Painting In L.A.

The Painter as Pitcher

2013-10-11T18:40:00.000-07:00

A baseball pitcher is a good metaphor for a painter. A pitcher stands alone on the mound, a painter stands alone in the studio. A pitcher chooses from an arsenal of different pitches, altering the speed and location of each pitch to keep the batter off balance. A painter chooses from an arsenal of different styles and techniques, smearing colors onto canvas to create images or evoke a mood in the viewer. Both pitcher and painter rely heavily on their arm to do their job.

Leon Benn explores this metaphor, among other things, in Pitching Rotations, his first solo show at Carter & Citizen. It is a small show, of small paintings, in a small gallery, but like a good pitcher, Benn is able to do a lot in a limited amount of space.

Leon Benn, Smokin' Samsung, 2013, oil and acrylic on linen, 34 x 39 inches

Leon Benn, Smokin' Samsung, detail

There are several references to the game of baseball in this show. Some are more subtle than others and it was fun trying to spot them. The most obvious of the bunch is found in Smokin' Samsung (2013), the first painting viewers see upon entering the gallery. In it, Benn depicts a flat screen TV surrounded by empty soda cans and slices of pizza. The TV is tuned into a baseball game and the image on the screen portrays a pitcher standing on a mound like a castaway on a small island. The show's title, Pitching Rotations, is another baseball reference - a term used to describe the order of starting pitchers on a baseball team. It is also descriptive of a pitcher's arm as it rotates at the shoulder to throw a ball.

Leon Benn, Supraspinatus, 2013, dye, plaster, and mixed media on linen, 22 x 19 inches

But the most subtle (and most intriguing) baseball reference in this show is hinted at in Supraspinatus (2013). The painting is mainly abstract, but the title refers to one of the muscles that makes up a person's rotator cuff. (I googled it). Injuries to the rotator cuff are frequently sustained in the act of throwing a baseball and very common among pitchers. I'm no anatomy expert, but it seems probable that this muscle would play a significant roll in the act of painting as well. The link between rotator cuff and pitching rotations seems intentional and, if so, is evidence that this is a show that will reward a careful viewer.

Leon Benn, Blue Bikini study, 2013, oil, collaged linen, and dye on linen, 17 x 15 inches

Leon Benn, The Stretch, 2013, acrylic, collage and mixed media on canvas, 24 x 28 inches

Not into baseball? That's OK. This show manages to cover a lot of other ground as well. Benn paints in an expressionistic style that implies speed and spontaneity, but a closer look exposes him as a thoughtful and deliberate artist. He utilizes repeating imagery, a controlled color palette reminiscent of Picasso's blue and rose periods, and cleverly-worded titles to link this show together into a cohesive whole. Equal parts humor and melancholy, Pitching Rotations is a rich and rewarding first show. Nice game Benn, and go Dodgers.

Pitching Rotations is on view at Carter and Citizen through October 12, 2013.

Leon Benn, Is Land, His Land, 2013, oil, acrylic, and collage on canvas, 28 x 24 inches

Leon Benn, Island, They Float, oil and mixed media on canvas, 28 x 24 inches

Leon Benn, Civil Interdependency, 2013, acrylic, collage and mixed media on canvas, 64 x 20 inches

(Image at top: Installation view of Pitching Rotation via Carter and Citizen)

12 Cool Paintings From This Fall In L.A.

2013-10-08T23:48:00.002-07:00

The fall art season is in full swing here in Los Angeles and there are plenty of interesting painting shows worth checking out. For the sake of brevity, below is a list of 12 of my favorite paintings seen around town this past month (in no particular order). Many of these shows close soon so hurry out for a chance to see them in person.

Arnold Helbling, Entropy and a Sundowner, 2004, acrylic on canvas
from Drop City at Diane Rosenstein Fine Art (through Oct. 12, 2013)

Leon Benn, Smokin' Samsung, 2013, oil and acrylic on linen, 34 x 39 inches,
from Pitching Rotation at Carter & Citizen (through Oct. 12, 2013)

Maureen Gallace, Summer Shade, 2012, oil on panel, 9 x 12 inches,
at Overduin and Kite (through Oct. 26, 2013)

Lester Monzon, Untitled, acrylic and graphite on Belgian linen, 14 x 11 inches,
at Mark Moore Gallery (through Oct. 12, 2013)

Sarah Williams, Jackson County, 2013, oil on panel, 18 x 26 inches,
at George Billis Gallery (through Oct. 12, 2013)

Cecily Brown, installation shot at Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills (through Oct. 12, 2013)

Jay Stuckey, Guardians of the Secret, 2013, oil on canvas, 70 x 105 inches,
from Prima Materia at Anat Ebgi (through Nov. 9, 2013)

Painting by Stephanie Pryor from New Work at Marine Contemporary (through Oct. 19, 2013)

Iva Gueorguieva, Self Portrait with Pieces, 2013, acrylic, collage, and oil stick on canvas, 65 x 120 inches,
installation view from Spill / Frame at ACME. (through Oct. 12, 2013)

10.

Heather Gwen Martin, installation view from Pattern Math at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles (through Oct. 12, 2013)

11.

Brenna Youngblood, Trifecta, 2013, mixed media on panels, 49 x 25 inches each,
from Activision at Honor Fraser Gallery (through Oct. 26, 2013)

12.

Jeffrey Gibson, Portal, 2013, elk hide over birch panel, graphite, acrylic and oil paint, 60 x 48 x 2 1/2 inches, installation view from The Spirits Refuse Without a Body at Shoshana Wayne Gallery (through Oct. 26, 2013)

Does Painting Still Have Boundaries To Push?

2013-07-02T23:52:00.000-07:00

I can't think of a task more difficult for a contemporary painter than to attempt to push the boundaries of painting as a medium. It's not that contemporary painters aren't up to a challenge, it's just what the hell boundaries are left to push in the medium of painting?

It was my understanding that this happened...

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917

...and then this...

Robert Rauschenberg, Monogram, 1955-59

...and then there were no more boundaries.

But recently, two group shows popped up in Los Angeles - Painting In Place organized by L.A.N.D. and Wassup Painters curated by Pavan Segal at Anat Ebgi Gallery - making the case that contemporary painters continue to be boundary-pushers. Similar intentions can be seen via the press releases from each show.

From the Painting In Place press release:

The exhibition will present a wide array of work from contemporary artists that tackle painting from various perspectives, using both traditional and unconventional techniques and media in their approach to the discipline. Exploring various ways that the definition of painting is continuously evolving, the project seeks to expand the traditional parameters of painting, sculpture, and installation: blurred, deconstructed, and refigured.

From the Wassup Painters press release:

Wassup Painters brings together contemporary artists who approach painting through the use of nontraditional materials and innovative processes as a way of exploring new conceptual ground. Painting as a medium has a long and rich history and recent trends have focused on exploring and reinterpreting what has come before. In some contrast to this, Wassup Painters highlights artistic practices that push the possibilities of the medium into unexpected realms, blurring the boundaries between painting and other forms of object making.

So what's the deal? Are there still boundaries left to push in the medium of painting? As I understand it, the main 'boundary' in question in these two shows is the line separating the medium of painting from other mediums - like sculpture. In a way, it is a continuation of the rebellion against Clement Greenberg's rule of medium specificity. After thinking about these two shows, I started wondering what it would look like if artists successfully erased all the lines separating one medium from another. Would we just be left with one singular 'super medium' that encompassed all current mediums? What would that look like? What would we call it?

Then I realized that's exactly what we currently have. We call it contemporary art.

Wassup Painters is on view at Anat Ebgi Gallery through July 20, 2013. Pics below.

Installation shot. Wassup Painters at Anat Ebgi.

Cynthia Daignault, Any window, any morning, any evening, any day, 2012, oil on linen, 12 x 9 inches, (detail).

Cynthia Daignault, Any window, any morning, any evening, any day, 2012, oil on linen, (detail).

Henrik Olai Kaarstein, Mingling (Just Love the Boy), 2012, paint, acetone, glue, cardboard, wood, silicone, fiberboard, 38.5 x 27.5 inches.

Cynthia Daignault, Any window, any morning, any evening any day, 2012, oil on linen, 58 x 36 inches, (detail).

Installation view. Wassup Painters at Anat Ebgi.

Molly Zuckerman-Hartung, Going into Space, 2009, oil, spray paint, collage, and masking tape on linen, 26 x 18 inches.

Molly Zuckerman-Hartung, Going into Space, 2009, (detail).

Henrik Olai Kaastein, With the Highest Degree of Coarsness, 2012, Paint, wallpaper glue, glitter, charcoal, gloss gel, iridescent medium, dirt, white spirit, acetone, nails on wooden plate, 44.5 x 47 inches.

Henrik Olai Kaastein, With the Highest Degree of Coarseness, 2012, (detail).

Henrik Olai Kaastein, The Virgin and he Friends are Just Part of the Bigger Picture, 2012, paint, cardboard, watercolor, silicone, gloss film, acetone on fiberboard, 22.5 x 19 inches.

Installation shot. Wassup Painters at Anat Ebgi.

Left: Liam Everett, Untitled, 2012, ink, acrylic, alcohol and sea salt on masonite panels, 24 x 18 inches.
Right: Liam Everett, Untitled, 2012, ink, acrylic, and sea salt on two wood panels, 24 x 18 inches.

Kerstin Bratsch, Untitled from the series: All Ready Maid Betwixt and Between, 2013, luster on antique glass with steel bar and rubber strip, 39 x 28 inches.

Installation view. Wassup Painters at Anat Ebgi.

Kerstin Bratsch, Untitled from the series: All Ready Maid Betwixt and Between, 2013, luster on antique glass with steel bar and rubber strip, 39 x 28 inches.

Kerstin Bratsch, Untitled, lustre and enamel on sandblasted artista glass with metal braces, 8 x 12 inches.

Kerstin Bratsch, Untitled, 2013, lustre and enamel on sandblasted artista glass with metal braces, 8 x 12 inches.

A Conversation With Christine Frerichs

2013-06-25T21:19:00.000-07:00

I recently had the pleasure of visiting with artist Christine Frerichs before the opening of her solo show at Gallery KM on Saturday, June 15th. A few beers were imbibed and a good conversation was had. Born and raised in the Los Angeles area, Frerichs approaches painting with an eye for design and an acute understanding of how materials can be used to elicit a guided response from the viewer. Much of the work I saw walks a delicate line between abstraction and representation in a way that establishes an entry point without being excessively inviting. There is an inherent willingness to embrace spontaneity in the work, but the literal and figurative realization of form through a self-imposed structure creates a beautifully conflicted narrative that is emblematic of life in general.

Studio view. Work by Christine Frerichs.

Frerichs' work contains these amazing moments where materials break down and reveal themselves in their former state. A visual representation of the way in which memories and experiences compile themselves to form the person we somehow become. One section of the gallery features a collection of ten paintings aptly titled The Conversation (#1-10). There is a consistently buried structural foundation that is present throughout the series, but the repetition is not off-putting. Rather, it seems to function as a reminder that people are forever imprinted by the decisions made or not made within the time we are given. As each subsequently numbered painting should indicate, there is a linear progression as the series continues. Beginning with The Conversation (#1), the inception of Frerichs' life gently gives way to adolescence, early adulthood, and so on - each painting extracting the most potent aspect of the memories associated with these points in her life. The series ends on a cliffhanger with the painting The Conversation (#10) and the artist in present day. There is an aphorism that comes to mind, and bears mentioning - "If we distance ourselves too far from the past...we are bound to repeat it." Frerichs seems to be keenly aware of this.

