James Little at June Kelly Gallery

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This is what you see when you walk in and face the opposite wall. We'll start here for our tour around the gallery

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"Gene Davis with points," is how one painter described James Little's new body of work, De-Classified: New Paintings at the June Kelly gallery. He was joking, of course. Davis may be a visual antecedent, along with Barnett Newman and maybe Kenneth Noland, but I'd describe Little's new work as "Geometry with finesse."

Here is an artist who's making hard-edge paintings with a soft material, oil and wax in an encaustic-like mix, and making it work. Over and over again. He has combined lushness of material with preciseness of image. And he's working large. As someone who paints with wax, I can tell you that this combination of hard and soft, in large scale, is no easy achievement.

Continuing around the gallery (I have no info on the first work): Gypsy, 72.5 x 94 inches, and Satchmo's Answer to Truman, 76 x 98 inches; both 2008, oil and wax on canvas

Closer view of both, below

Formally, these resolutely abstract paintings would seem to be about figure and ground, or more precisely about the ambiguity of figure and ground, and thus about the ambiguity of space, and about color and control, flatness and expanse. And certainly about chromatic rhythm. In these paintings, sawtooth elements are placed in side-by-side in discrete segments (occasionally a Davis-like band of stripes changes the visual cadence). As the angles of different colors, sometimes near complementaries, slide into one another, a mirage-like shimmer hovers over the surface. It's in no way Op in the manner of Bridget Riley, but it is retinally invigorating.

Little's paintings are technically virtuosic and visually ravishing . His palette, saturated and opaque, has just a touch of white. It's far from pastel, yet there's an alluring softness to it.

Swoon. .

The show is up at the June Kelly Gallery in SoHo through June 9.

Continuing around from Satchmo's Answer to Truman is Near-Miss, 2008, oil and wax on canvas 72.5 x 94 inches

I was taken by the two framed paintings (not sure of medium) on paper between two larger oil and wax paintings. Beautifully realized, they nevertheless appear to be maquettes or precursors to some of the larger works. I've placed one at the bottom of this post, just under the larger painting it resembles

The Marriage of Western Civilization and the Jungle, with detail below showing the clean lines and luscious surface

We've completed our circuit of the gallery, with the entry at left the the 'V' painting on the right

Below: A small framed painting on paper relates to the large work on the far wall. The large painting is When Aaron Tied Ruth, 2008, oil and wax on canvas, 72.5 x 94 inches

Related reading and looking:
. Ben LaRocco's interview with James in the the current issue of The Brooklyn Rail
. Geoform, an online resource for abstract geometric art.
. Little's own website: www.jameslittleart.com

. Updated 7.14.09: James Kalm's video visit to the gallery followed by a studio visit with the artist

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On the Geometric Trail, Part Two: SoHo

Kay WalkingStick: Cataloochee, 2007, gold leaf, oil and wood, diptych; 24 x 48 inches

The geometric trail continues below Houston Street. I get around each month--uptown, Chelsea, downtown, the museums--and the amount of geometry I saw in December was far beyond what I normally see in a given month. And with Warren Isensee's show just opened at Danese, I'll have more geometry to report on later this month.

Here's some of what I saw and liked in SoHo in December: .

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Kay WalkingStick: New Paintings
at the June Kelly Gallery

You might call WalkingStick a quasi abstractionist who is semi geometric. The larger picture is that she’s a landscape painter who introduces abstract elements into her work, typically via a diptych format that allows her to integrate the two disparate elements so that they are no longer disparate at all. The geometry in her new work is derived, I think, from Native American weave patterns (she is a member of the Cherokee Nation).

The installation shots are mine; the individual works are from the gallery's website. You can see more exhibition images at the gallery website and more on Kay's website.

At the June Kelly Gallery, above and below: opposite views of Kay WalkingStick's show

Above: Remember the Bitterroots, 2007, oil on wood panel, diptych, 36 x 72 inches; below: The Road to Santa Fe, 2007, oil on wood panel, diptych, 24 x 48 inches

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Machine Learning
at The Painting Center

Matthew Deleget, a reductivist painter, put together a sharp show of four contemporary artists working in geometric abstraction. And sharp is the operative word here, as the paintings by Henry Brown, Terry Haggerty, Gilbert Hsaio and Douglas Melini are hard edge.

The title, Deleget writes in his catalog essay, comes from the field of artificial intelligence in the way computers are programmed with algorithms to allow them to recognize patterns within the volumes of cyber data they process (like the Google search engine, for instance) so that they continue to make new associations based on what they have done in the past. I didn’t get the connection between the artificial intelligence of the premise and the visual intelligence of the work itself, but I thought it was a smart show.

Two views of Machine Learning at the Painting Center

Above: paintings by Terry Haggerty, Gilbert Hsiao and Henry Brown; below: Brown again, two by Douglas Melini, and another by Haggerty

If you’re in Houston March 8 to May 3, you can catch the exhibition as it travels to Gallery Sonja Roesch. There’s more information on the Painting Center website and on Minus Space, the online curatorial project Deleget maintains with his partner and co-editor, with Rossana Martinez.

Below: Gilbert Hsiao, Encounter, 2006, acrylic on wood panel, 30 inches diameter

Impromptu Geometry
Sometimes the city is a gallery. I saw this geometric assemblage in an old garden lot at the corner of Houston and Elizabeth Streets.