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WARP

Millree Hughes — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 22:32:51 +0000

WARP Millree Hughes December 2, 2025 - 17:32

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Trespasser no. 4, 2025, Oil on linen over shaped stretcher, 72 x 96 inches

KARIN DAVIE: It Comes In Waves

Miles McEnery Gallery, NYC

Through 20 December 2025

Karin Davie is famous for a suite of extraordinary paintings that she showed in the 00s. They seemed to be her last word on the Stripe Painting, which had been her subject since the early 90s. She cut the stripes loose from the edge, and they recoiled like heavy rubber bands. These large abstract works consist of wildly interweaving fist-sized strokes on a coloured ground. The lines are painted wet on wet, picking up colour as they travel, each brush stroke loaded in such a way as to imply weight and volume and evidence of a light source or sources hitting the surface of the line. She never lets you forget, however, that this is paint speaking the formal language of Art.

In her dynamic new show at Miles McEnery, the stripe is back with a new set of instructions. The show consists of two sets of glorious paintings. Two red wave-like paintings, made up of two joined canvases, and a second group of wavy paintings, each in a predominant colour. They are unusual colours that can appear natural, artificial, or both. All of the second set has a divot cut into the top in the middle of the canvas, as if a giant's thumb has pushed into the picture plane.

"Trespasser No 4" is a particularly lovely golden-haired painting. Lines move horizontally in sensual gestures from one side to the other with a kink in the middle, so that by the time the last line is made, there is a groove or path running vertically through the canvas, finishing at the cut-in divot at the top. As the line moves, it picks up lighter or darker versions of the prevailing colour. The way that darker tones gather in parts of the image makes me think that the shadow of clouds has been cast on Van Gogh's "Wheatfield with Crows." The line sometimes stops firmly before the edge or runs on as if it didn't exist. Drawing attention to the formal limits of the canvas and then sometimes totally ignoring them.

Words have worked for Davie in the past. Not in a literal way that say "container" did for Ross Bleckner with his paintings of the '90s made in the shape of urns. But her '90s pieces were "wavy" Davie's and sometimes "curvy" Davie's. But after the '00s, she began looking inside for inspiration rather than at how she looked from the outside.

"Abstractionists see no more sections, no divisions between different sections of reality, and this is not surprising since reality has been transferred from the outside to the inside of the artist, where experience is all one, and everything exists on the same plane." - Guillaume Apollinaire

Strange Terrain no. 5, 2025, Oil on linen, 60 x 105 inches

A more internal perspective persists in the Red Wave paintings. In "Strange Terrain No. 5," we are reminded of both the sea and the body. These are gorgeous paintings, but she doesn't let you just fall into fairy-tale beauty. She brings you back to the real condition of the body. At one point, a cut opens up between the lines and drips over the undulating surface.

There's a carnal shadow. It's not only a billowing pomegranate sea at dusk, but it's also viscera heaving with the breath, the tissue that covers the ribcage.

Both Strange Terrain paintings are composed of two canvases. It means that when she is painting the horizontal stroke, she has to stop and then continue the line again on the next canvas. This deliberate obstruction asks the question, 'Is the action still authentic if it is made a second time?'

Or in this case, if the line is continued.

It harks back to one of her earlier diptychs like "Ummm….#1 & #2," 1993. Part of the Sidewalk series. Where a curvy form covered by stripes had to be repeated in the second painting.

Ummm….#1 & #2, 1993. Part of the Sidewalk series. Oil on canvas over shaped stretcher. Each canvas: 90 X 60 in

This emphasis on the performance side of painting reminds me of the difference between the guitar playing of Jimi Hendrix and Marc Bolan. It didn't matter whether Jimi was playing with his teeth or behind his back; you took the notes he played to be an authentic response to the music. But in a performance by T Rex at the Rainbow music venue in the early '70s, Marc ran his tambourine up and down the neck of the guitar until he finally ejected the tambourine into the audience. It really didn't matter what the sounds coming out of the speaker were; it was about the performance of the action. Marc was no slouch as a guitarist either, but he sometimes used the guitar as a prop as well as an instrument.

While I recognize that this example is not exactly the same thing, because Karin very much cares about what the painting looks like. I'm just using it to make a comparison between how glam was much more playful with the rock music form in a way that is similar to how the post painterly abstract artists used Minimalism. The exact same thing would be if Marc played an impassioned solo and then reproduced it, immediately note-for-note. That would be very Karin Davie.

Karin's work is about aesthetics and poetry. She asks: can a painted performance be authentic? Is the edge of the canvas the end of this particular state described by the painting? At the same time she's alluding to places and things in an optical way. This line casts a shadow, this one emanates light. This picture reminds you of waves. Consequently, the image seems to shift constantly between different states.

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Makers Mark

Millree Hughes — Sat, 01 Nov 2025 01:51:41 +0000

Makers Mark Millree Hughes October 31, 2025 - 21:51

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Stretch, Hold, Release
Picture Theory at 548 West 28th Street, NYC

The uniqueness of a work of art is inseparable from its being embedded in the fabric of tradition." - Walter Benjamin

AI is not regarded as a tool by artists the way the tools of the past were: burnt willow sticks, polished lenses, and Photoshop, because it’s seen as a threat to the artist’s existence.

