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On Display: Sharon Butler, Joy Curtis, Cathy Nan Quinlan at STOREFRONT
7/28/2010
In August my paintings were included in "On Display," an exhibition curated by Hrag Vartanian, with work by by Cathy Nan Quinlan and Joy Curtis at STOREFRONT. A full-color catalogue with essays by the artists and Vartanian is available.
The exhibition was selected as a Critics' Pick at Time Out New York, an ArtCat PICK, and was also recommended by Gallerina @ WNYC. Paper Magazine selected "Brightly Colored Separates 8" as the Work of the Day. For a complete list of mentions and reviews about the exhibition, click here
Press Release:
“On Display” offers three challenging new perspectives on abstraction. Each artist employs familiar forms, but in different and idiosyncratic ways. Their work thus embodies an inventive and wide-ranging exploration of crucial elements of visual language: framing, illusion, and ultimately imperfection.
About the artists
Sharon Butler’s paintings embrace the slightly off-kilter, the not-quite-right, the un-straight line, discordant color, and awkwardly placed shapes. “Uncertainty and doubt are central to my painting practice – I’ve learned to respect the tentative and contingent.” Butler blogs at Two Coats of Paint, writes for The Brooklyn Rail, and is a professor in the art department at Eastern Connecticut State University. She divides her time between New York City and Mystic--her hometown in Connecticut.
Joy Curtis’s sculptures explore bad form and anxious psychological space. The familiar, the irrational, the discarded, and the imperfect particularly intrigue her. Her recent solo shows include exhibitions at Klaus Von Nichtsaggend, and “Amphibological Displays” at HQ, both in Brooklyn, NY. Curtis’s work has been in many group exhibitions in New York and Los Angeles, including shows at CRG, Lehmann Maupin, Triple Candie, and Workspace.
Cathy Nan Quinlan’s paintings crosshatch, separate and reintroduce pictorial space. “Every so often, standing at the easel, I say to myself, about myself, ‘She paints like an angel.’ Slightly more frequently, I think the painting is shit and say, like Faust, ‘I am a wretched fool and still no wiser than before.” Quinlan is a passionate cook, founder of The 'temporary Museum, author of “The Platonic Solids,” sometime art critic (The Brooklyn Rail and Artcritical) and co-writer with Su Friedrich of the film “Hide and Seek” (1996). Quinlan lives in Brooklyn.
Hrag Vartanian is a Brooklyn-based writer, blogger, and cultural worker. He edits the art blogazine Hyperallergic.
STOREFRONT is at 16 Wilson Avenue, Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY.
Dates: August 6-22, 2010.
For more info and gallery hours, call (646)361-8512.
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Norte Maar For Collaborative Projects in the Arts presents Camp Pocket Utopia
7/20/2010
I'll be an artist-in-residence for a few days at Camp Pocket U, an alternative summer camp rooted in the experimental spirit of Black Mountain College. The camp, organized by Austin Thomas and Norte Maar, is inspired by a Joseph Beuys-type thinking of what artists are, Andrea Zittel's ongoing investigations into living and building, and upon Jen Dalton and William Powhida’s examinations of the way art is made and seen. Camp Pocket U is offering free classes and evening salons. Some of the classes include dance, drawing, ethics, knitting, politics, chess, mural making, and wordplay. I'll be leading a dockside discussion on art in the blogosphere on Sunday, July 25 at 4pm.
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New artist's book: Habitat
7/20/2010
Habitat, an artist's book that recounts my experience working in a 4' x 5' studio shack in the summer of 2008, is now available here through Lulu Publishing. The shack was part of Habitat for Artists, an artists' community built by Simon Draper on the grounds of Spire Studios in Beacon, New York. The book includes an essay and full-color images of paintings that I created during this unorthodox artists' residency. Habitat is the second ink-on-paper publishing project produced through Two Coats of Paint. All sales help support the blog. Designed by Eastern Connecticut State University student Sofia Nicander and edited by Jonathan Stevenson, with an introduction by Simon Draper.
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The Two Coats of Paint Video Channel
5/19/2010
Recently I was preparing a video for a presentation at The Aldrich Museum and it struck me that there should be a video channel dedicated to painting...so I started one. The Two Coats of Paint Video Channel, features low-budget videos made by painters about their process and practice. Shortly after the launch, the channel was featured on NYC blogazine Hyperallergic and recommended by Art Beat, the daily blog for PBS Newshour.
Painters who would like to submit a video for consideration should first post it on Vimeo, and then send a link to twocoatsofpaint[at]gmail.com.
Thanks for watching.
