STEVEN ALEXANDER J O U R N A L: Superb Painters

Showing posts with label Superb Painters. Show all posts

15.8.15

Superb Painters: SVENJA DEININGER

Svenja Deininger, Untitled, 2012, 28 x 21 cm , oil on canvas

Svenja Deininger was born in Vienna, and still lives and works there. She studied with Albert Oehlen at the Kunstakadamie Dusseldorf, and shows mostly in Europe. She is represented by Marianne Boesky in New York, and will have a show there in October 2015.

One of the most striking aspects of Deininger's work is her sensitivity to the nuances of her materials -- her ability to achieve a wonderful variety of surface and edge within a highly reduced vocabulary. She does this with utmost subtlety, employing soft color contrasts, and shapes and lines that both adhere to and slide away from the grid. Her facture reads like collage, and indeed her paintings seem to be constructed similarly, with the slippages that occur at the edges of shapes offering dynamic punch. Some of her recent work has become a bit more complex and assertive -- perhaps sacrificing some of the delicacy and the brittleness that I find especially beautiful -- but still remarkably sensual. I look forward to her October show with much interest.

Svenja Deininger, Untitled, 2012, 65 x 50 cm, oil on canvas

Svenja Deininger, Untitled, 2012, 28 x 21 cm, oil on canvas

Svenja Deininger, Untitled, 2013, 28 x 21 cm, oil on canvas

Svenja Deininger, Untitled, 2015, 40 x 45 cm, oil on canvas

Svenja Deininger, Untitled, 2015, 50 x 40 cm, oil on canvas

Images from gallery websites

14.8.13

Superb Painters: EMILY BERGER

Emily Berger, Untitled, 2013, 24 x 20 inches, oil on linen

Emily Berger lives and works in Brooklyn. In her modest scale paintings and works on paper, she employs the most direct means to explore nuances of surface, movement and color. Layering and scraping, working wet and dry, thin and thick, she infuses each piece with concentrated emotional resonances that are like waves of sound, cycles of thought, visible histories. Her ability to sustain focused intensity within her simple program of horizontal striations has created a body of varied, deeply felt and starkly beautiful works.

Emily Berger, Untitled, 2011, 30 x 22 inches, ink on paper

Emily Berger, Untitled, 2012, 20 x 18 inches, oil on wood

Emily Berger, Untitled, 2012, 50 x 42 inches, oil on linen

Emily Berger, Untitled, 2013, 18 x 14 inches, oil on wood

Emily Berger, Untitled, 2013, 22 x 18 inches, oil on wood

Images from the artist's website.

18.7.13

Superb Painters: OTIS JONES

Otis Jones, Five Squares One Empty, 2011, 16 x 16 x 4 inches, acrylic on canvas

Otis Jones is a native of Texas, and still lives & works in Dallas. He makes paintings that are sensual objects constructed of paint & canvas & thick wood stretchers. The surfaces and exposed edges are invested with the history of laborious accumulation of marks and scrapes. The configurations are straightforward formal situations that also resonate with metaphoric clarity. These paintings convey an organic material beauty, and a factual simplicity that is seductive and timeless.

Otis Jones, Four Red Squares, 2011, 39 x 39 x 4 inches, acrylic on canvas

Otis Jones, Pale Yellow Rectangle with Grey Border, 2011, 59 x 56 x 4 inches, acrylic on canvas

Otis Jones, Blue Square with Two White Squares, 2011, 16 x 16 x 4 inches, acrylic on canvas

Otis Jones, Black Rectangle with Four Red Rectangles, 2011, 80 x 36 x 4 inches, acrylic on canvas

Otis Jones, Two Black Circles, 2011, 60 x 42 inches, mixed media on paper

Otis Jones, Black Rectangle with White Lines, 2009, 71 x 65 x 3 inches, acrylic on linen

Otis Jones, Black Line with White Line, 45 x 2 inches, mixed media on canvas

Images from the Holly Johnson Gallery website

11.6.13

Superb Painters: RODNEY DICKSON

Rodney Dickson, Untitled, 2009, 94 x 60 inches, oil on canvas

Rodney Dickson was born in Northern Ireland, and now lives and works in Brooklyn. His massive paintings are accumulations of multiple encounters between the painter and his materials -- repainting the whole surface with each new approach. Some paintings are completed over the course of a year, others more quickly. All are invested with an existential intensity and a material directness that goes to the heart of painting's potency and its ancient origins. Added bonus -- they smell great for decades.

Rodney Dickson, Untitled, 2009, 94 x 60 inches, oil on canvas

Rodney Dickson, Untitled, 2010, 94 x 60 inches, oil on canvas

Rodney Dickson, Untitled, 2012, 94 x 60 inches, oil on canvas

Rodney Dickson, Untitled, 2011, 94 x 60 inches, oil on canvas

Rodney Dickson, Untitled, 2012, 94 x 60 inches, oil on canvas

Rodney Dickson, installation view, 2012, Gasser & Grunert, NYC

Images from the Gasser & Grunert website.

28.5.13

Superb Painters: KAREN BAUMEISTER

Karen Baumeister, Little Pink, 2012, 8 x 8 inches, acrylic on canvas

Karen Baumeister lives and works in Philadelphia. Her paintings are compact packages of color presence. Although some of her pieces are larger scale, it is the smallest paintings that seem to deliver the the most potent resonance -- achieving an exquisite balance of opacity and translucence, of surface incident and activation of surrounding space. They simultaneously absorb and radiate, creating charged and dynamic color space situations.

Karen Baumeister, Little Pink, 2012

Karen Baumeister, Blue Grays, 2012, 12 x 12 inches, acrylic on canvas

Karen Baumeister, Red Grays, 2012, 12 x 12 inches, acrylic on canvas

Karen Baumeister, Everchanging, 2010, 9 x 8 inches, acrylic on canvas

Karen Baumeister, Everchanging, 2010

Karen Baumeister, Stout, 2011, 12 x 12 inches, acrylic on canvas

Karen Baumeister, Stout, 2011

Images from the artist's website.

21.5.13

Superb Painters: JULIA ROMMEL

Julia Rommel, Big Soda, 2012, 12 x 11 inches, oil & wax on linen

Julia Rommel was born in Maryland, and now lives and works in Brooklyn. She attempts the near-impossible -- an original and deeply felt approach to monochrome painting -- and arrives at works of such delicate materiality and color as to be utterly disarming. Recently, her process has expanded to removing the canvas from its stretcher and re-stretching it on a slightly larger format to reveal the imprinted edges of the previous dimension, adding a more assertive physicality. Earlier works featured raw linen with the most subtle of interventions.

Here is an excerpt from an artist's statement that accompanied her show at Bureau last year:

"If I am drawn to moody landscapes, why don't I just paint them? I allow myself to do so little. Clean, smooth, spare, cool, and hard. Impossible for a softy like me. But allow any more in and I'm telling you my slow sappy stories. I know better."