Review
January 25, 2012, 8:15am
Robert Buck at CRG: This American Graveyard
A horned cow skull on a nine-foot-tall cement totem looms in the entrance of CRG Gallery. As all of the works in Robert Buck’s show Kahpenakwu (“west” in Comanche), of paintings, drawings, and large sculpture, it serves as a tombstone for Native America, transforming the gallery into an industrial wasteland.
January 19, 2012, 9:09am
The Faces of Our Time: Give Me Head at James Harris Gallery
Give Me Head at Seattle’s James Harris Gallery transpires most literally: as a collection of 21 heads. This group show of paintings and sculptures primarily created within the last five years offers a visual survey of the face. With very limited exceptions, a lack of expression represents the unifying theme of the imagery. Although some eyes meet the viewer dead-on and others gaze outside the confines of their frames, the intimacy affiliated with portraiture is consistently absent among these stoic figures, raising the question: why would the lack of expression define this body of work?
January 12, 2012, 8:15am
Richard Aldrich at SFMOMA
An artist based in Brooklyn, Richard Aldrich’s paintings are products of his eclectic interests and environment. With piece titles that range from being inspired by French philosophy to Kanye West lyrics, his engagement with history and popular culture merge to create a dynamic painting practice. His paintings are often based in abstraction, with hints of figuration. He says of his work, “I don’t really differentiate between what makes a painting abstract or not, because it’s all part of the art…I’m interested in the machinations of contemporary society, or of information in general and how it moves along.
December 26, 2011, 8:15am
World of Wolf Pack: Amy Ross at the Kopeikin Gallery
"For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack." Rudyard Kipling said this in The Law of the Jungle and when viewing Amy Ross’ solo show at the Kopeikin Gallery in Culver City, my mind kept coming back to this quote. And as the release of The Hangover, gave “wolf pack” a new meaning, the power of the pack remains. - Ellen Caldwell, Los Angeles Contributor
December 22, 2011, 8:15am
Distilling to the Core: Katy Stone’s Myriad
Katy Stone’s Myriad visually reverberates throughout the otherwise silent rooms of Seattle’s Greg Kucera gallery. The artist’s vibrant forms of painted aluminum are known for walking lines, fluctuating between two and three dimensions, between the linear and the organic, between painting and sculpture. In her most recent body of work, these explorations expand to include additional mediums, as the oversized collage titled Myriad (You Are Here) extends across the floor, forming a 15 x 5 ft. centerpiece for the show. - Erin Langner, Seattle Contributor
December 19, 2011, 8:15am
Ruminating on the Self: Anne Austin Pearce’s Passport
While pondering on, and salivating before, Anne Austin Pearce’s (NAP #84) most recent collection Passport I came to a striking conclusion: I’ve fallen prey to the reality television trap. As soon as television producers brainstormed the concept of reality TV I’ve been right behind them with a mental pad and pen ready to dissect the private lives of newly appointed public figures. But now I’m tired...Read more by Kansas City contributor, Halcombe Miller, after the jump!
December 02, 2011, 8:15am
Ryan Travis Christian at Western Exhibitions
I’ve never seen anyone successfully treat a pencil as a painting tool the way Ryan Travis Christian does. In his current show, entitled River Rats, at Western Exhibitions is a large array of his recent drawings of technically proficient geometric explosions, early 20th century-style cartoon characters, drug references, and op-art patterns that fluctuate between being graphic and expressionistic. The space in the drawings is both converging and exploding simultaneously. The work itself seems mischievous, the product of a recurring theme of a self-referential suburban upbringing and the tomfoolery that accompanies the banality of growing up in the ‘burbs.
November 30, 2011, 8:45am
Colorful Language: Paintings by Mel Bochner at the National Gallery of Art
As Mel Bochner tells it, his longstanding engagement with language was inevitable.
November 28, 2011, 8:15am
Walton Ford: Primal Instincts and Pop Culture
Walton Ford's reputation for enormous (specifically life-sized) watercolors of animals executed in the highly illustrative, realistic vein of ornithologist-artist John James Audubon precedes him. I have expectations when approaching a new Ford exhibition: the works will be large; they will be fully realized; and there will exist some disarray, some violence that offsets the animals' handsome portraiture. I've followed Ford's work since 2005 and have seen his deft folding of dissent beneath a naturalistic veil, like Le Jardin's rugged bison fighting off a pack of chicly groomed wolves on a manicured garden.
November 25, 2011, 8:15am
Chicago Works: Scott Reeder at the MCA Chicago
It is difficult to think about Scott Reeder’s work without the word “funny” coming to mind. The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago recently opened up with the Milwaukee-native’s first museum show that features his colorful, faux-naïve paintings of smoking fruit, symmetrical pirates, protesting pandas, and humorous still-lives: the usual suspects in Reeder’s art historical and pun-based visual jokes. The exhibition also includes Reeder’s newer untitled spaghetti paintings, made using raw and cooked noodles and spray-paint. Upon entering the MCA, visitors are confronted with a massive, two-story, raw spaghetti painting; commissioned specifically for the show. - Josh Reames, Chicago Contributor
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