NANA DIX – COLOR ME BEAUTIFUL

Posted on 2012-03-19

The current exhibition “Color Me Beautiful” marks a turning point for Nana Dix from collage back to painting, an organic artistic development. After years of abstinence from the medium of painting she returns and showcases a developed stage. Whereas the former collages reflected the overflow of images and the unrest of our times, the monochromatic color fields of the current exhibition indicate a ruminant withdrawal, which can be regarded as an allusion towards the abstract paintings of Mark Rothko. Contrary to the latter one the works of Nana Dix also feature an intrusion of aggression into the otherwise harmonic color fields: The pale green color field of the painting “Three Dots” (2012) gets disturbed by three blood red paint splatters, which may remind the viewer of shooting wounds.

The ruminant effect and aesthetic of monochromatic color fields collide with the aggressive potential of action painting. If at first the artists introduces an untouched aesthetic of peace and meditation with the painting “Pale Pink” (2012), she immediately and consequently destroys this impression with the other exhibited paintings that are mutilated with paint splatters and drippings. The imagery Nana Dix has created moves between the poles of human existence, between rest and unrest, between gentleness and aggression, Eros and Thanatos.

Opposite – Three dots, 2012

Exhibition runs through to April 14th, 2012

Andreas Grimm Munchen
Türkenstrasse 11
80333 Munchen
Germany

www.andreasgrimmgallery.com

  

HOLLY COULIS

Posted on 2012-03-19

In a collection of new paintings, Holly Coulis presents large scale still-lifes and landscapes in broad and subtle color. She cleverly employs the simplicity of traditional genres as a framework for a complex exploration of the language of painting. The work is simultaneously cerebral and emotional, playfully raising questions about our relationship to images while finding poignant tensions in an idiosyncratic sense of color, line, and material. Colors range from vibrant to murky, paint marks from elegant to gritty, and space from harmonious to awkward; the work embodies an unexpected sense of beauty that encompasses much more than visual affect. In both theme and execution, the levity of her work is always in play with a darker, more serious subtext.

In “Pink Flowers, Red Vase,” the vase appears on the verge of ever so gracefully tipping off the back edge of the table. While the under-painting serves to designate foreground from background, vase from table, the application of subsequent, vibrant layers of complimentary colors works to flatten that space and suspend our belief in the cast shadows. This peculiar push-pull is not uncommon in Coulis’ paintings, which draw upon a mix of influences as varied as cartoons, French painting and Pop. Similarly, the scale possesses both a stark monumentality and playful intimacy; an effect that is heightened by Coulis’ simplified edges and flattened shapes drawn, in part, from the smaller sketches that are her sources.

Opposite – Daisies, 2011

Exhibition runs through to April 28th, 2012

Cherry and Martin
2712 S. La Cienega Blvd
Los Angeles
CA 90034

www.cherryandmartin.com

  

KYLE TROWBRIDGE – THE POLITICS OF TIME

Posted on 2012-03-12

For several years Trowbridge has been investigating how technology alters the dynamics of inter-human relationships. His grand new paintings are at once abstract geometric paintings and functioning Quick Response (QR) codes. They are about 8 feet square. Their appearance, paint handling and palette reference canons of abstract geometric painting, such as Gerhard Richter’s Color Chart paintings (1966-), Piet Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie (1942-43), Hans Hoffman’s later abstract paintings and Josef Albers’ Homage to a Square (1965).

On the other hand, these colorful paintings, once scanned with the proper application, yield a text written by the artist. Usually one sees these QR codes, the next generation of barcodes, on product packaging and promotion materials. Scanning the black and white squares with a QR application on a smart phone can link the user to websites, text, and other kinds of data at a remote source. The hallmark of a QR code is an equal sized square within a square, repeated three times in the lower left, upper left and upper right corners of a larger square. With the frame established, a computer can read, in a zigzagged and zoned pattern, the binary code contained within it.

Exhibition runs through to March 31st, 2012

Dorsch Gallery
151 NW 24 St
Miami
FL
33127

www.dorschgallery.com

  

RESPONSIVE EYES

Posted on 2012-03-12

The Responsive Eye was an exhibition held at MoMA in New York in 1965. It brought together artworks by so-called ‘Op’ and minimalist artists such as Bridget Riley, Josef Albers, Viktor Vasarely and Almir Mavignier. The curator William Seitz described the show an ‘exhibition that would indicate an activity, not a kind of art’.

In the catalogue text Seitz writes, ‘The eye responds most directly when nonessentials such as freely modulated shape and tone, brush gestures and impasto are absent.’ He argued this was ‘non-objective perceptual art‘, art that ‘exists primarily for its impact on reception rather than for conceptual examination… Ideological focus has moved from the outside world, passed through the work as object, and entered the incompletely explored region area between the cornea and the brain.’

Opposite – Paul B Davis, ‘Surviving the 90’s No.1’, 2011

Exhibition runs through to May 12th, 2012

Jacob’s Island Gallery
56 Butler’s & Colonial Wharf
10–11 Shad Thames
London
SE1 2PY

www.jacobsisland.co.uk

  

ELLEN BERKENBLIT

Posted on 2012-03-12

Berkenblit applies a distinctive palette of vigorously mixed colors with assertive broad brushstrokes and some scraping of the palette knife. Her shapes are rough yet well-defined fields of color; occasional black outlines can define an object, an animal, or the features of a face. Out of the paintings’ visceral physicality emerge certain themes, motifs and ideas: a head in profile featuring intense black lashes and long shimmering hair, lacey ribbons (painted as angular and deliciously awkward bands of paint that vigorously pull together the paintings’ fore- and middle-grounds). Even purely atmospheric sensations such as clouds, bolts of sun light, rainbows and starry night skies find expression. These images simultaneously emerge out of the subjects’ relevance and the visibly exuberant act of painting.

The paintings’ spirit is bold, boisterous and forceful, sometimes mysterious, always deeply emotional. The interplay between figurative elements, the intense atmosphere created by color contrast and tonal palette, as well as the compositional devices create figurative paintings of great fluidity and openness without being narrowed by narrative.

Opposite – Snodgrass, 2011

Exhibition runs through to March 31st, 2012

Anton Kern Gallery
532 West 20th Street
New York
NY
10011

www.antonkerngallery.com

  

EDWARD BURRA

Posted on 2012-03-05

This is the first major exhibition for over twenty-five years of the work of Edward Burra (1905-1976), providing the opportunity to reassess one of the most individual and celebrated British artists of
the twentieth century.

Despite suffering from acute arthritis, Burra created a large body of memorable paintings during his lifetime, characterized by their unusually powerful handling of the watercolour medium and his singular taste for the macabre. Defiantly anti-intellectual, he was nevertheless widely read and drew on an extraordinary range of artistic influences from old masters to his own contemporaries, as well as Hollywood cinema, ballet and jazz music.

In common with Lowry, Burra remained distinct from most mainstream modernist art movements though he was a member
of the English Surrealist Group in the 1930s and a close friend of the artist Paul Nash. Above all, Burra painted for himself,
describing his activity as ‘a sort of drug’ and each of his paintings creates a world unmistakably his own.

Exhibition runs through to May 27th, 2012

Lakeside Arts Centre
University Park
Nottingham
NG7 2RD

www.lakesidearts.org.uk