Cubes, Squared

Jackie Winsor at the Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, through November 29

From left: Circle Square, Pink and Blue Piece, and Gold Piece

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Two current shows, one in Manhattan, the other in Boston, are the result of sculptors thinking outside, inside, around and through the box: Jackie Winsor at the Paula Cooper Gallery, through November 29, and Tara Donovan at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, through January 4, 2009.

A generation separates Winsor and Donovan, yet they are united by their affinity for material, their use of the castoff (Winsor) or overlooked (Donovan) and their interest in the cube. The two exhibitions afford us an exceptional opportunity to look at the cubed sculptures of both artists.

Tara Donovan at the ICA Boston through January 4, 2009

From left: Untitled (Pins), Untitled (Toothpicks) and Untitled (glass). Work courtesy of Pace Wildenstein; image courtesy the ICA, Boston; photo: John Kennard

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Winsor’s cubes (and cubed spheres), handcrafted from industrial materials—lattice, plywood, concrete, stuff often found at construction sites or on the street—appear initially like alien objects, installed at a remove from one another in the gallery. There’s an outside and an inside, and you may peer into them. At least one of them peers back at you: Pink and Blue Piece, whose mirrored surface delivers a dose of your own curiosity. No secrets are revealed, and these works retain their mystery. They have become iconic—time-and-place markers for a particular point in art history: the Eighties, when Minimalism was holding on, Feminism had settled in, and SoHo was the center of the universe. If anything, their totemic power has increased over time. (So has the price: $300,000.)

Above: Winsor. Pink and Blue Piece, 1985; mirror, wood, paint, cheesecloth; 31 x 31 x 31 inches

Below, foreground: Winsor. Circle/Square, 1987; concrete, pigment; 34 x 34 x 34 inches

Winsor. Gold Piece, 1987; concrete, pigment, gold leaf; 32 x 32 x 32 inches

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Donovan takes the most commonplace of materials and, altering them little or not at all, amasses them into unexpected forms. A styrofoam-cup cloud that wafts overhead is surprisingly beautiful, a wall made of drinking straws is equally so. But Donovan’s cubes are the focus of this post. The ICA press materials liken them to Serra and Judd, and they’re not wrong, but they’ve overlooked the more direct lineage. Winsor is the younger artist's immediate antecedent.
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There is a divergence in that where Winsor's work is deliberately process intensive, Donovan does not make her own sculptures anymore. Still, it's process intensive for someone. The museum staff creates it from her directions. The knowledgeable ICA staffers explained the process: Thousands of toothpicks, about 650 pounds worth, are poured into a mold. Mass and material affinity hold the piece together. (Want a cube of pins? Buy the directions for $45,000 and make it yourself. I'm assuming the 1500 pounds of pins are included.)

But the process discussion is for a different post. This post is simply an opportunity to view together the work of two sculptors whose work has tangible affinities.

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Donovan. Untitled (Toothpicks), 1996, wooden toothpicks, dimensions unavailable, but about 40 x 40 x 40 inches. Image and detail from the Internet

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Material affinity may hold the form together, but you can see that entropy is already underway. Indeed, when I was looking at the work, I saw individual toothpicks loosen themselves from the mass and fall soundlessly to the concrete floor

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Detail below:

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What Jobs Have You Had?

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Recently, Julian Jackson, painter and co-owner of Metaphor Contemporary Art in Brooklyn, came to my Senior Seminar class at Mass Art in Boston to talk about being an artist and gallerist. During the course of his rich and discursive talk, he mentioned some of the jobs he's had and how they all ultimately benefited his life as an artist/gallerist. For instance, he's been a gallery installer, house painter and cabinet maker--good training for designing a gallery and serving as its general contractor, and then running a successful exhibition space--to say nothing of making the stretchers he needs for his canvases.
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That started me thinking about the jobs I've held.

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Thirty years and as many pounds ago, I worked my way through art school in Boston's Combat Zone --the high-crime, low-life bar area-- as a go-go dancer. Then, after graduation, living on a hippie commune in upstate New York, I worked as a glaze maker in a pottery factory, a janitor in the same facility, and a dump-truck driver for an independent contractor. (Talk about role diversity.)

