June 22 to July 27, 2018
291 Grand Street, at Eldridge Street
New York City, jamescohan.com

Spoiler alert: Description of the standout piece in Berlin-based Helene Appel’s second solo show with James Cohan might blow the best thing about this painter’s work for those, like myself, who missed the first and have not been paying attention to this international art star. Upon gravitating towards Blue Net (2018), the largest work in this spare, reductive show, I “realized” that something was protruding from the support, a fine filigree of some kind of mesh or netting. Turning to other works on display – images of, for instance, a puddle with soapy bubbles or of sandy beaches with shell fragments and manmade litter – it became evident that Appel, in fact, depicts various motifs, however much surface increments feel like appropriations of actual matter. Sent back to Blue Net, I realize I’ve been had: It is all just paint.

The ekphrastic moment “suffered” (enjoyed) by this critic won’t, thanks to my reporting it, be your experience, too. For that I’m truly sorry. I’m sure we all recall that ancient Greek who wrote about a bird so taken by the verisimilitude of a bunch of grapes by Zeuxis that, poor thing, she pecks at them. Ornithology for birds, I hear you say, but the headline here is that Cohen pecked.

A subsequent chat with a knowledgeable gallery assistant made me feel a little better about my gullibility. For it transpires that, in addition to painstaking efforts in acrylic and sometimes oils, our trompe l’œilist adds watercolor to selected passages to ever so slightly imply shadow. Ms. Appel has worked hard at her trickery, certainly in the almost 13 foot wide Blue Net. But where do we go, once we’ve gotten what’s going on?

Critical appreciation of Blue Net makes one wonder at the allegiance of this artist born in Karlsruhe in 1976, who studied in Hamburg and London, for the work is in equal measure Brice Marden and Catherine Murphy. Even once we register the skill and patience of their rendering, these loops of netting continue to exalt in their reductive alloverness. It is not a rigid grid, for sure, but a lifelike, arbitrary deposit all the more composed in the casualness of the conveyed heap. But maybe the generational privilege of a younger German painter is to be freed of any implied antimony between Minimalism and Hyperrealism; that at this stage of art history we can have our cake and eat it; that old battles are lost and won. Freed, one might venture, from Fried, because an opposition between absorption of touch and a theatrical demand for attention to the literalness of what is depicted are forcibly dissolved in Appel’s images.

These are highly intelligent paintings, not just in the ways they are learned in art lore, but because they are filled with local and particular decisions that earn respect with time spent with them even after the pecking punch line has been delivered. This has to do with variety of approach from one motif to the next. Blue Net is the tour de force of verisimilitude here. A close second is Shell Pasta (2017), a tiny canvas at three by one and one half inches. Dimensional extremity, in either direction, is perhaps a strategy for Appel to think of herself as respectably conceptual rather than academic in her realism (not – please note – for this critic, but others are concerned by such niceties). Shell Pasta, like her other pasta paintings, is an instance of realism, but not of trompe l’œil: we are impressed, perhaps, but not deceived, as unlike netting, pasta wouldn’t stick like this.

There is actually more to say about scale, in particular its literality. A remarkable fact is the lifelike size of all the things depicted: It is a plausible explanation for the diminutive proportions of Shell Pasta. The implausibility of the spaghetti being anything other than a painting of spaghetti – despite the same care bestowed upon it and its shadows as on the netting and the netting’s shadows – is the stylized way this cluster sits on its expanse of linen.

In the sand paintings things actually get more interesting, from a painterly perspective, by being less literal, in a depictive sense. While the watercolored dunes are quite astounding in the way they seem to take us to an actual beach, almost the way a Daniel Spoerri takes us to someone’s actual lunch, the shells in these beach paintings and other surface incidents are replete with the artist’s almost expressive touch, with delight in materiality divorced from paint’s second life as some depicted corollary. The glints of color in the foamy bubbles in Washing (2018) are an instance of sheer delectation in the overlooked, in what is perhaps something hitherto unrepresented in painting (even though bubbles per se have a rich art history) that brings to mind the quirky mannerist realism of Alexi Worth. The color serves to elicit a sense of bubbles in the round, but they are also abstract in the way they deploy spots of synthetic color across the composition.