Walter Benjamin's "Age of Mechanical Reproduction" is in full flow. Music, images, and books are being created to order by producers. Soon, just as Spotify is making its milquetoast music, Netflix wants to generate ambient, half-digested TV using AI and other means. It will be created according to the digitally tracked needs of the public in the service of the corporation. Mechanical Reproduction intends to obliterate the ‘who’ of art making.

Craft-based art returns the focus to the object—how it was made, where it was made, and by whom it was made.

At Picture Theory, the gallerist Rebekah Kim has curated a show of craft-based art called "Stretch, Hold, Release."

The relationship of the artist to where they are from is significant here. Unhitching art from its tethering post of origin has been useful for corporate-made content. It wants to make a global product from a global culture. The specifics of the place make it harder to control.

Luis Emilio Romero paints Guatemalan fabrics, going as far as to imitate the raised stitch in paint. They remind me of Scottish Tartan, '60s hard-edge abstraction, and city plans. However, here, all the shapes and colors that comprise a traditional woven piece can refer to animal, plant, or cosmological patterns. It’s a metaphor for the Mayan worldview.

Lior Moran is an Israeli artist, raised in a country partly populated by people who came there because they had to hide their religion, now caught in a terrible darkness where the objectives on both sides are hidden. He takes found objects or makes sculptures that he hides under a velvet canvas. He shaves off the protruding planes, creating an inverse shadow. He uses twilight colors in his work. They are then bound along the side with a flesh coloured belt that sometimes has a buckle, like a bundle wrapped for a hurried exit.

The multiple handles and thick knotted rope, the little pinafores that she makes for her examinations of Peruvian pottery, draw attention to the utilitarian character of Terumi Sato’s own Japanese ceramic traditions.

Elisa Lutteral is an Argentinian artist born in New York. She is represented here by hanging lengths of woolen fabric with a glove at each end. In the video, the glove-wearing performers are positioned in a specific location from the camera's perspective. The resulting braid is achieved by their movements around each other. It’s an improvised group performance of one of the first crafts that we learn as children.

JaLeel Porcha’s contribution is the least didactic in the group. It’s a deep-pile hanging rug. It appears to represent a clearing in the woods, featuring two black children and a pond, perhaps. He’s influenced by the illustrators of classic American children’s books. The nostalgic quality is enhanced by being a knitted piece, which adds an ironic element to its shadowy mood.

An object that has only been created by hands and shows ´where’ and ‘when’ it is made and ‘what’ it is made from is crucial to understanding ‘what’ it is. Without these interrogatives being answered, it probably isn’t Art at all.

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The New York Art World Rebooted

Mary Hrbacek — Fri, 10 Oct 2025 01:54:55 +0000

The New York Art World Rebooted Mary Hrbacek October 9, 2025 - 21:54

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Nathaniel Mary Quinn Study for Grange Copeland, 2025 Oil paint and gouache on linen canvas stretched over wood panel 18 x 15 inc

Gagosian Gallery: Nathaniel Mary Quinn - Echoes from Copeland (9/10–10/25/2025)

Hauser and Wirth: Ambera Wellmann - Darkling (9/5 – 10/25/2025)

Company: Ambera Wellmann - One thousand Emotions (9/5 – 10/25/2025)

Marianne Boesky Gallery: Celeste Rapone - Some Weather (9/4 – 10/18/2025)

Nathaniel Mary Quinn explores personal, family, and historic narratives in twelve intense new oil and oil pastel paintings on linen, where he uncompromisingly excavates pictorial planes in his search below surfaces for the underlying, intrinsic, emotionally charged forms that spur and motivate his life and his art. His meticulous, exquisitely composed vision displays a strong formal connection to the methods employed by Francis Bacon, while also delving deeply into the visceral underpinnings of the personalities he constructs and describes. This is the primary focus of the complex, highly empathetic structures that build the psychological force that each image conveys. Quinn’s mastery of the paint medium and its many possibilities provides a level of expertise that has long been scarce in contemporary art. The intimate works are forcefully compelling and meaningful. Their complexity draws viewers into the process of painting, assaulting their senses to make them experience otherwise subconscious or unexpected feelings.

Quinn’s ability to submerge the main subjects in a revealing context accentuates their truth on a number of levels in their attempts to escape racism, in their efforts to flee poverty in rural and urban America, and in their desire to put the slave heritage that haunts their quest for freedom and equality behind them. His search for self-realization involves a closer look at the circumstances of his dysfunctional family members. The hope and possibility of redemption is inspired by the novel “The Third Life of Grange Copeland,” by Alice Walters.

Quinn’s dynamic blue, red, and yellow hues activate the central themes of his plots to a level of power that sensually engulfs the viewer. The combination of black and white within the maze of the facial forms and features sets the stage for deep introspection and personal tandem feelings one may relate to in one’s own family history and experience. Quinn explores the emotional pain frequently released through the painting process by creating fierce shapes and expressive forms that may function as a healing measure. One can only appreciate the artist’s special ability to transform disturbing-looking structures into unusual embodiments of beauty that grow from facing harsh realities. His distinctive “paint-drawing” technique enlivens the authority of each vignette, where scenes and backdrops express a graphic sensibility that is counterbalanced by his painterly interpretation of the facial features and specific body parts. The show is unique and powerful.

