New American Paintings

WEEKLY RECAP (WEEK OF APRIL 9)

This week we mixed it up. There was a poll, a few reviews, and a feature on the Culver City Art District Gallery Guide. If you missed any of it, this is your chance to go back and get your fill. After the jump, we've summarized the week's blog activities. So check it out!

Culver City Art District Gallery Guide, by Jana Des Forges of BLK/MRKT

When we dug deeper into Zach Peabody's mission to share the art he comes across at the fairs, he turned us onto another venture, the Culver City Arts District Map (CCAD). After the jump, learn more about the map, created by Black Market's Jana Des Forges, and how Peabody contributes to the local art scene in Los Angeles by documenting the dozens of exhibitions so others can find their way through the region. Learn more about the map's creation and the ZList, here.

---

This week we did a quick poll (Artist Headshots: Stay or Go Away) to see how our readers felt about the head shots we print on artist spreads within New American Paintings. At the moment there is overwhelming support to keep the head shots, nearly 70% as a matter of fact. There is still time to voice your opinion. Vote here and use the comments section to tell us why you voted the way you did.

---

Matthew Smith gave us a great review of Tom Green's exhibition at Curator's Office in DC. Smith wrote: “Time is of the essence now.” Most of us will never fully grasp the weight of Tom Green’s words when he spoke to the Washington Post last December. He’d been diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) six months earlier and was aware that at some point, possibly soon, he’d lose his ability to paint, robbed of his motor skills by this neurological disease. The news of the urgent diagnosis, however, although paramount and ultimate, is but a blip in the long trajectory of the artist’s career in Washington, D.C., a career that also included stops at the Whitney Biennial in 1975 and the Guggenheim in 1981. Opening earlier this month, Of This World at Curator’s Office features Green’s latest works on paper. They’re also his final paintings, restrained and elegant reinterpretations of his longstanding pictorial engagement with semiotics." Read more about Tom's brilliant career and exhibition here.

Tom Green | Of This World 6, 2011 acrylic on paper 29.75” x 22.25”, courtesy Curator’s Office

---

Our NYC contributor, Whitney Kimball wrote about "Spirit Level" at Gladstone Gallery. She comments, "Walking into the Spirit Level, on view through April 21, at Gladstone Gallery’s 24th Street branch, one passes through a hallway of Ann Craven’s large, dark paintings with taffy-colored off-white holes in the middle. The floor is lined with Latifa Echakhch’s “Frames”: rectangular rugs with the centers removed, so that only thin edges and fringes remain. The pairing sets the tone for the exhibition, and it’s testament to Ugo Rondinone’s curatorial dexterity: the simple combination evokes prayer, death, infinite, cycles, and detritus which inevitably fills up empty space." Whitney's full review can be found here.