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During those four years I lived happily in a renovated grist mill with other long-haired folks, and we gardened, canned, cut wood for heat--I owned my own chain saw--and indulged in all the things 20-somethings indulge in. I maintained my own VW bus, even rebuilt the engine. Then, longing for a New York art life, I moved to Manhattan and supported my art and myself as a magazine editor for a big publishing company before taking the leap and working full time as a studio artist.

(Image caveat: All pictures pulled from the Internet. The go-go dancers are not me; the dump truck I drove was green; the VW bus I owned was a dull, faded matte red; and my chainsaw was yellow. But you get the picture . . .)
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I'm not sure how the go-go dancing enriched my art life, except to have provided exercise and a steady income, but everything else has helped me immeasurably. As a glazemaker, I learned to think about color in a different way. The janitorial and truck driving duties built up my strength; and splitting wood built muscles I didn't realize I had--all of these activities the macho version of go-go dancing, I suppose.

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While I now do nothing more thermostatically or automotively challenging than turning up the heat or listening to "Car Talk," I can tell you that splitting wood with a sledge-and-wedge and rebuilding an engine imbued me with a sense of independence and role-breaking machisma that is now part of the fabric of the artist that I am. The subsequent editorial experience allows me to bang out these posts. Along the way there have been teaching, lecturing, writing a book, all of which have made me better able to think and talk about art, my own and others'.

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But this is not a post about me, except insofar as to serve as a platform for these questions I pose to you:

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What jobs have you had to support yourself?

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How have they enriched your life and/or career as an artist?

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(And all you anonymi out there, give us your real name for this one. I've bared all in this post; I hope you'll do the same.)

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A Little Crazy . . .

I'm a little crazy this week as I finish up the work for my solo show in Boston , rev up for a number of group shows around the country, and get my press passes lined up for Miami.

Bear with me. I have a lot of great pics of recent exhibitions to show you--Beatriz Milhazes, Ron Gorchov, Mary Heilmann, Tomma Abts, Martin Kline and more. I'll post as much as I can before I leave for the art fairs. After that . . .well, it will be all Miami all the time.

Meanwhile, following the interactive projects at Color Chunks and Thinking About Art, Pam Farrell has come up with a similarly interesting project. She's inviting artists to e-mail her two photos: "one of your studio or workspace . . . that represents your process or you as an artist, and one of your work." Go on, you know you want to.

Here's a pic I took in Pam's studio. I love the compositon, the inside/outside, the color, and the drape of yellow netting that divides the two groups of rectilinear elements. (When I have a minute, I'll post a picture of my studio on her blog.)

An in-and-out-view of Pam Farrell's New Jersey studio, taken in October
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The Downturn in Chelsea

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We know the economy has had an effect on the art world. In a series of short conversations recently, I found out just what that effect has been on individual dealers in Chelsea and elsewhere

“See the sidewalk?” said the dealer, looking down to the street from her gallery on a high floor in Chelsea. It was a Saturday afternoon, just after lunch, and the pavement was nearly deserted. “It’s been like that for the past month.” There wasn't so much panic in her voice as resignation.

Foot traffic in the galleries has been correspondingly light, so over the past couple of weeks a number of dealers have had the time to chat with me as I made my rounds of the shows. What follows are snippets of my conversations with them. I’m not identifying the dealers by name—it would be unfair to attribute quotes from a personal conversation; indeed I’ve removed as many identifying elements as possible—but I guarantee that all the conversations were real, with quotes as accurate as I can recall. (A few conversations took place outside of Chelsea but they were in keeping with the tone of the conversations, so I included them.) Not intending to write a piece about the downturn at the galleries, I took no notes, but as the conversations spun themselves into a thread and the thread wove itself into a narrative, I realized there was a story.

The changing face of Chelsea,

above and below

Going Cyber
“I’m taking my gallery virtual,” said one dealer, who plans to expand his web presence and work out of his Chelsea apartment. He’ll close his doors at the end of the year. And what of the artists he represents? They’ll be on his online roster, but there will be no actual shows. Fairs are "not out of the question, but not right now."

