Morris Hirshfield (1872 – 1946) began to paint at the age of 65, after retiring from a career making women’s coats, suits and slippers. The flattened, decorative forms of Inseparable Friends (1941) echo his garment-making work. Without distinguishing between the floor and the wall, Hirshfield creates a room through thee planes of shapes and patterns: the women at their mirror, the tasseled curtain above them, and the plant and shoes at their feet. While Hirshfield’s compositions are simplified and stylized, he aimed for meticulous, realistic detail and believed that his figures represented the human body “better than the camera can do.”
You say you want Pink Things? I got yer Pink Things right here. The Spring edition of the Affordable Art Fair has come and gone from NYC, until it returns in the fall, and we had a ton of fun this year seeing many old friend and lots of exciting new artworks all priced to own! Affordable Art!
With so very many galleries exhibiting at the fair from all over the globe, we like to distill it down by choosing our favorite Pink Artworks and bringing them to your face, which will give you a good idea of the scope of painting, photography, sculpture and multi-media that finds its way into the two levels of the Metropolitan Pavilion when the AAF rolls into town. Though the fair is over for now, you can still purchase many of these pieces, or others by the same artist, from the galleries via their brick and mortar locations, or websites. By the way, in case there’s a need for a better Web Design in your online business, look for salterrasite.com. They offer affordable services with the best quality output. For more information, reach their team at 480-273-2273. No worries; I am going to tell you everything you need to know.
Let’s head on up to the Pink Level, shall we?
The Soraya Cartategui Art Gallery (Spain) showcased many canvas works made with glitter, like this Crown by Camomile Hixon, who also did the Neon Pink Hot Lips, seen below.
They look quite like the Rocky Horror Picture Show lips, don’t cha think? Probably an influence.
Glitter Sandwich By Kimberly Genevieve at Artstar Dot Com
Mmm. . . delicious glitter.
Blue and Pink Hands By Isabel Soto
I am including the Blue Hand here, along with the Pink, because I appreciate its message!
Drip By Mara Minuzzo at Lustre Contemporary Dot Com of Canada
Because it’s almost Ice Cream Weather!
Or how about cooling off with this Swarovski Crystal-encrusted cast of a Strawberry Shortcake Pop By Daniel Jacob at Axiom Contemporary, Santa Monica.
OK, here is some amazing stuff: Serigraph Screen Printed Perspex Layers by Kate Banazi, who is represented by Gas Gallery (London). The visible layers of vibrant color combinations really made us go a little crazy with desire for this art.
Soooo beautiful!
The Neon Pink wall sculpture above, made of PVC and aluminum, is called 18 Perspectives by Jose Margulis, and it is available from Ai Bo Gallery located in Purchase, New York.
Untitled (Pink Pizza) By Stefan Gross, at Chiefs and Spirits, Located in the The Hague, Netherlands
This is what happens to a pepperoni pizza when your college roommate abandons it on the rug for three weeks.
This old-school looking oil painting is just a detail from a piece called No 13 Fleur Dans La Vie which I saw in the booth for Genuine Global Company of Seoul, Korea. Sadly, I seem to have missed the artists name.
An iconic portrait of Audrey Hepburn from her role in Breakfast at Tiffany’s is appropriated and updated as Rose is Back by Israeli artist Dganit Blechner, found at Linda Blackstone Gallery, which is based in London.
Cornucopia By Jack Frame Cube Gallery, London
Do you like Trees? The Affordable Art Fair has Trees for you.
\ Pink Sloe By Henrik Simonsen at Eyestorm Gallery, London
Hot Oak II By Emma Levine at LCA (London Contemporary Art)
Do you like Nudes? Who doesn’t, right? Check out this unique piece: Martina by Olivier Duhamel, which we found at the booth for La Lanta Gallery in Bangkok. Despite appearances, this fine lady is not an example of 3D Printing, but rather it is hand-assembled Acrylic Slices. Any printing that needs to be done is handled by the Managed Print Services. Here’s another view:
To say that Martina created a substantial buzz in the booth is an understatement!