Ambera Wellmann, Mother, 2025 Oil on linen 45 x 49 in 114.3 x 124.5 cm (AW152) Photo: Sarah Muehlbauer

Ambera Wellman’s two current shows in New York overlap in their visual narratives with the “One Thousand Emotions” coming in as an edgy depiction of the destructive forces in former times aimed against women who are discerned to defy societal conventions. In “Darkling,” her seven oil on linen paintings feature masked congregations who have gathered, as in James Ensor’s masked assemblies, to commiserate, to support, or to experience a sense of communal dread that foreshadows the impending apocalypse. Her painting style is semi-representational, not realistic, which provides a successful vehicle for her phantom-like reveries. Wellmann’s visions of the naked and departed, in a feast that hints at an interim stage of the afterlife, seem to refer to a frightening existence devoid of the order to be found in everyday life. These specters and hallucinations relate to the hellish visions of Hieronymus Bosch projected forward into the contemporary mind.

Wellman is one of the present-day artists to visualize and express the unsettling implications of the current world turmoil. The artist’s beautifully rendered works express emotions of terror and foreboding. She intimates in the painting entitled “Siren,” that our original human genesis as sea creatures will become our endgame. Wellmann delves into her personal philosophy to explore the path to oneness with the Universe; her meditations hint that through the release of the ego, we will achieve that unity. She explores personal, societal, historical, and philosophical ideas in forceful, intricate visions set in fraught outdoor settings and in ethereal evocations of mystical, sensual inner worlds.

Wellmann’s show, “One Thousand Emotions,” displays six oil on linen paintings that are connected by photographic and drawn wall imagery in installation formats. Her emotionally charged images are steeped in nudity, sexuality, and flirtation with the spiritual dark side. Wellman evidently intends to conjure the apparitions of disobedient women from dark, unstable ages, who were persecuted as witches and executed as dissenters. Death is depicted as a metaphor for chaos and change. Wellmann has the courage to explore subjects that spark our fears and resistance to the reality that life is transitory, changeable, and fleeting. Her provocative, intriguing work represents a committed intention to bring universal meaning and philosophical content into the contemporary art arena.

Celeste Rapone Poised, 2025, Oil on canvas 32 x 28 inches 81.3 x 71.1 cm

Celeste Rapone’s large-scale oil on canvas paintings, presented in her current show “Some Weather,” provide a clear vision of believable, ultra-personal imagery that describes a quotidian life every viewer can relate to. In an unusual perspective, Rapone infuses her contemporary imagery with art historical spatial interpretations that evoke the work of Cezanne and Modigliani. Her anatomical distortions accentuate an arm around a shoulder or a female figure shuddering as wind blows her hair under an inadequate umbrella. She piles figures on top of each other in what appears to be the morning after an all-night drinking party. Figures in a hot tub swelter red against glowing white bubbling water. Rapone has a very European vision of the figure, where elongated legs or enormous hands call the viewer's attention to the distorted, accentuated anatomical forms. Her colors are muted, sophisticated, moody, and convincing. The facial features seem morose and reserved, not exuberant. A figure wearing a LOVE T-shirt sits with a girl, suggesting the pair is a couple. There is a sense of orderly melancholy in this vision that is quietly believable. The artist paints beautifully; the subtle tones distinguish these paintings. By their extreme introspection, they create a calming effect that allows the viewer to focus on the personalized, elongated distortions. The group formats allude to unsurprising ordinary relationships present in the everyday lives of the majority of people, which provide a sense of community in life. The elegant rendering of the forms puts these works in a category of their own, as a formal achievement well beyond the usual depiction of common objects and normal people. The delicately modeled, unique figures set in distinctive milieus are poetic and mesmerizing.

The three exhibitions reviewed above, as well as the solo shows “Yuan Fang: Spaying” at Skarstedt and Austin Martin White's “Tracing Delusionships” at Petzel, indicate that the windows in Art have been opened to allow fresh air to circulate. The New York Art World seems to be diverging from past constraints, which have long determined the style of art that holds dominance here. There is a refrain from a song from 1963 by British folk-pop duo Chad and Jeremy called “Yesterday’s Gone.” Its sentiment expresses the space and opportunity for the freedom to flourish that is enabling a new trajectory to flow in the Art World. Unrest and chaos in society often spur creativity. I think this is an upbeat time to encourage and foster the daring types of individualized art that are entirely acceptable, very marketable, and above all exciting and engaging.

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Trust Issue

Millree Hughes — Mon, 09 Jun 2025 02:31:31 +0000

Trust Issue Millree Hughes June 8, 2025 - 22:31

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"Pond with Early Snow III," 42" x 38"

Mary Temple: Rough in the Distant Glitter
Pamela Salisbury Gallery
Hudson, NY
May 17 - June 15, 2025

"Devoid of locus, there is nothing to objectify." Nagarjuna (2nd C)

It's another important time for painters. Digital Art, Photography, and Video Art have all suffered because of social media. We have endured so many ghastly lies and had so many useless products foisted on us that all remote artwork feels untrustworthy. Anything with a physical quality or that is as unlike a phone image as possible is true.

