STEVEN ALEXANDER J O U R N A L: Svenja Deininger

27.1.23

Some Memorable Shows from 2021-2022

The past two plus years have been challenging in so many ways -- no travel, no restaurants, no openings, no hugs -- to mention only a few of the more minor Covid losses....Nevertheless, some important shows happened in New York, and I was able to get to a small fraction of them. Here are images from a few of the standouts. My sincere regrets to all my friends and colleagues whose shows I missed.

Jacqueline Humphries at Greene Naftale

Joan Mitchell at David Zwirner

Richard Pousette-Dart at Pace

Thornton Willis at David Richard

Michelle Stuart at Lelong

Ron Gorchov at Vito Schnabel

David Diao at Postmasters

Mary Obering at Bortolami

Frank Bowling at Hauser & Wirth

Svenja Deininger at Maryanne Boesky

Brice Marden at Gagosian

Maja Ruznic at Karma

Terry Winters at Matthew Marks

Jasper Johns at the Whitney Museum

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.