Alice Neel @ Zwirner and Wirth through 6/20/2009

The nudes exhibit expressionism's primitive delineation, stylized anatomy and unvarying black outline,  a mote fending off the ground. Neel treats the visages of her subjects symbolically. Their hands and feet are contorted. Their meager, bohemian interiors are joyless. The compositions can be rich and complex. None of these works display Neel's signature style, but portraits done over the next 50 years are marked with the the same tropes. The revolution in Neel's work was the background, where sketchy naturalism flattens, exhausting the entire vocabulary of abstraction.  Throughout her career Neel did with portraits everything it was possible to do with painting

Art-99; a 99word review.

Mimmo Rotella @ Knoedler & Co. through July 31, 2009

One room contains 9 sections of layered bills or collages made to appear so, all 1958. The acidic colorization of some papers is naturalistic  in these abstractions. In another room most works are modified bills and enlarged 60's media clippings with hand painted shapes and subtractive collage. There are three JFK pieces, one from the Zapruder film. In two double portraits from posters advertising a Kennedy appearance a blank piece of corrugated paper covers the top of his heads, as if to bandage the wounds captured in the film. The image juxtaposition of photo collage serves political not surreal ends.

Art-99; a 99 word review.

Keizo Kitajima @ Roth through June 6, 2009

The multiple prints on most supports is mirrored in staggered groupings of works that allow for another level of juxtaposition. The resulting confrontation with the viewer is also seen in the frontal address of the subjects of these prints from a series of photographs taken in Okinawa, 1980. The jagged hang, the high contrast of screen prints, the lowbrow, varied supports, not to mention the subject matter of the images, all contribute to a street grit. Japanese prostitutes and American servicemen behaving badly address the camera out of drunkenness and abandon as if the night will go on forever.

Art-99; a 99 word review.

Gary Baldwin @ Open Source through June 4, 2009.

These 15 small, color photographic portraits, hung to suggest missing images, all beg a little explanation; observe the quizzical, hostile or far away expressions, a bleeding gash, an eye bandage. Each is a study in intimacy in its own way. Most subjects confront the camera and collaborate in their characterization. The rest evidence comfort with the photographer. The compositions are determined and complex. The masterpiece of the show is a picture of a blond boy (Hugo) wearing a striped shirt, sitting in Viking-inspired arm chair, sipping orange juice, lit by a late afternoon light shaped by a window shade.

Art-99; a 99 word review.

Cordy Ryman @ Next with DCKT through May 5, 2009.

Ryman's craft comes to the fore inversly. There is a contemplated crudity to the finish of these small abstract works and a studied carelessness of execution. Paint is applied both mechanically and blissfully to ad hoc, raw wood supports. Colorization is ruled by a giddy formula; earthy tones perturbed by fluorescents. There is something comical in the sloppy notation combined with hue hyberbole. But great care is also demonstrated. Some flat shapes are carefully delineated and there is attention to layering. Many works exhibit a tiny homage to the underpaint, an unexpected wink from a savant of nonchalance. 

Art-99: a 99 word review.

Nicol Allan @ Davis & Langdale through May 2, 2009

In these simple collages of organic materials including rare, handmade papers and paste from a British Museum recipe, architectural forms emerge from flat muted hues of earth toned shapes mostly brown and green, with brick red and minimal blue. The compositions follow an organic cubist model. Though they are textless, there is a trace amount of mark making. Some look like plan views of rural interchanges or baseball diamonds. Flatness is defied by diagonals indicating a doorway, the side of a building, a shadow. There is an idylic mood, like the sublime might dwell in the simplest shapes of civilization.

Art-99; a 99 word review.

Tara Donavan @ PaceWildenstein through May 2, 2009

Twenty four large scale "drawings" hung edge to edge, most of which are in two values, delineating the fractures in plates of broken glass. Visually these are very direct and expose their technique. They are both patently representational and profoundly abstract. They look like nothing but schematic studies of how glass shatters. Another group employs a different, unknown technique. Their appearance is of a fine, off white, irregular net or web upon a black ground. The web-like accumulation seems scribbled or spiraling. They oppose the others. Its's unclear how they were done, and they are completely non-objective.

Art-99; a 99 word review.

Simryn Gill @ Tracy Williams through May 2, 2009

The garden level space of the village townhouse gallery exhibits an array of smallish spheroids on the floor varying greatly in size and materials. Several are termite balls, one a plaster cast of the inside of a pumpkin, another a wad of rubber bands.  Some are composed of entwined foliage, one from corrugated paper. The first floor presents black and white photographs of panes of tinted glass leaning inside an abandoned and scavenged home shot just as the sun lights them, with two bronze sculptures formed in the fissures of a dry river bed.  All three lines of work rely on collaboration with natural processes.

