Chris Rywalt
Chris Rywalt's GalleryChris Rywalt's Bio
Chris Rywalt's E-mail Address
Chris Rywalt's Handsome, Dashing Figure
Art Critic's Statement
A Note on Working Methods
Artists and Shows Covered
|
Do you love Blown Glass? Then you need to check out HandBlownGlass.net. They offer beautiful pieces of GlassArt. Everything from Blown Glass Vases to Hand Blown Glass Scu lptures. And if you want something your friends will envy, buy one of the Glass Wall Art pieces. |
Art Blogs
- The Douglas Kelley Show List
- Chelsea Art Galleries
- Gallery Guide New York/New Jersey
- Thinking About Art
- Militant Art Bitch
- Stuck in L.A.
- Edward_ Winkleman
- Steven LaRose
- M. Cameron Boyd
- Woospace! Woo!
- James W. Bailey
Artists
- Tracy Helgeson
- Walter Darby Bannard
- Tim Folzenlogen
- Cory Marc
- François Dubeau
- Mark Kostabi
- James Wolanin
- Audrey Kawasaki
- Timothy Mutzel
- Stephanie Lee Jackson
Jerry Saltz
archives
| Javascript Tree Menu |
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
Into the Woods
The invitations have been coming on strong lately for some reason. The summer is supposed to be the art world's off season, but suddenly everyone's found my e-mail address; maybe it's because of all the group shows, which means more artists, which means more people trying to get obscure bloggers to write about them. I've tried to keep up with the invitations but I missed a couple of shows, alas. Then again, one of them was from a photographer, and he said he liked my blog, which leads me to believe he's never read it, because anyone who's read my blog knows how I feel about photography. On the other hand, his photos were of naked women, so maybe he does read my blog.
Not only are there invitations coming in but I'm also finding shows to go to. This time, I picked Elisabeth Condon because she commented on Stephanie's blog and her work looked interesting online. Her paintings are part of a group show, Into the Woods, at the Arsenal in Central Park. Elisabeth didn't publicize her show or ask anyone to go; I just followed along from her comment to find her site, was intrigued, and decided to go.
Elisabeth Condon, Woods, 2007, oil and acrylic on linen, 24x24 inches
Kurt Lightner, Settle, 2007, acrylic, collage on panel, 55.5x72 inches
The best work in the show, however, belongs to Kim Krans. I couldn't find a Website for her or any images online of the works in this show, which is a shame, because it's really excellent. If I just list her materials here, you might be horrified -- ink, gouache, spray paint, glitter, fur and glue on paper -- but she puts all of it together beautifully. In fact these three small works are mostly gouache on black paper, where the paint contrasting with the ground is meant to evoke the bark of a tree stump. The other ingredients are just, we might say, supporting players. Each piece is small, maybe 11 by 14 inches, maybe 14 by 18 -- I'm not a great judge of size -- but lyrical in its abstraction from reality. Each one isn't so much abstract, actually, as distilled; the essence of tree stump, with all the years of treeness, and all the sense of decay and renewal wrapped up in that. While all the other pieces in the show seemed to be there because they incidentally involved trees -- the show is called Into the Woods, after all -- only Kim's pieces really address the idea of trees, the importance of trees, and the impermanence of those seemingly most permanent of plants.
I wanted to talk to Elisabeth, to let her know I'd come to her show, and to Kim, to whisper that I liked her paintings best, but none of the women handing out drinks could tell me who was who, or even where the bathroom was. I didn't feel up to introducing myself to random people, so instead I left, and in honor of Central Park and the trees, took the long walk along 59th Street back to the bus station.
Labels: Elisabeth Condon, Kim Krans, Kurt Lightner
But it's nice to see landscapes again - maybe summer makes people more appreciative.
The Lightner looks more conventional to me, but yeah probably more consistent, more assured over all.
Was the Krans also landscape?
Kim's paintings weren't landscapes except loosely. They were really closer to still lifes. Each tree stump -- I think all three were tree stumps, if memory serves -- sort of stood or floated on its own in a space created by a spray-painted atmospheric background.
I really wish there were JPEGs of those somewhere. They're hard to describe.
Shocked at how the work is perceived here! So dismissive!
Draftsmanship, skill, facility: these are not ends in themselves. I'm seeking the sensation of place from my inner core: not an externalized language; oh, sure, snippets but the whole thing, no.
Place is the contingency. These paintings come from Brooklyn and Saratoga Springs: places that make me reach for the oil, in tandem with acrylic, to create a world of sensation more than form.
Ming Fay and I have a two-person show near the Arsenal at 16 E 77th through 7/11.
This is the first time someone said a jpeg of my work looks better than the work itself. I simply cannot disagree more, though I do have a great photographer.
Well, CR, many thanks for coming to the opening. The Arsenal has a wonderful tradition of opening up the roof and it is a lovely experience of the park, at tree level. Had we met it would have been nice to chat there.
Best wishes,
Elisabeth Condon
-EC
With all due respect EC, did not mean to sound dismissive about any of the work. I would hardly bother commenting if I didn't think the work was worth the effort.
Just callin' 'em like I see 'em!
If anyone heads uptown next week do see my work at Lesley Heller (M-F 11-6) - next week is the last week of the show, in which I have ten works. There's a video that features the show on http://www.lesleyheller.com
BTW Kim Krans is represented by D'Amelio Terras in NY and Wendy Cooper in Chicago.
When I first received the painting, I experienced the overpainting as a sort of intrusion on the space of the work. I had the thought that it pulled my eye more than I wanted it to.
Now, having lived with the painting for several months, I have an entirely different experience of it. The overpainting neither competes with nor distracts from the fabulous flowing colors and shapes underneath.
What I see now are layers of space and relationship far more complex and nuanced than that of underpainting and overpainting. In close physical proximity with the work on a daily basis (it hangs over my desk), the painting seems to shimmer and shift. The overall composition, the dominant red and blue splashes, seem to move back and forward in space, revealing, concealing, distorting, and making sense of other elements of the work.
The painting I fell in love with as a jpeg was beautiful. The painting I own is an experience, sometimes beautiful, sometimes haunting, sometimes even threatening.
To reduce Condon's vocabulary to under- and over-painting and to the use of pours versus line is a natural response on first encounter. But with time and intimacy, her vocabulary reveals itself to be infinitely more nuanced.
Elisabeth, you use a brush pen also. I've got a Kuretake. I love it.
Pentel Pocket Brush Pen
Best,
Matthew Rose / Paris, France
http://www.youtube.com/user/mistahcoughdrop
though I have very little to base this on.
Sadly, I'm not emperor of the universe.
But at which point, we're not really talking about art anymore. So as artists we might as well just shrug and go back to looking hard and terying to explain what we see.
I wish we, as a culture, could figure out a better way of redistributing income and supporting things like TV and blogs and magazines than advertising, which is pernicious and inefficient. But right now this seems to be what we're stuck with.
But that's how they ripped/rip off Google - by pumping up their aggregate or net hit stats with bogus non-blogs contributing their hits....
Finally the whole thing just looked so UG I moved over to Blogspot and decided I'd rather have a clean, good-looking site that I maintained just for fun, rather than a grubby one than really didn't contribute anything for all the ads.
And even though I am unemployed.
You'll notice also the ads stay, even if 'your stats' don't warrant payment for them...
Ever since, I've been extremely suspicious of all these 'free' hit counters available on the web as well. I ran different ones at different times just to sample consistency and was amazed/appalled at the variation - my stats could range between around 400 hits a day and just over 100 depending on 'counter' brand.
Yeah the web! - forget about the dot com thing though, it's all a dot con thing.
<< Home