The secondary gallery features a number of smaller works and one large painting that is comprised of two canvases. The later statement may initially sound like an inherent contradiction, but I asked Frerichs to provide contextual insight into how this and other choices were made.

Studio view. Work by Christine Frerichs.

Easton Miller: Whether it is a specific palette of colors, or the recurrent symbol beneath each painting in The Conversation series, there are repeated elements throughout your work. When did this method first become a tool you were interested in using within your practice?

Christine Frerichs: For the past 5 years, I've been using motifs in my paintings such as storm clouds, patterns of lines and dots, symbolic colors, and abstracted forms that reference the human body, all to represent recurring themes and feeling I've experienced in my life with pleasure, loss, vulnerability, and control. the newest body of work, The Conversation, is a series of ten mid-sized mixed-media paintings that use these colors and forms to tell the story of reconciling and expressing the various sides of oneself on an emotional level. The repetitive controlled line work that functioned as veils or obstacles in my work from 2009-2012 is present in this new series, through often serving as a 'backdrop' or 'open curtains' to more playful and improvisational imagery, such as the full color dancing line seen in (#1) and the thickly painted beam of light in (#2) which both reappear in different forms throughout the series.

EM: Are there specific connotations behind the colors you choose, or is your process of selection more general?

CF: The palette for these paintings is determined by personal associations I make with each color, and I'll use each color as a stand-in for a particular person, place, object, or feeling. So for example, the mixed blue represents a cool, controlled figure, the vibrant warm red represents intensity and strength, and the flesh tint is custom-mixed to match to my own skin color and represents the surface, corporeal version of myself.

EM: Based on the level of consideration you've placed on your color selections I would assume that scale holds an equal level of significance in the work?

CF: Definitely. Ultimately, these paintings are portraits, so I reference the human body by beginning each work with a thick layer of acrylic modeling paste, which I carve grooves into, creating a figure 8 patten. The measurements of this figure 8 is based on my own body, with the top loop at eye level and the base loop at my navel.

Studio view. Works by Christine Frerichs.

EM: There is an inherent build up of emotional and aesthetic layers in your paintings - how do you view this compilation on an ideological level?

CF: With this body of work, I wanted to find a way to create abstracted portraits that do exactly what you say - describe at once the physical and emotional aspects of oneself through the use of symbolic color, form, and composition. Instead of the body acting as the exterior shell for one's interior thoughts and feelings, I wanted to try flipping it inside out. So the abstracted body form in these paintings is the base layer and superimposed on that textured foundation is imagery and mark-making which oscillate between spontaneous eruptions of color, light, and form as seen into controlled lines and patterns, reflecting the range of form that emotion can take, both in a painting and in our lives. Anger, as with joy, can erupt explosively as exaggerated performance, and too as a restrained seizing of the body. My use of materials also reflects this idea of a range of self and our capacity for transformation on an emotional level. Oil paint and spray paint are stretched to their physical limits, transmuted into thick clotted dabs, thinned and thrown from a bucket, or carefully layered in translucent veils of glassy color.

Studio view. Underpainting by Christine Frerichs.

EM: It's obvious that you have a deep routed fascination with the associative properties of materials. As a 'materials nerd' myself, I have to ask what you've used to create the sense of depth in the black areas in many of your paintings?

CF: I use a paint material I developed in 2008 called Activated Carbon Paint (ACP). This deep matte black paint is made with activated carbon, a porous material used primarily in water and air filtration systems, oral ingestion for poison treatment or overdoses, and gas purification. Visually, the use of ACP alongside vibrant colors creates an incredible sense of depth and contrast in the paintings. Metaphorically, it furthers the content of transformation and renewal.

Studio view. Works by Christine Frerichs.

EM: I love the tension created between the borderline scientific approach to your material development coupled with the romantic reasoning behind your decisions. Speaking of coupling, could you talk a bit about how you came to the decision of presenting two canvases as one painting, and what the significance of this gesture means to you?

CF: As you mentioned, the 'paired' paintings are made by placing two stretched canvases of the same size side-by-side with their edges touching. I began working on them a year ago, concurrently with The Conversation series, as a way of exploring the relationship between two people - two 'bodies' - as opposed to the singular portrait in The Conversation paintings. These paired paintings also use imagery of storm clouds, the sea, abstract symbols of color, light, and darkness, to express the experience of connecting on an emotional level with another person, and feelings of vulnerability and intimacy. The human body, represented as a textured figure 8 pattern underneath the painted imagery in The Conversation is also present in these paired paintings yet there are two 'bodies' now, one on each canvas. Visually, I wanted to use this sub-texture to bring the focus to the 'center' of the paired paintings, where the two canvases/bodies meet.

Left: Christine Frerichs, The Conversation (#1), oil, acrylic, and ACP on canvas, 44 x 34 inches, 2012-13
Right: Christine Frerichs, The Conversation (#2), oil, acrylic, and ACP on canvas, 44 x 34 inches, 2012-13

EM: What was the impetus of this decision?

CF: The formal structure of the paintings were inspired by two things. One was spending much of this past summer on the East Coast in Fire Island and watching the way the tides moving in different directions met in the ocean and how those crosscurrents would sometimes meet gently and other times with friction. Two Friends at the Sea and Pair (The Talk 1 and 2) are portraits of that dynamic that occurs between two people in a relationship. The other inspiration for the form of these paired paintings is Brancusi's sculptural series The Kiss (1907-1925). The way he composed and sculpted the embrace of these two figures is so tender, with their arms crossing over one another's bodies, binding the two two together. It's a simplistic form, clunky even, yet the way he used so few marks and forms to lock these figures together feels elegant and extremely emotive. I reference Brancusi's composition with my paintings Pair (The Kiss 1 and 2) and use two thickly painted beams of colored light (a motif seen in The Conversation) as the two crossing 'arms', which creates that intense connection between the two canvases.

Christine Frerichs, Pair (The Kiss 2), oil, acrylic, and ACP on two canvases, 11 x 17 inches, 2013

EM: I see an intense connection between all of the works regardless of their spatial proximity to one another. That said, there is definitely less of a direct narrative in the smaller works than what I've seen in many of your larger paintings. Do you notice a difference in your approach with the more diminutive works - both aesthetically and ideologically?

CF: I approach both my larger and smaller works in a similar way, in terms of my use of color, how I compose an image, what meaning it carries, and the emotion I'd like to get across to the viewer. I would say that one difference between my 8.5 x 11 inch paintings and these larger ones is the relationship between the canvas size and the size of one's body. Once a canvas becomes the size of one's body or the size of a doorway, for me it becomes less of an 'example' of a person, and more of an abstract embodiment of that person (or people). I see the 8.5 x 11 inch paintings more as diagrams or letters, because of their relationship to the familiar size of a sheet of paper.

EM: Well...we've covered process, palette, ideological/aesthetic associations, and scale. I'm pretty satisfied with the way things have gone. Do you feel good about it?

CF: I do feel good (laughs).

EM: Thanks for taking the time to peel back some of the layers in your work!

CF: It's my pleasure, thank you for the chance to do so!

Studio view. Works by Christine Frerichs.

As previously noted, Frerichs' work is currently on display at Gallery KM in Santa Monica until July 27th. In addition, Gallery KM will be hosting an artist talk and exhibition walk through on Saturday, June 29th at 5:30 pm. Frerichs is also exhibiting in a group show at Kevin Kavanagh Gallery in Dublin until June 27th.

As is the case with almost all art documentation, pictures do not do the work justice. If you happen to be in either city during the aforementioned dates I strongly encourage you to set aside some time to see the work in person.

**If you can't attend the exhibition, but you'd like to see more of Frerichs' work - you can do so at www.christinefrerichs.com.

Easton Miller is an artist and writer based in Los Angeles, CA.

(Image at top: Christine Frerichs in her studio.)

Painting In Place

2013-05-31T16:28:00.000-07:00

Before becoming the tanned, laid-back, West Coast dude that I am today, I was a pale, high-strung, East Coast art student who worked at a bank to help pay my tuition. For that reason, I felt very much at home at Los Angeles Nomadic Division's new exhibition Painting in Place - a contemporary painting survey mounted in the historic Farmers & Merchants Bank in Downtown Los Angeles.

The stately old building proves a fascinating setting for a contemporary art show and with a stacked roster of well-known contemporary artists participating in the exhibition, it's worth checking out. I've included some images below, but come on, it's a show about place, they would probably prefer that you go see it in person.

Matt Greene, for her/lost it/way decapitated, 2013, acrylic on canvas and wood, axe, sandbags, 96 x 192 x 84 inches

Kon Trubkovich, Red Square, 2013, oil on canvas, wood, sandbags, structure: 111 x 112 x 41 inches

Kon Trubkovich, Red Square, 2013, back detail

Sam Moyer, LA Overhead, 2013, ink on canvas, butterfly frame, stands, screen: 137 1/2 x 133 1/4 inches, frame: 173 x 122 x 47 inches

Sam Moyer, LA Overhead, 2013, detail

Painting In Place installation view

Olga Koumoundouros, Possession; version 3, 2013, acrylic on vinyl with mixed media, detail

Sarah Cain, Runaway, 2013, acrylic, vinyl, and string on window and wall, dimensions variable

Sarah Cain, Runaway, 2013, detail

Vincent Szarek, Untitled, 2013, urethane on aluminum, detail

Jacob Kassay, Untitled, 2013, linen on wood support, 84 x 120 inches

Jacob Kassay, Untitled, 2013, canvas on wood support, 35 1/2 x 12 x 1 inches

Jacob Kassay, Untitled, 2013, canvas on wood support, 35 1/2 x 12 x 1 inches, side view

Alexandra Grant, Model Self (2), 2012, cardboard, paint, adhesive stickers, disco balls, wood, and rope, 100 x 48 x 48 inches.

Paintings by Jim Lee

Analia Saban, Potato Sack (Abstraction with Blue and Green Forms, Mountainscape, Portrait of a Cat), 2013, potatoes, oil and acrylic on canvas, 32 x 24 x 12 inches

Analia Saban, Potato Sack (Still Life with Scissors, Abstract Cityscape, Portrait of a Blonde Pink Woman, Oceanscape with Girl and Boy, Portrait of a Man with Green Hat and Blue Fan), 2013, potatoes, oil and acrylic on canvas, 32 x 24 x 12 inches

Monique Van Genderen, "...the love of gold" -Heist 1 and "...the love of gold" -Heist 2, gold leaf on linen, 61 paintings in each pile, each painting 4 x 11 x 1 3/4 inches.

Rita Ackermann, Fire by Days XVII, 2011, oil, spray paint and acrylic on un-stretched canvas, 165 x 135 inches

Nate Lowman, Employees Only, 2013, oil, dirt, paper and tape on canvas, 115 x 134.5 inches

Nate Lowman, Employees Only, 2013, detail

Nate Lowman, Sitting On A Ruin, 2012, acrylic, dirt, and dental floss dipped on oil paint on canvas, 85 1/4 x 74 1/2 inches.