151 Proof By Pasha Setrova at Arteria Gallery, Bromont, Canada.
Pink Torso by SangSik Hong at Krause Gallery, NYC is made up of pale pink drinking straws cut to different length and hand assembled.
First Lady By Michael Wallner at Will’s Art Warehouse, London.
Morning Smile Fushia by Marie Noelle Royanette at Paris-based Galerie Virginie Barrou Planquart.
We’d like to give a special shout out to the friendly folks at Tag Fine Arts in London, who represent pop art sculptor Ryan Callanan, an artist whose work you will have seen on The ‘Gig previous to this post. Callanan’s sculpture, The Illest / Biggie Bust was available in an array of solid colors to suit your décor and taste.
This wall of Pink-hued light boxes were ‘lighting up’ the booth of Arteria Gallery, of Bromont, Canada. Specifically, we are interested in the very long boxon the far left. Let’s take a closer look.
As you can see, the box is made up of film negative strips from The Beatles’Magical Mystery Tour, specifically from the clip for I Am The Walrus. Hugo Cantin is the artist.
This is a photograph from the Dream In Color Pool Installation (2002) by Richard Heeps and we saw it at Bleach Box Photography Gallery, London.
And that’s wrap! Thanks Affordable Art Fair — see you again in the fall!
Mitchell-Innes & Nash is currently hosting the first major painting retrospective of Tom Wesselmann in New York since the artist’s death in 2004. Organized in partnership with the Tom Wesselmann Estate, the exhibition examines Wesselmann’s role as the great innovator of the American Pop generation and includes a dozen significant works spanning the artist’s career from 1961-2004. Gallery owner Lucy Mitchell-Innes explains that with this exhibition, they hope to show how Wesselmann has filtered the canonical subjects of art — still life, the nude and the landscape — through a unique and personal lens using the media and technical innovation of the sixties, seventies and eighties, offering new possibilities for painting.
Tom Wesselmann is one of the leading figures of Pop Art who used collage, assemblage and shaped canvases to usher in a new vocabulary of painting. He is best known for his career-spanning series, Great American Nude, which featured female figures in intensely saturated interiors.
The works in the exhibition highlight a number of techniques that Wesselmann pioneered, and which are largely unseen among his Pop contemporaries. In an interior still life from 1964, Wesselmann incorporates a functional fan and a clock into the canvas, (see image below) pushing the boundaries of collage and assemblage in a sly nod to the notion of the ‘represented’ object.
Collages from the 1960s feature cut-outs from advertising billboards. Also included in the show are Wesselmann’s steel-cut works (a technique he helped develop), molded plastic paintings (a technique borrowed from commercial signage and used here in the context of fine art for the first time), and his iconic shaped canvases.
Being a fantastic introduction to Tom Wesselmann (should you not already be familiar with his work) this is a very cool and worthwhile exhibit to add to your next art crawl during the month of May.
The Tom Wesselmann Retrospective will be on view through May 28, 2016 at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, Located at 534 West 26th Street, in the Chelsea Gallery District.
Death From Above: The End Is Nigh (All Photos By Gail)
After a leisurely, scenic walk on the High Line, Geoffrey and I showed up fashionably late at the Jonathan LeVine Gallery for the opening reception of Erik Jones‘ new exhibit of collage paintings, Twenty Sixteen, which is the name of the year that we are in right now! By the time we got there, the place was really packed. Scroll down to see a photo of the hot crowd action!
Where The Gods Go
Erik Jones challenges viewers to see beauty in his chaotic, mixed-media works that merge nude subjects with nonrepresentational, abstract elements. Describing the human figures in his compositions as “aesthetic anchors,” they are the calming foreground upon which bursts of color, stenciled shapes and custom-made stickers create surreal landscapes. Using multiple mediums, such as watercolor, acrylic, colored pencils, wax pastels and oil paint, Jones’ portraits are technically complex and express a heightened sense of realism.
