Autumn in New York, Part 8: An Afternoon in Bushwick

Part 1: Fiction (With only Daylight Between Us) 

Part 2: Louise Bourgeois at MoMA  

Part 3: Soft Shapes, Sharp Angles 

Part 4: Shape, Gesture, Surface 

Part 5: Blanc et Noir   

Part 6: Eccentric Domesticity     
Part 7: Stitched, Stapled, and Tacked

Panorama of Brenda Goodman: In a New Space at David & Schweitzer Contemporary 
(September 8-October 1)

Every one of the artworks included here would have fit appropriately into one or another of the Autumn in New York posts already published, but I saved them for this one. I wanted to show some of the splendid and diverse work being shown in Bushwick (note to out-of-towners: a relatively recent Brooklyn outpost for artists to live, work, and exhibit). We start in the gallery building at 56 Bogart Street with the brilliant Brenda Goodman at David & Schweitzer Contemporary, drop in to a few other galleries on the ground floor, and then walk a few blocks over to Odetta on Cook Street. Come with me.

BRENDA GOODMAN

What'd You Say, 2016, oil on wood, 72 x 80 inches
Detail below

BRENDA GOODMAN
Installation view with What'd You Say at your right shoulder

Foreground: Lickety Split, 2017, oil on wood
Far wall and below: Watching and Waiting, 2017, oil on wood

Much of Goodman's new work features a densely linear surface that seems almost filled in with a 
Much of Goodman's new work features a densely linear surface that seems almost filled in with a light application of color. This is a big change from her earlier paintings whose surface was dense with textured oil paint. In his catalog essay about Goodman's work, Thomas Micchelli describes the way the artist achieves her new surface: "She takes a linoleum cutter and incises it in random, spidery loops, horizontals, verticals, diagonals, and curves." The cut-up surface thus becomes "a playing field upon which paint must negotiate and sometimes surrender to a pre-existing condition."

BRENDA GOODMAN

View of the wall opposite What'd You Say

On it, Siblings, 2017, oil on wood, shown below

. . . . .

LEN BELLINGER

Partial view of his solo show, also at David & Schweitzer Contemporary, Thugs, Miscreants and Recent Extractions (September 8-October 1)

Far wall: kkp.plutusred, 2015-17; oil, metal, staples, fabric on canvas

LEN BELLINGER
Installation of works on paper (this wall is on the other side of Goodman's Siblings)

Individual drawing below
Book pages serve as substrate, ground, and palimpsest for these small works, which reference--and paint over--images of altarpieces, religious iconography, the geometry of architecture and art history

LEN BELLINGER

Installation view of the wall opposite the works on paper

LEN BELLINGER

Miscreant, 2017; oil, acrylic, charcoal, staples, archival glue on repro mounted on wood; 19.5 x 19 inches

LEN BELLINGER

Choir (for Tom Black),2016-2017; oil, acrylic, etching ink, plexiglass on homosote; 19 x 15.5 inches

LEN BELLINGER

No. 9 On the Plan, 2017; acrylic, watercolor, staples, archival glue on repromounted on wood; 22.5 x 16 inches

. . . . .

DARLA BJORK

Darla Bjork: Sanctuary at SoHo 20 Gallery (September 7-October 8)

The first floor of 56 Bogart Street is home to a number of galleries. Positioned near the entrance to the building, SoHo 20 Gallery offers a dramatic view of each exhibition when viewed from the end of a long hallway, and Darla Bjork's painting could not be more dramatic in that setting. Bjork's brand of gestural abstraction consists of hue and texture built up via layers of color and mark. And that deep, dark background exerts its own particular power.

DARLA BJORK

From the Garden I, II, 2016, encaustic and oil stick on a double panel, 80 x 28 inches

DARLA BJORK

Peek into the smaller side gallery with Garden Mist and Green

Below: Garden Mist, 2017, encaustic and oil stick on panel, 24 x 24 inches

. . . . .

ERIC BROWN
Installation view of Punctuate at Theodore Art (September 8-October 22)

Brown wrests powerful paintings from a reductive geometric vocabulary and a deceptively simple palette. His surfaces are lightly painted and relatively uninflected, though in some of the paintings there are underlayers suggesting how the work took shape.

ERIC BROWN

Ground Game, left, and Ground Game II, both 2017, oil on linen, 10 x 8 inches

You can see these paintings on the wall in the installation shot above

ERIC BROWN
Installation view, opposite wall

Below: Cinch, 2017, oil on linen, 18 x 24 inches

. . . . .

COLORMANIA at Odetta Gallery (September 8-October 15)
With Paul Corio, Ken Weathersby, and Robert Otto Epstein

Gallerist Ellen Hackl Fagan brought together three painters whose work focuses on color relationships that push the retina beyond its comfortable parameters of perception and/or challenge the viewer with the illusion of structure and space.