Barnaby Furnas, Untitled (Rummy's Flood), May 19th, 2013, L.A., 2013, dye, water dispersed pigment and acrylic on linen, 120 x 240 inches

Left: N. Dash, Untitled, 2013, acrylic, linen, and pigment, 55 x 48 inches
Right: N. Dash, Untitled, 2013, adobe, jute, linen, oil, pigment, and watercolor, 110 x 27 inches

Paintings by Allison Miller

Painting by Allison Miller

Britton Tolliver, Pointless Whispers from a Sea Captain, 2013, acrylic on panel, 115 x 75 inches

Britton Tolliver, Pointless Whispers from a Sea Captain, 2013, detail

Kevin Appel, Untitled (Bank), 2013, acrylic, oil, and UV cured ink on canvas over panel, 84 x 72 inches

David Hendren, twice the night in half the light, 2013, wood, glass, jute, lights, enamel, ink, and stain, 204 x 144 x 96 inches

David Hendren, twice the night in half the light, 2013, wood, glass, jute, lights, enamel, ink, and stain, 204 x 144 x 96 inches, alternate view

Kim Fisher, Magazine Painting (House), 2013, oil on aluminum on dyed linen, 38 x 38 inches

Los Angeles Nomadic Division's exhibition Painting In Place is on view at the Farmers & Merchants Bank in Downtown Los Angeles through July 31, 2013.

(Image at top: Painting In Place installation view)

The Graduates: UCLA's MFA Painters

2013-05-29T18:59:00.000-07:00

As the school year draws to a close, it's time for graduating art students to pack up their studios, take down their thesis shows, and set out on the life of financial uncertainty and critical scrutiny they have pursued so enthusiastically for the past several years. Hopefully they are equipped with as much knowledge, ability, and determination as UCLA's graduating MFA painters Jonathan Apgar, Leon Benn, Michael John Kelly, and Christine Wang. I asked the four talented young artists about their work, their time in school, and their plans for the future.

Jonathan Apgar

Jonathan Apgar, Deep Gate, Violet Black, 2013, oil on canvas, 96 x 84 inches

1. Are you comfortable being called a painter?

Yes

2. How would you describe your work to someone seeing it for the first time?

Oil paintings; some large, some small, on canvas or paper, often nearly abstract, but containing the feeling of a known space, and sometimes infused with a figurative presence.

Jonathan Apgar, Garden Leg Morning Light, 2012, oil on canvas, 98.5 x 98.5 inches

Jonathan Apgar, Shallow Gate, Blue and Pale, 2013, oil on canvas, 96 x 72 inches

3. Which artists have most influenced you?

Bonnard, Kirchner, Matisse, Burchfield.

4. What's the best advice you received during grad school?

A professor challenged me to decide whether I was the kind of painter who settled (leaving good enough alone), or the kind of painter who gambled (risking and often losing the "good enough" to find something new and interesting).

5. What are your post-graduation plans?

Stay in Los Angeles, make paintings, show them when opportunities arise, and hopefully teach a bit here and there.

Leon Benn

Leon Benn, Blue Bikini, oil and acrylic on three strips of linen, 78 x 90 inches

1. Are you comfortable being called a painter?

Yes, of course.

2. How would you describe your work to someone seeing it for the first time?

Narrative-based paintings: American liberal fallacies, real-estate hallucinations, shallow sexual puns, introspective masculinity, desire, haute cuisine (particularly seafood), and colorful hand-dyed fabrics from Morocco.

Leon Benn, Coup de Barre, oil, acrylic, permanent marker, one gold leaf, and collage on Moroccan linen sewn to Belgian linen, 78 x 90 inches.

Leon Benn, Front Lawn, oil, acrylic, and collage on Moroccan linen, 78 x 90 inches

3. Which artists have most influenced you?

Adam Cvijanovic who I worked for as a studio assistant in New York City. Lari Pittman who I recently studied with in Los Angeles. And my wife, Julie Mattei-Benn, who has opened many doors for me to other cultures and histories such as France and Morocco.

4. What's the best advice you received during grad school?

Lari Pittman once told me that pre-visualizing the specificity of how the painting will look would prevent the painting from becoming what it wants to be. In other words, let the painting paint itself and you, the author abide by its inherent nature. Also, Rodney McMullan said to avoid making expedient gestures, and attempt at making more meaningful ones.

5. What are your post-graduation plans?

I am going to live a happy and adventurous life with my wife and friends. <3

Michael John Kelly

Michael John Kelly, Mask 5, 2012, oil, acrylic, pigment print collage on panel, 80 x 64 inches

1. Are you comfortable being called a painter?

Yeah, sure. I don't always make paintings, but my creative impulses are rooted in my training as a painter.

2. How would you describe your work to someone seeing it for the first time?

I'm always making pictures with a smartphone. Imagery comes in through its camera or internet connections, they're manipulated with its intuitive interface. Sharing and feedback are immediate. It was important to find a way to integrate this tool into my painting practice.

The work is printed digital imagery and paint. I find conversations of 'digital vs. analog' redundant so I'm collapsing these different strategies into a single unified image. Right now my work contains a lot of abstracted portraiture. I see these shapes as masks. Not masks that conceal identity, but personalities. Masks that express a facet of identity like the comedy and tragedy of symbols of drama.

Michael John Kelly, Mask 8,9, 2013, oil, acrylic, pigment print collage on panel, 89 x 137 inches

Michael John Kelly, Spring Masks, 2013, oil, acrylic, pigment print, collage on panel, 80 x 82 inches

3. Which artists have most influenced you?

When I first started to make are, I was into Basquiat, Twombly, and Rothko. Lately I have been looking at Charles Garabedian, Albert Oehlen, Charline von Heyl, and John Altoon.

4. What's the best advice you received during grad school?

During MFA orientation, Lary Pittman was adamant about seeing a lot of production. Later, when asking Roger Herman what things I could be doing for my art career, he told me that the best things that ever happened to him were just lucky breaks. I took that all to mean make a lot of work, be present, and keep cool.

5. What are your post-graduation plans?

Make a lot of work.

Christine Wang

Christine Wang, Untitled (Would You), 2012, oil and acrylic on canvas, 96 x 84 inches

1. Are you comfortable being called a painter?

Yes! Absolutely yes!

2. How would you describe your work to someone seeing it for the first time?

My work includes paintings with images and texts that are crude and humorous.

Christine Wang, Dandelion, 2013, acrylic, charcoal, yarn, ribbon, and gold leaf on canvas and linen

3. Which artists have most influenced you?

The artists who have most influenced me are painters including Monet, Guston, Michelangelo, Alice Neel, Jacob Lawrence, Sue Williams. Artists include Jenny Holzer and Santiago Sierra. I wish I could call David Hammons an influence but I think he is in a league of his own. I can only stare up at his greatness and admire it.

Since coming to Los Angeles I've become more familiar with the work of super awesome artists like Barbara T. Smith, Judith Bernstein and Carolee Schneemann. Artists who have taught me and influenced me include Robert Bordo, Byron Kim, Susanna Coffey, Pam Lins, Doug Ashford, Sharon Hayes, Andrea Fraser, Lari Pittman, Roger Herman, Mary Kelly, Rodney McMillian, and Tam Van Tran.

Christine Wang, ACAB, oil and acrylic on paper, linen, and cloth, 197 x 145 inches.

4. What's the best advice you received during grad school?

When I first moved to Los Angeles I had a hard time adjusting so Laura Owens told me to just relax in my studio and hang out in it and give myself time to get comfortable.

5. What are your post-graduation plans?

Post-graduation I plan on sleeping. I am also going to teach drawing and painting to high school students at the UCLA Summer Institute. That will be fun. Of course I have to keep working!

(Image at top: Installation view, paintings by Leon Benn.)

(This article was originally published on the New American Paintings blog. View it here.)

Painting, You're Doing It Wrong

2013-05-18T14:19:00.000-07:00

Don't bother asking Mark Gottsegen - founder of AMIEN, author of The Painter's Handbook, teacher, artist, and all around art materials guru - what's the best type of paint to use? "I get asked this all the time," said Gottsegen, who took time out from writing to speak to me last week. "And I say, well, I can't tell you that."

It's not that he doesn't have opinions on the matter, but as someone devoted to the scientific study of art materials he realizes the importance of maintaining an unbiased position. AMIEN, which stands for Art Materials Information and Education Network, bills itself as "the only unbiased source of information about art materials on the internet." They do not accept advertising and do not allow the promotion of any specific products. In a series of forums on the AMIEN website, users can post their questions about art materials and get answers from a team of knowledgable moderators and other experts in the field who monitor the site. (Gottsegen informed me that he personally reviews each answer for accuracy). AMIEN's board of directors includes conservation scientists from top institutions, founders of well-known art supply companies, and artists from around the country. Many of them help answer user's questions on the site as well.

While you are never going to reach a consensus among painters about something as personal and subjective as art making, when it comes to materials there are some objective realities that dictate proper use. Sure, you can ignore them, but you do so at your own peril.

"If you make [art] out of stuff you don't know anything about, you might make stuff that doesn't last," said Gottsegen. "I'm happy to say to any artist, I'm not prescribing to you how you should make your work. But if you want to make work that you're going to sell, that you want to last, you can't do what you propose to do because it won't last. On the other hand you can make it this way and it will last."

What follows is some advice for painters who are interested in seeing their work withstand the test of time, at least in the physical sense. Here are five tips, gleaned from my conversation with Gottsegen that I think painters will find useful, interesting, and possibly even surprising.

1. 'Archival' is a marketing term.

The work 'archival' gets thrown around a lot these days in relation to art supplies. But as it turns out, the term is too inexplicit to be of much real use. "Words like archival are used as marketing hooks," said Gottsegen. "People assume that if something is labeled archival that means it's durable. But the word does not mean that. The word means, in the context, of or about archives...I think people ought to use the simpler word 'durable' and never mind the marketers."

So don't rely on the word 'archival' printed on the packaging of your art supplies to determine the durability of the material. Instead, try to find out what's in it and how it was made. That will be a much better indication of quality.

2. That ain't gesso.

There is a good chance that the white containers lying around your studio labeled 'gesso' are not actually filled with gesso, but with acrylic dispersion ground. What's the difference? "Gesso is a specific material," said Gottsegen. "And acrylic dispersion ground is only related to real gesso in the fact that it's white and it contains chalk. Otherwise, it ain't."

Traditional gesso is a mixture of inert pigment, water, and protein-based glue (like the kind made from an animal hide). It was used historically as a ground for paintings done on panel. Real gesso dries to a brittle film that is prone to cracking, so it isn't suitable for flexible supports like stretched canvas.

Acrylic dispersion grounds, the most common type of 'primer' found in art stores today, are made with an acrylic polymer instead of the protein-based glue found in actual gesso. Sometime around the middle of the twentieth century, companies started using the word 'gesso' to refer to acrylic dispersion grounds and the term stuck.

Today it's common to hear just about any white painting ground - be it real gesso, an oil ground, or an acrylic dispersion ground - called gesso. But in fact they are all different materials, with different properties, suited for different applications. The ground you chose to paint on is an important part of both the aesthetic and structural make-up of your painting. It's worthwhile to look into the benefits and drawbacks of each.

