ART NEWS: April 02
In 1981, Joan Mitchell produced a series of prints at Kenneth Tyler’s workshop in Bedford, New York aptly titled the “Bedford Series”. Endlessly seeking to translate her feelings into her art, Mitchell approached printmaking with the same openness to improvisation and revision with which she applied to painting. Aiming to facilitate Mitchell’s process of experimenting with color and composition, Tyler gave her sheets of Mylar on which to draw her images for the “Bedford Series” prints. The sheets could be layered easily to view an entire image or selections from it, and inspired Mitchell to incorporate more colors into these prints than she had used in any previous printed works. To execute the multifaceted prints, the printmakers transferred Mitchell’s drawings directly from the Mylar to lithographic plates. Although Mitchell had made many prints prior to 1981, Tyler Graphics was the first workshop she encountered where a full range of printmaking techniques were available to her. Tyler referred to the workshop as his “candy store,” and Mitchell embraced the broad expertise of the workshop whole-heartedly. Rather than learn the printing processes herself, she put her ideas in the hands of the printers, often asking Tyler, “which piece of candy do I get today?” Info: Susan Sheehan Gallery, 136 East 16th St, New York, NY, USA, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 10:00-18:00, www.susansheehangallery.com/
Beth Letain in her solo exhibition “Bring the Ground to You” presents a series of new paintings presented for the first time in Milan. In this series of works, Letain alters her method to take on new configurations, building on a long-established painterly style that renders minimal geometric forms in large swathes of color. Where white primer has been a key visual feature of the majority of previous paintings, in this body of work Letain largely conceals the colorless ground to privilege dense fields of color. Thick, velvet coats of paint veil the white base layers underneath, signaling a departure from her earlier methods of working with more translucent materials. “Doubt is what allows a single gesture to have a heart,” writes Fanny Howe, a writer Letain often draws on through her process. Although Letain is often situated within a lineage of minimalist abstraction, she resists the pull to total uniformity that distinguishes this artistic genre. This is most evident in her refusal to use a ruler, for example, and the continued visibility of her brushstrokes, two ways in which she reveals a nuanced vulnerability in authorship. Mistakes are visible and integrated in Letain’s paintings—a clever gesture, given that she executes such exact forms entirely by hand. These new works are not as rough-hewn and loose as previously, but they nevertheless continue to approach the minimalist style with a defiant spontaneity. Info: Peres Projects, Piazza Belgioioso, 2, Milan, Italy, Duration: 12/4-25/5/2023, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 11:00-18:00, https://peresprojects.com/
In “Thereabout”, Pam Posey reflects on her lifelong fascination with the landscape, tracing her journey from early experiments with abstraction in the 70’s, to her current explorations of painting from memory, imagination, and place. As Posey explains, “it’s not just what I see in my head, but what I see happening as I paint that I seek to understand and depict.” During the pandemic, Posey spent countless hours in her studio, looking through photos of the places she’s been and using them to ignite her memory of being there. She reimagined these places in a way that involved mapping her experience of being in landscape into painting, creating movement between intuition and intention. The paintings in Thereabout are a result of this process, depicting the landscapes that she has visited and reimagined; each painting becoming a place that she has simultaneously viewed and created. As Posey explains, “Painting is both intentional and exploratory, a call and response system. As characters are said to take on life of their own for the writer, so too does the landscape take on its own growth and weather for the painter.” Info: Praz-Delavallade, 6150 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA, USA, Duration: 14/4-13/5/2023, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-18:00, www.praz-delavallade.com/
Born in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, the acclaimed painter Denyse Thomasos was raised in Toronto and spent most of her professional career in Philadelphia and New York City. A career retrospective “just beyond” brings together more than 70 paintings and works on paper, many rarely seen, to show how Denyse Thomasos challenged the limits of abstraction, infusing personal and political content onto her canvases through the innovative use of formalist techniques. Through pattern, scale and repetition, Thomasos conveys the vastness of events such as the transatlantic slave trade without exploiting the images of those who were most affected. The exhibition features sections devoted to the artist’s primary areas of research, illustrated with major works on loan from museums and private collections in Toronto, Montreal and New York City. Working closely with her family and gallerist, curators are supplementing the exhibition with sketches, photographs and newly uncovered documentary footage of Thomasos working in her studio. Info: Curators: Michelle Jacques, Renée van der Avoird and Sally Frater, Remai Modern, 02 Spadina Crescent E, Saskatoon, SK, Canada, Duration: 15/4-3/9/2023, Days & Hours: Wed & Fri-Sun 10:00-17:00, Thu 10:00-21:00, https://remaimodern.org/