Art-99; a 99 word review.

Noah Davis @ Jack Tilton through May 16, 2009

Six oils depict poor or third world people, some laboring in dress clothes. In one, the lone white person is a victim. In the other five, it's  more unclear what is happening, but the semi-rural exteriors range from tense to disturbing. Despite the power of the subject matter, execution steals the show. The notation is so mixed, washes, impasto, wild gestures broad and minute, as to threaten depiction. The technical variety is accentuated by colorization; high key tints and high hue contrast between underpainting and finish. These effects and the paintings' realism trouble each other and resist reconciliation.

Art-99; a 99 word review.

John Outterbridge @ Tilton through May 16, 2009.

Rustic looking wall hung assemblages, some based on folk jewelry. Many are vaguely heraldic like large charm bracelets and seem to include antique horse tackle or rigging, others look like broken off parts of simple farming tools hewn from chunks of wood. Is there an indictment of burden in the way the tackle morphs into the bones or horns of the implied animal, in the severed dreadlocks? A work containing a sickle blade, severed hair and a tiny american flag politicizes the class origins of folk art and continues its tradition of social critique.

Art -99: a 99 word review

Tacita Dean @ Marian Goodman through April 30, 2009.

Large and small scale photographs of natural world objects with the background painted out by hand: the objects look unnatural and the works unlike photography.  The rocks start to suggest animal forms in the same way abstraction or clouds can.  The beauty of the trees is enhanced by the white paint which must be more dexterous but is also more interesting. Web like patterns emerge in the ground of Painted Kotzch Trees I-IV, while in the large scale "gravure project" the black ground lacks such nuance. With two 16 mm films, one a negotiated, sunlight obsessed tribute to Beuys.

Art-99; a 99 word review.

Donald Judd @ L & M Arts through April 18, 2009

Part of the appeal of Judd's manufactured, modular aesthetic is that nothing mass produced could ever attain this level of finish. The works do not contain technical flaws or happy accidents. His objects are far too meticulously unemotional not to evoke emotion.  It's the mission statement of minimalism. The viewer is pressed with order, precision, color theory and math to project meaning.  Two signature columns of boxes, one copper and clear plexi, one galvanized steel and red plexi are without gesture, but not without a hard fought expressionism. They are so physically exquisite as to belie their purported neutrality. 

Art-99; a 99 word review.

Richard Tuttle @ Pace through April 25, 2009

Each work was composed of two long, horizontal panels of fabric, grommeted so that they overlapped slightly in the center.  As always, Tuttle varies everything it is possible to vary, the apparent level of transformation of the fabric, the two panels' visual similarity, the saturation of hues, even the number of dimensions fluctuates in more than one way: the suggestion of landscape is dangled and snatched away,  while perfectly non-pictorial works are pierced by roughly woven strands. He maximizes the tension between the object itself and its aesthetic value by dialing up and down the appearance of artistry.

Art-99: a 99 word review.

Harry Roseman Utopia Parkway @ Davis and Langdale through March 28, 2009.

In these twenty 11 x 13 7/8 inch photographs of Joseph Cornell from the last three years of his life, his home features prominently. Clapboard siding appears in 15 works, and the faux Dutch architecture of Flushing is at odds with Cornell's originality.  There are no pictures of Cornell's work, which stands outside any New York school tradition. These photos aspire to be art themselves, diagonal compositions, extreme foreground, ploys reminiscent of Bellmer's self portraits, reflections in the home's windows. In eight of the works the master is seated or asleep, reminding us he's at the end of his life.

Art-99: a 99 word review.

James Castle Drawings @ Knoedler & Company through April 25, 2009

Every mark in these drawings was made by accumulation of unsteady smudges and scuffs. Despite the crude materials used, a wobbly precision delineates the ambitious subject matter. With soot and spit Castle takes on challenging vistas, interior perspective studies, Ansel Adams like nocturnes, an ornate door. The notation within the lines and planes is troubling because it indicates excessive effort. At the same time it serves the atmospheric perspective and the wear and variation on surfaces that defines naturalism. But a lack of  line straightness and a clipped range of line quality suggest the work of a child.

Art-99; a 99 word review (expanded to 499 words).

