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

THORNTON WILLIS at Elizabeth Harris

Thornton Willis, step over, under and through, 2016, oil on canvas, 70 x 61 inches

Thornton Willis is presenting a diverse and powerful group of recent paintings at Elizabeth Harris Gallery (through May 7, 2016). As with every new body of work, here Willis continues to push his paintings into new territory, constantly refining and expanding his vocabulary, while also releasing himself from his own rules and assumptions. The most distinctive new development is a sort of dissolution of the structures, so that rather than being contained or cropped by the edges of the rectangle, in the newest work, the shapes and configurations float in a continuous field of color. The effect is one of buoyancy, of hovering in a constantly shifting space. There is a translucence created by the intensity of the color field and the open placement of various sized rectangles within it, heightening the ambiguity and mystery of the configuration. The color ranges from high key, almost acidic, to soft pastels, and is utterly intuitive with no apparent system other than the internal poetry of the painting. As always the surfaces are juicy, with an offhanded and direct approach to the paint which belies the precision of the compositions. These are masterful works by an artist who has achieved a radical freedom.

Thornton Willis, step around, 2015, oil on canvas, 77 x 61 inches

Thornton Willis, spin step, 2016, acrylic on canvas, 77 x 61 inches

Thornton Willis, totem #1, 2014, oil on canvas, 77 x 61 inches

Thornton Willis, three painters, 2014, oil on canvas, 77 x 61 inches

Thornton Willis, impingement, 2015, oil on canvas, 77 x 61 inches

Thornton Willis, totem #2, 2014, oil on canvas, 86 x 70 inches

Thornton Willis, carousel, 2014, oil on canvas, 77 x 61 inches

Thornton Willis, three soldiers, 2015, oil on canvas, 70 x 61 inches

(Images from the gallery website)

Thornton Willis at Elizabeth Harris

Thornton Willis, Freedom Rings, 2009, 97 x 70 inches, oil on canvas

Painters in New York always look forward to seeing new Thornton Willis paintings, and his new show at Elizabeth Harris (through April 23) offers proof that Thornton is as prolific as ever. These are fresh energetic paintings that present playful improvisations on the grid, using vaguely architectural forms in a constantly shifting conversation with the rectangle. Limiting his devices to horizontal and vertical lines, and his color to primaries and secondaries, the emphasis is on a kind of stream of consciousness shapemaking, building complex compositions of planes in spatial flux. Much more flexible and open than the "Lattice" series from his last exhibition, these new configurations have a contingent or unresolved quality that brings them to life, like perpetual works in progress.

Thornton Willis, Billboard, 2011, 79 x 61 inches, oil on canvas

Thornton Willis, Installation View

Images from the gallery website.

COLOR-TIME-SPACE at Lohin Geduld & Janet Kurnatowski

Kim Uchiyama,Untitled, 2009, 19 x 14 inches, oil on canvas

Joanne Freeman, Bent, 2009, 20 x 25 inches, oil & wax on canvas

Acknowledged affinities between painting and music must surely be prehistoric in origin -- being, along with movement/dance, among the most elemental of human impulses. Of course abstract painting has always been talked about in musical terms, specifically aligned with music as a parallel language. This analogy has mostly been perpetuated not by critics but by artists themselves because indeed the process of manipulating the formal dynamics of the two ineffable substances, color and sound, is virtually the same.

The postulation of abstract painting as a "musical" idiom is the theme of two simultaneous shows under one title, Color-Time-Space, at Lohin Geduld in Chelsea and Janet Kurnatowski in Brooklyn through October 10. Curated by painters Joanne Freeman and Kim Uchiyama, and drawn primarily, but not entirely, from the stables of the two galleries, this is a lively and yes, musical show of small abstract, mostly geometric, paintings. Featuring the work of 13 painters, each offering a distinct illumination of the theme, the show is more than anything a resounding affirmation of the vitality of abstract painting. Some of the many outstanding works include a reprise of new Thornton Willis paintings that we saw at Elizabeth Harris last season, the funky configurations and lustrous surfaces of Laurie Fendrich, Julie Gross' exquisite color and rhythmic circle motifs, and juicy open-ended gestural works by James Biederman. For me, the big surprise was the work of Kazimira Rachfal.

Kazimira Rachfal, in a certain sense (iva), 2009, 18 x 10 inches, oil on canvas

Kazimira Rachfal, so to speak (iva), 2009, 17 x 7 3/4 inches, oil on canvas

A bit more stark than the other work in the show, her small abstractions are finely tuned poetic configurations in which the perfectly proportioned shapes, the layered oil surface, and the verticle format engage to form a sort of perpetual, slightly shifting tension -- like a long, deeply resonant, modulated hum.

THORNTON WILLIS at Elizabeth Harris

Thornton Willis, Conversion, 2008, 97 x 70 inches, oil on canvas

Thornton Willis, Conversion, 2008, Detail

Thornton Willis, Black Warrior, 2008, 70 x 59 inches, oil on canvas

Immediately upon entering the new Thornton Willis exhibition at Elizabeth Harris through April 18, anyone who is a lover of painting will inevitably feel a rush of recognition -- that increasingly rare sense of being in the presence of an authentic voice. At once familiar and challenging, this rich new body of work is like the visual equivalent of a great Muddy Waters record that takes the traditional 12-bar blues, strips it down, opens it up, and invests it with an abundance of guts and lived wisdom. Now well into his 70s, Willis is in peak form, achieving here an important breakthrough that exudes momentum and clarity. Compared with the complexity of his previous triangular cluster configurations, the new paintings, which revisit a configuration he touched upon 30 years ago, have a much simpler pictorial space consisting of interlacing horizontal and vertical color bands on a solid color field. By simplifying the image, Thornton has cleared the way for a new emphasis on color and material -- acidic and nuanced color relations glowing from luscious layered oil surfaces with plenty of ragged edges and pentimenti. There is a lively tension between the physicality of the surface and the openness, almost breeziness of the space, with each structural deviation and color modulation or incident producing an electric charge. And just like a deep blues, steeped in a long expressive tradition, these works evoke and celebrate both the difficulty and the exhilaration of the process -- the feeling of life.

THORNTON WILLIS

Thornton Willis, Countercluster, 2007, 24" x 18", oil on canvas

Just got a nice note from Thornton Willis, one of my favorite painters. I’ve had one of his announcement images on my studio wall for a long time, and I see his work every chance I get. It is the real deal – pretense factor zero – as direct as it gets. Each painting is a record of a moment in his perpetual shaping process – intuitively building spatial relationships out of clusters of triangular shapes. The color interactions are simple but intense, and the frequent use of a dark outline suspends and separates the colors somewhat like stained glass. The paint is applied quickly with plenty of revision and overlap and other incidents making the surfaces tactile and alive. The effect Willis achieves, both within each painting and in the larger body of his recent work, is of a state of constant flux – toward and away, in and out, around and through – pure pictorial dynamics, infused with the breath of life.