The range of modes of realism within this one tight display impresses me, though I can see how to others it might suggest a dissipated outlook—that what I take to be range others might construe as inconsistency. But in terms of intentionality, I get the sense that she is supremely aware of the implications of each stylistic move. The “post peck” experience that keeps me interested in this painter in a way that I’ve never been remotely interested in, say, Glenn Brown or Tauba Auerbach, to both of whom she bears comparison, is that while she depicts banalities, she is not banal in the means of depiction.

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curated by Bella Easton and John Stark
January 4 to February 19, 2016
19 Neptune Quay
Ipswich, Suffolk, England, +44 01473 338654

Royal Academy-trained painter and independent curator Bella Easton lives and works in South London. Last year she interviewed regular artcritical contributor Paul Carey-Kent about his show “The Presence of Absence.” Carey-Kent now takes the other side, talking to Easton about the latest in her series of “Collateral Drawing” exhibitions.

PAUL CAREY-KENT: You are, first and foremost, an artist. How did you come to be organizing exhibitions?

BELLA EASTON: I grew up in a creative family: my father is a painter, and mother an oil painting restorer. For as long as I can remember I knew I would also train as an artist. After studying at the Royal Academy Schools, I exhibited my work for some years before I started organizing my own exhibitions nomadically. I then set up and ran a project space in South East London for four years, to 2015. I continue to promote and collaborate with others and have many future projects and exhibitions lined up in the UK and abroad. Being both artist and curator has enabled me to work with a diverse range of artists, writers, journalists, gallerists and curators.

What is “collateral drawing”?

Collateral Drawing is an on-going project run under my curatorial platform, BEASTONprojects. For each project I invite a co-curator, such as you, Paul, for the Berlin version. Collateral drawing explores the by-products left behind from the artist’s working process. Each invited artist reveals elements from their practice that would otherwise remain unseen by the public, alongside a finished artwork. That can take many forms, but I’m especially fascinated by the way each artist’s methods inflict marks on their surroundings. Whether dripped, scratched, taped, cut, erased, smeared, or hammered — all are repetitive and typically unguarded instances of drawing. The wall, floor or table acts as a raw surface to capture these ongoing ritualistic activities. Those work surfaces are rarely displayed, but hold a fascination of their own: not just as a documentation of the creative process, but as an insight into the relationship between what is subconscious and conscious in the artist’s work.

This is the fourth in a series of shows on that theme. Why a sequence, and how many do you expect there to be?

When Collateral Drawing was launched at Plymouth College of Art, two years ago, there was no particular emphasis on where its 10 artists came from. Subsequently, the artists have had some connection to each venue’s location, including at two international project spaces. Beton7, which was staged in Athens in 2014, showed Anglo-Greek artists. And rosalux, in Berlin in 2015, brought together artists linked to London and Berlin. The fourth show, in Ipswich, features 16 artists with an East Anglian connection.

The whole project is documented through the Collateral Drawing website. I’m keen to expand the sequence as far as I can take it. Three more are planned for London, Margate and Toronto in 2016 and ‘17. I am aware, though, that funding will be necessary! I hope it will eventually be possible to produce a book of the project.

Where is Ipswich, and what makes a good place to put on this show?

It’s near the East coast in Suffolk, East Anglia. Collateral Drawing will be presented in a public gallery within the new university site at Ipswich Docks. Having begun my artistic training in Suffolk, I have always been aware of the vibrant artistic community East Anglia attracts, and am at a stage in my own practice where exhibiting the project on home territory provides a platform for my own artistic reflection.

The series feature a high proportion of painters. Why is that?