3. Size matters.

Size is a material that can be applied to canvas to protect it from the paint layers above. There are a few reasons you might want to apply a coat of size (like an acrylic polymer or a PVA glue) to the raw canvas before applying a ground.

If you choose to use an oil ground on fabric like canvas or linen, sizing is a must. "With an oil ground, you definitely have to use a size," said Gottsegen. "Oil dries by oxidizing. If you strike a match to light a candle, the match is oxidizing, just at a very rapid rate. I used to tell my students linseed oil, or any other drying oil that dries by oxidation, is doing a slow burn."

That "slow burn" will eventually rot the canvas, but a layer of size applied to the fabric can protect it by keeping it from coming into contact with the oil.

Acrylic dispersion grounds (must...avoid...instinct...to call it...gesso) won't do the same damage to canvas a oil grounds, but you should still use a sizing coat for a different reason. "Acrylic paints stay wet for a while and they can leach organic material out of the canvas," said Gottsegen. "Canvas is not pristine and clean, it's got specks of dirt and stuff like that in there, and acrylic paint that wets the ground enough to wick the organic pollutants out of the canvas can discolor the ground. It's called support induced discoloration and it was documented in a study by Golden Artist's Colors years ago." So if you paint with acrylics and you want to avoid future discoloration of your work, sizing the canvas can help.

Traditionally, rabbit skin glue was used to size canvases prepared with an oil ground. Some painters still insist on using it, despite research that proves it to be problematic. Sure, all the old masters used it, but that's because it was the only thing available at the time.

"Rabbit skin glue is hygroscopic, it absorbs atmospheric moisture and it expands and contracts vigorously," said Gottsegen. "This was proven 35 years ago. Marion Mecklenburg at the Smithsonian did extensive studies on rabbit skin glue and concluded that it's not a good thing to use...Now that there are better choices, that do not pose such jeopardy to the painting, why not use the better ones?"

If you still insist on using rabbit skin glue, there is a way to mitigate its shortcomings. "If you want to use rabbit skin glue as a size on your canvas that is mounted on a panel, that's not a problem," said Gottsegen. "If you put it on a panel that restrains the expansion and contraction, then that's not a big deal."

So save the rabbits. Or don't. It's up to you.

4. The fingernail test.

Oil paint can take a long time to dry and many of the problems that affect oil paintings over time have to do with their drying. You want to make sure an oil ground is thoroughly dry before you start painting on it. Some people argue waiting at least six months, maybe longer. Likewise, a finished oil painting needs to dry thoroughly before a varnish should be applied over it.

No artist wants to wait months to begin a painting, or to apply the final coat of varnish once it's finished. The truth is, drying rates vary greatly based on the thickness of a painting and on the temperature and humidity levels they are exposed to. When I asked Gottsegen about this, he recommended a useful test to determine if a layer of oil paint is dry enough.

In regards to grounds, "if you can stick your fingernail on the [oil] ground and not make a dent in it, it's ready to paint on," said Gottsegen. "Usually, if you keep it in a warm and dry room, a week is good enough."

In regards to a finished oil painting, "there's no hard and fast rule because some paintings are thick and some are thin, so some will dry slower and some will dry faster," said Gottsegen. "The fingernail test is a really good test. You take your fingernail and you press it on the paint and if your fingernail can leave a mark, the paint is not dry enough to varnish. If it doesn't leave a mark, like a dent, then you can varnish it. I've had oil paintings dry in a month because I don't paint that thickly but then I have friends who paint with lots of impasto and they have to wait a year if they want to varnish."

5. Stretched canvas is poor painting support for oil paints.

Bottom line, oil paintings on stretched canvas are eventually going to form cracks. "Linseed oil grounds or even oil alkyd grounds and linseed oil paints or walnut oil paints...they all get brittle as they age," said Gottsegen. "And they are much more likely to crack if they are on a flexible support."

The number one thing you can do as a painter to help ensure the durability of your paintings is to paint on a rigid support, like a wooden panel. If you prefer the texture of canvas, you can mount it to a rigid support instead of stretching it. "A lot of people don't like to hear that because it makes a very heavy support," said Gottsegen. "But if you're going to paint with oil paint, then [the canvas] ought to be stretched on a panel, not loose."

Acrylic paints don't get as brittle as oil paints over time, and they may avoid some of the problems that oil paints encounter as they age. But all paintings, no matter the medium, still risk the possibility of being punctured or torn if they are simply stretched as opposed to mounted.

What is a suitable way to mount canvas to a panel? Acrylic dispersion gel mediums make an excellent and durable adhesive. "I put a spoonful on the panel and I spread it out with a spatula and make sure the panel is evenly coated, not very thickly, and then press the canvas on," said Gottsegen. "Sometimes I dampen the fabric with a spray bottle so that some of the gel medium is drawn up into the fabric to make a better bond. I roll it on with a brayer to make sure that everything is sticking and there are no bubble."

You can find several detailed descriptions of this process in the archives of the AMIEN forums.

If any of this information is news to you, then you've probably made some paintings that don't quite adhere to Gottsegen's advice. Now what? One last tip - how you store a painting after it's been made can play a big role in its durability over time. "It's the cyclical change that's tough on a work of art," said Gottsegen. "Because if you have an organic material like canvas or wood that is continually expanding and contracting, it's bound to give up a little bit. A lot of the risk can be mitigated by environmental conditions. In other words, if you keep the painting in a very stable environment that has moderate room temperatures and humidity that doesn't radically change and no direct sunlight, it will last a lot longer. That's the goal of a museum."

Gottsegen went on to point out that museums can spend millions of dollars a year maintaining a proper environment for artworks. That might be out of your price range, but you can at least consider not hanging your work in the bathroom.

(This article was originally posted on the New American Paintings blog. See it here.)

A Good, Old-Fashioned Painting Show

2013-05-13T00:09:00.000-07:00

Just so we're all on the same page, the art world doesn't like figurative painting and they especially hate portraiture, right? I thought everyone knew this to be the case. I though I knew this to be the case.

But after typing it out so bluntly, I'm quickly realizing just how ridiculous it sounds. First of all, what do I mean by 'the art world' anyway? What a meaningless generalization. There are tons of different 'art worlds.' Secondly, plenty of people love figurative painting and some of the most successful, well-known contemporary artists are figurative painters.

Okay.

But then why do I still have the nagging suspicion that my initial instincts are warranted - that there is a real bias against a certain type of figurative painting by a certain segment of the art world? You must know what I'm talking about. Perhaps you can't articulate it any better than I can, but somehow you find yourself cognizant of this allusive prejudice. You're aware that there is a perceived difference between 'cool' figurative painters like, say, Lisa Yuskavage, Marilyn Minter, or Nicole Eisenman, and 'uncool' figurative painters like, say, the guy with the mustache who wears a fedora and carries a huge chip on his shoulder because the art snobs refuse to pay attention to his work even though he is a master draftsman and mixes all of his own freakin' paints from scratch!

I'm doing a terrible job of explaining this, aren't I?

Well, if you're still confused, just flip through any book that surveys hip contemporary painters (Vitamin P2, Painting Today, Painting People, to name a few) or visit any installment of the Whitney Biennial and you'll quickly begin to get the gist. Certain figurative painters are acceptable, others, not so much. Suffice it to say that I sense a bias against realistic paintings of the human figure to exist (warranted or unwarranted) in the contemporary Art World (whatever Art World means when you capitalize it like that).

Sean Cheetham, Selfish, 2013, oil on panel, 12 x 9 inches

I bring this up because I am trying to describe the environment in which a show like Selfish, currently on view at Katherine Cone Gallery in Culver City, exists. It is a figurative painting show in the most traditional sense. Curated by artist Sean Cheetham, Selfish brings together 20 artists who each submitted a self-portrait. It's no surprise that such a conservative (is that the right word?) exhibition stands out among the trendy Culver City art scene.

What you will find in Selfish is a good, old-fashioned painting show with some skillfully executed works on display. There is a small painting by the always excellent Marc Trujillo, featuring his likeness through the window of a fast food joint. There is also an eye-catching profile pic contributed by artist Stephen Schirle. And Cheetham himself has a piece in the show (of himself) in which he proves to know his way around a palette and panel.

Marc Trujillo, 2201 Eubank Boulevard, 2013, oil on panel, 8 x 10 inches, at Katherine Cone Gallery

Stephen Schirle, SES, 2013, oil on linen mounted on aluminum, 10 x 10 inches, at Katherine Cone Gallery

That said, two works (that just so happened to be installed next to each other) stand out as the real showstoppers. Pearhead, by Natalia Fabia, is a knock-out. It's typical for a traditional oil portrait to follow the tried-and-true formula of 'figure emerging from a dark background.' The contrast is exploited in an attempt to articulate light. But Fabia's painting seems to be completely made of light. Composed in a high-key palette of golds and pinks, it truly glows.

Natalia Fabia, Pearhead, 2013, oil on panel, 20 x 16 inches, at Katherine Cone Gallery

Wayne Johnson, on the other hand, displays a mastery of dark colors in his standout piece Past, Present, Future (image at top). The subtle details in the figure's black sweatshirt and hat are painted beautifully, which is harder than it looks to pull off. I heard a couple of viewers at the opening note that the painting looks like a photograph. FYI, that isn't always received as the compliment you intend it to be, but in this case I think it is an accurate description and it points to a stylistic choice by Johnson that serves the work well. The painting is articulated with a bold precision that echoes the stoic expression on the subject's face. There are no cheap tricks here. Johnson seems to put each brushstroke precisely where he intends for it to go and the result is superb.

There are lots of other paintings in Selfish, but these are the ones that really jumped out at me. Go check out the show, you'll probably have your own favorites. You might even hate some of it. Just remember, this is only one person's selfish opinion. (Zing!)

Selfish, curated by Sean Cheetham, is on view at the Katherine Cone Gallery through June 22, 2013.

(Image at top: Wayne Johnson, Past, Present, Future, oil on panel, 12.5 x 18.5 inches at Katherine Cone Gallery)

William Powhida Paints In Earnest

2013-05-09T10:06:00.001-07:00

At first glance, William Powhida's new show Bill By Bill at Charlie James Gallery looks like a fairly typical survey of contemporary art. Just about all of today's most common approaches to object-driven art making are represented. There's a post-minimalist sculpture, some neo-modernist wall pieces, a hard-edged abstraction, three large digitally printed color field paintings, a neo-expressionist painting, a taxidermied animal, and a neon sign.

At second glance, the show looks like one big joke about the contemporary art world. Powhida farmed out the making of these 'artworks' to assistants, mimicking popular contemporary tropes. He then created some of his signature text-based pieces to accompany each of the works, satirically describing the labor (or lack there of) and intellectual rigor (or lack there of) that went into their creation.

William Powhida, Some Asset Class (Digital) Paintings - Color Fields (stretched prints on canvas component), 2013, archival pigment prints on canvas on stretcher bars, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy of Charlie James Gallery.

William Powhida, Some Asset Class (Digital) Paintings - Color Fields (panel component), 2013, graphite and watercolor on panel, 19 x 15 inches. Photo courtesy of Charlie James Gallery.

