Tauba Auerbach

July 17, 2015, 9:41am

Printmaking, Abstraction: “Zero to One on Paper” at Ratio 3

There’s a piece of public art installed in the Mission Bay neighborhood of San Francisco that is quintessential Richard Serra. Two 80-ton steel slabs emerge from ground at a slight angle, tilting vertically as they extend 50 feet into the air. Like other works by Serra these are experiential sculptures, un-monuments meant to affect the way we perceive the space around them. That work is titled “Ballast,” referencing the performative heft of the piece as it serves as a kind of anchor in a transitive cityscape. Serra’s etchings at “Zero to One on Paper,” on view at Ratio 3 through August 21, share the same name, though in this case the titles are “Ballast II” and “Ballast III”. Like his public sculpture at Mission Bay the works at Ratio 3 are monolithic and textural, anchor-like in the expansive gallery space that also has works by a host of painters and other artists making editioned work on paper. - Matt Smith Chavez, San Francisco Contributor

Zero to One on Paper, July 2 – August 21, 2015, Installation view: Ratio 3, San Francisco, Courtesy of the gallery

Listed under: Review

Tagged as: Ratio 3, Matt Smith Chavez, San Francisco, Richard Tuttle, Alyson Shotz, Donald Judd, Ellsworth Kelly, Louisiana Bendolph, Martin Puryear, Mary Heilman, Paul Mogensen, Richard Serra, Sol Lewitt, Spencer Finch, Tauba Auerbach, Tomma Abts

July 27, 2012, 8:30am

Who is the most significant painter to emerge since 2000? (Poll)

So you don’t believe in miracles? Think about this: Painting has been pronounced clinically dead dozens of times, and, like Lazarus, it keeps coming back for more. It is the medium that simply refuses to die.

The 1990s were a tough decade for painting, as video, installation, and, in particular, photography, relegated it to the margins of the art world’s often too narrow field of vision. But as the 2000s began, the oldest of mediums returned with a vengeance. Impressively, it has continued to be the dominant medium for more than a decade, first with an explosion of figurative work in the early 2000s, and now with an extreme focus on abstraction.

Listed under: Poll