Joanne Mattera Art Blog

It wouldn't be Art Basel Miami Beach if the crystalline compositons of Sarah Morris were not on exhibition. These are splendid paintings! Made with household gloss on canvas, they are typically shown on an outside wall and they stop you in your tracks.

With Morris thus setting the scene, there was a range of geometry--not just angles but curves, as flat pattern, or with a suggestion of depth, or with actual dimension. One surprise was the degree of decorative pattern, which I'll talk about more when we get to that section of the post.

ABMB: Heimo Zobernig at Galeria Juana de Aizpuru, Madrid

Scope: Ted Larsen's two- and three-dimensional geometry at Pan American Projects, Dallas and Miami

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Art Miami: Merrill Wagner at Sundaram Tagore Gallery, New York and elsewhere

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ABMB: Odili Donald Odita at Jack Shainman, New York

ABMB: Gert and Uwe Tobias, Team Gallery, New York

. Art Miami: Amy Ellingson at Charles Cowles, New York

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I'm not focusing on materials in these posts because keeping track of the information is more than I can do, but a few mediums stand out. Ellingson's paintings are encaustic, noteworthy because the substantiveness of the medium creates a dimensionality that complements the deep visual space of her compositions.

David Poppie's work, below, is a mosaic made from Prismacolor pencils sliced lengthwise. (His pencil-point mosaic opened the Pulse post.)

Pulse: David Poppie at Pavel Zoubok Gallery, New York

In the fairs this year, there was a whole set of geometric expression that refered directly to pattern and decoration, and to textiles. For instance, Philip Taaffe's paintings, one of which is shown below, channel tie dye, stained glass, and the Alhambra; Delson Uchoa's unstretched painting referenced tapestries, or more specifically, Colonial floorcloths (the poor-person's "carpet"); and several other artists seem to have incorporated Amish quilt patterns. Interestingly, all of this decorative geometry was made by men.

ABMB: Philip Taaffe at Jablonska Galerie, Berlin

ABMB: Jorge Pardo at Capitain/Peztel

Scope: Jacob Ouillette at Dean Project, New York

ABMB: Delson Uchoa at Galeria Brito Cimino, Sao Paolo

Channeling the Amish "pinwheel" pattern: The ubiquitous Heimo Zobernig at Capitain Petzel, above, and Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris, below

Aqua Hotel: Matthew Rich at OH+T Gallery, Boston

From textile-referenced patterns, there's an easy flow to geometry in which curvilinear elements prevail, sometimes within the matrix of a grid.

ABMB: Bridget Riley at Pace Wildenstein, New York and elsewhere

Art Miami: Charles Arnoldi at Modernism, San Francisco

ABMB: Gabriel Orozco at Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris

Pulse: Linda Besemer acrylic painting at Angles Gallery, Santa Monica, California

ABMB: Jessica Stockholder sculpture and Chris Martin painting at Mitchell-Innes and Nash, New York
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Pulse: Ronnie Hughes colored-pencil drawings at Rubicon Gallery, Dublin, with one work from the grouping, below:

Red Dot: Julie Gross gouache-on-Mylar paintings at Eo Art Lab, Chester, Connecticut

Pulse: Four views of Leo Villareal's ever-changing light sculpture at Conner Contemporary Art, Washington, D.C.

ABMB: Beatriz Milhazes prints at Stephen Friedman Gallery, London

12.19.2008

FAIR WEATHER: Geometry (First of Two)

Miami Art Fairs, Art Basel Miami Beach, Aqua, Art Miami, Bridge, Pulse, Red Dot, Scope, Rubell Collection
Already posted:
FAIR WEATHER: Deal or No Deal
FAIR WEATHER: Prologue
FAIR WEATHER: Art Basel
FAIR WEATHER: The Containers
FAIR WEATHER: Art Miami
FAIR WEATHER: Art Imitates Art
FAIR WEATHER: Pulse
FAIR WEATHER: Trends and Coincidences-Animals
FAIR WEATHER: Trends and Coincidences-Cut Paper
FAIR WEATHER: Trends and Coincidences-Looms with a View
FAIR WEATHER: Aqua Hotel
FAIR WEATHER: Aqua Wynwood
FAIR WEATHER: Trends and Coincidences-Stacks and Bales
FAIR WEATHER: Trends and Coincidences-Giants
FAIR WEATHER: Trends and Coincidences-Manual Labor
FAIR WEATHER: Scope
FAIR WEATHER: Red Dot
FAIR WEATHER: Bridge, Both Locations
FAIR WEATHER: Trends and Coincidences-Suspense

FAIR WEATHER: Trends and Coincidences-"We Are the Borg"

ABMB: Frank Stella "protractor" painting, John Chamberlain sculpture, Josef Albers painting (another Chamberlain/Albers pairing) at Waddington Galleries, London

I feel like the marathoner who has hit the wall and pushed past it. I'm almost there! To those of you who have commented here on the blog, mentioned my effort on your own blog, or e-mailed me directly, thank you. You've been like the folks on that 26-mile route handing out water.

If you follow this blog, you know that I write regularly about geometric abstraction. My own work falls into this category, and I'm intellectually and visually engaged by the endlessly inventive ways artists have employed a few basic shapes with a variety of materials (a few in these Geometry posts: household gloss on canvas, tempera on canvas, wax on panel, plastic tape, lights, paper and pins, needlepoint, cast resin, plexi, collage, painted wood and aluminum, and colored pencil as both drawing material and collage element).

I've included many splendid examples of the genre in the posts from the various venues, but I wanted a dedicated post on geometry. Turns out there will be two. Even after I edited and re-edited my selections, I still had too much for one post.

ABMB: Alfred Leslie, Cough Control, 1961-62, at Allan Stone Gallery, New York

So let's start with some works from the Sixties and Seventies, and then follow a visual narrative of shape, color, proportion and material as one image leads into the next.

Art Miami: Artist and date to be identified at McCormick Gallery, Chicago

Art Miami: Jesus Rafael Soto, Mural Cinetico, 1983, painted wood, aluminum and other materials, at Leon Tovar Gallery, New York

Detail below

Art Miami: Frederick Hammersley (two paintings at left dated 1965), Jeremy Thomas and William Metcalf at Charlotte Jackson Fine Art, Santa Fe

ABMB: John McLaughlin, paintings from the 1960s, including 1963, foreground, at Michael Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles