Art Dealers Association of America The Art Show at the Park Avenue Armory

February 27 to March 4, 2018

Don’t wait until next week to get into fair mood: This year, for venue scheduling reasons, The Art Show, the ADAA’s annual outing at the Park Avenue Armory, precedes the onslaught on the piers—the other Armory. And, like years past, it’s proving to be the place for aesthetic delectation.

I simply don’t know where to begin, there are so many fabulous exhibitions packed under this drill hall, so I may as well begin at the beginning: Cheim and Read’s solo display of new sculpture by the redoubtable Lynda Benglis that greets you at the entrance. Turn left, as supermarkets have discovered most of us do, and you get a revelatory display of landscape sketches by Myron Stout at Washburn Gallery, along with one of his trademark black and white painted iconic shapes: the nervously breezy, feather-stroked perceptual landscapes done in Provincetown, Mass. in black Conté send you back to the hard-edged abstraction with renewed intensity.

Brian Washburn told me they discovered a box of these drawings when they moved downtown recently hidden in plain sight in a painting rack. A metaphor, in a way, for The Art Show experience, where in one box after another (the booths) treasures from the past reveal themselves. Just over the aisle, Peter Freeman, Inc. have Mel Bochner paintings from the early 1980s that, if you are more familiar with his word pieces, will come as a surprise: Shaped canvases bursting with geometric forms dispatched with neo-expressionist gusto. Bochner first painted these images on regular shaped canvas, the sales assistant told me, and then determined the right irregular shape from the resulting form. Their surfaces reminded me of his contemporary, Terry Winters, represented elsewhere at the fair in a group show at Matthew Marks.

Hirschl and Adler, nestled in the corner, are in an appropriately intimate, almost closeted space for their show, Americans 1943: Realism and Magic Realism. This marks the 75th anniversary of a show of that title at MoMA. Sunday communist Osvaldo Louis Guglielmi delivers an allegory of corruption and resistance in The American Dream, 1935, that suggests that only the settings have changed in the interim. All the same issues are in place: horny CEOs, marginalized minorities, put upon protesters and an unloved statue.

Speaking of minorities, African American artists feature prominently amongst stand out solo booths in this year’s fair, including some historic rediscoveries. Michael Rosenfeld Gallery celebrates the achievements of abstract painter William T. Williams, while Galerie Lelong & Co showcase the lyrical gestalts of southern painter Mildred Thompson with Magnetic Fields, a series from her last decade. “Years ago, I had a dream about an event in space” she wrote in a 1992 statement. “Feeling fortunate to see this event, I stayed to look at it in detail.”

Detail is the essence of the experience of Harmony Hammond’s riveting textured grids in the Weave Paintings at Alexander Gray Associates. Not that one is seeking to survey the fair in identity categories, but another openly queer artist, Nicole Eisenman, makes play with a two-person display with Andy Warhol at Anton Kern Gallery. Their brochure quotes Andy Warhol as saying “If only one day my work could be shown in an art fair booth alongside the work of a radical lesbian”, which ambition Eisenman has obliged in a display where master and acolyte are not always easy to tell apart.

Intensity of detail and exquisiteness in finish are also determining factors in appreciation of Lynn Herhmann Leeson’s early work at San Francisco’s Anglim Gilbert Gallery, Dotty Attie’s works at P.P.O.W. and new drawings by Amy Cutler at Leslie Tonkonow. The balance of aesthetic and mechanical precision in Thomas Chimes 1970s metal box constructions are aptly contextualized at Philadelphia’s Locks Gallery display with Alexander Calder and Joseph Cornell. But the last and abiding delectations in the final aisle were of a more rough-hewn nature: Milton Avery at Yares Art, sumptuous and fulsome collages by Biala at Pavel Zoubok, and the take home dream of this visitor, the ravishing quietude of James Bishop with San Antonio, Tx. gallerist Lawrence Markey, where color and space seem to be breathed onto the page.