Similarly, another dealer will show out of his storage cubicle in the area. (There are several huge storage facilities in Chelsea.) “I’ll have a full inventory on the website, with a small selection on display in the storage unit,” he said. “My clients will think it’s an adventure.”

This approach wouldn’t be possible without cyberspace, of course, and given that so many dealers have already been selling from the Internet, it just may work. But what does it mean for artists, who need to show as much as to sell? And what does it do to a lifestyle in which gallery going and openings are part of the social and creative process?
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Staying Put, Doing Outreach
The dealers who remain committed to staying in their spaces are working the phones, calling and recalling clients. Said one dealer: “I worked out a sweet deal for a client—sweeter for the client than for the artist or me, actually—and he just called to say, ‘We really like the painting, but we’re going to hold off for now.’ It was only $9000.” It wouldn’t be so bad if it were an isolated instance but, she says, “I’ve been getting that response for the past few weeks.”

“Clients aren’t returning my calls. I think they’re embarassed,” admitted another.

Other dealers are making presentations to clients in their homes, in one instance driving more than a hundred miles in hopes of making the sale.
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Taking a Job
“I need a job!” said one dealer, half in jest.

"I’ve taken a job to support the gallery before, and I can do it again if I have to,” said another.

Yes, we understand. Is there an artist (well, an artist without a trust fund) who has not had to do that at some point to support their studio?
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Fair and Equal
The taking-a-job conversation evoked a strong sense of déjà vu. Three years ago at Armory fair time, I congratulated an out-of-town dealer for having made it into one of the hard-to-get-into satellite fairs, which at the time was being held on a ground-floor warehouse space not far from the Armory’s pier location. She sighed. “This was my backup. I really wanted the Armory but didn’t get in. But now I consider myself lucky." She ticked off the names of half a dozen dealer friends. “They didn’t even get into this fair,” she said. Just as I was thinking, Now you know what it’s like for artists, she said, “Now I know what it’s like for you artists. The rejection is terrible. It’s so demoralizing. “ Umm hmm. Then in a flash of insight she added, “Never before have artists and dealers been on such equal footing.”

Cut to the present. Never have dealers and fair organizers been on such equal footing. “I’m not participating this year,” is the phrase I've heard most often. With galleries not applying to get into the fairs, organizers have taken to calling dealers to invite them in. At least one previously rejected dealer signed on. “I figure it will guarantee me a spot when the economy picks up and it’s hard to get into again,” she said. I’m not sure whether she was being optimistic or masochistic, but she had already started packing her inventory.

“I've got to sell $80,000 worth of art just to think of breaking even,” said one dealer. She’s going, but she’s biting her nails.

Many of the dealers I spoke with have turned down the invitations. And not only are they not clamoring to get in, some are clamoring to get out after they’ve signed the contract. “Did you hear that (art fair) is suing (dealer) for breach of contract?” asked one gallerist friend.

“I pulled out," said another. "I’d rather lose a grand [in deposit money] than the $30,000 it will cost me for the booth, the shipping, the hotel and the flight.” She could do that because she hadn’t yet signed on the dotted line.

This is not to say that Miami will be a ghost town. Many of the dealers who aren’t taking a booth will go to see and be seen. As one pointed out, “This will be the first time I’ll actually get to see what everyone else sees.” And who knows? A big uptick in the Dow could sends hordes of collectors from Europe and South America with euros and pesos burning holes in their pockets. Art is a tangible asset, after all.
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Renew the Lease or Move?
Fear of commitment (or lack of money) is also an issue when it comes time to renewing gallery leases. The first wave of 10- and 15-year leases in Chelsea has already started to cycle around. Some dealers signed new leases—in some instances at double or more what they’d been paying. Others closed their doors because the rent was just too steep. The owner of 511 W. 25th is condo-izing his building--the ads have appeared in a few art magazines. Want to stay in the building? Buy your space. (I don’t know how the recent downturn has affected this transition, and to be honest, I feel uncomfortable asking the dealers in that building.) But some galleries have already departed.