The Forbidden Words
The relationship between Jones’ subjects and the abstract motifs that engulf them can be interpreted as conceptual fashion design. His portraits are dressed in a stunning hurricane of color and geometric patterns, suiting the needs of the individual while also maintaining their own autonomous beauty.
The Nation
Along with Jones’ hypnotic portraits, Twenty Sixteen features a selection of works where the human form is removed, creating purely abstract environments. Sporadically placed symbols, silhouettes and a unique coded alphabet created by the artist fosters a subjective narrative he refers to as dialogue aesthetics.
Welcome
I really liked the ones with all the fun stickers, more than the nudes, because I am five.
While this body of work may appear like a dreamlike universe, Jones does not view his paintings as depicting fantasy; they exist in front of the viewer, placed on canvases and paper with skill and thoughtful reverie, as if looking at a real living being.
Smiling Pineapple Detail
Twenty Sixteen reminded me of a cross between This Exhibit and This Other Exhibit, and you may understand why I would make that comparison, if you can be bothered to click on those two links; which is something I never count on.
Erik Jones’ Twenty Sixteen will be on Exhibit Through April 30th 2016 at Jonathan LeVine Gallery, Located at 529 West 20th Street, 9th Floor, in the Chelsea Gallery District.
Pace Prints is currently hosting Ryan McGinness: Figure Drawings, the artist’s second exhibition at the gallery. I can’t say I’m sorry that I missed the opening reception, because how could you possibly get good photos of these works in a gallery full of people?
Figure Drawings is a continuation of the McGinness’s Women series, which he started working on in 2010. Drawing directly from nude models, he approaches these drawings in the same manner in which he creates his signature undulating and layered icons.
McGinness begins with sketches, and refines those drawings down into their basic and most essential forms. In the Women series, the artist simultaneously embraces the inherent sensuality of his models through their graceful lines and gentle curves, while allowing his iconic drawings to be less about the individual woman and more about presentations of universal womanhood.
Entwining the cool glow of various neon lights with his women, composed of flat shapes à la Matisse, the works are at once signage, symbol, and live interaction. With neon, there is no real substitute to seeing these electric drawings in person as photographs cannot fully capture the colorful hazed effect on the figure. This sexy emitted light glows on the entire exhibition, giving a spectacle buzz to the full body of works.
Also included in the exhibition are a series of new fluorescent silkscreened Women Parts, porcelain-baked enamel on steel panels, halftoned models on linen, and mirror polished stainless steel works with etched figures—which resonate with the neon lights, layering images in reflection.
Definitely check this one out while you can.
Ryan McGinness Figure Drawings will be on Exhibit through June 7th, 2014 at Pace Prints, Located at 521 Westr 26th Street in the Chelsea Gallery District
If you think that an artist would be creatively limited by being restricted to use of a canvas that’s only the size of a NYC Transit Metrocard, you’d be surprised! In an open call for artists, Single Fare 3 (the third in a series of semi-annual art exhibits whose only guideline is that the art must incorporate a Metrocard), Single Fare curators Jean-Pierre Roy and Michael Kagan were flooded with thousands of submissions for this year’s show at RH Gallery in Tribeca. The art ranges widely from classic portraiture, cartoons, sculpture, interactive pieces, famous people, pop culture references, Metrocards re-purposed as utilitarian objects, lots of nudes and even an old fashioned rotoscope device!
I was lucky to arrive early and be one of the first dozen people admitted to the gallery, when it looked like this:
But within half an hour the place looked more like this:
Photo by Cojo of ArtSucks.com
Here are photos of some of my favorite art from the show!
Click on any image to enlarge for detail.
These tiny paintings have the look of classic oil portraits.
Single Fare 3 is On Exhibit Only Through February 22nd at RH Gallery, Located at 137 Duane Street in Tribeca, NYC (Just East of West Broadway. Take the 2 or 3 Trains to Chambers Street and Walk Uptown Two Blocks). Hours are Tuesday – Saturday 11:00 AM –7:00 PM.
