anaba

3X

2016-04-26T11:31:00.003-04:00

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I un-posted this (below) after I initially wrote it two years ago because whatever I am dormant and didn't want to end on a sour note... but I will re-post it now because annoying.

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Roberta Smith says James Franco sucks but instead why doesn't she just shut up about him... it's the third review she has given him. Waste of space. Two full reviews of George Bush paintings too.

Roberta Smith on James Franco 8/19/2010.
Roberta Smith on James Franco 11/18/2011.
Roberta Smith on James Franco 4/22/2014.

Thanks Roberta.

Patrick Berran

2014-03-11T22:48:00.001-04:00

Patrick Berran, with White Columns, at The Independent.

Pat Berran Studio Visit, anaba, 3/5/2012.
Pat Berran on PaintersNYC 7/7/07.

GYG

2013-07-13T00:09:00.000-04:00

Michael Dotson

Eight Ball, at Geoffrey Young Gallery, in Great Barrington. MA. Closes 7/27.

Brece Honeycutt.... wearing a cool shirt she made... I think she said she made it by wrapping something really hot/burning(??)... I can't remember, maybe a horseshoe?... but it was an interesting process.

Initially I thought it was like a Cai Guo-Qiang gunpowder thing... like he did for Gap... as seen in 'Which Infant Stool Sample?'.

Geoffrey Young (L) Michael Dotson (Center) Gary Petersen (R).

Somebody remind me who did that yellow piece... it's plastic pepsi bottles or something all flattened and smooshed down, painted over yellow.

Vince Contarino!... - I've known Vince for a few years at least but this was the first time to see a selection of his paintings,,,, NICE!

Vince Contarino and Nina Smith.

Vince Contarino

John Phillip Abbott

Cary Smith and John Phillip Abbott

Vince Contarino

Kylie Heidenheimer

2013-07-04T22:07:00.000-04:00

Kylie Heidenheimer, at Galerie Gris, in Hudson. Closes 7/15.

not sure if he has a website yet, it's a new gallery... at 621 Warren... same street as John Davis!

The previous show was Marina Adams.... I missed that show but got some good photos of her work in the back... will post soon.

Kylie Heidenheimer

John Davis Gallery (through 7/14)

2013-06-27T22:15:00.001-04:00

Gregory Amenoff

at John Davis Gallery, Hudson NY, through 7/14.

Jason Stopa

Gregory Amenoff - very nice... I liked the big ones especially...they are very Elizabeth Murray.

(btw I mentioned that and he said they were in a show together in 1978... Eight Abstract Painters, at the Philadelphia ICA... with Frances Barth, Jake Berthot, Bruce Boice, James Juszczyk, Paul Rotterdam, Joan Thorne)

Jason Stopa

STUDIO CRITICAL interview with Jason Stopa.

STUDIO CRITICAL interview with ME!

Jon Isherwood - glistening brown... plop... mysterious glyphs... so WEIRD!

Gregory Amenoff and Jason Stopa - sorry it's blurry.

JJ Manford + a Jason Stopa painting... rainbow and glitter. JJ had a show at John Davis last year.

Gregory Amenoff

JOHN DAVIS GALLERY!!!!!

MASS MoCA Summer 2013

2013-06-10T23:01:00.000-04:00

Eric Doeringer, Some Los Angeles Apartments, in Love to Love You, curated by Martha Joseph.

MASS MoCA SUMMER 2013!! .... some new shows opened.... a Jason Middlebrook show, a Joseph Montgomery show, and a small group show including Eric Doeringer.

Jason Middlebrook's centerpiece... a Falling Water sculpture... kind of an 'awkward space'-filler, his totems/planks are more interesting.

MASS MoCA recycles everything... I wouldn't even be surprised if this was Styrofoam left-over from K. Grosse's wonderful show.

BEST use of MASS MoCA recycling I have seen yet was the utilization of the the C. Buchel abandoned movie theater seats to watch Guy Ben-Ner's (Buchel mocking) video.

Jason Middlebrook... charred-ish... 'plank' pieces are always cool. How/Why. Also, anything that is burned or just looks burned.