A.I.R., for instance. This venerable women’s co-op is something of a bellwether when it comes to locating and relocating. It started life on Wooster Street, moved to the then fringes of SoHo—Crosby Street—when SoHo got too pricy, then back to Wooster, then over to Chelsea relatively early on (I may be missing a stop). Now it has moved to Front Street in Dumbo, where it has found a nice space on the second floor of a building where other dealers are located. It used to be that the gentrification of an area drove out the artists; now it also drives out the galleries. And now that galleries are moving into artists’ studio buildings, it’s only a matter of time before the artists have to vacate. There’s something almost biblical about the cycle.

Even the blue-chip galleries are feeling the pinch. I heard this story from a gallerist friend: A high-end dealer had renter’s remorse after signing a lease on a sprawling space in Chelsea just days before the market crashed. “When he tried to back out after the crash, the landlord threatened him with a lawsuit.” He's there now for the duration of the lease.
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Meanwhile . . .
Emerging and mid-level artists keep sending in submission packages and j-pegs in the hopes of securing representation. Dealers at all levels are keeping their eye on the bottom line as sales trail off, trying, as one dealer puts it, “to come up with new models for doing business.” Fair organizers are forging ahead with Miami.

So the shows go on.

For now.

Rose Olson: Ethereal Color

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Installation shot: Just Color No Curves, solo exhibition by Rose Olson at Kingston Gallery, Boston

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While Bram Bogart's massive paintings were straining the gallery walls of Jacobson Howard in New York (previous post), Rose Olson's ethereal layers of color were hovering over their appointed stations like benevolent spirits at the Kingston Gallery in Boston. Olson is well known in this city for her paintings, which consist of washes of (acrylic) color on birch-ply panels or boxes. There's a nice yin-and-yang at work here: the solidity of the support tethering those luminous veils.

I'm showing you installation shots only, because my little camera couldn't quite capture the subtleties of hue in the individual paintings nor the hushed conversation between the rectilinearity of the composition and the the organic pattern of the wood. But here in these shots, you can certainly see something of the kinship between and among the paintings--the rhythm in their sizes and spacing-- and the brilliance of the color, which manages assertiveness and reticence at the same time. Just Color No Curves was at the Kingston Gallery through November 1. You can see additonal work on the artist's website.

Above: In the main gallery, looking into Gallery 2
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Below: left wall of the main gallery

Bram Bogart: Hunks of Color

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Bram Bogart at Jacobson Howard Gallery in October. Here, Rode Rouge, 2008, mixed media, 66.25 x 55.25 inches

I've been viewing a new crop of exhibitions this month, but I want to close out October's offerings with a look at two shows: in this post, the material paintings of Bram Bogart in New York; in the next, the ethereal paintings of Rose Olson in Boston.
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I had not heard of Bram Bogart until I walked into Jacobson Howard, a white-walled, white-floored gallery on the Upper East Side. Wow! These are the monster trucks of painting. And I mean that in a good way.
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Color is not just on the surface, it is the surface. Indeed, the color, the surface and the painting are one. And it's as much sculpture as painting (some of the works are a good 12 inches deep) Bogart is coy about his medium, but it would seem to be pigment mixed directly into something like plaster, marble dust, and probably resin to hold the mix together. The stuff is troweled on. Looking at each work, you really get the physicality of the process, the plop, pile and smear of it. Viewing the work is a visceral experience; you almost feel every one of the hundreds of pounds that these paintings weigh. To be honest, I find the colors a bit too uh, how-you-say, unsubtle, but then finesse is not what these paintings are about.

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Here, take a look at the muscle and heft:

An approximately 8x10"detail of Rode Rouge, the work at the top of this post

Hans Hoffman on steroids? Sorry, my notes don't tell me the title, but you can see the palette and scale of the work

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Up-close viewing yields some interesting passages. The chromatic topography below is a tiny section from the right edge

Bogart also showed a number of all-white paintings, which in their monochrome strike me as even more sculptural than the chromatic works. You can see one, Het Wit, on the gallery website.

