Category: Culture

Gabriel Shuldiner An Unavoidable Destiny 2007 modified acrylic polymer, pigment, latex house paint, alkyd resin, gesso and casein resin, overall dimensions variable, approx. 48″ x 96″ x 1″ [installation view]


Gabriel Shuldiner Site And Context (Part I) 2007 modified acrylic polymer, pigment, enamel house paint, gesso, Enamelac, rust, dirt and alkyd resin on canvas on mounted wood panels, overall dimensions variable, approx. 40″ x 30″ x 6″ [installation view]

[detail]


Gabriel Shuldiner Until Repetition Becomes Endurance 2007 modified acrylic polymer, pigment, gesso, reus and alkyd resin on canvas on mounted wood, overall dimensions variable, approximately 19.5″ x 19.5″ x 3″ [installation view]

Barry and I stopped by the open studios and exhibition of the Summer Art Residency of the School of Visual Arts on Thursday evening. This particular edition was an especially exciting one, judging at least partly from the fact that although it was a warm and humid evening (even warmer and more humid inside the building on 21st Street) we ended staying much longer than we expected.
As we had met Gabriel Shuldiner before and had seen some of his earlier work, we were not coming upon it totally blind. Shuldiner is very attracted to what he describes as the “power, authority and brillance” in the color black, even if he usually manages to introduce glimpses of some of its components in his lusty paint-sculptures. He writes about his art:

My work is about process: both highly intuitive and mathematically considered. . . . .
I experiment with many different materials, and am fascinated by the contrast and dialogue between them. Unconventional implements, homemade tools and modified paints help to make each mark, gash, scratch and chip as intentional and vital as my brushstroke.
My paintings evolve over time and eventually function as compositional objects; their relationship to the wall, to their environment and to the viewer’s position becomes an important and vital compositional element, as does the light it absorbs, reflects and scatters off the varied black pigments, creating further shades of grays and whites.

For more images and words, see Barry.
Most of the other artists were new to us and about them I have virtually no information other than names and images captured that night. I will be uploading mostly-undocumented photos of work by several of them later today or tomorrow.

Martin Mullin Hydra 2006-2007 mixed media collage 11.75″ x 9″ [installation view]


Tony Berlant 24 Hours 2000 11.5″ x20″


Robert Warner Untitled 2007 flint glass and collage on book board 10.25″ x 8.25″ [installation view]

[detail]


Fritz Bultman Waves and Others 1978 painted paper collage 16″ x 20″ [installation view]

Pavel Zoubok’s current group show, “collage + abstraction“, can described pretty much by its title alone. The works shown were created by 55 artists over most of the last 100 years. The oldest piece is Kurt Schwitters’s tiny, 1921 “Lady in Red”.
It’s a rich collection, and in a visit to the gallery earlier this week I found the small and large beauties of these dozens of works arranged as they are in a handsome, rhythmic, salon-ish installation almost overwhelming. And it’s all very elegant.
That last adjective however provokes me to ask mischievously whether something might be missing. There’s nothing obviously outrageous going on here. Maybe that’s only an over-stimulated today talking, looking for novelty, and in the interest of disclosure I should say right now that I like outrageous (note: Pavel Zoubok has often fed my appetite generously).
I definitely won’t fault the gallerist/curator’s aesthetic choices for this show, but in spite of my love for both abstraction and collage I think I regret the almost total absence of representational imagery in these works. Also, even if I can accept the restriction defined by the exhibition’s title definition, and although some of the works employ stuff outside the collagist’s conventional range of paper materials, maybe the components and, yes, the shapes of the collages selected could have been a bit less predictable. Stefan Saffer‘s “Fortress” and Robert Motherwell’s “Celtic Air” are two of the very few pieces which do not subscribe to a presentation involving four right-angle corners, and Saffer’s folded paper structure actually breathes totally free, managing to resist confinement in a frame of any kind, only barely able to rein in its third dimension.
But all this is small change when looking at the work itself. I went back to the gallery today, along with Barry and an artist friend. All three of us had a really hard time leaving.

Jeremy Blake Reading Ossie Clark 2003 video [still taken from November, 2003 installation]

Jeremy Blake is no longer no longer missing, but he is still very much missed. The picture above looks very different to me after the news of the last two weeks; it now suggests a brilliant, burning star.
I posted this short piece three and a half years ago, with another capture from “Ossie Clark”.
[there are sensitive photos of Jeremy, and Jeremy with Theresa Duncan, on the Wikipedia entry]

Victor Sj�str�m and Bibi Andersson in a still from Ingmar Bergman’s 1957 film, “Smultronst�llet” [Wild Strawberries]

Well, of course it is. Everything is like a scene from a Bergman film.

Wow. Maybe this is not a balanced judgment, since I’ve been greedily devouring Ingmar Bergman’s work for 50 years, but I think this piece by The Reeler‘s Stu VanAirsdale may be the most extraordinarily beautiful memorial to an artist that I’ve ever read.

[image from luebeck]

Marsden Hartley Evening Storm, Schoodic, Maine No. 2 1942 oil on board 30″ x 40.5″

[detail]

We crossed Brooklyn ferry this afternoon (by subway, of course), on the last day of the Asher Durand show at Brooklyn Museum. I wasn’t permitted to photograph the Durand paintings, because they were not part of the museum’s own collection, but my camera wasn’t idle when we walked through the other galleries on the 5th floor.
This evening, still on the subject of the natural beauty of the Northeast, I can’t think of a better image to stand in for the pioneering Durand landscapes than this magnificent painting by Marsden Hartley. It may be my favorite thing of the day.

Joel Longenecker And Then You Die 2007 oil on canvas 90″ x 96″

[detail]


Joel Longenecker Float Theory 2007 oil on linen 62″ x 54″


Joel Longenecker Get Drift 2007 oil on canvas 78″ x 74″

When I first saw these paintings I didn’t know how to fit them into my accustomed ideas about how art should ideally provoke and re-draw my world in some way when I initially encounter it. Joel Longenecker‘s paintings in his solo show, “Ignorance and Bliss“, at Sideshow are both powerful and beautiful, but they do not capture new territory. In fact while they were all finished this year, they would not look anomalous (although they’d probably have been stars) in a Manhattan gallery show years ago.
But to say this is not to dismiss what Longenecker has accomplished. I still like to visit the work of the iconic abstract expressionists, even when it’s become very familiar, and when an artist speaks in the same language today, but to tell new stories, why should I refuse to listen?
I knew I would end up appreciating this work more if I hung around a bit yesterday, and I did. I didn’t however expect to become as attached to it as I am now, the result of an increased familiarity from having spent an absurd amount of time today trying to adjust the colors on the images I shot during my visit. I had to revise my adjustments over and over to see that the colors were neither too bright and transparent nor too dark and smudgy. I hope I’ve come close to the originals but, especially with painting, there’s no substitute for being able to stand in front of the canvas itself.