But at third glance (stay with me), Bill By Bill turns out to be an earnest and successful attempt to make thoughtful, content-driven paintings. That is, once you realize that the real art in this show is not the fabricated objects on display but Powhida's watercolor text pieces that supplement them. Well-crafted and explicit in their intent, these paintings are polar opposites of the redundant, boringly vague artworks that they mock. They depict Powhida's ideas as handwritten texts scrawled across a piece of notebook paper. The illusion is so satisfying, and the writing so intriguing, you hardly notice that what you are really looking at are representational watercolor paintings created with such care that it's almost sentimental.

Critics of this show have their work cut out for them. Powhida's art exudes knowingness, as if to say, "I'm aware of everything you might say to critique me and I've already though about it myself." A literal example of this is found in the piece titled Some Criteria For Evaluation where Powhida offers a list of over 50 questions to ask when evaluating a work of art. Despite the satirical undertones, the list actually reads like a useful critical tool. It also lacks the smart-ass asides or sarcastic scratch-outs characteristic of much of the other work. In a different but similar series of paintings, titled What Can We Learn About Art?, Powhida lists summaries "from 36 critics writing about criticism, condensed into assertions, that are conditional or absolute." While this piece is obviously more satirical, the result is a list of proverb-like sayings about art that are thought-provoking despite contradicting one another.

William Powhida, What Can We Learn About Art? (panel 1 of 4), 2013, graphite and watercolor on panel, 19 x 15 inches. Photo courtesy of Charlie James Gallery.

William Powhida, Some Criteria For Evaluation, 2013, graphite and watercolor on paper, 22 x 15 inches. Photo courtesy of Charlie James Gallery.

These two pieces are good examples of the inquisitive tone Powhida has established in this show. They also let on to the fact that, despite the posturing, Powhida seems to care very much about the state of contemporary art and to spend a lot of time reading up on the subject. That being the case, his criticism must come from a place of caring, and with so much of the work in Bill By Bill focused on criticizing painting he may just have a soft spot for the medium.

One of the most entertaining works in the show, titled A (really bad, bad) Neo-Expressionist Painting, depicts a skull in the manner suggested by its name. Powhida's accompanying text tries to explain the difference between a good bad painting, a bad bad painting, and a really bad bad painting. About the resulting piece he quips, "I can barely look at it, what have we done?" and "you realize people are going to like these...Fuck." The piece appears to have sold quickly.

William Powhida, A (really bad, bad) Neo-Expressionist Painting (painting component), 2013, acrylic on linen, 58 x 44 inches. Photo courtesy of Charlie James Gallery.

William Powhida, A (really bad, bad) Neo-Expressionist Painting (panel component), 2013, graphite and watercolor on panel, 19 x 15 inches. Photo courtesy of Charlie James Gallery.

In another piece, titled A Geometric Hard-Edge 'Abstract' shapes in a flat pictorial plane, Powhida had the idea "to take my critique of the art market beyond language to the aesthetic level of objects by making a prototype of a flawed idea, art's relationship to income inequality and wealth. Or this entire show." The 'purity' of abstract form and color is co-opted to express a literal ideology. "Does skill or craft matter," he asks? "Whatever...Let's paint!"

William Powhida, A Geometric Hard-Edge 'Abstract' shapes in a flat pictorial plane (painting component), 2013, acrylic on linen, 58 x 44 inches. Photo courtesy of Charlie James Gallery.

William Powhida, A Geometric Hard-Edge 'Abstract' shapes in a flat pictorial plane (panel component), 2013, graphite and watercolor on panel, 19 x 15 inches. Photo courtesy of Charlie James Gallery.

But strip away the humorous premise, the fabricated objects, and the stuffed coyote from Bill By Bill and you end up with a pretty traditional painting show. In fact, it is really an exhibition of paintings about art - a well-tread theme that Powhida somehow manages to breathe new life into. One of the lines from What Can We Learn About Art? states: "Art can be about art but meta-art is boring. Boredom is death." And yet, this show is far from boring. Two other lines read: "Art is exciting and provokes fierce, fiery, and intimate emotions" and "Art forces and opinion. (Asshole)." Now that is a much better description of what I find so enjoyable about Powhida's work.

William Powhida, A Taxidermied Animal (crate and coyote component), 2013, detail. Photo courtesy of Charlie James Gallery.

William Powhida, A Taxidermied Animal (panel component), 2013, graphite and watercolor on panel, 19 x 15 inches. Photo courtesy of Charlie James Gallery.

William Powhida's exhibition Bill By Bill is on view at Charlie James Gallery in Los Angeles, CA through June 8, 2013.

(Image at top: Installation view of Bill By Bill. Photo courtesy of Charlie James Gallery.)

(This article was originally posted on the New American Paintings Blog. You can view it here.)

Marcia Roberts at Rosamund Felsen Gallery

2013-05-06T09:06:00.000-07:00

I ran across this sweet little exhibition of paintings by Calfornia-based artist Marcia Roberts Saturday night at Rosamund Felsen Gallery in Santa Monica. Two shows were opening simultaneously at the gallery that night - the other being a sculpture exhibition by artist Mindy Alper - and a sizable crowd of patrons had turned out in support. The gallery was abuzz with chatter and movement, except in the room where Roberts' work hung where an atmosphere of quiet austerity prevailed. People seemed to feel the need to slow down and hush up around her paintings, as if paying their respects.

Marcia Roberts, Fort Bragg, 2013, acrylic on canvas over panel, 22 x 30 inches at Rosamund Felsen Gallery

Marcia Roberts, Dos Rios, 2013, acrylic on canvas over panel, 22 x 30 inches at Rosamund Felsen Gallery

The paintings in this show stick to a 'pattern and deviation' formula often found in poetry. When a pattern exists, any deviation from it tends to stick out like a sore thumb and that is often where the action is. Here, Roberts presents a group of paintings that all look pretty much the same - an irregular quadrilateral sits atop a rectangle, bordered by the edges of the canvas. They only differ in color-scheme and in the play of light present at the center of each. So, without even reading the press release, you'd be safe to assume that color and light must be what Roberts finds important.

Marcia Roberts, Leggett, 2013, acrylic on canvas over panel, 22 x 30 inches at Rosamund Felsen Gallery

Painting by Marcia Roberts at Rosamund Felsen Gallery

I enjoy geometric abstraction in which the artist's hand is quietly present (which reminds me of this fascinating article by James Elkins about Mondrian's technique) and Roberts' work fits that category. From a distance, her lines may look flawlessly straight, but on closer inspection it becomes clear that they are hand-painted and just irregular enough to be interesting, without being distracting. The actual surfaces of the paintings are dull and flat, but Roberts employs exquisitely subtle shifts in color to create the illusion of light glowing softly from within the geometric forms. Think Rothko by way of Malevich.

Marcia Roberts, Anchor Bay, 2012, Acrylic on canvas over panel, 22 x 30 inches at Rosamund Felsen Gallery

Installation view, paintings by Marcia Roberts at Rosamund Felsen Gallery

The exhibition of paintings by Marcia Roberts is on view at Rosamund Felsen Gallery through June 1, 2013.

(Image at top: Painting by Marcia Roberts, 2013, detail)

One Painting Review: Llyn Foulkes' Pop

2013-05-03T07:59:00.000-07:00

The Llyn Foulkes retrospective at the Hammer Museum ends with the painting Pop, an illuminated relief painting situated within a pitch-black room filled with a tune composed by the artist. The painting depicts the artist as an aging, shell-shocked father glued to his television, dressed in a Superman shirt and gripping a Diet Coke. In the room with him are his two children, his daughter with her hand on his shoulder and his son listening to a tape recorder and holding an open book with text drawn from the Micky Mouse Club handbook that reads, "I will be a square shooter, I will be a good American." The iconographic elements within the painting - the Superman t-shirt, the Diet Coke cup, the baseball on the floor, the calendar dated to the day of the Hiroshima bombing, etc. - are poignant symbols within a particularly American psyche.

The culmination of these symbols draws attention to Foulkes' ongoing narrative of anxiety about corporate powers at work - a paradoxical feeling of both helplessness and pacification by way of entertainment which has resulted in the commercialization of the self, a Disney-fied government, and disappointment in our Superman president. The expression of disgust towards American capitalism and immersive pop culture is not a particularly unique perspective in contemporary art, which is why it is rare when a work is able to communicate this feeling without being trite. Foulkes' stance does not come off as trite because it does not adhere to the currency of unique ideas within contemporary art. Foulkes adopts a narrative of tired resignation, illustrating himself with an intoxicated look in his eyes, a facial expression of vacant submission.

The music emanating from the painting is darkly patriotic and carnivalesque. The domestic setting for an American dystopia is perfectly preserved in the diorama-like painting. Various styles converge in the work which plays with an exaggeratedly banal King of the Hill caricature, the grotesque thickness of a Phillip Guston painting, and the illusionistic qualities of Magritte.

The experience of staring at Foulkes' illuminated painting in complete darkness gives the impression of watching television alone in the dark. The familiar sense of a glowing box existing as another entity in the room and the perception of depth within the painting creates a hi-definition impact. Foulkes' painting goes much deeper that flat illustration. Pop emanates a deeply personal narrative that is undeniably sincere in its depiction of humor, disappointment and decay.

(Image at top: Llyn Foulkes, Pop, 1985-90, in the collection of MOCA, Los Angeles)

7 QUESTIONS: Brian Calvin

2013-04-24T22:14:00.002-07:00

Brian Calvin, Memory of a Sister (Con), 2013, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 48 inches.

We asked Brian Calvin the following 7 questions because we think he's a good artist and we really wanted to hear his answers. His work is currently on view at the Finley, an alternative space in Los Angeles offering visitors a very unique viewing experience. Brian described it as a sweet little art oasis for Peeping Toms. We're intrigued. The show, titled End of Messages, is on view through May 18, 2013. Click here for more info.

1. What is your connection to Los Angeles?

I exist just on the periphery of Los Angeles' gravitational pull.

2. Name a living painter that you admire.

Maureen Gallace, Charles Garabedian, Jane Freilicher, John Wesley, Jim Nutt, Tomma Abts.

3. Name a dead painter that you admire.

Many of my waking hours are spent contemplating painters who were dead before I was born: Giotto, Piero, Fra Angelico, Manet, Cezanne, Bonnard, Vuillard, Matisse, Balthus, Milton Avery, Marsden Hartley, Forrest Bess, Morandi. And what about Guston, Joe Brainard, Alice Neel, Fairfield Porter, de Kooning, Agnes Martin, Warhol, Christina Ramberg, Roger Brown, CPLY? But somehow "dead painter" makes me think of more recent deaths (Richard Artschwager, Raoul De Keyser). And yet, getting back to my initial response to the question, I particularly admire Albert York!

Brian Calvin, Untitled, 2013, oil, acrylic and sand on canvas, 14 x 11 inches

4. How much did you sell your first painting for?

$50

5. Of the paintings you have made, which is your favorite?

That's a terrible question!

6. LACMA, MOCA, Getty, or Hammer?

Getty.

7. Why make paintings?

I have no idea. Channeling David Foster Wallace, to keep my head from exploding.

Thanks Brian.

What Makes A Painting Good?

2013-04-22T09:52:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year again. Art schools and summer residency programs have sent off their admissions decisions to anxious applicants around the world. A charmed few will receive the welcomed validation of an acceptance letter while others will be reminded just how personal the rejection from an impersonal form letter can feel.

