March 19, 2014, 5:39pm

Kristen Dodge: Exit Interview

Artists come and go, and so do galleries. Last week gallery owner Kristen Dodge announced that DODGEgallery, which has been in operation since 2010 in New York City’s bustling Lower East Side arts district, was closing shop. The news took a lot of people, including myself, by surprise. - Steven Zevitas, Publisher

Andrew Judd, Kristen Dodge, Patton HIndle. Photo by: Carly Gaebe

March 18, 2014, 9:43am

Everyday Evocative: Paige Jiyoung Moon

Something about Paige Jiyoung Moon’s (NAP #109) paintings stays with you. They are colorful, inviting, and familiar – and in them Moon captures her everyday experiences and environments in a way that is playful and realistic.

It isn’t her style that is particularly naturalistic though, it is her subject matter. Her style is slightly exaggerated in perspective, as she often places viewers so that it feels as if we are hovering above the scene, looking down on it from afar.  Her paintings make me consider memories and memory-making – how we experience a day, how we remember it, and how we reconstruct it in our minds. 

On the converse of the everyday, though, Moon also creates a dreamlike quality in her work, because as we hover over images of her painted memories – of a screen printing class, or a hike through Sequoia, or a weekend hotel stay – it conjures a memory-bank full of my own recollections from such classes, hikes, and trips.  It is personal and voyeuristic, everyday and evocative, and ephemeral eye candy that leaves me wanting to spend a day in the life of (or with) Moon. – Ellen C. Caldwell, Los Angeles Contributor

Paige Jiyoung Moon | Printshop, Acrylic on wood panel, 14"x 11," 2013.

March 13, 2014, 7:09pm

A Conversation: Raychael Stine

Something to consider: How does Painting handle love? Or better yet, can a painting be infused with love? Raychael Stine (NAP #78) believes that a painting that comes from a place of love can serve a greater function beyond an innocuous object. Painting can be used to cope and sometimes that coping deals with issues that pertain to love. I don’t remember the last time someone used the “L” word when speaking about their practice as it may come off as trite. But at the same time are we so cynical not to believe that painting and love do not go hand in hand? Stine pushes beyond these initial queries to a place where life, and love, is reaffirmed through the act of painting. - Arthur Peña, Dallas Contributor

Raychael Stine | Vision 4, 2012. Oil and acrylic on canvas, post card, 17 x 13 in.

March 11, 2014, 1:50pm

Pat Steir’s Fluid Reality

There is a notable heaviness present in the galleries of Cheim & Read’s Pat Steir show currently on view in New York. The weightiness is evoked not by any darkness, but by the unique paint application the artist employs in her large-scale canvases, in which she lets gravity dictate the way paint falls, spills, and spatters across the expansive surfaces. Sidestepping any didactic elements in her particular style of feminist practice, Steir instead employs an approach to painting that makes metaphoric references to the leaks, seepages and flows of the female body, seeking to draw out allusions to something that is more random, intuitive, and created by chance circumstances. Rejecting the traditional use of a brush to apply paint, Steir also stands against the myth of the male-artist-as-genius in her choice to abstain from the decisive action of placing paint on surface. Instead, the artist has devised a non-traditional approach, choosing to pour thinned paint from the top of her canvases while they’re vertically mounted on the wall.

Pat Steir installation view, Cheim & Read, New York.