With a landscape painting, you feel as though you are witnessing a genuine response to a real place. You are looking at a different place, in a different time, asking yourself, "Whose eyes am I looking through?"

Temple mixes abstraction and figuration approaches together. Or rather, certain modes of abstraction are employed to convey space. Different artists and times come to your eye as you pass over the surface. A Whitten-like smear, an occluded Guston blodge, a treacley Mitchell line. Compactified dimensions whose works are revealed across a small surface.

It also happens along the Z axis. She situates the viewer a certain number of paces away from the painting—the place where it coalesces. The closer you get, the more it disintegrates into abstraction.

It's one of the many dualities of this show. Hot/cold, light/shadow, close/far. The blue and the orange. One representing the physical, the other representing light, the évanescent.

These landscape and seascape paintings are mostly empty. There are no obvious stand-ins for the figure, like a landform or a lone tree. Snowy branches bend ant-like arms, creating an empty frame.

"Pond with Early Snow III" increases the chromatic value of different parts to distract your attention from the whole. The snow obscures areas of the scene. The water, the land, and the sky share colours. Everything teeters on the edge. It's all part of dematerializing the subject.

Campfire in the Snow 1

Her "Campfire in Snow I" painting finally fills the space, acting as a mediator between the blue and the orange. You are no longer looking into a clearing but are focused on an object and an activity. The flame crackles in swathes of hot colour, melting the blue. The broken branches take on a broken figure appearance, like an abstracted body.

Mary's paintings work well on social media. They transform well into posts. But there are certain colours that are not photographable. The contrast is pushed for the phone image, which limits colour possibilities. Texture can't be seen either. You have to turn up because these are paintings that demand your presence.

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Thank you Millree, this is…

Thank you Millree, this is so gorgeously written. 🙏🏼

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Alchemical Romance

Millree Hughes — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 14:50:39 +0000

Alchemical Romance Millree Hughes April 17, 2025 - 10:50

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Flame, 2024 oil on linen 44 x 31 ins.

"My spirit moves to tell of shapes transformed/into new bodies." - Ovid

PPOW gallery feels hushed by Judith Linhares's new suite of paintings. There's a chapel-like quality to the room; each painting gives off a subdued glow. But these are not windows; rather, each piece is like a slab of the material that this dimension is made of.

The painted subjects are occupying an impossible space. They defy the normal rules of perception. A motif of a knitted quilt appears under many of the figures and vases of flowers. However, frequently, their own perspective lines throw the vanishing point into the deep distance, even though the shadows on the wall behind the objects make them seem very close. At other times, the knitted surface tilts wildly towards us, pitching the objects out of the canvas as we fall into the "space."

The lighting is often both front-lit, top-lit, and sometimes side-lit too. A recurring double daisy image seems to have flower heads lit on one side and the other in shadow despite this hard light not affecting anything else in the space. The place that we, the viewers, are in seems to light the canvas and create shadows like Plato's cave that dance behind the flowers in an animated cartoony silhouette. This light appears to come from a fire or candles.

In one of the most spectacular paintings in this powerful show, "Flame," the quilt has been shrunk(relative scale also follows its own rules in this world), a figure, which may be the artist as a young girl holding a toy rabbit. We can't make out her expression.

A tiny votive candle on a red bandana casts unflickering shadows in four directions, like the spokes of a wheel. It reminds me of a pavement memorial that you might see in a Hispanic neighborhood. There are doublings and intimations of mortality throughout this show. The light will eventually go out.

Behind it is a disproportionate brass vase sporting dark flowers. Behind that, a double circle of radiating lines is either the apex of a circus tent without its pole or a new kind of nonlight casting a dark double burst.

Judy has always employed stripes. As backgrounds, wallpaper hinted at tents or otherworldly rays of light. They can be parallel or radiating from a single source or, as in "Backyard Bouquet," performing an impossible half zig zag under a vase of flowers.

Flower paintings have long been part of her output. In more figure-orientated shows, they've acted as less loaded images so we can step away from the psychic drama of the figure pieces and enjoy the bliss of her colors and forms entirely for themselves. But now the flower paintings are filled with loaded images. A drawing of two open hands in a book. An old photograph of a man. An image of a pregnant woman is a reminder that in her world, from girlhood to womanhood, women give of themselves and that even though they encounter dangers like narcissistic men, other jealous women, and angry lions, they do so without fear.

In this dimension, we have to accept the rules, whatever they are, or run the risk of having our hippocampus frozen by the contradictions in an unresolvable paralysis.

PPOW Gallery 392 Broadway New York, NY 10013, Tuesday - Saturday, 10:00 am - 6:00 pm

Tel 212-647-1044 (tel:212-647-1044)

info@ppowgallery.co

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On Sense

Millree Hughes — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 02:05:05 +0000

On Sense Millree Hughes February 2, 2025 - 21:05

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David Humphrey: PorTraits

Fredericks & Freise, NYC

Dec. 12 through Feb. 8

Social media and the engines that power its algorithms engage us in a race to the bottom. The stupider depths have worse music, more ill-informed news, and bad ideas.

