abstraction). Steven Alexander and Sharon Butler have embraced blogging as part of their creative practice. While Steven's online Journal offers his thoughtful observations about painting --his own and others'--Sharon's Two Coats of Paint is a digest of reviews and articles on the topic from all over. I like that together they form a kind of yin and yang coverage.

And did I mention that I's completely in love with the painting of all four of these artists?

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I'm curious to hear what drove the curatorial selections of my colleagues, and I'm eager to see more. I'll find out at the Thursday opening and the Saturday Blogpix panel discussion, and you can, too. If you're in New York City, getcher butt on down.

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If you're not in the neighborhood, I'll be posting installation shots, people pics from the exhibition, and a report on the Saturday panel--so check back over the next few days.

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And did I mention that I have work at the Bridge Fair, which is part of the fair week offerings in New York? I'll be at the opening on Thursday night after Blogpix, around 9:00 pm. Info about and links are also on the sidebar right. I'll have work with DM Contemporary (Booth 28). The fair runs through Sunday.

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Awash in Color: More Friends of Mr. Biv

Click here for "No Chromophobia."

So a friend e-mailed me the other day to ask, "Who is this Mr. Biv?" If anyone is similarly confounded, think back to third grade. It's the mnemonic used to help you remember the spectrum. Remember?

Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Indigo Violet

Since we're discussing Roy (and in the interest of equal representaton, it could just as easily have been Rona, you know), I'd like to show the work of a few more of his friends. Most of these folks I know, a few others I don't. I'm motivated strictly by the chromatic intelligence of their work. For some of these artists, color is not necessarily the dominant element, it's the geometry. But we don't have to take sides, as color and composition are perfect complements.

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Julie Karabenick, Composition 71, 2007, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 30 inches

I curated Julie's work into Luxe, Calme et Volupte last year at the Marcia Wood Gallery in Atlanta. I'm impressed with the intellectual rigor and physical demands of her work. On such a pristine surface, there's no going back and painting over. Decisions made are decisions maintained. This is a breakthrough painting, because there's now a figure-ground relationship in the work, and the color has a chance to interact with the viewer's eye from various points in a visually dimensional space. Julie is the editor of Geoform. You can see her work there, or on her own website, Karabenick-Art.

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Marcia Hafif,TGGT 12: (Red-Gold, Violet), 22 x 22", oil on Canvas, 2006. Image from the Marcia Hafif website

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I've seen her work in person here and there over the years--Larry Becker in Philadelphia, the now-closed Baumgartner Gallery in Chelsea, and a few months ago at a gallery showing at Pulse in New York. Though relatively small--modestly proportioned easel size work--each painting has a huge presence. Her newer work is divided vertically, each section containing a different hue. Considering what she said about painting in 1990, her more current work is positively image laden:

"Having taken into consideration years ago the consensus decision of the art world that painting was no longer acceptable as an art form, it seemed necessary to move my awareness to a second level. Accepting the idea that one could no longer paint in good faith, I thought it would be possible to paint on another level, one providing a certain distance, in order to look at the paint rather than at its subject. It would be possible to paint "as if" one were painting, using the materials and techniques of painting, but without referring to a separate subject. This thinking led me to monochrome. Thus I do not paint with the intention of making a painting as such, but I work from the outside of painting using traditional methods and materials to discover a new image. " (Why Paint: Marcia Hafif from the catalog Marcia Hafif: Red Paintings, Verlag der Galerie Conrads, Neuss 1990 ).

In this relatively newer work, the vertical created by the abutting of two colors creates an image--a "painting as such"--but it does so on Hafif's terms.

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Chris Ashley, Cluny, 2008, HTML image

Chris works in a unique way, creating "drawings" directly on his computer screen using HTML code. They could easily be called "paintings," but I'm using his preferred word. The work is created using, I think, numbers that translate into blocks of color, so it's keystrokes rather than brush strokes that make the work. Lately, the work has made the leap off the screen and into a printed image, which makes me call them "paintings," but I suppose technically that would make them prints. In this new incarnation the saturated color on creamy paper has the look and visual feel of super-saturated gouache on watercolor paper. Visit his website, Look See, to see much more.

BTW, Chris wrote about my work in his blog a couple of years ago. Then I curated him into my Luxe, Calme et Volupte show. (You see how my blog world has very few degrees of separation; but then, that's true for the entire art world, where three degrees will probably take you back to the Cave Painters). In the fall we're going to be in a show called "Calculated Color," curated by the painter Jane Lincoln, at the Higgins Gallery on Cape Cod. Oh, and we're both part of the Geoform.project, along with Lyda Ray, below. Full disclaimer, yo.

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John Tallman, Color Stack, 2007, polyurethane resin, 1o x 10 inch diameter

Tallman is a painter and sculptor for whom materiality is essential. Indeed, you can't disentangle the painter from the sculptor any more than you can disentangle the color from the form. Visit his website and his Color Chunks blog to see what I mean. I don't know him, but when I found his blog I felt an instant affinity for what he's doing.

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Bill Gusky, Crush, 2007, enamel on urethane, 21 x 19 inches

I didn't know Bill until we we showed together in the Blogger Show, organized by John Morris, in the East Village last fall. That's when I saw this painting and purchased it for my collection. (More no degrees.) I've still not actually met him, so I don't actually know him, but I feel as if I do, partly because I wake up to his painting every morning and partly because I read his blog, Artblog Comments, regularly. Anyway, I like the way Bill combines color and form and material. See more at Bill Gusky.com

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Lynda Ray, Float Copper, encaustic on panel, 14 x 18 inches

I was introduced to Lynda's work when I was looking at images for my book, the The Art of Encaustic Painting. Her slides vibrated right out of the envelope. Like John Tallman and Bill Gusky, above, Lynda mixes color, form (via sensuously slathered paint) and materiality--and she maintains a geometric sensibility as well. See more on Lynda Ray Art.com

I suppose "Friends of Mr. Biv" will become a recurring feature on this blog. Stay tuned.

Awash in Color: Karl Benjamin on Geoform

Karl Benjamin, #6, 1990, oil on canvas, 48 x 60 inches. These images courtesy of the artist and Louis Stern Fine Arts, via Geoform

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Karl Benjamin, a founding father of geometric abstraction, is the subject of a newly posted, long and in-depth interview with Geoform editor Julie Karabenick.

"Quite early on, I began to develop a strong sense of shapes and the areas in between them," says Benjamin early in the interview. A lively discussion ensues, along with five decades' worth of images--including one of his studio as seen from his home. Look for it. ("I've alway been able to see my paintings through windows in my house, says the artist. "I'd keep a light on in the studio so I could see the paintings any time I needed to settle down.")

"He is simply the most wonderful, generous man, " writes Karabenick in the course of an e-mail correspondence with me. "He has helped so many younger artists, as well as having an amazing art career. I have a very deep respect for him and am glad to see he's starting to get more recognition on the East Coast--of course, he's an icon on the West. "

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A recent portrait of the artist in front of I.F. Big Magenta with Green, 1959, oil on canvas, 40 x 50 inches.

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