PAUL CORIO

Baby Zip I and Baby Zip II, each 2017, acrylic on canvas, 96 x 96 

KEN WEATHERSBY

240, 2015; acrylic and graphite, wood;  73 x 16.5 x 16 inches

KEN WEATHERSBY

149 (gdp), 2006, acrylic on canvas with inset panels, 16 x 14 inches

ROBERT OTTO EPSTEIN
Installation view

ROBERT OTTO EPSTEIN
Josh, 2017, acrylic on panel, 30 x 24 inches

Detail below

More on Bushwick Galleries

. Bushwick Gallery Map
. Arts in Bushwick
. Wagmag with a special section for Bushwick
. Art-collectiong.com with a special section on Bushwick

Autumn in New York, Part 7: Stitched, Stapled, and Tacked

Part 1: Fiction (With only Daylight Between Us) 

Part 2: Louise Bourgeois at MoMA  

Part 3: Soft Shapes, Sharp Angles 

Part 4: Shape, Gesture, Surface 

Part 5: Blanc et Noir 

Part 6: Eccentric Domesticity  

Panorama of Howardena Pindell: Recent Paintings at the Garth Greenan Gallery, Chelsea,

extended through December 21

Like a Polaroid photo, this post developed on its own. As I viewed the handwork and hardware that formed a number of works, text and images became visible in my mind's eye. From Howardena Pindell’s splendid stitched canvases, I spent some time with Lance Letscher’s relatively small-scale stapled collages, the staples functioning much like Pindell’s stitches. Up in Western Massachusetts, Nancy Natale was showing a group of constructions whose painted strips are tacked in place. Back in Manhattan, Liza Lou's subtly striped color field revealed itself on closer inspection to be made of tiny glass beads stitched by hand.

 HOWARDENA PINDELL
 Nautilus #1,  2014-2015, mixed media on canvas, 68 x 70 inches

Detail below

.
Long known for her process-intensive work, Pindell cuts and then reassembles canvas into organic shapes that spiral or meander. Tiny cut circles, perhaps made by a hole puncher, have long been a feature of the topographical surface of Pindell's paintings, and in these new works we can see additional elements: glitter, sequins, and larger round or ovoid shapes. The paintings are shown unstretched, which underscores the organic nature of her abstraction. A veteran painter, Pindell was a founding member of A.I. R. Gallery and has shown widely. Press material notes that a retrospective, Howardena Pindell: What Remains to Be Seen, will take place at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago in the early part of 2018.

 HOWARDENA PINDELL
 Songlines: Labyrinth (Versailles), 2017, mixed media on canvas, 40.50 x 80 inches

Detail below

HOWARDENA PINDELL 

Night Flight, 2015-2016, mixed media on canvas, 75 x 63 inches

 HOWARDENA PINDELL
Carnival: Bahia, Brazil, 2017, mixed media on canvas, 74 x 84 inches

Detail below

 HOWARDENA PINDELL
Songlines: Cosmos, 2017, mixed media on canvas, 57 x 81 inches

Image from Garth Greenan Gallery website

Detail below

. . . . .

LANCE LETSCHER

Installation view of one wall of  Cut and Staple: New Work by Lance Letscher at Pavel Zoubok Gallery, Chelsea, through December 23

Image from Pavel Zoubok Gallery website

LANCE LETSCHER

Elephant Study #1, 2017, metal collage, 9 x 7 inches (shown framed at far right in installation shot above)

There are two bodies of work on exhibition: conventional collage in a riot of color and biologic forms, and the works I'm showing you here: cut-metal constructions held together with industrial staples, which give a rhythm and texture to the surface.

LANCE LETSCHER
Installation view, with Elephan Study, left, and Ampersand, right

LANCE LETSCHER

Elephant Study, 2017, metal and staples, 27.75 x 24.25

Detail below

LANCE LETSCHER

Ampersand, 2017, metal collage, 27.75 x 32.50 inches

Detail below

LANCE LETSCHER

Another installation view, with Fox and Rabbit on far wall

Image from Pavel Zoubok Gallery website

LANCE LETSCHER

Fox and Rabbit, 2017, metal collage, 18.75 x 10.50 inches

Detail below

. . . . .

NANCY NATALE
Fall Back, 2017, encaustic with mixed media on panel,  24 x 24 inches

Nancy Natale's grid-based, mixed-media constructions consist of strips of created or found materials laid horizontally, typically secured with tacks applied in a vertical orientation. The result is the visual equivalent of jazz or salsa: a 4/4 or 6/8 rhythm overlaid with the pop of syncopation and marked by improvisation that rides the highs and lows of the notes on the page. Color heightens the effect, but a new achromatic series depends on relief for its impact.

NANCY NATALE

Installation view of Pursuing Geometry at Elusie Gallery, Easthampton, Mass. (through December 2)

NANCY NATALE

Dark Foursome, 2017, mixed media, each 10 x 10 inches

NANCY NATALE
Above: Dark Time 1
Below: High Contrast

. . . . .

LIZA LOU

Title and date unavailable, stitched glass beads, app. 78 x 78 inches

Seen at Lehman Maupin Gallery, Chelsea. This gorgeous work--so subtle from a distance, so rich from up close--was not in an exhibition but simply on one of the inner-room walls when I saw it. 

You can see a similar such work here.

Detail below

. . . . .

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