Monica Bill Barnes @ 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Festival through March 8, 2009

Barnes knows that movement is identity. Here, a single character is fractured into four parts longing for mutuality. The evening opens with a solo performance characterized by the repetition of truncated lunges, giddy smiling and mild exhibitionism. A lunatic air threatens the joy of comedy. This series of steps and expressions reappears in sequence after sequence, first possessing a duet, then another solo, then a trio and so forth. Throughout the work, the dancers attempt to influence each other's behavior and bring it into line with their own by demonstration, entreaty or physical compulsion. The theme of compliance is pushed through several variations, from dance-offs, to teaching a few steps to people pulled from the audience. These variations are part of an attempt to link up all the parts, all the movement and sequences into a perfectly unified dance. Even the solos seem to occur in the context of synchronization. We learn that the joyous outbursts of one dancer are the pain and consternation of the others. Barnes studies the difference between authentic behavior and doing what you're told. She has the dancers perform the same movements with and without conviction. This simple ploy raises the problem of identity. If a gesture is performed with belief, authentic character is revealed, if not, character is concealed. These are the stakes for a choreographer. The problem is expanded from dance to all behavior by the sequence with the audience. The willingness of the "dancer" to learn not only the steps but the psychological cause underlying them, is rewarded with love. With long closed-eye hugs and assuring words in the ear, Barnes expands the jurisdiction of choreography to just plain hoping people will behave. The coalescing goal of all this persuasion is to get four parts dancing in unison; at many points it's clear that happiness is contingent upon it. Barnes has expanded the range of her facial expressions over the years. Once all anger and vengeance (though there is still plenty of that) she now emits a longing and heartbroken look that is almost too much to bear. The saddest sequence in the show is one where Barnes attempts to influence the movement of Rowlson-Hall. In the first diagonal cross, her efforts are unseen: Barnes dances briskly behind her as she walks away. In a later cross, Barnes follows her as she walks backward to keep a distance. Barnes points at the foot of Rowlson-Hall, catching up, and stopping it with her hand, then, placing her foot on top of it, making explicit the connection between position and identity. By making an issue of physical compliance, Barnes intentionally conflates surface and depth.  At two points dancers refuse to move at all, while another literally carries them to a new place on stage. Barnes deconstructs synchronization and discovers the chemistry for transmittable happiness.

Art-99; a 99 word review.

Walter De Maria, The Earth Room, 1977 @ Dia (141 Wooster) permanent installation.

You can smell the 280,000 pounds of dirt when you enter the Soho townhouse.  The work's title has poetic power but it's more than a room.  An open plan (from Wooster to West Broadway) is divided only on your far right by a small room and an open doorway; whole space weighted with 22 inch deep black dirt.  A two foot high glass plate bridges the viewing doorway. Two iron pillars disappear into the mass. The formless, worthless material is shaped and elevated by the preexisting interior. The piece both expands the address and posits a constricted microcosm of the natural world. 

Art-99; a 99 word review.

Franz West @ Zwirner and Wirth through April 25, 2009.

The sculptures are not figural, biomorphic, geometric or ready-made. They are as unshaped and craftless as aggregate rock. Craggy, brittle textures are slathered with hues, treatments and finishes which seem to bind the work together. The amorphous stumps and trunks fail to justify their complex surfaces. In some cases it's questionable whether they are objects at all. The shabby armatures and pedestals suggest a sculpting class calamity. With 2-D modified anouncements for previous shows, the subject of the art world is at issue. The art object is hollowed out or supplanted by the activities attendent on studio practice.

Art-99; a 99 word review.

For Life: The language of Communication @ Jack Tilton through March 28, 2009

Despite the title, it's not a self help seminar.  The "language of communication" (redundant) in the press release is vague and righteous in its hope for political transformation.  Obama's election does not make all curatorial choices good ones.  It is thin justification for a show of selections from Tilton's contemporary program and second market estates. There are 30 works by Ruth Vollmer which couldn't have less to do with Tuttle's craftless, caught in a storm drain constructions or Berman's sexy beatnik iconography.  Between her perfect minimalist drawings and sculptures evocative of extra-terrestrial geometry, there is a solid solo show.

Art-99; a 99 word review.

Philip Guston @ L&M Arts through February 28, 2009

L&M presents seven large oils from the 50's.  The most beautiful look like magnified American impressionism, the ugly ones a collision of hues, impasto and wet on wet technique.  Each notation seems to have been its own idea. Shapes are slathered forth by forceful gestures meant to describe the brush being used. A jangling color scheme dominates the pallet: red and green are common to all with sky blue intruding here and there.  The works are obstinately flat and unpictorial, while the titles are suggestive.  To Fellini proves the more marks, the harder it becomes to avoid figuration.