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Just in case you aren't familiar with Bram Bogart, he's a Netherlands-born octogenerian who lives and works in Belgium. As if you can't tell, he's been at it for years. .

YES, WE DID!

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for

P R E S I D E N T . O B A M A !

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OK, all together now: exhale.

Now it's back to art as usual.

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President Obama, don't overlook Jo the Artist, Joe the Gallerist, and members of the art community of all names, sexes and disciplines. We may not unclog your toilet, but we keep the creative economy flowing.

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The Jeff Koons Diet

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I'm not a fan of Jeff Koons's work. However, I found an unexpected appeal in his big balloon-y sculptures. That's me in black, reflected in the red heart on the roof of the Met. I'm wearing a jacket and carrying a big, bulky, over-the-shoulder pouch (into which I dump everything when I have to check my backpack). Still, I'm looking leaner than in real life. If that's not a good reason to rethink my response to his work I don't know what is.

Jeff Koons on the Roof closes tomorrow, October 26

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The Serra of Soap

I visited Danielle Julian-Norton's show on its last day at Reeves Contemporary, so while it's no longer up, I still want to show you what I saw: An undulating wall of translucent bricks. Fragrant translucent bricks. Wait, they're not bricks at all. I know that scent. It's soap. A wall of 20,000 bars of honey-colored glycerine soap. Walking through that golden passageway was heady and kind of otherworldly. I emerged feeling, well, cleansed.

Above and in details below: Ambrosia, 2008, 20,000 bars of soap, 7' x 40' x 12'

"Material Color"

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A peek at the hue and substance of Material Color at the Hunterdon Art Museum. Here, a detail from Wil Jansen's Untitled

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The Hunterdon Art Museum is located in a 19th Century stone building that began life as a grist mill. MoMa it’s not—but then MoMA doesn’t have a river and waterfall outside its front door, either. About an hour west of Manhattan in Clinton, New Jersey, this solid, four-story building provides an unlikely but lovely environment for contemporary art, specifically Material Color, the subject of this post. The thick walls and shuttered windows remind you of its former life, as do the wooden floors, massive beams and solid staircases. Looking up you see the remains of what was once a chute that sent materials from one floor to another. Looking out, you see the Raritan river.

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Inset: The facade of the museum

Below, a view across the Raritan to a historic mill

In this bucolic setting, the museum’s chief curator, Mary Birmingham, has assembled and installed a sophisticated international show.

“I had been thinking about the Material Color idea since Miami last December,” says Birmingham. After being introduced there to the work of Robert Sagerman—“at no fewer than four places in Miami,” she notes—her antannae tuned into the color frequency.

"I started to become more aware of other artwork that shared this material/surface quality, and by the end of my stay in Miami, I had seen enough to tease my thinking about a possible future exhibition,” she says, adding that the works she responded to “had a very visceral feeling about them.”

In subsequent trips to the Chelsea galleries, with references from artist friends, as well as visits to the various art fairs in town (and, artists take note: some Internet searches), the concept expanded to include material and process, and the roster was formed.

“I was especially interested in seeing how different artists found different ways to handle paint and color,” Birmingham says. “While it is not the entire story, the idea of paint as a substantial material is central in all of these works.”
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The juicy details:

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Above: Leslie Wayne's Mondo Mondo

.(All details represent works that are shown in full in this post)

Above: My Mudra 1

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Below: Vadim Katznelson's Privalok

Above: Ivana Brenner's Sin Titulo (Bosque)

Below: Peter Fox's Royaume

Above: Cecilia Biagini's Emanates From a Center Point

Below: Carlos Estrada Vega's Marcus

There are 20 artists in the show, all of whom work with mostly saturated color in a tangible, physical way. Nobody in this show just “paints.” As you can see, pigment is poured, pulled, rolled, slumped, sliced, dripped, swiped, squirted, pieced and scraped. Dan Bischoff, who reviewed the show for The Newark Star Ledger, calls it “corporeal color.”

