ArtSeen
Survey: Modern Iranian Art
By Bansie VasvaniWhat’s so apparent from Iran Modern is the relative obscurity of Iranian art in galleries and institutions since the American collector Abby Weed Grey began buying art from Iran in the 1960s
JOAN WALTEMATH: The Dinwoodies, 2005-8: graphite drawings on mylar
By Kara L. RooneyThe Dinwoodies, a series of Joan Waltemath's mylar drawings made between 2005 and 2008, is currently on view at Schema Projects in Bushwick. This is the first time the work has been shown, and it is Waltemath’s first New York solo exhibition in over a decade.
The Importance of Being Bruce High Quality
By Jeremy ButmanEntering into the first room of Ode to Joy, the Bruce High Quality Foundation (BHQF) retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum, one immediately confronts a circus-like multitude of action, images, and sound. What strikes one, progressing through the show, is not a sense of chaos, however, but rather an organization that purposefully defies easy classification.
BARBARA TAKENAGA New Paintings
By Robert BerlindThe ample array of Barbara Takenaga’s recent, work-intensive paintings dazzles the eyes with the panache of fireworks. She is prolific both in her generous output and within each of her paintings, which are made of myriad, exquisitely crafted details.
EBERHARD HAVEKOST Titel
By Terry R. MyersEberhard Havekost has always made it clear that his paintings neither stand apart nor together as a “body of work,” as that term has been overhauled since postmodernism.
CHARLINE VON HEYL
By Corina LarkinCharline von Heyl’s paintings share the qualities of a ballet dancer—effortless grace with the help of discipline and serious muscle. First, a word about the muscle: the works are all large (typically around six square feet), and the canvases assert a palpable degree of authority, even in the context of a very spacious gallery.
BARRY MCGEE
By Jonathan GoodmanSome 20 years ago San Francisco artist Barry McGee was part of the art scene’s graffiti movement there. Posted on the walls of the city, his images of bums and aboriginal faces were so good that one inevitably felt he would go on to larger, more mainstream recognition—and so he has in this show at Cheim & Read, his first New York gallery exhibition in eight years.
ALDO TAMBELLINI We Are the Primitives of a New Era
By Kara L. RooneyAldo Tambellini is obsessed with black. This fixation extends back six decades to a time when the artist, as one of new media’s avant-garde pioneers, was exploring the color and its associated meanings in various iterations of swirling spirals, black holes, and spherical matrices.
Flower Garden
By Michael PepiIn 1971 Vito Acconci performed “Seedbed” at Sonnabend Gallery. The artist masturbated for hours at a time beneath a low ramp built upon the gallery floor while patrons walked above. Acconci’s provocative statements played over speakers, establishing an environment of threatening sexual presence.
GLORIOUS MADNESS
Art, Improbability, and Jean Dubuffet’s Excursions en no man’s space
By Alana Shilling-Janoff
It is ironic that discourse about Jean Dubuffet, that notorious “rebel” of art-land, is so often script-like, resembling ritualized narrative, as if convention could make it possible to contain the complexities of a titan.
SOCIÉTÉ RÉALISTE
A rough guide to Hell
By Paula Burleigh
Black lettering on P!’s deep red awning reads: “Lasciate ogne stranezza voi ch’intrate”(Abandon all strangeness, you who enter here), a loose adaptation of the infamous inscription over the Gate of Hell in Dante’s Inferno.
MATTHEW DAY JACKSON
Something Ancient, Something New, Something Stolen, Something Blue
By Alexander Shulan
With his new exhibition Something Ancient, Something New, Something Stolen, Something Blue, Matthew Day Jackson unfurls a nightmarish and mythological American landscape reminiscent of the sort described in Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel The Road.
SONYA BLESOFSKY Renovation
By Darren JonesIn her second solo exhibition at Mixed Greens, Sonya Blesofsky continues her excavations into the unyielding architectural reinvention of New York, bringing attention to human histories and daily experience in relation to our built environments.
Julian Pretto Gallery
By Pac PobricOn May 24, 1995, a short obituary appeared in the New York Times for an art dealer named Julian Pretto. He had died two days earlier, at the age of 50, from AIDS-related complications.