David Humphrey's wild melange of painting styles was an argument for pluralism. He and other New York artists like Amy Silman and Michael St. John imagined painting as a manifestation of '90s tolerant liberalism. All kinds of things can coexist on the canvas because relationships matter.

In a big, messy, diverse country like America, this all makes sense, but nowadays, I believe that breaking rigid habits of thinking is more important.

In the main room, David's large paintings are made of carefully arranged parts. They seem to be worked out in advance rather than "found," as there is very little reworking going on. The paintings are much less oily than they used to be, and the colors are keyed up. I think a lot of artists are thinking about how their work will be read on the phone, as this is how a lot of painting is experienced now.

Plant Thoughts, 2024 Acrylic on canvas 60 x 72 inches

Is it a good example? The parts are laid out for consideration, and there is plenty of space between them. The conflict of black squiggles to the right on the blue and orange ground has a calligraphic quality. It contrasts with a more Instagram-like selfie head to the left.

Figures are often going through something. Stretched, smooshed, and, in this case, "censored." This one is pixelated, which relates to denying the viewer the ability to read it accurately. She has a plant growing out of her head, which reappears in other watercolors.

I'm reminded of the late Richard Foreman. Watching his plays, I often felt as if I was at the center of a vortex. There was an activity on stage that I couldn't follow. It was occasionally abated by a direct-to-audience speech that didn't really go anywhere in narrative terms.

With Foreman, as with David Lynch's movies, I find it best to adopt a relaxed, alert, but accepting state, just as I would do if I were meditating.

These artists all work within glittering structures made to contain their ideas. Seductive formal qualities make the work more available. Lynch's movies happen in gloriously lit vistas. Foreman's plays are like exquisite clock mechanical ballets, and Humphrey's paintings appear in gorgeous colors. They ask us to be free, despite the obstacles, to be open, even if we are afraid.

Above the pixelated head is a flourish of orange paint. It seems to act as a shadow to the head/mass of black strokes.

This play of like and unlike in unusual constructions is crucial to his work. It's poetry.

The back room of the gallery is like the inside of David's head. There are sculptures on shelves, watercolors, and a video curated by his wife, the artist Jennifer Coates. It's where experiments happen.

Looking at the back room, I saw connections from the sculpture to the sketches and into the video. Humphrey reminds me to perceive associations outside of narrative or familiar perceptual connections. For example, a thing may cast a "shadow," even if unformed. A ceramic cat with a broken face took me back to the first show of his that I ever saw at Deven Golden's gallery in the '90s. It was a show of piles of found broken ceramics formed into new sculptural totems.

A conjunction of yellow balls on a pedestal reminded me of a Cezanne fruit bowl in some kind of flux. The watercolor behind it is an ectopic portrait. An image of the artist sleeping on a sofa seems to be a focal point. Reality reassembles itself in his dreams.

The absurd is a way to open the mind to new possibilities. In the world we live in now, we are constantly being forced to make normal decisions and have normal responses. As I write, AutoCorrect is changing my wurds! Nonsense is a powerful antidote.

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Highly Pitched Colored Narratives

Mary Hrbacek — Wed, 25 Dec 2024 22:16:09 +0000

Highly Pitched Colored Narratives Mary Hrbacek December 25, 2024 - 17:16

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A Midsomer Night's Dream, oil on canvas, 72 x 60," 2024

Katya Leonovich: American Renaissance

Leonovich Gallery 10/1-12/31/24

Leonovich Gallery presents an inaugural show curated by Elga Wimmer of eighteen new large-scale oil on canvas paintings by Katya Leonovich, gallerist, and artist. The gallery is the "new kid on the block" of established and mega-galleries on West 24^th Street in the N.Y. art district for international and world-class artists. The daring and expansive works on view have not been molded to the usual expectations that typically reflect the "New York School" painting style; far from it! Her freely flowing radical painting technique is linked through touch and content to German Expressionism. Leonovich, a former fashion designer, goes all in with rough, textured brush strokes of unusual vigor. Her highly pitched colored narratives do not spare the viewer or seek to please. They are emotionally charged statements that focus on male subjects, accentuating the tension and highly wrought challenges that span the lives of many men in Western culture.

Leonovich paints the figures in loose, vibrant strokes that draw the eye through the fluid musculature of her nude male figures, many of whom express the discord of a struggle with animals that may symbolize the impulses and emotions they are confronting. The bright, uncompromising backgrounds function as metaphors for the aggressiveness, strength, roughness, and unrestrained physicality that is often associated with men. Women, in contrast, have traditionally been linked with the finer feelings of caring, empathy, compassion, and delicacy of manner and behavior. Women sometimes cry when a film has an especially sad ending; I question if men have been sufficiently liberated yet to cry at a sad conclusion!

Earthly Delights, oil on canvas, 72 x 60," 2024.

