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Review of “Messenger”

Hi friends, Check out my review of Messenger, a two-person exhibition featuring Theresa Bloise's futuristic-hued landscapes and George Boorujy's ink on paper wild animals, in the June 2020 issue of The Brooklyn Rail

https://brooklynrail.org/2020/06/artseen/Ortega-y-Gasset-Projects-BrooklynMessenger?fbclid=IwAR11Wa1hh54he8WhnHvH08IHqRxdIkL90tz32STzWSD2KSMS65fsxJRhK-o

Curated by Nickola Pottinger, the exhibition was on view and then online at Ortega y Gasset Projects, Brooklyn.

Installation view: Theresa Bloise and George Boorujy: Messenger, Ortega y Gasset Projects, New York. Courtesy Ortega y Gasset Projects.

Theresa Bloise, Sunrise, 2019. Acrylic on canvas with LED light strip, 43 x 40 in. Courtesy the artist.

George Boorujy, Cottonmouth, 2018. Ink on paper, 37 1/4 x 34 1/4 in. Courtesy the artist and P.P.O.W., New York.

[robert-r-shane]

Review of Rodriguez “Destruktion”

Here's my review of Cuban artist Alberto Alejandro Rodriguez's first New York solo exhibition "Destruktion" at 532 Gallery Thomas Jaeckel:

https://brooklynrail.org/2020/06/artseen/Alberto-Alejandro-Rodrguez-Destruktion

"[In Descriptive Memory (2018)] the artist carved curving landscape topographies atop 10 squared stacks of yellowed papers—all recovered architectural plans and building records from an abandoned building... [...] If the topographical forms were scaled up to the size of real landscapes, then the towers upon which they rest would run unfathomably deep, past the Earth’s crust and mantle into the depths of memory and the unconscious."

in the June 2020 issue of The Brooklyn Rail.

Alberto Alejandro Rodriguez, Destruktion (detail), 2019. Mixed media, building materials, 12 x 12 x 2 1/2 inches. Courtesy Gallery Thomas Jaeckel, New York.

Alberto Alejandro Rodriguez, Descriptive Memory (detail), 2018.  Recycled Paper, 60 x 96 x 12 inches. Courtesy Gallery Thomas Jaeckel, New York.

Alberto Alejandro Rodriguez, Prolog 02, 2019. Book cover, artist paper, (two volumes). Courtesy Gallery Thomas Jaeckel, New York.

[robert-r-shane]

Review of Leonard Contino

Check out my review of "Totally Dedicated: Leonard Contino, 1940-2016" in The Brooklyn Rail:

https://brooklynrail.org/2020/04/artseen/aa

"Like a retablo in electric hues, a wall of 17 abstract paintings (1966-1977) by Leonard Contino arranged in three tiers, towers over the viewer..."  

Installation view: "Totally Dedicated: Leonard Contino, 1940-2016." Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, SUNY New Paltz, NY. Photo: Bob Wagner/Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art. 

Leonard Contino, Splintered, 2009. Acrylic on canvas, 24 x 30 in. Photo: Bob Wagner/Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art. 

Leonard Contino, Zao, 1967.   Acrylic on canvas, 45 x 49 in. Photo: Bob Wagner/Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art. 

Leonard Contino, RE, 1977. Acrylic on canvas, 28 x 30 in. Photo: Bob Wagner/Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art.

[robert-r-shane]

Review of Otto-Knapp “In the waiting room”

Bringing together her long-standing interest in both landscape and dance, painter Silke Otto-Knapp's exhibition In the waiting room at Chicago’s The Renaissance Society last February took a performative turn casting the viewer in an open choreography among paintings hung on free-standing walls which acted like stage décor.  

Check out my review in The Brooklyn Rail:

https://brooklynrail.org/2020/03/artseen/Silke-Otto-Knapp-In-the-waiting-room

Installation view: Silke Otto-Knapp: In the waiting room, the Renaissance Society, Chicago, 2020. Photo: Useful Art Services.    

I also wrote the entry on Otto-Knapp for the book Landscape Painting Now ed. Todd Bradway (Artbook/DAP, 2019).

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[robert-r-shane]

Interview with Gladys Nilsson

Star Trek and opera are among the many sources that have informed Gladys Nilsson’s hilariously irreverent paintings and collages since her time as a Hairy Who? (1966–1969) member.