Many of the paintings are sufficiently built up to qualify as reliefs. This is certainly true of Robert Sagerman’s painting, 15,356, a shimmering green rectanglar field comprised of thousands of dense brush strokes, well exactly 15, 356 dense brush strokes, pulled up into individual peaks. It’s true of Leslie Wayne, who—I’m not sure how she does this—seems to assemble layers of still-plastic paint and then scrapes and pushes them into an over-the-top topography of lushness, like the elongated Mondo Mondo. It’s true of Carlos Estrada Vega, whose roughly four-foot-square grid of waxy color, Marcus, consists of hundreds of individually painted tiny canvases adhered by means of magnets to a metal plate. It’s true of Peter Fox, whose canvas, Royaume, the largest in the exhibition, consists of multicolor drips that form an undulating, almost hypnotic field.

Installation view as you enter the second-floor gallery from the stairs. From left: Peter Fox, Royaume; Marcus Linennbrink, Lightenyourdark and Stehafmannchen; my Mudra 1, 3 and 6; Carlos Estrada Vega, Marcus

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I’m not a critic. I think of myself as a reporter with opinions. This is the stance I take with all my writing, and I mention it here particularly because I am a participant in this show. Can I be objective enough to report on it? Well, these pictures show you what I saw, so whether or not you agree with my remarks, you can view the show and form your own opinions. Let me take you clockwise around the perimeter of the gallery showing you, as much as possible, both installation views and specific works. The light in the gallery was a combination of incandescent (or halogen) and daylight; my little hand-held camera worked valiantly to adjust.

My Mudra 6, Mudra 3 and Mudra 1, all encaustic on panel, 12 x 12 inches. Courtesy of Simon Gallery, Morristown, New Jersey

From left: Wil Jansen, two by Linenbrink, Fox's Royaume (shown in detail at top of post)

Below: Wil Jansen, Untitled, oil on canvas, 12 x 12 inches (shown in detail at top of post). Courtesy of Brenda Taylor Gallery, New York

Formally, the issue for all of these works and many of the others you will see, is a single element repeated again and again to form a whole—a maximal result from minimal means. The grid is an obvious organizational motif in some of the work, but the pattern of repetition and regularity, however different from artist to artist, provides the overarching structure of the show. Technically, each artist is in formidable control of his or her medium—a peak that holds its shape, a smoosh that doesn’t slump, a drip that remains eternally at the point where surface tension, about to give way, defies gravity. If you think that’s easy, you haven’t done it.

The works with a relatively flat surface have a whole lot going on under the smooth exterior, like James Lecce’s Chambord, poured and rushed swirls that activate the eye from beneath a transparent layer of resin. This is true of Carolanna Parlato’s Lemon Streak, too. The poured abstraction is ostensibly sleek, but look closer: beneath the enamel-like surface (she uses acrylic), there’s a tangible network of drips and pools—forever-to-be-unseen paintings giving shape to the one before your eyes.

My own work in the exhibition consists of three small paintings from a 2004 series, Mudra, in which drops of wax paint build up into a modestly dimensional surface. “Oh, like a dripping candle on a chianti bottle,” I heard someone say. Well, something like that, except for the part about the candle and the chianti bottle. I’m also represented by a brand-new painting, Vicolo 35, from a body of work I’ll show at Arden Gallery in Boston in December. Here most of the color is under the surface, glimpsed through channels I have skived into the wax paint.

As we move around the gallery, you can see James Lecce's Chambord and my Vicolo 35 through the plexi vitrines containing Linnenbrink's work. By the way, that bowling-pin shape of Linnenbrink's? Epoxy resin and pigment on a bowling pin



James Lecce, Chambord, acrylic polymer emulsion on canvas on panel, 40 x 72 inches. Courtesy of McKenzie Fine Art, New York

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Above and below: my Vicolo 35, carved encaustic on panel, 18 x 18 inches. Courtesy of Arden Gallery, Boston