Erik Schmidt traces a path of vibrant colors in constant movement, which begs to be explored in a state of physical and identity mutation. Through the use of gesture and color, Schmidt persists in amending a document which results from an obstinate reality that continues to move forward, unstoppable. The artist paints over an image of one palm tree and another and another until their full dissolution. He records and gives color to a delirious, failed parkour, which suggests the idea of escaping towards otherness, towards the palm trees, as the only escape route. He paints over newspapers that are up to date but indiscernible in terms of their violent, daily, inescapable content. He pastes on and reframes a group of teenagers, an eternal, reclaimed youth. And, whilst incessantly searching for a parking space, repeating the same exercise in different ways, he reflects. Once the document has been intervened in and its reiteration annulled through the artist’s personal, living and visionary inner gesture Schmidt’s memento mori materialise. Info: carlier | gebauer Gallery, Calle de José Marañón 4, Madrid, Spain, Duration: 15/4-3/6/2023, Days & Hours: tue-Fri 11:00-19:00, Sat 11:00-14:00, www.carliergebauer.com/
“Slow Mo Mother” is the first solo exhibition of Finnish artist Emma Jääskeläinen in the Netherlands. She presents recent sculptures, specifically adapted and expanded with new elements for Vleeshal. The title of the exhibition refers to the physical act of slowing down that Jääskeläinen experiences in both motherhood and her work as an artist, two roles of labor that she depicts and connects with humoristic light-heartedness. Physicality, slowness, and repetition play an important role in Jääskeläinen’s work. This is not only evident in her “Gustonian” bulky body forms, but also in her choice of marble as the primary material for her sculptures. The labor-intensive and repetitive manual work required to process the heavy blocks of stone is a way for Jääskeläinen to engage in a dialogue and allow the material itself to determine the form. She describes the intensive relationship she has with the stone as family-like, experiencing similar feelings of empathy, care, and attention. Jääskeläinen addresses fundamental questions about motherhood and care, but she always does so with funny, clumsy, and soft forms, preventing the work from becoming too serious. The stories, anecdotes, and motifs underlying the sculptures are influenced by the life of the artist as part of a family. Info: Curator: Roos Gortzak, Markt 1, Middelburg, The Netherlands, Duration: 16/4-2/7/2023, Days & Hours: Wed-Fri 13:00-17:00, Sat-Sun 11:00-17:00, https://vleeshal.nl/
Nicole Ondre’s exhibition “Heatwork” presents a series of knotted ceramic sculptures adapted from mathematical models. Knots imply a physical relation. To think of a knot is to consider how forms get tied down, get stuck, or are looped back on themselves. Working with knots is part of an everyday tactile habit. In this body of work, the artist’s starting point is knot theory, a mathematical subfield of topology. These knots are classified as ‘prime knots’, closed loops that contain a specific order of crossings and cannot be untangled or reduced into a composite form. Ondre’s knots are not taken from everyday life — they are polymorphous, infinite curves that maintain their original sequence despite the distortion they undergo in becoming sculpture. Ondre treats the space of the gallery as a vessel or body, introducing binding yet versatile structural forms, including handles, knots and webs. These forms, functional and aesthetic in their usual manifestations, are constructed in ceramic, a material that is brittle yet enduring. The work emphasizes cuts and breaks which reveal gaps and undersides. These are in play with the processes – material, biological, and psychic – of fixing through attachments, sutures and adhesions. Info: Tanya Leighton Gallery, 4654 W Washington Blvd, Los Angeles, CA, USA, Duration: 18/4-20/5/2023, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-17:00, www.tanyaleighton.com/
Roger Ballen’s exhibition “Call of the Void” assembles photographs, videos and installations, which together make for a truly ‘Ballenesque’ mood. In recent years Ballen has created a style – or to be more exact, an underlying mood – that is recognizably his own. He calls this ‘Ballenesque’, a coinage that denotes the strange, discomforting, disquieting quality of his works. He also incorporates this atmosphere into his installations, which are becoming more frequent. He stages scenarios in his studio that he not only captures through photography, but also, more recently, has started to showcase in exhibitions. At Museum Tinguely, this remarkable leap from two-dimensional photography into three-dimensional space culminates in a shack built specially for the exhibition. Aside from serving as a backdrop for various scenarios, this crude dwelling can also be entered, enabling visitors to see, smell and feel the ‘Ballenesque’ first hand. The exhibition featurea a specially reworked version of one of Ballen’s last analogue series of rat photographs. A selection of these images will be shown for the first time alongside other prints featuring Ballen’s birds. Two videos, “Ballenesque” (2017) and “Roger the Rat” (2020) push the boundaries still further into another artistic sphere. In the works of Roger Ballen, it is the fragile, the uncertain, the wavering, the uncanny and the obscure that set the tone. These are works that viewers can dive or dream their way into, works in which chaos and order coexist, just as do anxiety and inspiration. Info: Curator: Andres Pardey, Paul Sacher-Anlage 2, Basel, Switzerland, Duration: 19/4-29/10/2023, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Fri-Sat 11:00-18:00, Thu 11:00-21:00, www.tinguely.ch/