These are not harmonious colors, they are visually searing, challenging the observer to confront a non-traditional approach to visual expression; their unrelenting power may startle the viewer, until they become accustomed to the force of its impact. Various animals function as foils that engage the male subjects in ferocious physical combat, but some works reflect reconciliation, perhaps displaying mastery over difficult tendencies and feelings. There are around eight works that explore the process of struggle, while another eight display a sense of companionship and shared well-being between men and wild animals that personify their passions and instincts.

A variety of carefully chosen creatures establish the character of the action in each format. In "Crescendo," a large gorilla and an alligator surround a crouching man, hinting at the brutality he may face in his own evolving nature and the strong force of his id/sexuality. In "Universal Manna," the figure tries to extricate his foot from a kangaroo pouch, perhaps to free himself from the overbearing influence of his own mother or of his ancestral roots. In "Lionheart," the cool blue male seen from the back manages to overcome a young lion that he carries on his shoulders; the lion in Mesopotamian reliefs signifies the battle between the creator-mother lion and the male destroyer.

The painting "In Obscurity to Danger" features a seated figure who grips an erect asp while he sits seemingly comfortably on the shell of a large tortoise. In China, the snake is a sexual symbol associated with the male organ, which is a vehicle for lust. Snakes are thought to embody cleverness and duplicity. The turtle is the Native American symbol for the Earth Mother and for the Earth itself. In China, the tortoise encircled by a snake represents the North and Winter, embodying the belief that all tortoises are females who exclusively mate with snakes. "Knockout" is an especially intense image of a fallen boxer who is lying vulnerable in the ring overseen by a triumphant kangaroo. Kangaroos in Australia are known to be both fierce fighters and vigilant mothers who embody ancestral spirits. This image denotes circumstances in which the confrontation with the weaknesses of one's inbred heritage has been lost.

From Obscurity to Danger, oil on canvas, 72 x 60," 2024

These paintings express Leonovich's personal agendas in provocative imagery and contrasting hues. The works recall the ruthless quality that defines the art of Francis Bacon. They spur the viewer to explore their own susceptibilities in response to the artist's concerns. These works are highly original. It is rare for an artist to display such unlimited dynamism with such unfolding vigor. Leonovich explores men's psyches to reveal their inner demons in order to find what lies below the surface of the so-called civilized man. Her investigation is thorough and intense. She tenaciously digs into her content until vital aspects of men’s characters are made visually manifest, employing animal symbolism as the core of her narratives.

Color plays a significant role in her oeuvre. She is not willing to tone down the highly charged feelings behind the brightly contrasting, even clashing colors she freely uses. Her work is not meant to be pretty or restrained, quite the opposite, but it is nothing if not wholly authentic. Leonovich perhaps mirrors in her art the contentious political atmosphere we are experiencing in contemporary America. The painting "Monkey Business" suggests the total folly that engaging in war perpetrates. The show encompasses some political undertones, as seen in "You Choose." Finally, the painting that borrows the title of Johnny Cash’s song "I Walk the Line" visually expresses musical notes played by a naked man in a cowboy hat. Our democracy is on the brink of implosion, just as these figures are, for the most part, on the edge of their inner turmoil, in search of a way through and out of the confusion and angst that will lead some of the subjects to serenity.

Self-taught Russian artist Leonovich has much to say and is unapologetic about how she presents her visions in deeply mythic engagements between man and his inner demons. Her art can be seen as a feminist manifesto that makes men, instead of solely women, the subjects under scrutiny in life's constant battle to break us or strengthen us. Her animal imagery perfectly suggests the impulses that must be overcome in order to find peace, clarity, and tranquility within oneself and in one’s battle for self-understanding and self-control. The darker backgrounds on some paintings seem to imply night, as if some forces are just below the surface of the subconscious mind, waiting to emerge to be recognized and dealt with. One of the most striking aspects of these works is the confident depiction of male anatomy in strong, forceful brush strokes that mold the tendons and muscles to the underlying bodily forms. Leonovich's professional work in men's fashion has strengthened her ability to capture the movement of the male body convincingly.

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Tension At Play

Mary Hrbacek — Sat, 02 Nov 2024 20:23:19 +0000

Tension At Play Mary Hrbacek November 2, 2024 - 16:23

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Ran Hwang: Evanescence & Regeneration

Leila Heller Gallery

10/15 – 12/7/2024

Leila Heller Gallery presents Evanescence & Regeneration, a site-specific exhibition of nineteen new works by Korean artist Ran Hwang that explores traditional forms and themes of Asian culture and art in a highly charged presentation with links to the décor field. Hwang's connection to the imagery of plum blossoms, an almost national treasure in Asia, is articulated by beads, pins, paper, buttons, and nails, which have played a key role in Hwang's work-intensive process for some time. The blossoms signal that life is renewing itself in splendor. They are one of the Chinese "Three Friends of Winter" springing from branches that appear dead. They are among the four flowers that represent a season: Spring. The five petals of the plum blossom stand for the "Five Gods of Good Luck." Hwang's affinity for this flowering tree integrates aspects of symbolism and craft as she hammers pins and nails into paper buttons to affix them in multitudes on shaped plexiglass or wooden surfaces.