ADDENDUM: Posted as a featured item from THE LIST on Sunday, March 4

So natural is the tendency of commercial galleries to hedge bets and pack their stands with variety that many art fairs have color coded sections put aside for solo spots. Not so ADAA’s The Art Show at Park Avenue Armory, now in its 30th year, which through natural selection, it would seem, affords a hearty mix of group and solo presentations. Two standout stands that eluded my round up earlier this week exemplify these respective models. Jill Newhouse, whose gallery specializes in historic works on paper as well as contemporary works in different mediums, showcased a fine selection of drawings by Pierre Bonnard along with a tightly hung, intriguingly diverse group of living artists working in the Bonnardian spirit. The six living painters – curated by Karen Wilkin – included Larry Poons, Graham Nickson and Rachel Rickert. Danese Corey, meanwhile, opted for audacious singularity in presenting just one massive eight-foot high bronze sculpture by William Tucker, Meru, 2015-2017. The intricacies and folds of Tucker’s massed modeling and the demands of this complex form to be seen, fully, in the round could detain the discerning visitor as long as the salon hung massed ranks of intimate works at other stands. It is just not quite so easy to take it home.

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November 20 to December 23, 2015
511 West 22nd Street, between 10th and 11th avenues
New York City, (212) 223-2227

Doron Langberg and Gaby Collins-Fernandez, two painters who are friends, are recent graduates of Yale University’s M.F.A. program. Because they are surprisingly different artists, this handsomely installed show in a major Chelsea gallery offers a very instructive way to compare and contrast their achievements. Langberg, a figurative painter, represents both men and women. The style of his Mark and Aubrey (2015) alludes to R. B. Kitaj’s, but thankfully without that artist’s weighty allegories; his Gaby, Julia and Amy (2015) depicts three women lounging in a studio. And some of his pictures show men in erotic settings—Tom #2 (2015) is a good example. Collins-Fernandez, who usually works on a smaller scale, superimposes texts and fabrics on colorful fields. Sometimes, as in Blue Velvet SMILE HUNNI (2014), she uses her fabrics to extend the painting beyond the frame, an effect that recalls Color Field painter Sam Gilliam.  But often, as in Yellow Spiral TO BE A MAN . . . (2014), she creates compact synthesis of words and abstract patterns. Fabrics are demonstrably a great subject (and material) for a painterly painter.

One way to bring this exhibition by two marvelous young artists into focus is to reflect, briefly, on the nature of art criticism. Traditionally there are two branches of art writing: art history, which looks to art of the past that has already been written about; and art criticism, which responds to contemporary art.  When dealing with older art, discussion needs to take into account prior writing, even if only to modify or reject its claims. In our art world, where famous living artists are much written about, mid-career figures are treated as if they were familiar old masters. But when describing absolutely contemporary art, like Langberg’s and Collins- Fernandez’s, writing must proceed from scratch, guided only by looking, aided by published or spoken commentary by the artists.  Such artists, such is my experience, pose the greatest challenge to writers.  In an interview in the Brooklyn Rail with Jarrett Earnest, “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” Langberg and Collins-Fernandez talk about each other’s work. This dialogue, from which I am borrowing, nicely illustrates how artists can provide a significant context for first-time viewers of their painting.

A binary opposition, a familiar tool of art historians, provides a marvelously suggestive way of understanding this exhibition. Because Langberg wants to make self-sufficient paintings, he takes the canvas rectangle as a given, whereas  Collins-Fernandez supplements her pigments with both fabrics and words, inserting alien materials into paintings. His mostly larger paintings dominate the front room at Danese/Corey, while her relatively smaller pictures are in the back room. But in between, two of their paintings are juxtaposed, and so we may allow, then, the juxtaposition in the middle gallery of his Shoes with her The Time is too late now, both paintings made in 2015, to define their differences. Here in one of Langberg’s smaller paintings, even when no human figures are present, the shoes, discarded on a lovely textured carpet, signal a human presence. Collins-Fernandez’s words, painted in black on black velvet, barely stand out over her darkly colored, abstract-looking spiral. In the Langberg picture, where the top of one shoe is cut off at the right edge, we view a fragmented scene, as if looking from off center, a device followed in some of his portraits, too. By contrast, although Collins-Fernandez centers both image and words, the meaning of this phrase is far from clear—too late for what, we might ask?

A little suspicious of the intrinsic power of visual images, Collins-Fernandez finds a world in which people and things are identified primarily by how they look unpleasant. And so, in response, she turns to words, gathered from overheard city conversations, and fabrics, materials that have a very different visual identity. It’s no doubt relevant that Langberg trained as visual artist, while Collins-Fernandez started out as a student of literature and writing. Her materials, she rightly says, “produce a density of emotion and meaning which I am interested in reproducing in my paintings.” Here of course she joins a long tradition of art drawing upon the contemporary urban environment. Langberg, on the other hand, wants that his paintings be presentations of visual desire. Not just of his personal desires—rather, “I want my work to speak of things we all share such as friendship, intimacy, and pleasure.”

