LOUISE FISHMAN at Cheim & Read

Louise Fishman, Afloat in Mystic Blue, 2012, 51 x 30 inches, oil on jute

Louise Fishman, Afloat in Mystic Blue, detail

It is a much deserved big month for Louise Fishman, with a magnificent 50 year retrospective at the Tilton Gallery (although it should be a more inclusive museum show), and this knock-out exhibition of recent paintings at Cheim & Read (through October 27, 2012). The new work, which grew in part out of a recent residency in Venice, presents a focused palette of blues and greens and pinks, ostensibly inspired by her strolls around the waterways taking photographs and soaking up the history. But there is nothing soft and nostalgic in these paintings. Each work presents the evidence of a direct physical encounter between the artist and her medium, with Fishman's trademark rawness ever present. Great swaths of oil paint are slathered on, scraped off and pushed around to create undulating webs of blunt gestures that feel both haphazard and exactly right. As with much of Louise's work in recent years, the color white is the unifying force here -- both applied white and the white of untouched primer -- infusing the space with a shimmering translucence that breathes and flows. And although there is no shortage of angst and agitation in this exhibition, there is a distinct note of reverie as well.

Louise Fishman, Zero at the Bone, 2010, 70 x 60 inches, oil on linen

Louise Fishman, Zero at the Bone, detail

Louise Fishman, Assunta, 2010, 70 x 60 inches, oil on linen

Louise Fishman, Assunta, detail

Louise Fishman, Postscript, 2010, 50 x 29 inches, oil on linen

A Great LOUISE FISHMAN Painting at Lennon Weinberg

Louise Fishman, Magma, 1989, 65 x 54 inches, oil on linen

This stunning Louise Fishman painting is in an exhibition called Before Again at Lennon Weinberg in Chelsea through November 28. In addition to this and one other beauty by Fishman, the show features some marvelous paintings by Joan Mitchell, Harriet Korman, Melissa Meyer, Jill Moser, and Denyse Thomasos.

LOUISE FISHMAN at Cheim & Read

Louise Fishman, Geography, 2007, 72 x 65 inches, acrylic on canvas

Louise Fishman, Geography (Detail)

Louise Fishman, Top, 2009, 20 x 10 inches, oil on linen

Louise Fishman, Fire and Ice, 2009, 66 1/4 x 38 3/4 inches, oil on jute

The first word that comes to mind regarding the new paintings by Louise Fishman at Cheim & Read (through May 2) is Fearless. Long regarded as among of the most uncompromising painters in her generation, Louise has achieved with this show a magnificent group of recent works that are at once aggressive and vulnerable, luscious and down right nasty. Unlike virtually every other painter I know, she has over the years seemed to systematically rid herself of "signature" or programmatic approaches to painting. It is evident here that for her, each new canvas is an entirely new and open proposition, presenting the opportunity or the necessity to re-invent the process every time. These paintings are overwhelmingly visceral -- big hunks of paint, poured, scraped, scumbled, layered in bold mostly architectonic structures. Her color is weighty and brooding with moments of punchy contrast and light -- beautiful but never pretty. There is within each work an embodiment of exuberant raw struggle -- a precarious balance between cognition and surrender -- a total disinterest in finish -- a total engagement with that which is utterly real.