In his 2011 artcritical review of this artist’s debut show, David Cohen wrote: “There is something deliciously grubby about the paintings and sculptures of Bianca Beck. She favors distressed, punctured, encrusted surfaces, an earthy, at times visceral palette and painterly gestures that border on violence. Lacerations, smudges and sgraffito incisions attack the paint as if in a last-ditch … Continued

Jason Farago, Seph Rodney, Karen Wilkin are David Cohen’s guests

Before the extended 7 Subway and Escheresque observation platform arrived in the overnight neighborhood of glass and steel behemoths that is Hudson Yards, Hell’s Kitchen was home already to a thriving artistic community. One longtime resident is Don Porcaro, and for the last month, examples of his unmistakable, stacked cylindrical “Talisman” sculptures, whimsical stupas in … Continued

Despite an air of uninhibited, expressive spontaneity, the dense and busy paintings of Judith Murray play by strict rules. Since her debut in a lauded 1976 solo at Betty Parsons, she has restricted her palette within each work or group, developed a tight lexicon of strokes and shapes, and included her trademark bar at the … Continued

Zach Van Horn and Ben Grzenia were the joint winners of the 2018 artcritical prize awarded by faculty vote ahead of the recent Annual Student Exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Both were graduating students of PAFA’s MFA program. The artcritical prize – consisting of an interview in these pages with an agreed … Continued

“The Gate,” Jason Stopa’s first solo show at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, features paintings that claim architectural patterns as pliable environments for painted exploration. Through layers of bright color and varying texture, Stopa abstracts rigid forms and brings elements from the outdoors in. In this spirit of harnessing energies and breaking boundaries, the back … Continued

“What I knew was that I wanted to get my hands dirty”

“Both video and music have given me a much stronger understanding of how layering works”

Al Held’s early works in gestural abstraction from the 1950s are the focus of the fourth of Cheim & Read Gallery’s exhibitions surveying the artist’s oeuvre. Presented in conjunction Nathalie Karg Gallery, this show examines his breakthrough in Paris while studying on the G.I. Bill and his continuing exploration, back in New York, of dimensionality, … Continued

Sarah Peters possesses an uncanny ability to combine an intense frontality with full sculptural consideration of an object in the round: you are compelled to circumnavigate while also pulled back to her figure’s hieratic gaze. A talk by the artist Saturday afternoon at 3PM promises to be well attended and illuminating, an antidote to fair … Continued