Art-99; a 99 word review.

Joe Fyfe @ James Graham and Sons through March 7, 2009

Graham, relocated to 32 East 67th after 56 years at 1014 Madison, reinvigorates its contemporary department with the help of Brooklyn savant Joe Fyfe. Fyfe curated last summer's Color Climax, an audacious assault on MoMA's Color Chart and presently opens a solo show in two large rooms. In one, restraint is the order of the day: a long series of monochrome fabric collages identically sized and spaced, its variation confined to straight horizontals and verticals. In the other room, an antic mood smiles.  Textiles of joyous coloration are joined in jaunty patchwork compositions like irregular grids.  Even polka dots pertain.

Art-99; a 99 word review.

Diana Kingsley @ Leo Castelli through February 28, 2009

At first glance they look like accidental exposures by Tina Barney. But the problem of nature confronted by the decor it inspired, emerges from these suburban interiors and exteriors. The figure is excised almost completely.  Just two hands appear among these large prints, both gloved, both holding cigarettes up to foliage, insulated from nature and what they hold. Floral prints (and their reflections) cast an accusing finger at the remove from which we experience the natural world.  A toy horse concurs.  Likewise, a lump of bleu cheese is more alive than the floral pattern sofa on which it sits.

Art-99; a 99 word review.

Ellen Kahn Alice Revisited @ 440 Gallery through March 29, 2009

The layering of texts and imagery (from Lewis Carroll's works) with nets of gesture in innumerable qualities belies the word picture in these drawings and paintings that both look familiar and seem more complicated than we remember. Some of the undulating lines, which penetrate the atmosphere between layers of notation, suggest foliage, elsewhere a web, or something more ethereal, abstract, or metaphysical. In the oils, the use of impasto adds an almost impossible depth to works of such graphic excellence (that a digital origin might be suggested). The effects of harmonious color schemes lull but refuse to ground apprehension. 

Art-99; a 99 word review.

Emily Roz @ The Front Room Gallery through March 29, 2009

Twelve intensely rendered, colorful scenes of natural world violence and menace: Hyenas and chimps populate the pictures with dead and suffering impala, Wildebeest and gazelles. Some appear in repose-like agony among well-drawn dogweed blossoms, poppies and honeysuckle. Dismembering and disemboweling bring to mind Thomas Huxley's sensational descriptions of Darwinism. The gore seems too familiar, from images of war.  The beautiful gestures and colors, plus one decorative pattern re-contextualize predation. While the apparent sadism of "Chimp Mother and Child" pushes the limits of what is natural the show as a whole draws a line between types of violence.

Art-99; a 99 word review.

John Walker @ Knoedler and Company through March 7, 2009

The achievement of most of these 70's abstract drawings is that the wide array of intense notation and subtle gesture avoids the suggestion of representation.  At times the marks refer to the surface of the various papers, with scraping and accumulation.  At others even atmospheric effects and luminescence skirt suggestion by confusing ground and surface.  The picture plane is negated and some works appear as holes in large vertical rectangles. But then, as if to show how easy it is, a room full of faint and blurry landscapes depicting the same suburban house with a curving path before it.

Art-99; a 99 word review.

Peter Doig @ Michael Werner through March 14, 2009

The gallery contained three large apocalyptic landscape paintings. Two, facing each other, featured a central winged figure with skinny legs. In the third, a sublime blue potato fills the horizon over a red sea ("Mal D' Estomac").  One figure seems to be on a cliff overlooking an ocean, the other, down on the beach.  Both are titled "Man Dressed as a Bat." Are they a rumination on the Batman of popular culture?  Is this self appointed hero lacking a civilization to crave justice? They represent disillusion just the way a huge potato over an acid broth spells stomach ache.  

Art-99; a 99 word review.

Fred Sandback @ Zwirner and Wirth through February 2009

Describing Sandback's work is ontologically exacting.  Five pieces are comprised of just 42 lines. These are the "sculptures." It's not a contradiction of terms: exhibition of minimalism. One work is a single diagonal wire on a wall, skirting its number of dimensions. Two works make use of his hallmark implied volume. "Untitled (Gray Corner), two vertical strands on the wall eight inches from a corner, two bent horizontal rods connecting them, leave the viewer standing in excised space. The conflation of 2D and 3D and the use of actual volume to imply volume requires a spatial reckoning that approaches philosophy.