I’m not sure that’s been planned, but perhaps my painting background has led me to work with curators who, like me, are inclined to select painters; and painting does provide a visceral and tangible way into the collateral process. That’s changing though: this show includes some artists who don’t work in conventional terms of painting or sculpture. So that the notion of collateral drawing is being challenged and expanded. I’m expecting the London CD to include several photographers, and I’m co-curating the 2017 Margate CD with photographer-curator Julia Riddiough.

Are studio visits an important part of the process?

The ideal would be to visit each artist’s studio. That isn’t always possible, but I am always conscious of the importance of picking up on the subtle habits each artist’s workspace holds — and which they themselves may not recognize because they’re so absorbed in the making.

Could you give an example or two of collateral drawing that struck you from the previous shows?

Goodness, that’s a hard task. It’s all interesting. I was intrigued by Frances Richardson’s use of an eight-by-four-foot sheet of MDF as a work surface, which, over time, built up drill holes and saw marks. It was beautifully intricate and like an artwork in itself. Or there’s the way Mark Titchner’s paperback books related to the inkjet prints set alongside them, which edited and magnified their back covers to a point where the statements printed on them were reinterpreted.

Has there been a line of development over the first three versions?

There has been a gradual process of editing down how many collateral elements represent the process of each exhibiting artist. John felt there needed to be a further reduction with the current CD and as a result we feel this has achieved greater clarity between the collateral clues and the finished artwork.

You’ve included your own work each time. What do you think you’ve gained from that double involvement?

It’s helped me to be far more objective about my own practice, and made me consider the methods I use more thoroughly and openly when I return to my studio. It is a very direct and honest way to develop as an artist, similar to peer learning.

You also have a co-curator, also an artist in the show and a local resident. Can you tell us something about John and his work, and how you have collaborated?

We were introduced through John’s gallerist, Zavier Ellis and found we had Suffolk in common. John recently moved to Aldeburgh with his wife, Da-eun, after living in South Korea. We both studied at the Royal Academy Schools, albeit at different times, and I like John’s philosophy and humorous outlook on life. He’s been a real asset.

The last time I saw Glenn Brown’s work, it occupied the whole of the Gagosian booth at Frieze. How did you persuade such a high profile and commercially successful artist to take part in such a modestly funded and provincially located show?

Yes, and John was especially thrilled when Glenn agreed to take part as he admires him very much as an artist who — like him — has made a successful career from re-working old masters. Glenn grew up in Norfolk and now lives and works between London and Suffolk. He really liked the unusual concept and was very understanding about the (lack of) budget. He has loaned a drawing from that Gagosian project, together with palettes and his light box, which holds photo reproductions. Glenn likes to support worthwhile local projects, and in 2012 he exhibited in the Aldeburgh Festival’s visual arts program.

Ryan Gander is also well known internationally. I imagine, with his love of playing with what a work of art can be, that he took particularly readily to the concept of the show?

Yes like Glenn, Ryan also lives between London and Suffolk. He instantly agreed to participate and is showing Things that mean things and things that look like they mean things (2008), a fictional documentary film that explores the production of an artwork that doesn’t exist. That brings an interesting angle: John describes Ryan, Daphne Warburg Astor and Kayle Brandon’s works as “utilizing the collateral, which then feeds back into or becomes the art work, a chicken and egg situation which could be described as an ouroboros.”

You are also featuring Matthew Collings and his wife, Emma Biggs. He’s an artist better known as a critic, especially on TV. Did he have anything to say about CD from that perspective?

Yes, I can quote him:

I think criticism is unrecognizable now. In practice it’s someone that calls him or herself a critic saying more or less random things, whose only purpose is to make clear to an audience that figures and ideas in art with which the audience is already familiar are very well known to the critic as well. From the position of the sort of art critic I am, I would say the Collateral Drawing is really well conceived because it brings into focus the process of making.