I sat down with Nilsson in her home studio in Chicago’s suburbs where she spoke—and laughed—about her time as a student at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she now teaches; comedy, which she considers “a very high art form”; and the mischievousness of the vibrantly aging female protagonists in her latest paintings. https://brooklynrail.org/2020/03/art/GLADYS-NILSSON-with-Robert-R-Shane 

Gladys Nilsson (1940–), Tidy Up, 2018. Acrylic on canvas. 60 x 40 inches | 152.4 x 101.6 cm. Courtesy the artist and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York.

[robert-r-shane]

Review of Mendez “The years now”

Here’s my review of Harold Mendez’s sound and sculpture exhibition The years now at Chicago’s Logan Center Gallery. Through both memorial and ritual, Mendez's artwork bears witness to traumas from colonization, diaspora, and present-day civil unrest in the Latin America and the US. https://brooklynrail.org/2020/03/artseen/Harold-Mendez-The-years-now 

Harold Mendez, The years now, 2020. Installation views in the Logan Center Gallery, University of Chicago. Photos by Robert Chase Heishman

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Review of Naumann’s memoir

Hi friends!  Please read my review of Duchamp scholar Francis M. Naumann’s book Mentors: The Making of an Art Historian in the Feb 2020 issue of The Brooklyn Rail:

https://brooklynrail.org/…/Francis-M-Naumanns-Mentors-The-M…

Of related interest: Francis M. Naumann Fine Art is holding its final exhibition “Depicting Duchamp: Portraits of Marcel Duchamp and/or Rrose Selavy” closing this Friday, Feb 28.  If you’re in New York, stop by 24 W 57th St, suite 305.

It’s a celebratory exhibition offering both a personal look at Duchamp through portraits made by friends and peers in his lifetime and a demonstration of his vitality today through contemporary portraits.

[robert-r-shane]

Review of Odessa Straub’s “There’s my chair I put it there”

Hi friends,

Please check out my review of Odessa Straub’s "There’s my chair I put it there" in the Dec 2019-Jan 2020 issue of The Brooklyn Rail.

https://brooklynrail.org/2019/12/artseen/Odessa-StraubTheres-my-chair-I-put-it-there

Here’s an excerpt:

“Throughout the exhibition the restorative and sexual relationships evoked in these works reveal a fragile yet perseverant Eros. […] Straub’s artwork reconceives sexuality as an intimate mode of living that is receptive and responsive, tender and creative, and as vulnerable as it is giving.”

IMAGE CREDIT: 

Odessa Straub, Venom—Voiding—Vessel, 2019. Scaffolding wood, acrylic paint, enamel, wool, rope, canvas, glass cloche, aquarium substrate, Plexiglas, plants, water. 21 x 69 x 59in. (53.34 x 175.26 x 142.24cm). Courtesy the artist and SEPTEMBER Gallery, Hudson, NY.

[robert-r-shane]

Review of Karen Kilimnik

Hi friends,

Please check out my latest review of Karen Kilimnik’s exhibition in the Dec 2019–Jan 2020 issue of The Brooklyn Rail:

 https://brooklynrail.org/2019/12/artseen/Karen-Kilimnik-

The exhibition is on view through December 20, 2019 at 303 Gallery, 555 W 21 Street, New York.

Here’s an edited excerpt:

“Kilmnik’s exhibition of nearly 80 works of painting, video, photography, collage, and readymade—borrowing imagery from pastoral landscapes, Tsarist Russia, classical and romantic ballet, pop culture, and Hollywood movies—maps an ambitious, unchronological history of domination and violence lurking beneath Western civilization’s idealized images of itself.

“Analogous to Hannah Arendt’s ‘banality of evil,’ Kilimnik reveals the elegance of evil in an exhibition that is at first visually seductive and then hauntingly unsettling.”

IMAGE CREDITS:

Installation views: Karen Kilimnik, 303 Gallery, New York, 2019. Photos: John Berens.  Images courtesy the artist and 303 Gallery, New York.

[robert-r-shane]

Review of Francesca DiMattio’s “Statues”

Hi friends,

Please check out my review of sculptor Francesca DiMattio’s exhibition “Statues” at Art Omi, Ghent, NY, in the November 2019 issue of The Brooklyn Rail. Here’s the link:

https://brooklynrail.org/2019/11/artseen/Francesca-DiMattio-Statues

Here’s an excerpt from my conclusion:

“In a sexist society which regards ambitious women and heroines as ‘strange monsters’ [as Simone de Beauvoir once wrote], DiMattio’s statues defiantly relish in their monstrosity, fusing masculine and feminine, human and animal, civilized and abject.”