Judy Chicago's 'plank'-ish piece, Rainbow Picket (1965), included in the 1966 Primary Structures show, came before the first McCracken plank (1966)... he was in Primary Structures also, but it wasn't a plank... was he inspired? I've never read anything.

Judy Chicago +... tough ads-as-art in Artforum before Benglis, car hoods on walls before Prince.

Jason Middlebrook

close-up

Jason Middlebrook

Eric Doeringer + MASS MoCA's Director Joe Thompson.

Eric has what looks like a really good show - or series of shows - this summer at No Foundation, in Toronto. I saw some photos on his facebook... not sure if this link to the fb pic works but try it. Eric's 2009 show at Dam, Stuhltrager was one of those rare perfect shows.

Joseph Montgomery

MORE TOTEMS!... not planks though, on the wall.

plastic coated

Joseph Montgomery

really like how this oily one extends, and the shadows

these are so 3-D

Joseph Montgomery

Eric with artists working at MASS MoCA. Eric's GF,,, I staged this photo don't be mad!

NOTE of DISCORD - i don't live terribly far from this museum... back in 5/2012 i emailed some curators here (Susan Cross, Denise Markonish, +) and at the Tang (Megan Hyde, Rachel Seligman, Ian Berry), inviting them to visit my studio... not a single one responded, even to decline. LAME!!...as non-profit museum 'curated' shows it's kind of sad; the artist's NYC galleries do all the work getting these shows placed.

The National Exemplar

2013-06-01T21:48:00.004-04:00

Richard Artschwager, at The National Exemplar. Closes 6/10.

National Exemplar is Eneas Capalbo's gallery. Eneas is an artist... I loved his show of fake Condos at Half Gallery.

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Peter Coffin in the front gallery.

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Richard Artschwager's last piece... a drum... it was at his bedside.

Richard Artschwager.

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Eneas gave me a small book of his portrait drawings ---

Portrait of Violetta Caprotti

Portrait of Dash Snow

THANKS ENEAS.

Simon Hantai

2013-05-27T20:52:00.002-04:00

Simon Hantai, at Paul Rodgers... through 9/13.

gotta post the Hantai after Parrino.

Simon Hantai

Joanne Greenbaum + Steven Parrino

2013-05-22T23:13:00.000-04:00

Joanne Greenbaum + Steven Parrino, at Kerry Schuss.

Travess Smalley

2013-05-21T22:37:00.001-04:00

Travess Smalley, at Higher Pictures. Closes 6/1.

It was so crowded.

Travess Smalley

Robert C. Morgan

2013-05-19T20:44:00.001-04:00

Robert C. Morgan, at Creon Gallery. Closing Reception, May 22, 7-9pm.

Robert Morgan

Jeffrey Collins - he's been making a documentary of artist interviews, posting clips on his fb... it is looking really good.

Peter Acheson

2013-05-13T21:57:00.001-04:00

Peter Acheson, at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects. Rear Gallery, through 5/26.

one of the most interesting painters.

Peter Acheson at John Davis Gallery, on anaba 11/16/2010.

(these images look a little blurry, i don't know why. click on an image to see it clearer. i have had major probs adjusting since blogger updated i hate it!)

Ramshackle Kaleidoscope

2013-05-10T21:30:00.002-04:00

Ramshackle Kaleidoscope, curated by Jordana Zeldin, at Artbridge.

This is the tiny broom closet space that I first knew of as Fake Estate, and next became Damien Crisp's The Ocean / The Waves.

Sarah Bednarek. All of these sculptures are transformers. They look like they open up or unfold somehow.

LOOK at how awesome these are.

Christian Sampson

Sarah Bednarek on anaba 4/27/05

Sarah Bednarek at Cynthia Broan, on anaba 7/23/2005.

Sarah Bednarek, at the first Aqua Miami, on anaba 12/9/05.

detail

Sarah Bednarek with Christian Sampson and Amelia Midori Miller.

Christian Sampson

Ramshackle Kaleidoscope through 8/1.