Matthew and Emma have made a painting for the exhibition and show an old studio table that has years’ worth of layers of cheap paper masking taped to its surface, placed as a way of always having a more or less clean and tidy surface. Matthew states that, “at the stage we offered it to the Collateral Drawing exhibition it had some scribbled quotes in charcoal on it from YouTube interviews with Francis Bacon because I was writing an article about a show called ‘Bacon and The Masters.’”

Daphne always records the work she makes each day. How does that flow into the collateral way of things?

For CD she started working on May 22, 2015, in a temporary studio in an empty garden shed on a farm surrounded by plants, bees and migrating birds. Her collateral is through recording and collecting, and her work is always connected to the land. Elements, such as wheat and pollen in this piece, are then utilized to make the drawings, which are incorporated into the final installation; so there is a slippage between the collateral and the final artwork which John and I found very interesting.

I often find that unexpected conjunctions emerge from a group show. Is that the case in Ipswich?

Always. These formal things are what interest me the most in bringing a show together. This exhibition seems to adopt a visual contrast between the industrial and synthetic versus the raw and earthy. There is an interesting dialogue between the real and the unreal. And light is important in many of the works. Trisant’s shiny enameled paint surface draws the outside in, whereas Chris Hawtin’s sci-fi landscape creates a synthetic light through its painted illusion; the ethereal illumination in my fabricated landscape contrasts with the intimate candlelit space of John’s painting. And there’s much more: you can find surprising conjunctions through all the artists shown here.

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On the ground floor in the very narrow, five story Upper East Side townhouse of Luxembourg & Dayan is Glenn Brown’s Oscillate Wildly (After “Autumnal Cannibalism” by Salvador Dali) (1999). Up the steep stairs you come upon Willem van de Velde the Elder’s pen and ink drawing, A Dutch Harbor in Calm, with small vessels inshore and beached among fisherman, a Kaag at anchor and other ships (late 1640s); and then you view oil paintings by Alex Katz, (Provincetown, 1959) Christopher Wool (Jazz and AWOL, 2005) and Alberto Giacometti (Téte de Diego, 1958).  And still further upstairs, amid austere abstractions by Carl Andre, Daniel Buren, Brice Marden and Robert Morris, Betty Tompkins’ large acrylic Fuck Painting #4 (1972) is something of a surprise.

All these works are in grisaille, which here is understood not just as another color but the non-color remaining when all other colors are eliminated. North Renaissance masters sometimes painted the outer wings of altarpieces in grisaille. Imitating the look of stone, these constrained images were generally visible only during Lent. Because grisaille is perceptually inert, that non-color is ideally suited to conceptual and minimal art.  Jasper Johns’ Screen Piece 5 (1968) feels withdrawn, and Daniel Buren’s Photo-souvenir: Peinture acrylique blance sur tassi rayé, blanc et gris anthracite (1966) looks sullen. We do, it is true, think of ‘a grey day’ as depressing, but in this gallery, set against intensely colored walls, this ensemble of grisaille works is oddly exhilarating.  When academic art historians have devoted so much bookish attention to identifying relationships between the old masters, the modernists and contemporary”artists, how exciting, how positively life-enhancing it is to see the way “grisaille’ relates American and European art from historically distant periods. The great modernist art writer Adrian Stokes argued that color allows pictorial “organization to be  . . .  intricate: a mutual evocation between forms must take place at all angles and at all distances and in all directions throughout a picture, so that each part will seem rooted in its place and working there.” By asking us to identify felt affinities between very diverse paintings and sculptures, savoring the connections between Jeff Koons’s Italian Woman (1986), Gerhard Richter’s Grau (1974), and John Currin’s L’intimité (2011), all installed in front of five lengths of Joesph Dufour et Cie’s panoramic wallpaper entitled Reconciliation of Venus and Psyche: Psyche Abandoned, Psyche Wafted by Zephyrs (1815), this grisaille ensemble functions as a total work of art.

Luxembourg & Dayan has generously supported this sensationally good exhibition, which was first seen in London last month, with a lavish catalogue containing tipped-in plates, like those found in Skira publications of a half-century ago, a nicely luxurious touch.

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