Emily Mae Smith

October 17, 2018, 12:05pm

FIAC PARIS 2018: Publisher Steven Zevitas Selects His Favorite Paintings

 

FIAC (Foire Internationale d’Art Contemporain) returns to the Grand Palais for it's 45th edition this week.  The modern/contemporary art fair welcomes galleries from 25 different countries to participate in this year's iteration.  New American Paintings Publisher and Editor in Chief, Steven Zevitas, lets us know which works are on his radar and which works you just can't miss: 

 

FIAC (Foire Internationale d’Art Contemporain)

October 18 - October 21, 2018

GRAND PALAIS
Avenue Winston Churchill
75008 Paris

 

1.

 

Ambera Wellmann

Homologous 

2018 

oil and acrylic on linen

92 x 96 cm 

 

Courtesy of Lulu

Listed under: Art Fairs

January 15, 2018, 10:36am

You Had Me At Hello: 150 Contemporary Artworks That Altered My Consciousness - Part 3

I look at a lot of art. Some of it good, some of it bad. Every once in a while, I come across artwork that fundamentally changes me, even if I don’t understand it at the time. A friend of mine recently asked me which works had had the greatest impact on me over the years, so I compiled my thoughts. This is not a greatest hits list and many artists I love are not included in it. These are all works that have been, for whatever reason, seared into my brain. To be honest, there are a number of artists on this list whose overall practice I am not a particular fan of, yet, they got to me at least once. – Steven Zevitas, Publisher

Listed under: Art World, Noteworthy

December 13, 2017, 10:30am

Miami Art Week 2017 Roundup

Another week of art, and pretty much whatever else, in Miami is in the books. This year, I participated in the amazing UNTITLED art fair, which has been gaining ground as a “must see” fair for serious collectors. As always, I took the opportunity to get out to visit other fairs, museums and private collections. There was a lot of good energy in Miami and a lot of strong artwork to be seen. - Steven Zevitas, Publisher


Ugo Rondinone 

Listed under: Art Market, Art World

February 11, 2016, 8:54am

16 Artists to Watch in 2016 (+ 2)

The needs and priorities of artists are in constant flux. Art historians have attempted to document this flux by identifying a series of seismic shifts in aesthetics and attaching to each its defining characteristics. This practice has provided us with a litany of isms that stretch back centuries. Art history will continue to roll on, but it very well may be that the age of the ism is behind us. That’s not to say that there are not, and will not continue to be, clusters of like-minded artists whose combined efforts can generate an aesthetic critical mass that historians are able to delineate. But with instant global communication, the time in which new ideas are disseminated, assimilated, and ultimately disregarded is so compressed that the enterprise has been, at best, reduced to trend spotting.

The medium of painting, in particular, has always been prone to noticeable trends. For the better part of a decade, the trend of note has been the overwhelming amount of abstraction that has circulated, in particular that of the provisional, or de-skilled ilk. While there are some talented artists working in this vein––Richard Aldrich and Joe Bradley, to name two––much of the stuff is so hopelessly bland and devoid of meaningful content that it has garnered the moniker “zombie formalism.” In the past two years, however, the winds have shifted. Abstraction is out, and the figure is in; flatness is out, as artists begin to embrace a space that lies somewhere between reality and a digital simulacrum of it.

Both of these trends were widely visible in 2015. As I wandered though the various art fairs that make up Miami’s art week in early December I was overwhelmed by the amount of figurative painting on view…much of if it at galleries that have rarely, if ever, exhibited such work. The figure is everywhere, and being addressed with all manner of stylistic intonation. Even more conspicuous was the number of artists who, whatever their subject matter, are conjuring a kind of space that seems teasingly “real,” yet clearly relies on life as experienced through the computer screen more than the living room window. Perhaps this is not a surprise, given that a generation of artists weaned on the Internet is now coming of age.

Before getting in to this year’s list of Artists to Watch, I want to say how pleased I am to see the success of all of the artists featured on last year’s list. Sadie Benning had a knockout show at Susanne Vielmetter in Los Angeles that was critically acclaimed. Katherine Bernhardt took it to the next level with her outing at Venus Over Manhattan. Daniel Heidkamp, who just gets better and better, was heavily in demand. Eddie Martinez, whose current show at Mitchell-Innes & Nash is his best to date, is now firmly on the radar of serious international collectors. Most exciting to me is the attention given to mature painter, Katherine Bradford. Bradford has been making her quirky, extraordinary paintings for years and, finally, the world has caught up. Her work looked completely of-the-moment at NADA Miami, and her subsequent one-woman show at CANADA in New York City was a huge commercial and critical success. – Steven Zevitas, Editor/Publisher


Katherine Bradford. Courtesy of CANADA, New York.

Listed under: NAP News, Noteworthy

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