Inherent in every admissions decision - whether for an artist residency, grad school program, juried show, etc. - is the implication that some artists are better than others. And if artists are judged based on samples of their artwork, it would seem to follow that some art is better than other art. You might disagree with this. Perhaps rejection only means an artist was not right for the specific program they were applying for, not that they were worse than other applicants. But it has to be fairly common that, within an applicant pool, there are more artists who do fit the criteria for admission than there are spots available to accommodate them. In such cases you would assume that the intention of the admissions committee would be to pick the better artists, whether they would articulate it that way or not.

But the seemingly simple question what makes art good or bad turns out to be nearly impossible to answer. Even narrowing things down to one specific medium - say painting - doesn't make things any easier. Artist Wade Guyton's recent show at the Whitney Museum of American Art sparked a discussion on Jerry Saltz's Facebook page with over 800 comments debating whether or not Guyton's work could even be categorized as painting. If we can't even agree on what a painting is, how could we ever hope to determine whether one painting is any better than another? And who really cares? Artists of this generation are generally savvy enough to know that art is subjective, so why get bogged down with trying to make such arbitrary distinctions? Well, perhaps because most of us do tend to make those distinctions, whether we are conscious of it or not. If we value certain artworks over others, we must have our reasons for doing so, right?

One of the biggest challenges to answering the question what makes a good painting is that as soon as you make any declarative statements on the matter you are essentially inviting others to prove you wrong (i.e. Clement Greenberg). And they will prove you wrong, simply by pointing out that art is a social construct and therefore no absolute values exist by which it can be judged, blah blah blah. Checkmate. Except you'll still go around liking some art more than other art even if you can't articulate exactly why.

So is it all just a matter of taste? The art world doesn't act that way. There is a definite hierarchy that exists where people seem willing to defer to "top tier" institutions to assign value. It is certainly easier to judge an artist based on their CV than it is to try and figure out if their work is any good on your own. But top tier institutions are people, my friend. They are made up of individuals who make judgement calls about the validity of the artists they represent or champion. How do they separate the wheat from the chaff?

Raoul De Keyser, Recover, 2003, oil on canvas, 32 1/3 x 26 3/8 inches via David Zwirner Gallery

Instead of speculating on that last question, and possibly digressing into an institutional critique, let's redirect. I'm an individual, how do I judge a painting? Here's one example. I think Raoul De Keyser is a good painter. Why? Well, I could talk about his strange but intriguing use of color, his subtle but brilliant compositional choices, or the understated confidence of his paint handling. But if I'm honest, my appreciation for De Keyser's work has a lot to do with the fact that I was taught to appreciate it. Let me explain. It started when an art school professor assigned me a series of articles that praised De Keyser as a painter. In a separate event, an artist I admire brought me to a De Keyser show at David Zwirner Gallery in New York and told me that the work was important. After that, I started noticing De Keyser's name popping up in other articles and on blogs and on the lips of other artists. That made me decide to study his paintings with more intensity, which in turn made me decide to write about them myself. All of this together added up to me ultimately appreciating Raoul De Keyser as a painter. Does that make his paintings good? To me, it does.

Raoul De Keyser, Again, 2010, watercolor and charcoal on canvas mounted on wooden panel, 6 1/3 x 11 4/5 inches via David Zwirner Gallery

I chose De Kyeser as an example partly because his work is representative of a certain style of painting that complicates the categories of "good" and "bad." If you like his work, you might describe it as purposely deskilled. If you don't, you might argue that your three-year-old could do better. When I said that I was taught to like De Keyser's paintings what I meant was that appreciating his work turned out to be a learned skill. And part of the learning was realizing that the context of the work greatly influenced its meaning. For example, I probably wouldn't have initially found them as interesting outside of the context of a magazine article or New York gallery. It was the context that convinced me to look closer at the paintings, but it was the act of looking closer that caused me to appreciate them. From there, my criteria for judging the paintings shifted as my knowledge about them grew and that actually says more about me than it does about whether De Keyser's paintings are good or bad.

Most of the panel discussions I have ever been to pose a very interesting question and then expend a good number of words not answering it. I'm beginning to realize that this article is going to suffer a similar fate. For whatever reason, I have always had a strong desire to try to answer the question posed in the title - or at least believe that it could be answered. However, I'm beginning to wonder if the question itself might be flawed. Values like "good" or "bad" are really just projections made by viewers when it comes to art, and maybe that's the answer I was looking for. Perhaps your judgement of a painting reflects more about you than it does anything else.

7 QUESTIONS: Marion Peck

2013-04-18T22:09:00.000-07:00

We asked Marion Peck the following 7 questions because we think she's a good artist and we really wanted to hear her answers. An incredibly fun exhibition of Marion's paintings, titled Animals, is on view at Michael Kohn Projects in Los Angeles through April 27, 2013. Don't miss it!

1. What is your connection to Los Angeles?

I moved here for the love of Mark Ryden, who later became my husband. I was living very happily in Seattle when I met Mark. He was on a trip up there to lay the groundwork for his Wondertoonel exhibition at the Frye Art Museum. I had never in a million years thought that I would move to LA. I love the Northwest, but Mark was worth it. I took me a long time to adjust, but I have slowly come to love and respect LA. It is a uniquely modern, culturally important, vital, fun place.

2. Name a living painter that you admire.

Well, Mark. Besides him, I am blown away by Neo Rauch. When I saw his show at the Metropolitan several years ago, I just couldn't even believe how great it was. He is able to reproduce the actual feeling of the unconscious, the weird things that happen in dreams, better than anybody else I've seen. And he can paint and draw incredibly well.

Marion Peck, Fish and Bird, 2012, oil on canvas, 11 x 14 inches at Michael Kohn Projects

3. Name a dead painter that you admire.

There are so many of the dead that I admire, it's hard to choose. One springs to mind, though: Watteau. He did those beautiful landscapes with ladies and clowns picnicking and playing guitars and such in the 1700's. There is something about his strange use of space, his combination of flatness and depth that fascinates me. And there is such and incredible atmospheric quality in them, something semi-magical. Come to think of it, these are similar to the qualities I admire in Neo Rauch. But Rauch's are big and bold, Watteau's quiet and small.

4. How much did you sell your first painting for?

I think $200, to friends of my parents, while I was in art school.

5. Of the paintings you have made, which is your favorite?

Aaaaagh. Hmmm. This is hard. I could talk about which paintings were important, or which ones I think are more successful, but picking a favorite doesn't seem like something I can do. It's like picking what day of your life was your favorite day. You think, oh that one! But maybe that one? Or was it that one?

6. LACMA, MOCA, Getty, or Hammer?

It is fun to go to the Getty, it's nice to be up high like that. They and LACMA both have nice permanent collections. I guess, though, that I am most fond of my local museums, the Norton Simon and the Huntington. They are good places to go when I've squeezed out all my creative juices and need to juice back up.

Marion Peck, Horsey, 2012, oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches at Michael Kohn Projects

Marion Peck, Sick Kitten, 2012, oil on canvas, 24 x 32 inches at Michael Kohn Projects

7. Why make paintings?

You make paintings because you long to have that thing exist. It is a strange and ancient activity, a kind of magical fetish-making. You are making a world, a reality for others to come visit. Paintings made by human hands have a subtle but deep fascination. People are always interested in them, despite the sea of images we swim in in this modern world. I think painting has incredible power, that it always has and always will.

Marion Peck, Wabbit, 2012, oil on canvas, 16 x 20 inches at Michael Kohn Projects

Marion Peck, Sad Pig, 2013, oil on canvas, 9 x 12 inches at Michael Kohn Projects

Thanks Marion.

(Image at top: Marion Peck, Hamster in the Grass, 2012, oil on canvas, 12 x 12 inches, at Michael Kohn Projects)

Not Your Average Joes

2013-04-15T02:18:00.000-07:00

Artists Joe Reihsen and Joe Hoyt have more in common than a shared first name. Both are talented young artists working in Los Angeles. Both employ interesting and unconventional methods of paint application in their work. And both currently have strong shows on view in the Los Angeles area - Reihsen with Clean Title, No Accidents at Anat Ebgi Gallery and Hoyt with A to B at Aran Cravey Gallery.

Joe Reihsen, The Wind Was Blowing Hard, 2013, acrylic on panel, 34 x 31 inches

Joe Reihsen, I Should Have Gotten Your Number After The Orgy, 2013, acrylic on panel, 19 x 18 inches

Reihsen's new paintings are a blast to look at. The unnaturally vibrant colors that shift and shimmer across the surfaces of his paintings will probably be the thing that draws you in, but it's the paradox inherent in each work that will keep you lingering. His painting style is passionately gestural yet coolly mechanical at the same time. The title of the show, Clean Title, No Accidents, seems to hint at the fact that Reihsen's haphazard looking "brushstrokes" are probably not haphazard at all. (Or maybe he just bought or sold a car recently).

Installation view of Clean Title, No Accidents at Anat Ebgi Gallery

Likewise, the paintings seem to occupy a place between abstraction and representation, with Reihsen employing a slight trompe l'oeil technique to exaggerate the depth of his surfaces. In that sense, the works are representational images illustrative of abstract marks - like Lichtenstein's brushstroke paintings - and not purely abstract (if such a thing even exists). There's contemporary precedent for this as well, in the work of painters like Laura Owens and Tauba Auerbach, but Reihsen manages to employ the technique in a way that's all as his own.

Joe Reihsen, Busty Bombshell In Pasadena, 2013, acrylic on panel, 15 x 19 inches

Joe Reihsen, Made Me Feel Elated, 2013, acrylic on panel, 18 x 18 inches

Joe Reihsen, Surface To Air, 2013, acrylic on panel, 18 x 15 inches

Joe Reihsen, Sleep Depravation, 2013, acrylic on panel, 12 x 12 inches

Paintings by Joe Reihsen on a shelf in the back room at Anat Ebgi Gallery

Whereas Reihsen uses machines (pneumatic devices and commercial painting tools) to mimic or enhance the look of handmade gestures in his work, Hoyt uses his hand in a way that mimics a machine. His small pen and ink drawings at Aran Cravey Gallery are meticulously rendered images of areas in and around Los Angeles, built up in layer after layer of tiny black dots. The scenes Hoyt depicts, chosen from "the Central Valley communities that will be linked by the first phase of California's controversial new high-speed rail system," are subtle and mundane but captivating - as are the drawings themselves.

Drawings by Joe Hoyt in A to B at Aran Cravey Gallery

Drawing by Joe Hoyt in A to B at Aran Cravey Gallery

While the small drawings read like intimate sketches in a personal notebook, Hoyt's paintings in this show have a slightly different vibe. In the paintings, Hoyt enlarged and transferred his drawings onto raw stretched canvas - interestingly choosing to stick with ink as the medium. In some, color has been introduced in the form of ink washes reminiscent of a Morris Louis Color Field painting. At a larger size, the fragmentation of the drawings becomes much more palpable and strange. The images take on a surrealist quality and judging by words like "memory," "fragment" and "perception" in his press release, it seems likely that Hoyt intended for this to be the case. Artist R.H. Quaytman comes to mind as another possible point of reference for this work. Not only are there some stylistic similarities, but the dialog between Hoyt's paintings and drawings in this show also raises parallels.