The artist immerses herself in the creative process as she strives for a material expression that fulfills her vision and needs to replicate a volumetric aspect of nature. The intricate particles adhere on translucent ultra-modern plexiglass surfaces. She covers a wood foundation with silver metallic paint that suggests machine veneers. Floral petals are amassed into blossoms over the background spaces.

Becoming Again_ETBF, 2024 Paper Buttons, Beads, Pins on Plexiglass H94.4in x W141.7in (6p) / H240cm x W360cm (6p)

Shape plays a major contributory role in Hwang's art. She uses circular forms symbolically to denote the eternal character of round formats. In the "Ode to the Full Moon," she plays with cycles of unexpected color: bright greenish blue, glittering pink, pale green, and neutrals of black, white, and gray. In this multiplex piece, these cycles speak to the artist's intensive constructive work process, as she creates alterations with new views that are subtly diversified. Except for these few examples, where the flowers take on a bright hue, the blossoms remain, for the most part, white, surrounded by the rough texture of the brown trunks and branches.

Hwang eases into the realm of "Décor" in some of her pieces. The blue screen is an example of a traditional Asian screen with updated variations; these are usually composed of panels delicately covered with water-based paints or inks on paper. Hwang reinterprets this style imaginatively to make the expressive statement stronger, more brightly colored, and surprisingly playful. The striking panels allude to contemporary interiors with the galaxy-like flowers that invoke stars in a vibrant evening sky. Nature here is assertively stated and more boldly expressed.

In "Beyond the Serenity," the entire work is immersed in solid pink, and in "Beyond the Serenity _P," 2024, the piece is saturated in a deeper orange-pink, which has isolated the blossoms in an unvaried world of pink hue. Pink subtly alludes to popular contemporary fashion. The oval shape of "Healing the Oblivious Aqua_OS," 2024, imitates a horizontal landscape format with softened edges. The silver metallic background vibrates with the nails and pins, juxtaposing them with a field of colorful primary hues in the bunched and blown petals. In this work, the artist expands her vocabulary to display a video game quality with pieces of plastic and paper blossoms juxtaposed with the silver ground. Nature is no longer pure or precious; it has become an extension of leisure that is adjoined to life's daily diversions and pleasures. It has become something that is fun to see and think about in leisurely contemplation but is not to be taken overly seriously or imbued with emotions or imaginative narratives. Nature is becoming more ordinary in popular culture.

Healing oblivious aqua_OS, 2024 Buttons, Hanji Paper, Beads, Pins on Wooden panels H78.7in x W141.7in (3p) / H200cm x W360cm

Hwang acts on an inner drive that seems to compel her to hammer materials in place on the surfaces and to shape those surfaces in symbolic ways that imply segments of experience as much as the fullness of expression.

Hwang has spanned the domain of traditional screens, wall hangings, and panels by expanding to ovals, circles, and extra-narrow formats. The artist has been fastidious in her work, hammering prolifically to deconstruct the image and conception of the Asian woman, which is often compared metaphorically to the traditional national flower. Whether consciously or without a clear sense of awareness, the artist is pounding away to undermine the cliché of delicacy whose aura plagues contemporary Asian women. They are in every way anxious to succeed in careers in contemporary art, business, finance, and all arenas of achievement and excellence. The works, including the steel nails embedded in the midst of the flower petals, retain their character with the addition of metal centers to affix them in place, within their firmament of purity in the context of reinterpretation, renewal, and redefinition.

Ran Hwang's powerful yet semi-decorative works express a strong self-assertive link with interior décor. She succeeds in imbuing her solid pink and pink/orange circular formats with a compelling volumetric depth of field that retains viewer interest as it fixes the eye on the dramatically shaped structures. The blend of natural petals and mechanistic nails and pins creates an unexpected, enigmatic combination that asks more questions than it answers. There is a tension at play in the works, in the forceful aura of contrasting elements that hold the viewer's attention. The unusually strong personal take on nature in the exhibition is both rewarding and stimulating. Ran Hwang has integrated Asian spiritual motifs and traditional Asian Interior décor with a trendy take on pop-Western nature perspectives to create an emphatic blend of forces that stir and inspire the viewer.

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Transliteration

Millree Hughes — Thu, 10 Oct 2024 23:19:22 +0000

Transliteration Millree Hughes October 10, 2024 - 19:19

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Kathleen Kucka at The Re Institute

Millerton, NY

Through October 26th

If art is not representing something, if it's not mimetic, what is it? It could be made up of signs or symbols that refer to some system of understanding. At best it might use its lack of plastic objecthood to conjure up something subconscious. It could use actions rather than things to do so.

Kathleen Kucka's new show at the Re Institute shares with an artist friend Janet Stemmermann continues her project of burn-marked canvases.

The space is large, filled with uncluttered light and betrays green folds of New York landscape from large windows. These beautiful canvases need space around them.

They act as a reversal of normal painting as the gesture cuts into the ground to reveal the colour behind. The raw canvas is scored by a hot blade. It's then laid on to a surface coloured by Flashe.

It is a slow read which helps to separate them from the influence of Lucio Fontana whose cuts can appear like a sudden murderous lunge.

Kucka's are sensual. The dyptych "Every-Thing" is exemplary. The marks move across the surface in an undulating pattern. The colour behind rises in a gradation from pumpkin to sign yellow. There is a hint of early Kusama with the same suggestion of the violence of revelation.