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Two Coats of Paint receives a 2010 Mindshare Award
4/10/2010
The Mindshare Awards, sponsored by eLearners.com, recognize innovative websites in 25 categories that support life-long learning, creativity, professional skills, or social responsibility. Other winners included blogs for The Wooster Collective, The Chronicle of Higher Education, McSweeney’s and the New Yorker.
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Artists Take on the Art Industry in New York
3/30/2010
In an effort to take art news to the general public, beyond the insular art community, I've been blogging at the Huffington Post. This post is about Bill Powhida and Jennifer Dalton's #class project at Winkleman Gallery. For the four weeks #class was in session, the project received enormous media attention due to the savvy use of social networking media and the participation of talented bloggers. To read the article, click on the title above.
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Art Review: Louise Belcourt @ Jeff Bailey
3/30/2010
Published in the March 2010 issue of The Brooklyn Rail. Click on title above to read the review.
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The Ivory Tower @ #Class
3/2/2010
Stop by #Class, either in person or via video feed,,a sprawling project underway at Winkleman Galery. William Powhida and Jen Dalton have turned the gallery into a 'think tank' for guest artists, critics, academics, dealers, collectors, and anyone else who's interested to examine the way art is made, seen, and sold in our culture. Their goal is to identify and propose alternatives and/or reforms to the commercial model and attendant commodification of art, but also the unquantifiable, intangible, unpaid aspects of participating in the art world. They transformed the gallery from a showroom into a conference room, where discussions and events will take place from approximately Feb 20 - March 20, 2010.
On Thursday, March 4, at 4pm, I'm leading a discussion/rant/faculty meeting about our experiences in art school--both as students and faculty.
#Class was selected as a Critics' Pick in ArtForum.
Winkleman Gallery, 621 West 27th Street (NEW LOCATION), New York, NY 10001. For more information, click on title above.
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The Promotion Project in Chicago
2/7/2010
This month I'll be in Chicago to present The Promotion Project at the College Art Association's Annual Conference. Please stop by the ARTExchange, free and open to the public, in the Hyatt Regency on Friday, February 12, 6-8pm. Artists from all over the country will be presenting prints, paintings, drawings, photographs, small installations, performance, sound, and spoken word projects, and I'll be live blogging the event via iPhone (if I've got 3G connectivity) on my other blog, @ Bushwick & Main. In case you haven't been following the project, it involves an exhibition of letters written in support of my application for promotion (pictured above) at Eastern Connecticut State University. The project is dedicated to all the unorthodox artists who are making their way in conventional art departments and universities.
To learn more about the project click on the title above.
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New Mirrors: Painting in a Transparent World
2/7/2010
Published in the February 2010 issue of The Brooklyn Rail.
"In New Mirrors: Painting in a Transparent World" curator Herb Tam suggests that painters, confronting a digital onslaught in which shifting identities are continually updated and instantly distributed, are compelled to deconstruct the logistics of painting in a similar fashion. This idea leads him to assert that the artists whose work he has included in the show are dragging “the corpse of painting to the limits of legibility with processes that mirror a philosopher’s probing, discursive thinking.” The show as a whole does not remotely expose such stark iconoclasm. Despite the hyperbole, however, Tam has selected pieces that reflect current directions among painters today....
Click on the title above to read the entire review.
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Everyone's a Critic
1/7/2010
Published in the January 5, 2010, issue of the New Haven Advocate.
"Every year in early December, the art world heads to Miami for Art Basel Miami Beach and a full range of satellite art fairs, including Pulse, Aqua, Scope, Fountain, Art Miami, and NADA (New Art Dealers' Alliance), each presenting a segment of the art market.
Art Basel Miami, located in Miami Beach's enormous convention center, is by a wide margin the biggest and most prestigious of the fairs. In large cubicles partitioned by white drywall, dealers hawk work by Picasso, Warhol, Lee Krasner and other legendary artists alongside the barely-dry work of today's art luminaries. Fueling the hype are press previews, parties on Collins Avenue, receptions, performances and confident musings about the present or future resurgence of the art market...."
Click on the title above to read the entire review.
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Social Curiosities: An exhibition of new work by the 2008-2009 Fellows of the New York Academy of Art
12/21/2009
Published in the December 2009/January 2010 issue of The Brooklyn Rail.