The exhibition is on view through Jan 5, 2020. See it for yourself!

Installation view: Francesca DiMattio: Statues, Art Omi, Ghent, NY, 2019. Photo: Bryan Zimmerman.

(Center): Francesca DiMattio, She-wolf, 2018. Glaze on porcelain and stoneware, resin, enamel, acrylic paint and steel. 112 x 44 x 95 inches. © Francesca diMattio. Courtesy the artist and Salon 94, New York.

(Left): Francesca DiMattio, Elephant Caryatid, 2019. Glaze on porcelain. 107 x 43 x 20 in. © Francesca diMattio. Courtesy the artist and Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London

(Right): Francesca DiMattio, Goose Caryatid, 2019. Glaze on porcelain. 107 x 43 x 20 in. © Francesca diMattio. Courtesy the artist and Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London.

[robert-r-shane]

Great Women Artists

I am proud to have worked on "Great Women Artists" (London: Phaidon, 2019). The book covers five centuries and over 400 artists from around the globe.  

I wrote profiles on 25 artists from the Renaissance to the present, including video artist Berni Searle, photographer Yishay Garbasz, and fiber artist Shelia Hicks.

You can find out more about the book here: https://www.phaidon.com/…/great-women-artists-9780714878775/

[robert-r-shane]

Review of Nick van Woert’s “Body Parts”

Hi friends,

Check out my review of sculptor Nick van Woert’s exhibition “Body Parts” in the October 2019 issue of The Brooklyn Rail. Here’s the link:

https://brooklynrail.org/2019/10/artseen/Nick-van-Woert

Here is an excerpt:

Armatures of stainless steel tubing and wire act like supports for anatomical models, but instead of displaying human organs they hold debris such as motor parts, plastic sheets, ghostly casts of bottles and cups, and formless masses of cement. Taken in sum, these things generate unexpected vitality […]. The artist has long argued that art is primarily ‘a material language,’ and this exhibition offers us a chance to hear what materials themselves, particularly industrial ones, have to say.

IMAGE CREDIT: Nick van Woert, Untitled, 2019. Rocks, crystals, stones, concrete, asphalt, palosanto, cat litter, papier-mâché, steel, exhaust pipe, white bronze, oil paint on steel table; 61 x 47 x 29 inches (154.9 x 119.4 x 73.7 cm). Courtesy of the Artist and GRIMM Amsterdam | New York.

The exhibition is on view through October 12, 2019 at GRIMM New York.

[robert-r-shane]

Landscape Painting Now (2019)

I’m so proud to have been one of the contributors, along with friend and colleague Susan van Scoy and Louise Sørensen, to Landscape Painting Now (New York: D.A.P/Artbook, 2019), edited by Todd Bradway, with feature essay by Barry Schwabsky.  The book launch at the Whitney Museum of American Art took place in April.

I’ve met so many impressive artists as a result of that project—Amy Bennett, Damian Loeb, Alexis Rockman—and I had the chance to write about some of my long-standing favorites, such as Vincent Desiderio.

Find out more about the book here: https://www.artbook.com/9781942884262.html

[robert-r-shane]

Review of Amy Bennett “Nuclear Family” at Miles McEnery, New York

Hi friends, Please check out my review of Amy Bennett’s exhibition “Nuclear Family” at Miles McEnery Gallery in this month’s The Brooklyn Rail:

https://brooklynrail.org/2019/09/artseen/Amy-Bennett-Nuclear-Family

Here’s an excerpt and two images from the exhibition:

“Peering into scenes painted on tiny panels, some barely larger than a note card, the viewer observes the intimacy and isolation of Amy Bennett’s one-inch high figures. Their fictional lives, set in richly colored and seemingly idyllic suburban neighborhoods and homes flooded with morning light, are disturbed by marital discontent and parental ambivalence. Family members often inhabit the same rooms, but absorbed in laptops or yoga routines, they never interact; mothers, attentive to their children’s needs, struggle to dress or sleep while infants are latched to their breasts, echoing psychosocial theorist Lisa Baraitser’s claim that the maternal care is “an ethics of interruption.” Although not the central theme in the exhibition, the complexity of motherhood, often eclipsed in the history of art by idealized images of maternity, is one of Bennett’s most important contributions in Nuclear Family, as she illustrates the changing roles mothers play within the ‘nuclear family’ since the term entered popular parlance in the last century.”