The night after seeing the show I dreamed of a favourite painting, Titian's "The Flaying of Marsayas." The metaphor can be the same, whether it's acted out or Represented.
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The Re Institute, 1395 Boston Corners Road, Millerton, NY
Shows are open from 1 to 4 PM on Saturdays or by appointment at 518-567-5359.

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The Poetics of Time

Dom Lombardi — Sun, 11 Aug 2024 14:00:00 +0000

The Poetics of Time Dom Lombardi August 11, 2024 - 10:00

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Dahlia Bed, Afternoon and Evening, 2018, acrylics on multiple acrylic sheets, all images courtesy of Cross Contemporary Art

Martin Weinstein: Looking Through Times

Cross Contemporary Art

Martin Weinstein’s art is time-sensitive. No, not the anxiety-producing, stressful, or expiring type. His art is more in the realm of the poetics of time—what we experience most often subconsciously when connecting with the time/space undercurrent encountered during times of heightened awareness.

Time, a human construct, was designed to give us organization and to present the concept of the past, present, and future, which some see as virtually nonexistent. Weinstein takes a very close look at that last part, dividing his paintings into separate, physical, overlapping transvisual layers. The resulting effect of his nontraditional approach precipitously changes the way we perceive two standard genres in painting: the landscape and the portrait, bringing renewed wonder and appreciation to these most familiar types.

Within his paintings, there is this shuffle between near and far, the time of day, and the changes throughout the seasons or years. Going beyond the preconceived, Weinstein changes the way we process visual information by breaking it down to selective details that jostle and float in space--real-time triggers that occur when one is immersed in the experience of life. And despite the fact that Weinstein works with acrylic paints and panels, his art puts forth a very organic and fluid vision well beyond the fixed and familiar. In the orchestration or the illustration of time, the artist pushes beyond the limits within the realm of the painted surface--a challenge that Weinstein solves by angling and overlapping the painted clear acrylic sheets.

Dahlia Bed, Afternoon and Evening, 2018, acrylics on multiple acrylic sheets, oblique angle photo by the author

Overall, Weinstein’s numerous works are Installed to hint at the sequential process of a graphic novel, moving the viewer through various vignettes that begin with an introduction to the lead characters in the form of portraits. From there, the installation moves us through individual, variously connected vistas where a windy and weightless thread begins in Italy with Venice, Stormy Evenings (2019) and Venice, Stormy Mornings (2021), soaring to a peak of intensity in mid-exhibition with Dogwoods and River, One afternoon Over another (2021), May Evening, One Over Another (2021) and Snowy Evenings, One Year Over Another (2021).

Venice, Stormy Mornings, 2021, acrylics on multiple acrylic sheets

Weinstein’s loving embrace of seasonal change is most profound in the spring and summer when the fireworks of exploding blooms reach their various peaks in warmer weather. In these instances, the artist gives that distinctive airiness to his painting technique and places it in the petals of the flowers. Often painted at close range, this series of floral delights is a continuous celebration, clearly recorded in the stunningly alluring Roses and River, Late Evening over Early Evening (2020), Irises and River, Evening Under Afternoon (2021) and Peonies, Three afternoons (2021). In these works and others like it, we experience the endless cycle of the earth through its most brilliant and colorful stars.

May Evenings, One Over Another, 2021, acrylics on multiple acrylic sheets

Weinstein’s portraits have a similar mix of persistence versus impermanence as we see more than one view of the subject. One immediately gets the feeling that these paintings, whether it is Syd (2015-2015), Katie (2022), John (2022) or the artist’s partner Tereza, April (2020), are individuals that are close in heart, mind and spirit to the artist. And as subjects, they also become integral but less overbearing elements than your standard portrait type, as they are absorbed directly into the artist’s fluid process. As a result, these portraits maintain the aura of each person, the spirit of the individual, placing them in an altogether different realm than the usual portrait type, just like the artist has done in his interpretation of a landscape.

Syd, 2015, acrylics on multiple acrylic sheets

Lastly, there is the Inside Over Outside series, which consists of a number of captivating works that move the viewer right through solid spatial boundaries. Walls dissolve, near and far intermingle, and what we understand as here and there blend together in a dance of visual delights. Add to the mix timeless cities like Rome and Venice, and the outside under the inside takes on even more import, giving the entire materialization of the narrative a chilling vulnerability.

Rome, Stormy Afternoons, Outside Under Inside, 2023, acrylics on multiple acrylic sheets

Take, for instance, Rome, Stormy Afternoon, Outside Under Inside (2023). Here we see the heavens intermingling seamlessly with the ceiling structure while landmarks encroach and interior furnishings hang in the balance. In Rome, Stormy Afternoon, Outside Under Inside, and the many works that take on that same challenge of traveling through tangible barriers that demarcate space, there is Weinstein’s unique take on the plotting of time, a vision with far more layers of meaning than the ones recorded in paint. What remains is a very tangible substance well beyond mere representation. Landscape and portrait painting has been thoroughly resuscitated, revived, and brought back to its once compelling place in the works of Martin Weinstein.