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There is a cultural shift happening right now. I can sense it. Just listen to the radio. There’s more R + B, Hip Hop is mixing with other forms and Indie Rock is pop. There is a general mining of post war 20th century culture going on. But, this is not your standard retro thing, which was generational: in the 90s, we saw a retro 70s thing; in the 80s it was the 60s and in the 70s it was the 50s. That’s standard commercial practice. Seven years into the millennium, it’s a little different. In terms of the visual arts, here’s a little history: |
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Picks for May/June, 2007 – Christopher Hart Chambers
There is a cultural shift happening right now. I can sense it. Just listen to the radio. There’s more R + B, Hip Hop is mixing with other forms and Indie Rock is pop. There is a general mining of post war 20th century culture going on. But, this is not your standard retro thing, which was generational: in the 90s, we saw a retro 70s thing; in the 80s it was the 60s and in the 70s it was the 50s. That’s standard commercial practice. Seven years into the millennium, it’s a little different. In terms of the visual arts, here’s a little history: The 80s maximallist painters answered 70s’ Minimalism, which, itself, was a reaction to 60s pop art, which was an answer to abstract expressionism. Okay, I’ll stop there.
More recently, in the 90s, painting was pariah. You couldn’t find a painting in a trendy gallery anywhere. Now that “painting lives” or is reborn, as in 1999/2000—commercially, anyway—it is largely a reaction to the digital age. There are two sides to that coin: so far this century, popular painting has been either puerile figuration (can’t paint well with an attitude), or slick surface (can paint well with the aid of hard edges and photographs). So now, what we are just starting to see is a desire for blood and guts once more. Old School soul is cool again.
Judy Ledgerwood, “Hard Jam” at Tracy Williams, Ltd is a collection of large abstract oil paintings based on graphic and textile patterning. Expressive and simple with lush, painterly surfaces, these are elegant paintings with lofty ideals. The artist goes against the grain of “trendy painting,” which tends to be narrative. A “painter’s painter,” she treads on the historically male grounds of “heroic painting,” while mining traditionally feminine decorative motifs as well as calligraphic elements.
In “Vice Versa” at Mike Weiss Gallery, artist Sofie Zezmer assembles plastic and rubber, prefabricated parts to create biomorphic, cyborg, plantlike formations. Her materials range from medical equipment to badminton birdies. It’s a sci-fi psychedelic smorgasbord of found objects.
Alejandra Seeber’s “The Pregnant Painter” show at Virgil de Voldere Gallery puts on display improvisational paintings that start as a “Rorschach blot,” formed by folding the canvas and wet paint alike. With subsequent “in-painting,” the now unfolded work organically evolves into a subconscious landscape, and whatever other imagery the artist imagined up—a sort of cloud gazing approach to image making.
Adam Weekly’s “Heating up to Dream” at Black and White Gallery proved a voyeuristic installation involving a hibernation box (titled Hibernation Chamber), some tiny dioramas and photographs contained within birdhouses, a wool cap, a painted triptych and several other elements. The symbolism ranges from fairy tales to science fiction and the “universal search for solace.”
Manfredi Beninati’s show at James Cohan displayed some visionary paintings with shining, hallucinogenic, rainbow-colored drips and spirals over landscapes, interiors and the aurora borealis.
Toward the beginning of this article, I mentioned blood and guts, and the dawn of a resurgence of interest in what I will now label “painterly painting.” Alejandra Seeber certainly qualifies, and another example of this was Duston Spear’s exhibition at Sara Tecchia Roma, New York, with her subject matter taken from photographs published in The New York Times on the war in Iraq. But, what truly makes the work interesting in terms of painting is her approach to the canvas. She goes about her business with the confidence of not having to prove herself, sticking to her business. She already knows what good painting is.