Amy Bennett, Sunday Morning, 2018, oil on panel, 3 3/4 x 9 inches, 9.5 x 22.9 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY. 

Amy Bennett, Fashion Show, 2018, oil on panel, 3 1/2 x 10 inches, 8.9 x 25.4 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY.

[robert-r-shane]

Sarah Irvin’s “Infant Feeding Log”

In honor of Labor Day here in the US, I am posting Sarah Irvin’s Infant Feeding Log (2017-18), consisting of 2,435 timecards meticulously documenting the date, time and duration of breastfeeding sessions between herself, identified as the “lactator,” and her infant daughter, “the consumer.” By using the rhetoric of wage labor timecards and invoices, Irvin reminds us that the labor of nursing a child goes not only unpaid in our society but unrecognized as such, despite the impact breastfeeding mothers make on our economies and foodways.

Hear more in this extended interview with Irvin on episode 29 of Kaylan Buteyn’s Artist/Mother Podcast. Irvin discusses Infant Feeding Log at 20:00-29:00min, but I recommend the entire podcast:

https://artistmotherpodcast.com/podcast/29-turning-the-mundane-experiences-of-motherhood-into-conceptual-art-with-sarah-irvin/

To see more of Irvin’s art check out:

https://sarahirvinart.com/home.html

https://www.instagram.com/sarahirvinart/

 And finally, I salute Garrett Klein and Ryan Massey of Massey Klein Gallery, New York—where I first saw this piece in February—for supporting Irvin’s work on maternity:

https://www.masseyklein.com/

https://www.instagram.com/masseykleingallery/

Image credit: Sarah Irvin, Infant Feeding Log, 2018, Card catalogue with 2,435 unique forms, hand-set letterpress colophon & title page, metal rods, wooden base w/ milk paint, 7 x 78 1/4 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Massey Klein Gallery.

[robert-r-shane]

Oliver on the ethics of tenderness

No other thinker has so dramatically transformed the way I engage with others than Kelly Oliver. In this piece on the ethics of tenderness she asks: How do we care for others without reducing them to objects of pity?

Oliver demonstrates that the way we approach both disability and maternity—two key topics in her article—forms the foundation for our response to each other in many contexts.

http://thephilosophicalsalon.com/jean-vanier-and-an-ethics-of-tenderness/

If you like this piece, here are the three books by Oliver that I found most transformative:

1. Witnessing: Beyond Recognition (2001, Univ of Minnesota)—all artists, art historians, and critics should read this, especially the parts on “the loving eye” in the “Introduction” and “Part III. Visions”!

2. The Colonization of Psychic Space: A Psychosocial Theory of Oppression (2004, Univ of Minnesota)

3. Earth and World: Philosophy after the Apollo Missions (2015, Columbia Univ)

[robert-r-shane]

“Away in the Hill” at GRIMM New York

If you are in New York this week, I recommend GRIMM Gallery’s landscape exhibition “Away in the Hill,” curated by director Margot Samel, including artwork by Claudia Martínez Garay, Matthew Wong, and Peter Doig.

I was particularly moved by Scottish sculptor Lucy Skaer’s Forest (2018). These two bronze casts each of a flitch—timber cut flat on opposite sides with bark edges—permanently memorialize the transitory state between living tree and lumber. Seeing ourselves in the polished but distorted mirrors of these human-sized sculptures, we feel the forest’s vulnerability.

Exhibition info:

“Away in the Hill”

until Friday, August 2, 2019.

GRIMM, 202 Bowery, New York, NY

https://grimmgallery.com/exhibition/away-in-the-hill/

Image credit:

Lucy Skaer, Forest, 2018. Cast bronze; in two parts. Flitch 1: 127.6 x 59.7 x 6.4 cm (50 1/4 x 23 1/2 x 2 1/2 in). Flitch 2: 170.2 x 58.4 x 7.6 cm (67 x 23 x 3 in). Courtesy of the Artist and GRIMM Amsterdam | New York