Installation view, work by Joe Hoyt in A to B at Aran Cravey Gallery

Painting by Joe Hoyt in A to B at Aran Cravey Gallery

Painting by Joe Hoyt, detail

Painting by Joe Hoyt in A to B at Aran Cravey Gallery

Joe Hoyt's exhibition A to B is on view at Aran Cravey Gallery in Venice through May 19, 2013.

Joe Reihsen's exhibition Clean Title, No Accidents is on view at Anat Ebgi Gallery in Culver City through May 25, 2013.

(Image at top: Paintings by Joe Hoyt, left and Joe Reihsen, right)

Forever Painting: Lauralee Pope at CalArts

2013-04-12T00:00:00.000-07:00

Interested to know what the kids at CalArts are up to these days? Second year graduate student Lauralee Pope had her MFA show up this week and the title, Forever Painting, intrigued us enough to make the drive out to campus to see it. There are some images from the show below and you can check out more of Pope's work, as well as the work of her classmates, April 21 from 1-6pm during CalArts Open Studios.

Forever Painting at CalArts, installation view

Painting by Lauralee Pope in Forever Painting at CalArts

Painting by Lauralee Pope, detail

Painting by Lauralee Pope in Forever Painting at CalArts

Painting by Lauralee Pope, side view

Painting by Lauralee Pope in Forever Painting at CalArts

Works by Lauralee Pope in Forever Painting at CalArts

Painting by Lauralee Pope in Forever Painting at CalArts

Work by Lauralee Pope, detail

This little ceramic piece was tucked away inside one of the gallery beams.

Antonio Adriano Puleo: Sculpted Paintings & Painted Sculptures

2013-04-10T00:37:00.000-07:00

The paintings in Antonio Adriano Puleo's new show at the Luckman Gallery may seem all over the place - both literally and figuratively - but they hold together under the well established tradition of painterly exploration. The gallery's website mentions Frank Stella, Josef Albers, Ad Reinhardt, and Robert Ryman as some of Puleo's influences - all artists who used paint more like scientists and philosophers trying to figure out what it was, what it could do, and what it meant. Likewise, the 100+ paintings in this show, installed in perfect grids throughout the gallery, read like test results from Puleo's artistic experimentations.

Work by Antonio Adriano Puleo from Sculpted Paintings & Painted Scultures at the Luckman Gallery

Painting by Antonio Adriano Puleo

The Luckman Gallery, located on the campus of Cal State L.A., is a large, beautiful space and Puleo's work looks great in it. The art is colorful, interesting, and abundent. But far from being a mere aesthetic experience, the way the show is installed in the gallery goes a long way in shaping the viewer's understanding of the work. Taken individually, Puleo's small paintings may seem to have more in common with the work of Raoul De Keyser or Andrew Masullo than they do Reinhardt or Ryman. You might even be tempted to categorize Puleo as a "provisional painter" - Raphael Rubinstein's term for painters whose work is purposely "casual, dashed-off, tentative, unfinished or self-canceling."

Work by Antonio Adriano Puleo in Sculpted Paintings & Painted Sculptures at the Luckman Gallery

Painting by Antonio Adriano Puleo

But Puleo's installation deflects this interpretation. Nothing about it seems casual or unplanned. The simple fact that the paintings are the same size shows foresight and seeing all the work grouped together in perfectly ordered grids emphasizes the fact that they are intended to be viewed as part of a larger project, ripe with artistic intention. Assuming Puleo was responsible for the installation, he seems to be tipping his hand as an artist who takes his work very seriously.

Works by Antonio Adriano Puleo from Sculpted Paintings & Painted Sculptures at the Luckman Gallery

Painting by Antonio Adriano Puleo

Work by Antonio Adriano Puleo

Sculpted Paintings & Painted Sculptures: New Work 2009-Present is on view at the Luckman Fine Arts Complex at Cal State L.A. until June 1, 2013.

(Image at top: Paintings by Antonio Adriano Puleo in Sculpted Paintings & Painted Sculptures at the Luckman Gallery)

Openings: Kim McCarty and Marilyn Minter

2013-04-08T00:03:00.000-07:00

If you made it out to both Kim McCarty's opening at the Santa Monica Museum of Art and Marilyn Minter's opening at Regen Projects Saturday night, you proved your resolve as a true lover of figurative painting. Traversing the 10 miles between shows during Los Angeles rush hour is no small feat, nor is finding parking at Bergamot Station on a Saturday night during gallery season. At least Regen Projects had a valet.

Paintings by Kim McCarty at Santa Monica Museum of Art

Kim McCarty Paints! at SMMoA, primarily an art sale intended to raise funds for the museum, turned out to be a very engaging exhibition. McCarty's watercolor paintings, most of them unframed, were installed salon-style by clips, tacks and wires in an intimately sized room. The choice was probably more practical than curatorial but the informality suited them nicely. The painting's surfaces - textured, raw and slightly warped from the wet media - revealed more depth when viewed at close range than one might expect from works on paper. The show is on view through April 20, 2013 after which time the works will head home with their lucky new owners.

Painting by Kim McCarty at Santa Monica Museum of Art

Paintings by Kim McCarty at Santa Monica Museum of Art

Across town, Marilyn Minter's show at Regen Projects was made up of five new paintings by the artist, as well as an early series of black and white photographs exhibited in a separate room. The paintings are huge, skillfully crafted, and on view until May 11, 2013.

Marilyn Minter, Last Splash, 2012, enamel on aluminum, 108 x180 inches at Regen Projects

Marilyn Minter, Big Bang, 2012, enamel on metal, 96 x 144 inches at Regen Projects

Marilyn Minter, Public Eye, 2013, enamel on Aluminum, 120 x 189 inches at Regen Projects

Marilyn Minter, Public Eye, detail

Marilyn Minter, Private Eye, 2013, enamel on aluminum, 120 x 72 inches at Regen Projects

Opening night at Regen Projects

(Image at top: Painting by Kim McCarty at Santa Monica Museum of Art)

Some Paintings from Made in Space at Night Gallery

2013-03-22T11:48:00.002-07:00

Below are some of the paintings on view in Made In Space, a group show curated by Laura Owens and Peter Harkawik at Night Gallery's new space. The gallery is open during the day now, so you can check out the show Tues-Sat, noon to 7pm, until April 15th.

Derek Boshier, The Los Angeles Collectors - Mr. + Mrs. Oscar Cyclodic, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 72 inches, 2001
On floor: Patrick Jackson, Blue Mug, ceramic, 2013

John Seal, Orpheus Singing to Pluto for Eurydice's Release, oil, canvas, wood, clay, 2013

John Seal, Orpheus Singing to Pluto for Eurydice's Release, detail

Marcia Hafif, Shades, oil on canvas, 64 x 38 inches, 2013

Eric Orr, Radio Play, meteorite dust, bone, radio parts, artist's blood, gold leaf, lead, 15.5 x 13.5 inches, 1990

Jesse Mockrin, Abracadabra!, oil on canvas, 23 x 34 inches, 2013

Left: Gabrielle Ferrer, Cones, inkjet prints, 8 x 8 inches each, 2013
Right: Vanessa Conte, Hot Bike (Green), acrylic on canvas, 48 x 62 inches, 2013

Aaron Wrinkle, Kiss Companion 2, work table top as production device for/as process orientated object, scenario 1 leaning, black gesso and Chinese calligraphy inks on laminated board/table top, 48 x 96 inches, 2013

Left: Laeh Glenn, Fruit Relief, oil on panel, 12.5 x 17 inches, 2013
Center: Laeh Glenn, X X X, oil on canvas, 12.5 x 17 inches, 2013
Right: Laeh Glenn, Red Guitar, oil on panel, 12.5 x 17 inches, 2013

Jim Isermann, Untitled (2987), Enamel paint on wood, 48 x 48 inches, 1987

Left: Eric Orr, Taveuni, oil on canvas, lead frame, 36 x 29 inches, 1990
Right: Eric Orr, Ngorongoro, oil on canvas, lead frame, 36 x 29 inches, 1990

Michael Decker, Joe Cool, found t-shirts, polyester thread, carpet, nails, painted wood, hardware, 89 x 89 inches, 2013

Night Gallery is located at 2276 East 16th Street in Los Angeles. Made in Space is on view until April 15th, 2013.

(Image at top: The prison yard/parking lot at Night Gallery's new space)

Julio Panisello Has Art Show In Shoebox

2013-03-18T15:41:00.001-07:00

ShoeboxLA, an art gallery roughly the size of two Ugg shoeboxes, popped up in the gardens behind the Velaslavasay Panorama in the historic West Adams district of Los Angeles this past weekend. On view in the tiny gallery were four new triptych paintings by Los Angeles based artist Julio Panisello. The show lasted a brief three hours. If you blinked, you missed it.

The Velaslavasay Panorama in the West Adams Historic District of Los Angeles

Entrance to the gardens behind the Velaslavasay Panorama.

Now in it's second season, ShoeboxLA invites artists to create work that can be shown within the confines of a portable 18 x 24 inch "gallery" that travels around to different locations throughout Los Angeles staging "one-day, site-specific exhibitions outside the traditional gallery setting." It's a peculiar and possibly risky concept (Can you effectively display art in a shoebox-sized gallery? Will people come to see it? Will they take it seriously?) but that risk is a big part of what makes the project so fun and intriguing.

Installation view, Miracles of the Dough by Julio Panisello via ShoeboxLA

Installation view, Miracles of the Dough by Julio Panisello via Shoebox Gallery

For this particular show, titled Miracles of the Dough, all the elements worked together nicely to create a cohesive and engaging experience. Panisello's paintings used traditional materials including egg tempera, charcoal, and gold leaf on a nontraditional support made of sundried conspersam farinam - a salt dough with nostalgic ties to Panisello's childhood. The resulting works, which resembled Russian icon paintings and were named after the 12 Apostles, effectively transformed the small gallery box into a reliquary. The show's setting, a beautiful garden oasis located behind the Union Theatre building, also added to the reverential tone.

Luckily, Panisello's lighthearted imagery kept things from getting overly serious. The panels depicted grinning self-portraits of the artist sporting various hairstyles, clothing, and accessories. And for what it's worth, the paintings were also completely edible.

Work by Julio Panisello via ShoeboxLA

Gold leaf on the back of one of the triptychs.

The artist standing behind his work.

If you didn't make it to the Velaslavasay Panorama for Miracles of the Dough, it's still worth heading over to the venue to check out Effulgence of the North, a 90 foot panorama installation that uses images, sculpture, light, and sound to transport viewers deep into the Arctic. You have to travel down a creepy hallway and up a dark winding staircase to get to it, which is half the fun.

Creepy hallway leading to Effulgence of the North at the Velaslavasay Panorama

Installation view, Effulgence of the North at the Velaslavasay Panorama

The Velaslavasay Panorama is located at 1122 West 24th Street, Los Angeles, CA. The exhibits and gardens are open Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, from 12pm to 6pm.