Christopher K. Ho

2013-05-06T22:28:00.000-04:00

Christopher K. Ho, Demoiselles d'Avignon, at Y Gallery. Closed 5/4.

circle of low tables/sculptures on a carpeted floor

looks so spare but full of incident

they are mostly non-functional... sculptures... balanced with wit style brains and humor.

i saw his last two shows at Winky and Co-Winky Dink's and didn't like either... snooze and forced, overthought + overwrought... but this is really niice.

it's nuts

Christopher K. Ho

Swing State

2013-05-05T21:45:00.001-04:00

Lisa Beck

Swing State, at Jane Kim Gallery... she has a new temporary spot so this is kind of a 'pop up'... really good artists and it closes 5/12.

Thomas Nozkowski - from 1976!... it's a recreation using original pieces, initially made during a break from painting.

The Lighter Side of Tom Nozkowski.

Joanne Greenbaum....!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tamara Gonzales - haha I see the Carrol Dunham penis guy.

Tamara Gonzales at Norte Maar, on anaba 3/22/2012. Fun Show.

Lucas Samaras! - how often do you see Lucas Samaras in these kinds of small shows??... knives and forks slathered with paint... looks like a dragonfly.

Joanne Greenbaum

Joanne Greenbaum - yes there were some other very good artists included (Lydia Dona, James Hyde, +) but I really love the GREENBAUM.

THIS SHOW HAD A NICE LITTLE SELECTION OF BOOKS TOO.

Green Car Crash

2013-04-26T00:26:00.000-04:00

Green Car Crash

THE GREATEST AMERICAN PAINTER

2013-03-19T15:58:00.001-04:00

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Now that's an ironic title for a review of a Walter Robinson show, isn't it, especially for someone who claimed to have "stopped painting" in 1985 to become a fulltime editor? Yet, here we have a brand new body of work at the Dorian Grey Gallery in which Wally recapitulates the metaphors of casual desire which made him, briefly, an art star in the early 80s, as the inventor of "bad painting."

In truth Walter Robinson never stopped painting, although for decades the only people who ventured to his studio and put him in group shows were the brilliant artist Jane Dickson and myself. How Scott Fitzgerald described his own style in The Crackup, "fatal facility", delineates the Robinson practice and the Robinson influence. Even though Walter was stupidly not included in the Met's Pictures Generation exhibition a few years back, the ambiguity of his life's work made Robinson the avatar of his generation of painters and all that followed. The hamburgers, babes, beer bottles, whiskey, playing cards, medicine cabinets and trannies which emerge so easily from Robinson's brush may be too facile for the intelligentsia but they are fatal in their encyclopedic depiction of American's downmarket desires.

The critical reaction to Walter's work has also been facile and, until now, fatal to his painting career: Peter Schjeldahl writing in The New Yorker that Damien Hirst stole his spin paintings from Robinson, Jerry Saltz repeatedly claiming that Walter "should win a MacArthur". Ah yes, so many have come to praise Robinson as his career lay buried in his own struggle for sobriety and his editorial attentions to others. For, in truth, just as Walter's easy strokes invite dismissal, so his enabling art world persona made him dismiss his own studio genius. Yet, if only by osmosis, the great ironists of figuration, Currin, Peyton and Yuskavage and their legions of inferiors, owe everything to Walter's painting, while , as his new show proves, he remains a better painter than them!

In 1995, I took Walter to Jenny Schueler's Soho studio to see her "TV Dinner Series". Because her work looked exaclty like Robinson's own TV dinner series from many years before, and because she didn't even know that Walter was a painter, Robinson nearly lost it. "But", I told him then, "Isn't this proof of your genius? Don't you have the true power of the Zen master atop a hill whose mere thinking has the easy facility to change the world?" Chew on that burger for awhile and you will come to the absurd but true realization that Walter Robinson is the most influential American painter since Jasper Johns, and, thus, the greatest.

