Criticism of art can be divided into three categories: descriptive, interpretive, and judgmental. Here I will post a few reviews that will contain one, two, or all three categories in order to critique an exhibition, artist, or series of works. I have highlighted a few examples in each article accordingly: descriptive interpretive judgmental Ida Applebroog New York, at Hauser & Wirth by Tatiana Istomina Ida Applebroog has developed her signature style over the course of a five-decade career. Most of her works, from flip books and films to composite paintings and installations, generate elusive narratives through the juxtaposition and repetition of images. The same principle holds for her recent exhibition “The Ethics of Desire,” which could be viewed as a single montage sequence. The show began in the lobby of Hauser & Wirth’s Chelsea venue with a row of metal folding chairs, each with a hand-painted cartoon on its seat or back. The seemingly naive drawings are vaguely disturbing: a woman carrying a naked man piggyback, Jesus crucified on a ladder, a naked child holding an American flag. The piece is coyly titled Please Don’t Sit on These Works of Art (2014). The side gallery was dominated by a large multi-panel painting of nine naked women marching in file in thigh-high boots and silver helmets, their white bodies luminous against a background of yellow and purple. Much larger than life, the women exude a gleeful single-minded energy, and their seriated limbs create a reverberating visual rhythm. A triptych that hung on the other side of the room depicts three more nudes, in explicit postures exposing their sexual organs; the figures are about human-size, and the pictures were placed low, so that one’s eyes were level with their inscrutable faces. In the main gallery, the 1978 video It’s No Use Alberto was screened on a monitor, while the cut-out paper figures used to make it were displayed on wooden blocks nearby. A woman has intercourse with a headless man; an angel lectures to a couple; several well-dressed men and women huddle closely together. Illuminated by spotlights, the figures and their stark shadows seemed a vital extension of the video, and the video’s snippets of stories and music added to the suspenseful atmosphere of the installation. The majority of the cavernous space was occupied by a recent body of work. Suspended from the ceiling singly or in groups were more than 30 pieces of Mylar, each over 9 feet tall and showing a naked man or woman. Rows of folding chairs lined up between them divided the space into narrow segments, creating twisting paths for viewers and seeming more like an integral part of the installation than like potential seating. The figures are drawn in thick outlines, with flat areas of diffuse color here and there; each has a distinguishing attribute—a cowboy hat, a crucifix, a prosthetic leg, a protruding and scarred belly. These men and women present the cold appeal and vaguely aggressive postures of catwalk models. Despite their monumentality and composure, however, they look as fragile as oversize paper dolls. Press materials related the exhibition to Plato’s Symposium, a candid discussion of different levels and varieties of love. That classic text is in part a debate on the moral education of youth and the possibilities of shaping human desires to produce ethical behavior. The reference may be a clue or a distraction, but Applebroog’s work certainly entices us to scrutinize our impulses for their moral and social implications. Article Citation: Istomina, Tatiana. Review of, Ida Applebroog. Art in America September 16th, 2015. Web. September 20th, 2015. http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/reviews/ida-applebroog-1/ Ron Nagle at Matthew Marks, through Oct. 24 522 West 22nd Street Set in niches in the walls and plate-glass vitrines throughout the gallery, 35 abstract sculptures Ron Nagle produced between 1991 and 2015 stand poised for worshipful contemplation. The colorful, textural icons, almost all four by six inches, employ a variety of techniques, including slip-casting and hand-molding, as well as materials like glazed ceramic, polyurethane and epoxy. The West Coast artist's works are radiant, playful and witty, though the joke itself is uncertain. In Quiet Wood (2015), for instance, skinny purple fingers poke through holes in a ceramic base. Orange polyurethane drips over the base, like a Nickelodeon kid's show version of toxic waste. A selection of drawings and a group of bronze sculptures from Nagle's "Hands On" series (1991) are also on view. Pictured: Ron Nagle: Handsome Drifter, 2015, ceramic, glaze, catalyzed polyurethane, epoxy resin. 3 ¾ by 4 by 3 inches. © Ron Nagle. Courtesy Matthew Marks. Article Citation: Review of, Ron Nagle. Art in America. Web. September 20th, 2015. http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/exhibitions/ron-nagle/ Dana Schutz at Petzel, through Oct. 24 456 West 18th Street Dana Schutz plots space more tightly than she used to. Her older works tweaked realist illusionism by clumping volume in one corner while letting loose in another, but her new body of work abounds in rigid angles and geometric patterning. She's painted pressurized environments that push at her canvasses' surfaces and sides. In a series of charcoal portraits, the caricatured figures' gazes and features are pressed eagerly, intensely outward. Fight in an Elevator (2015), which lends its title to the exhibition, is a jumble of limbs and smeared, stretched faces, glimpsed through the lines of half-open doors. The mise-en-scène seems to dramatize the act of painting itself, of paint gone wild in the plane set by the stretcher. The result distances the space of the viewer from the space of the work; Schutz's paintings are obsessive yet aloof, beguiling but uninviting. You're more of a voyeur than a viewer. The effect climaxes in As Normal as Possible (2015), where you're staring down a kid's dilated and reddened eyes under a flashlight's broad beam, as a police cruiser's lights blink behind him—you're a cop. Pictured: Dana Schutz: Swiss Family Traveling, 2015, oil on canvas, 84 by 88 inches. Courtesy the artist and Petzel, New York. Article Citation: Review of, Dana Schutz. Art in America. Web. September 20th, 2015. http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/exhibitions/dana-schutz/
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Emily B. PosnerNew York based artist and editor. Archives
November 2016
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