7 QUESTIONS: Marc Trujillo

2013-03-15T08:20:00.000-07:00

We asked Marc Trujillo the following 7 questions because we think he's a good artist and we really wanted to hear his answers. Marc's work was recently exhibited at the Armory Show via Hirschl & Adler Modern. He will also be featured in an upcoming group show in Culver City this May (more details soon). Those interested in seeing more of Marc's work can contact Shelley Farmer, Director at Hirschl & Adler Modern. (Image above: Marc Trujillo, 6351 Sepulveda Boulevard, 2012, oil on polyester over panel, 38 x 47 inches)

1. What is your connection to Los Angeles?

I'm from New Mexico so LA was a trip we always made when I was growing up. I like living here, the west makes sense to me and I like open spaces in my paintings.

2. Name a living painter that you admire.

Rackstraw Downes - Rigorous, with an area of investigation he's defined for himself that seems natural, satisfying and open ended - and I really enjoy looking at his work.

3. Name a dead painter that you admire.

Velazquez - Crushingly talented - he articulates complicated structures with a simplicity that comes from thorough understanding - visually his concision is like what Hemingway talks about when he says you can only leave out what you know. You can look at Velazquez paintings over his life and see his coming into contact with influences, you can tell when he went to Italy and saw Titian for example, his brushwork opens up but he never looks like an imitator. He was able to absorb and synthesize whatever influences he came in contact with.

4. How much did you sell your first painting for?

$400 - 1990.

5. Of the paintings you have made, which is your favorite?

The best answer to this question is Duke Ellington's - "It's always the next one."

6. LACMA, MOCA, Getty, or Hammer?

Getty - I have friends there like Sue Ann Chui who works in the painting conservation studios so I get to go back into the studios and see what they're working on - always a treat! MOCA is less without Paul Schimmel, LACMA is ok but they recently de-acquisitioned a Ter Borsch which was given to them as a gift in the forties which I think is a shame and I have to get over to the Hammer to see Lynn Foulkes' show.

7. Why make paintings?

Delacroix said that we work not only to produce but to give value to time, and I think that's beautiful and that the truth is actually a little more than that. I think we make ourselves when we make things - they come to define us, so in a way the paintings I'm making are making me in turn. If you're asking why painting as opposed to something else I would say that painting is a form as opposed to being a medium, meaning that it means something inherently different to make a painting than to make a film or a song or a comic.

I make paintings in an old way, I start with a lot of drawings to define what my visual motive is for the painting I want to make, which is important to me because the visual has primacy in painting so I need to have a reason that it needs to be a painting. From the drawing I start underpainting in what the 17th Century Dutch would call a dead color layer, raw umber and white with a little black. The reason I'm bringing up process is that I make paintings that are a long, slow, historically informed look at parts of the world we've made for ourselves that are made to be looked at very quickly or not at all.

Thanks Marc.

Dan McCleary At Craig Krull Gallery

2013-03-13T06:58:00.000-07:00

The five new paintings by Dan McCleary, currently on view at Craig Krull Gallery in Santa Monica, seem to be in dialog with one another. Props, poses, and even people are repeated within the small body of work, giving the impression that a narrative might exist that links the subtle moments depicted in the paintings together. In actuality, the repeating models are probably more of a practicality for McCleary. He paints directly from life, depicting mundane moments in a simplified, yet cunningly sophisticated style. You could describe the work as snapshots that just so happen to take months to develop.

Dan McCleary, Cafe, 2012, oil on canvas, 49 x 63.5 inches, at Craig Krull Gallery

Dan McCleary, The Conference, 2013 oil on canvas, 51 x 56.5 inches, at Craig Krull Gallery

Three larger paintings, The Conference, The Manicure, and Cafe make up the meat of the show but it is Dr. Martinez, a small portrait of a Latino man in medical scrubs, which has the most direct appeal. The model's warm skin tones reverberate against his cool green shirt. He stares straight out from the canvas with a blank expression onto which the view must choose to project the appropriate emotional state. It's a gem.

Dan McCleary, Dr. Martinez, 2013, oil on canvas, 20 x 16.5 inches at Craig Krull Gallery

Along with being a painter, McCleary is also the founder of Art Division, an organization dedicated to training and supporting young adults in the Rampart District of Los Angeles who are committed to studying visual arts. Two students of the program, Emmanuel Galvez and Javier Carrillo are exhibiting work at the gallery alongside McCleary's. Galvez's small still life works, painted from life, depict the unique color, texture and shapes of traditional Mexican bakery goods. Carrillo's paintings depict close friends, family members, and his own life experience, taking the form of the playing cards used in a Latin American game of chance, similar to Bingo, entitled La Loteria.

Painting by Emmanuel Galvez at Craig Krull Gallery

Painting by Javier Carrillo at Craig Krull Gallery

Dan McCleary, New Paintings / Javier Carrillo, La Loteria de la Vida / Emmanuel Galvez, Pan Dulche is on view at Craig Krull Gallery at Bergamot Station through April 13, 2013.

(Image at top: Dan McCleary, The Manicure, 2013, oil on canvas, 56.5 x 51 inches, at Craig Krull Gallery)

100 Painters Of Tomorrow

2013-03-11T06:26:00.000-07:00

So this is interesting. Publishers Thames & Hudson have initiated a worldwide open call to painters, inviting them to submit their work for a chance to be part of a new book, to be published in 2014, definitively titled 100 Painters of Tomorrow. It basically sounds like New American Paintings on crack.

From the 100 Painters of Tomorrow website:

"100 Painters of Tomorrow is an ambitious new project, initiated by editor-curator Kurt Beers and the publishers Thames & Hudson, to find the 100 most exciting painters at work today. Culminating in a major publication that will introduce and present each artist and their work, creating a snapshot of the best new talent in painting from across the globe."

The job of selecting "the 100 most exciting painters at work today" from an international applicant pool seems beyond daunting. 10 jurors, under the chairmanship of Kurt Beers, have been brought in to complete the task, including Cecily Brown (the only painter), Barry Schwabsky (contributor to the popular painting surveys Vitamin P and Vitamin P2), and Sir Norman Rosenthal (a knight). Los Angeles is represented on the jury by Suzanne Hudson, an Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Southern California.

If you're interested in applying you'll need to hurry as the deadline to submit is ~~March 15, 2013~~ March 22, 2013. The application calls for a CV, a brief artist statement, 4 images of your work, and £10 ($14.93 at today's exchange rate). I imagine it wouldn't hurt to already be a fairly well known young painter, as well. Remember, you will be up against the entire world.

7 QUESTIONS: Devin Troy Strother

2013-03-08T00:18:00.000-08:00

We asked Devin Troy Strother the following 7 questions because we think he's a good artist and we really wanted to hear his answers. Richard Heller Gallery is currently showing new works by Devin in their booths at both Volta NY and The Armory Show. You can see more of Devin's work here. (Image above: Devin Troy Strother, Lamar Getting Out Of Tyrone's Pool (After Hockney's 'Peter Getting Out Of Nick's Pool')

1. What is your connection to Los Angeles?

i lost my virginity there, so it's pretty high on my list of special places. plus it's always sunny and i like wearing shorty shorts, vans and a t-shirt when i'm awake, perfect place for that.

2. Name a living painter that you admire.

austin eddy, john wesley, rose wylie, and ella kruglyanskaya.

3. Name a dead painter that you admire.

my gramma, matisse, bill traylor, helen frankenthaler, philip guston.

Devin Troy Strother, Nigga I Ain't Playin Whi'chu

4. How much did you sell your first painting for?

i traded my first painting for a eighth of weed. it was a collage of bob marley pictures i found in a calendar.

5. Of the paintings you have made, which is your favorite?

"we caught dat nigga slippen"

Devin Troy Strother, We Caught Dat Nigga Slippin, 2009, gouache, acrylic, cel vinyl and silkscreen on cut paper, 18.75 x 14.75 inches.

6. LACMA, MOCA, Getty, or Hammer?

museum of jurassic technology

7. Why make paintings?

because i can't rap and i'm really bad at sports.

Devin Troy Strother, Janeane Antoine

Work by Devin Troy Strother

Thanks Devin.

Laughing At Thomas Lawson

2013-03-06T00:28:00.001-08:00

When I found out that Thomas Lawson was going to speak at the Hammer Museum last month as part of the UCLA Department of Art Artist Lecture Series, I was tempted to dust off my copy of Last Exit: Painting and give it a re-read. Discovering Lawson's famous essay was an important milestone in my artistic development, as I'm sure it was for many artists torn between their critical theory textbooks and their paintbrushes. So what if it was written before I was born?

But Lawson made it clear from the start of his lecture that despite his penchant for writing polemical essays, publishing zines, and running art colleges, he was there on that particular night to speak as a painter. And as a painter he had plenty to say, covering over three decades of his artistic career in just under two hours. His style as a lecturer closely resembled his style as a painter - sharp, thoughtful, droll, and unpretentious.

Early in his talk, Lawson brought up the question of painting's current validity as a medium - an ongoing dialog in which he has had a significant voice. Perhaps not surprisingly, he only touched briefly on this well-worn topic, using it to segue into an interesting assessment of the importance of humor in contemporary art.

"One of the questions that haunts me in my studio practice...is painting a valid expression? Are the visual arts even that valid anymore? Obviously that indicates a certain set of readings that have to do with political theory and cultural theory that have been investigated ad nauseum from the mid-century onwards. But they're very telling arguments and they're very difficult arguments to confront and to overcome, and I think you have to overcome them. And one aspect of the overcoming, I think - or this is my current situation or my current position - is that you have to open yourself up to a kind of idea of humor. That you can do whatever you like as long as it makes for something that is discontinuous and upsetting, or unsettling and sort of unbalanced in some way."

For me, Lawson's definition of humor was the take away moment from the talk. Why should painting aspire to discontinuity, upset, and unbalance? Maybe because the only way to actually see anything anymore, in a world saturated with easily consumable images, is to challenge visual expectations. It's an idea that was explored thoroughly by the Pictures Generation, of which Lawson was a part, but one that still resonates.

It was interesting to see the development of Lawson's work laid out chronologically over the course of the evening, hearing the thoughts and circumstances that led to shifts in style and content. "I think that's one of the most curious aspects of life in the art world," Lawson noted. "You of course believe you're a coherent individual but the work moves along and makes its own decisions and its own turns and you never quite know how you might relate to something that you did when you were 26 years old." The contrast between his early paintings and his current body of work may seem sharp, but seen as a whole the stylistic shifts in his practice prove to have been a gradual and logical progression. And progression is the correct word, as his newest paintings are as fresh and interesting as any being made today.

Below are a few other interesting moments from Lawson's lecture.

"I've always been interested in different ways in which reality can be represented. It can be represented imaginatively and it can be represented in language. It can be represented in color, it can be represented in form. Or, in a very mundane way, it can be represented sort of realistically and, in my mind, that was always what photography did. And so it was interesting to take photographs and put them through a system where they got less real, less mundane. The ones I like to choose are always kind of mundane and I turn them into something else."

"When you see square paintings, you know you're looking at someone who is thinking about the artificialness of art and is considering the question of art as some kind of system of representation."

"I find that at this stage in my life I'm more interested in the practical actuality of being in my studio doing something and making a decision based on something I just did than thinking about it too much. That's the difference from 30 years ago and I'm trying to understand what that might be about. Is it just aging? I don't know. Or The Age? But I am finding that I do have a lot of fun making these paintings."

The Hammer Museum hosts great events like this often and admission to the museum is also free every Thursday.

(Image at top: Thomas Lawson speaking at the Hammer Museum on February 7, 2013)