March 2007
posted March 24, 2007
DIANE THODOS on Michele Russman and Mark Nelson at the Koehnline Museum, De Plaines |
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The combination of Russman's ghost-like hangings and Nelsonís punctuating sounds combine to give a sense of abstract nature as Japanese Noh Theater. The entire room is suffused with a pervasive quietism, lightness, and verticality, emphasizing the spaces between the sculptures as well as the spaces between the sounds.
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posted March 21, 2007
JENNIFER RILEY on Melissa Meyer at the New York Studio School |
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There is a familiarity to the high contrast, cut-out-like positive–negative interlocking forms, but as we follow the forms we discover the image resists being locked into simple association. It seems to change as we view it or is it we who change as we view it?
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posted March 16, 2007
ERIC GELBER on Alan Davie at ACA Galleries |
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Davie pushed his invented and appropriated abstract signs and symbols forward by using hot and loud colors, connoting a wide range of emotions. Abstract forms can be read as musical notes because they are weightless, rhyming, disparate, and seep into the mind in the way of musical patterns or riffs.
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posted March 11, 2007
REUBEN BARON and JOAN BOYKOFF BARON on Josef Albers and Donald Judd at PaceWildenstein, Tony Oursler at Lehmann Maupin |
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We think there is a clue in Oursler’s work that provides us with a deeper insight into the nature of the relationship involved in the Albers-Judd pairings. This is a rather surprising state of affairs given that Oursler’s grotesque sculptures are hardly known for their imaginative use of color.
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posted March 4, 2007
TOBEY CROCKETT on Andrew Krasnow at ADM Projects, Los Angeles |
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The lion’s share of the work are objects which Krasnow has fashioned from leather he has made from human skin. It is not a lurid undertaking. In fact, it is a rather beautiful, painstakingly crafted and well-installed exhibition with an attention to detail and respect for the material that is quite nearly heartbreaking, the show undeniably packing a visceral and emotional punch.
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posted March 1, 2007
DAVID COHEN on High Times, Hard Times at the National Academy Museum |
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These artists found a space for themselves between the dogmatics of minimal and conceptual art on the one hand and the formalist abstraction championed by the critic Clement Greenberg, on the other. Having their cake and eating it, they wanted to enjoy playing with shape, form, color, and material and feel that they were structurally questioning the language of art in the process.
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