In setting up this opposition between Langberg and Collins-Fernandez, however, I do not mean to underestimate their common concerns. When Collins-Fernandez says, “you put a lot of yourself out there to see what will stick,” I believe that she speaks for both of them.

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The promotional video shows the five exhibitions discussed by The Review Panel, March 13, 2015 at the National Academy Museum. Scroll down for the media files to hear what the critics had to say. The next panel takes place April 17 when critics Sharon Butler, Noah Dillon and John Yau join David Cohen to discuss the Triennial at the New Museum and the Invitational at the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

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Inspired by meeting John Cage in New York in the 1990s, after pursuing cello studies at the Oberlin Conservatory, Theresa Chong’s early work incorporated chance/random aesthetics and musical notation into elaborate and elegant ink painting. Now, midcareer, Chong returns to an abstraction that skirts Asian traditions in ways that are deeply original: small marks on exquisite paper hold their own between highly worked, nearly textural embellishments and a fine sense of overall composition. The small paintings, usually with top and bottom bands framing the composition, occupy that hybrid, Asian-Western territory that after the length of a generation has now reached the point where bridging two distant cultures has become a critical cliché. This does not mean that Chong’s efforts in this area are to be faulted; instead, it seems that the practice of appropriation has become so widespread as to lack the visual punch it once had.

But Chong’s double reality has little to do with the theft of one style or the other. Instead, in her work we come face to face with a stylized treatment of abstraction built upon gouache brushstrokes and colored-pencil markmaking. Areas are constructed from darker and lighter shades of black and gray, so that the lighter domains feel very much like islands in a dark sea. While the first impression of the artist’s efforts is that they are primarily abstract, over time they take on the suggestion of natural effects — of what exactly, we are not sure, but they do seem to imitate nature. The realms are not tied to a classic grid pattern; instead, they are resolutely organic in both small forms and the overall expanse of the composition. Chong points out a general direction for interpretation by naming her works according to entries in the I Ching, the ancient Chinese manual for the practice of divination. Titles such as Following or Gathering Together form a visual commentary on a literary text with a weighted philosophical orientation.

The patterns in the works correspond to rubbings of Chinese stone markers, as Lilly Wei points out in her catalog essay. The myriad small, fine lines represent duration, the passing of time, while the lighter sections of the drawings correspond to passages in which the stone has dwindled, the result of weathering. No matter the specific cause of the image, these drawings are resolutely beautiful, confirming a generally Asian perception of the artist’s hand as it faces nature. But Chong does not necessarily stop there — it is important to realize that despite the static nature of drawing and painting, her works embody the notion of change over time. In K’UN (Earth) (2014), horizontal rows of very small vertical lines mass into two darkly painted organic shapes that look like lakes surrounded by a land mass. Two black bands, on top and below, frame the composition. The feeling is one of earthen weight — the image corresponds nicely to its title. And despite the small size, the feeling of density is very much alive in this piece, likely the result of the intricacies of the drawing’s surface. The delicacy and large number of the short lines shows how a small surface can be loaded with weight thanks to the technical prowess of the artist.

The feeling of an imagined landscape is taken up in Lu (Walking Carefully) (2014), although nothing specifically belongs to a rendering of nature. A high number of lighter areas complicates the painting and gives it a variable density. These areas range from quite small to relatively large within the composition, which is nearly 12 inches square. Two broad black bands of paint contain this small scene, at once abstract and figurative in its suggestions. Huan (Dispension) (2104) consists of a large, relatively white light area of crosshatching, with miniature points of white. Three smaller islands, composed of the small, darker lines, drift in the open sea of cross hatching, while a rough, dark triangular area dominates the upper right of the picture. The feeling is that of a still pulled from a film.

Collectively, these drawings of consummate skill and precision form a sequence that will remind Chong’s audience of an album of Chinese ink paintings. While they lean toward abstraction and, as their titles imply, the portrayal of ideas, the pictures also abound with natural themes. Chong’s combination of approaches indicates that nothing is entirely abstract or completely figurative. Discerning the similarities and the differences is a source of compelling pleasure.

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