Charlie Finch

dibbity-dab

2013-03-18T21:35:00.000-04:00

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"I’m skeptical of the current fad for (easily salable) nostalgic dibbity-dab abstract paintings" - Andrew Russeth

"Since the economy tanked, we have become so accustomed to seeing so many artists churn out insipid, derivative drivel that we cannot imagine things any other way. The lemming abstractionist movement (also commonly referred to as the Martha Stewart School of Provisional Painting) still seems to have inexplicable hegemony over most of the art world." - Irena Jurek

"There is an overabundance of nostalgic abstract painting in the world today. Many of these works are shown and garnering attention in Manhattan's Lower East Side, in close proximity to the gallery that shows Liz's work. The system of art is lubricated for nostalgia: The dealer can easily talk about these paintings because they look like older art, the collector "gets it" because it is something that he or she has seen before, the artist feels comfortable since it gives him or her a relationship to "history", and comparing contemporary art is a trusty crutch taught in MFA programs. The job of the artist is to question - not to be boringly complicit with - all of these structures." - Carter Mull

Carrie Moyer

2013-02-26T20:34:00.001-05:00

Carrie Moyer, Pirate Jenny, at the Tang Museum.

Pirate Jenny, 2012

Mlle. X, 2012

Video Studio Visit - i didn't know she makes little b/w collage studies first as sort of armatures which enlarged the color gets painted poured and layered into... the same design sometimes gets used in more than one painting.

Rapa Nui Smashup, 2009

Motor Belly, 2012

Skullspout, 2007

it's past over

2013-02-08T00:41:00.002-05:00

on the case

"These works make you wonder if Bush is familiar with Jasper Johns’s “Seasons,” where each of the four paintings is shadowed by a male, seemingly unclothed silhouette, or Pierre Bonnard’s strangely chaste, luminous paintings of his wife reclining in a bathtub." - R. Smith

Please sign my ipetition to make this be a bad dream.

LAID TO REST

("These days the art world blogosphere produces so much of its own smug, semi-informed, provincial snark that it is hard for Mr. Safer’s to stand out." - R. Smith)

paintings

2013-02-05T18:50:00.000-05:00

i havent posted any of my own paintings since 8/2011... before i went to istanbul.

except for pics from Bromirski/LaBine/Riley at Storefront Bushwick!

(PROPERTY OF SUSAN SCOTT ^)

i had made this^,... and later i was looking at these islamic carpets again... oh duh.

some of these are scraped and shredded so far down i then stain them from the back.

people talk about casualism and provisionalism but nobody ever talks about wabi sabi.

BROmirskiBROsseau.. look, its one of the best blog posts ever.

qualities of a good scholar's rock - grotesque, corruscated, pockmarked, elaborated, over-elaborated, animated, awkward, top heavy, wrinkling (texture), moistness (tactile and glossy), resonance.

Simon Cerigo

2013-01-22T14:59:00.001-05:00

Simon Cerigo died Sunday.

he made every scene more interesting

Bye Simon

Simon in the hat with horns and lights, making Deborah Warner laugh, at Mark Kostabi's tv show.

Love to Nancy

best three

2012-12-28T20:02:00.002-05:00

Jamison Brosseau, "The Natural", at 245 Varet.... a one-night party show.

My best three most wonderful art shows/encounters/experiences of the year.

Robert Janz... Mountain Mode... I noticed him working on the street, and then talked with him... later I looked him up and saw more.

Yohji Haijima, at Art + Eat... another chance encounter, a second artist in his eighties... we were just looking for a place to sit and have something to eat between galleries.. but it turned out to be the reception for the best show I saw in two months in Tokyo.

THANK YOU!

(previous yearly favorites here)

Ken Weathersby

2012-12-19T21:28:00.003-05:00

Ken Weathersby Studio.

insets

detail

cut-outs

He had a show of these small ones at Chris Ashley's Some Walls.

a study.

the center diamond is a recycled postcard image from a previous show.

new work includes b&w photos hidden behind lattice.

Ken Weathersby's first (solo) show at Pierogi, on anaba 6/23/2010.

Full-size.... a circle was cut and slightly turned... it is very hard to photograph how cool some of these are... the colors merge in the photo, and you can't see the splotches and pencil lines.

detail

another one

detail

cover up

Ken Weathersby.

Chris Vasell

2012-12-15T23:29:00.004-05:00

Chris Vasell, Cutouts: Variations on 14 Yellow Teeth, at Team. Closes 12/21.

Chris Vasell