"Social Curiosities, work by the 2008-09 New York Academy of Art postgraduate fellowship recipients—Matthew Miller, Annie Wildey, and Phillip Thomas—gives me hope for what has become a dire situation for the art profession. Tens of thousands of debt-ridden art students are scheduled to graduate this year. When they started school, the art market was thriving. Galleries, curators, and collectors trawled MFA open studio events for new talent. Jobs were plentiful. Being an artist seemed like a legitimate, practically defensible career path rather than an eccentric calling that would lead to noble pauperism. Now, tenured professors can no longer afford to retire, and university art departments and art schools face staff reductions despite the inexplicably growing number of applicants. Art school graduates can’t even count on finding low-level positions like studio assistant, university studio technician, art handler, or gallerina. A good many of them will shake their heads, plead temporary insanity, cast off the whole idea of the artist’s vocation as frivolous and head to law school. The upside, of course, is that Darwinian times force the fittest—the most dedicated and ambitious as well as the most talented—to shine. Social Curiosities comprises three young artists determined to find their voices during these difficult times...."
Click on the title above to read the entire review.
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Slack Tide: What's the point of Williams Lamson's latest exhibit at Artspace? It's hard to say.
12/21/2009
Published in the December 9, 2009, issue of the New Haven Advocate.
"This month at Artspace, Brooklyn-based artist William Lamson presents Time Is Like the East River, a series of videos, photographs and relics of his performance projects. Organized by Artspace curator Liza Statton, the show aims to explore notions of transformation and chance, and the ways in which time equates with space and distance. Lamson, who had a well-received solo show last year at Pierogi 2000 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is the first artist Artspace has ever invited to occupy the entire exhibition space, and he made much of the work specifically for this show. In previous outings, Lamson conducted inventive DIY science experiments that blended the systematic with the random, turning kites into sky-high drawing machines, launching giant paper airplanes and casting hunting and barter as art processes. But at Artspace, the amusing ingenuity that has been Lamson's hallmark appears to have gone missing...."
Click title above to read the entire review.
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Time Out of Mind: Yale's Gallery's
11/29/2009
Published in the New Haven Advocate, November 25, 2009.
"In Continuous Present, the current exhibition at Yale University Art Gallery, a very loose curatorial conceit ties together the work of a disparate group of seasoned and established artists. Simply put, each piece explores some kind of existential phenomena.
"According to curator Jennifer Gross, the show was initially inspired by Rodney Graham's whimsical film, "City Self/Country Self" (2000) which, projected on a wall-sized screen, confronts visitors as they enter the gallery. A four-minute loop, set in a French village and featuring flamboyantly costumed characters, features the artist playing both an urbane gentleman and a hayseed...."
Click title above to read the entire review.
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My first contribution to the New Haven Advocate
11/17/2009
Recently I was contacted by John Stoehr, the new editor at the New Haven Advocate, one of Connecticut's alt weekies, to write about Connecticut arts. My first article, online as of October 29, is about the Philip Pearlstein exhibition at the Lyme Academy College of Fine Art. Here's an excerpt.
"The Lyme Academy College of Fine Art is unabashedly among the most conservative art schools in the country. Unlike other schools where artists crank out disembodied conceptual projects, videos, and installations that are fashionable today, Lyme Academy College focuses on rigorous mastery of traditional drawing, painting, and sculpture, and on exhaustive perceptual study. So at first glance, the current exhibition of Philip Pearlstein's figurative work from 1990-2007 in the Chauncey Stillman Gallery seems perfectly at home. But deeper reflection unearths a distinct incongruence between Pearlstein and the college's chosen approach...." Click title to read more.
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Sharon Butler @ The Washington Square Outdoor Art Exhibit
9/14/2009
Fueled by a potent mix of curiosity and nostalgia, I participated in the Washington Square Outdoor Art Exhibition over Labor Day weekend. This year 100 artists were involved, some of whom have been exhibiting their work at the WSOAE for more than thirty years. Check out my blog chronicle of the event here. Click on the "Archive" link and start at September 5.
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Another World: The Washington Square Outdoor Art Exhibit
9/14/2009
My story in the September issue of The Brooklyn Rail is about the Washington Outdoor Art Exhibit. In 1931, during the early days of the Depression, before the Works Progress Administration was put in place, an outdoor art exhibition, modeled on those in Europe, was held in Washington Square to help struggling artists make a living. Not yet thinking in terms of their careers, but simply trying to pay the rent, artists like Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Alice Neel are said to have been among the more than 200 artists who participated. In the exhibit’s halcyon days, all the major museums embraced the show, and over 100,000 people visited each day. Today, art world insiders are more attuned to blue-chip galleries and international art fairs; MFA-trained artists rarely give the exhibit a second thought. Rather than investing in the booth fees, framing, and display racks required to show in Washington Square, ambitious emerging artists are inclined to hold open studio events where gallerists, collectors, and curators are most likely to see their work. However improbable it may be, the typical 21st-century MFA is intent on being discovered, making an international reputation, and somehow influencing the course of art history. Selling artwork to the untutored masses is not a priority...
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