Continuing around the gallery: Alana Bograd, Chichi Charm School, oil on panel diptych (one panel visible), each 14 x 10 inches; Kathleen Kucka, Apparitions Hovering, acrylic on aluminum panels, diptych, 40 x 60 inches overall, courtesy of Brenda Taylor Gallery, New York. In the corner: two paintings by Leslie Wayne

Below: Leslie Wayne, Mondo Mondo, oil on wood, 47 x 6 inches (detail at top of post). Courtesy of the Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

Leslie Wayne, One Big Love, 13, oil on panel, 13 x 10 inches. Courtesy of the Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. Detail below:

Above: With Wayne's One big Love in the corner you see Carolanna Parlato's Lemon Streak, acrylic on canvas, 48 x 45 inches, straight ahead. Courtesy of the Elizabeth Harris Gallery, New York

Below: With Parlato's Lemon Streak in the foreground, you see work by Louise P. Sloane, Cecilia Biagini, Gregg Hill, Robert Sagerman, and Carlos Estrada-Vega. (Specifics in the images that follow)

There are also sculptures, such as Gregg Hill’s installation of slumped forms, Beliefs. They look like vinyl but they’re painted steel—crushed helium cannisters, in fact. Touche, Gregg, for your neat trompe l'oeil. Estrada-Vegas’s Carlito is a physical extension into the third dimension of his gridded paintings. Then there’s Cecilia Biagini’s Emanates From a Center Point, a sinuous assemblage of painted wooden shims hanging on the wall. Is it flat sculpture or a dimensional painting? No matter, it’s formally rewarding and visually luscious, a satisfying paradigm of the exhibition theme.

Above, from left: Louise P. Sloane, Violet Aqua Violet, acrylic polymers and pigment on aluminum, 32 x 28 inches, courtesy of OK Harris Gallery; Cecilia Biagini; Gregg Hill

Above: Cecilia Biagini, Emanates From a Center Point, acrylic and flashe on wood, 47 x 36 x 7 inches. Courtesy of The Hogar Collection, Brooklyn

Below: Gregg Hill, Beliefs, painted steel, dimensions variable

Swinging around to the face the gallery entrance: Gregg Hill, Beliefs; Robert Sagerman, 15,356, oil on canvas, 41 x 71 inches; Carlos Estrada-Vega, Carlitos, oleopasto, wax, pigment, oil and limestone on canvas, wood, and steel core, 13 x 13 x 13 inches. Sagerman and Estrada-Vega courtesy of Margaret Thatcher Projects, New York. (My big disappointment here: the details I shot of Sagerman's painting are too blurry to post.)

Another view toward the front of the gallery, from left to right: Lori Kirkbride, Untitled, acrylic polymer and resin on panel, app. 21 x 21 inches; two by Vincent Hamel (see view below); Ivana Brenner (see second view below); Linnenbrink's sculptures in the center; Vadim Katznelson, Privalok (shown in detail at top of post), polymer acrylic resin on canvas app. 13 x 13 inches; and two by Omar Chacon: Untitled #177, acrylic on canvas, app. 7 x 11 inches, and Untitled #103, acrylic on canvas, 42 x 54 inches, courtesy of Greene Contemporary, New York

Above: Vincent Hamel, Structure in Green, oil on wood, 14 x 19 x 2.5 inches. Courtesy of the Howard Scott Gallery, New York

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Below: Ivana Brenner, Miami, solidified oil paint on acrylic base, courtesy of CTS Creative Thriftshop. In distance, Paul Russo, Dr. Weeks

View into the right side of the gallery. Foreground: Paul Russo, Dr. Weeks, latex caulk and acrylic on canvas, 24 x 18 inches

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Birmingham’s statement ends this way: “Each of the artists in Material Color engages in a conversation with paint. Using different processes, each creates a unique visual language with a diverse vocabulary of marks, always giving color an active voice. The hope in assembling this wide range of individual works is to provide the opportunity for a larger and more meaningful conversation.”

To which I would add: The show is up through February 1. If you’re in the area, head on over and “listen in.”

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The curator in conversation: Mary Birminghan talking with exhibition visitors. Behind her right shoulder, James Lecce's Chambord; behind her left, my Vicolo 35
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