MARTHA EDELHEIT: NAKED CITY, PAINTINGS FROM 1965–80 : Eric Firestone Gallery

Martha Edelheit’s “Naked City” sees the new yorkers of the 70s in an idealistic nude fantasy. The stylized figures sit in an exaggeratedly lush city where plants and nude figures take center stage. The city is the central theme looming in the background, or sometimes simply alluded to in the edges of the painting. Most figures don’t know they are being looked at and the ones that do seem disinterested, these paintings have an apathy to being observed making the figures just another prop in the paintingThere are some paintings that stray from the city part of the show and are more abstract and some works see figures placed in a Southwest environment or on silk blankets. All the figures have a strangeness in the way they occupy space but the nude Eden-New York juxtaposition feels considered while the rest seem collaged and out of place. The figures are the strongest part of this work. The use of the nude in non-narrative fashion is reminiscent of Philip Pearlstein’s work. Sylvia Sleigh or Alice Neel’s work is another reference point of an artist dealing with similar themes. Edelheit’s work is exploratory, not sticking to one setting, and the figures carry much of the visual interest, the works focusing on the city hold the most interest. 

Aidan Lapp

  

Andrea Geyer: plein-air

Unpacking larger complexities of fascist ideologies lies ahead in the Southwest German forest Andrea Geyer creates in plein-air. The multimedia experience combines text, photography, and video. never yet (2023), her slowly panning video installation, inspired by the German forests of her childhood, creates a perspective as if we were standing among the large forest trees. The projects establish a calmness mixed with an unsettling feeling that a darker truth looms ahead. The accompanying voiceover of Geyer’s experience as a queer teenager growing up, juxtaposed with her mother’s history during WWII, adds a rich layer to the installation. In the adjacent collage of print and online news stories, plein-air (2023) builds on the connection between Geyer’s personal history with those of political issues, such as facism and the patriarchy. She uses the past to reframe the present, with the news articles alluding to the exploitation of nature, and suggesting doing so will impact our future and our environment’s as well. The works on view seem to be referring to when the forest had been exploited by white supremacists to justify constructs of Social Darwinism and binary gender norms. She questions the role of today’s social construct, capitalism and facism in U.S. culture and everyday life. With an extended visit, viewers can begin to completely understand the impact of these political and social ideologies.

- Rose

Jennifer Bartlett: Works on Paper

Viewing Jennifer Bartlett’s solo show Works on Paper, 1970-1973 at Marianne Boesky Gallery, it was as if I had happened upon a conspiracy theorist’s red-stringed evidence board. The artist is working out a grand idea that is truly understood only by her. The show features 77 small paper works from early in the artist’s career that explore color and form in Bartlett’s recognizably minimalist visual language. 

Austere, yet surprisingly hypnotizing, Bartlett’s array of deeply systematic drawings stand at a crossroads of abstraction and representation, nearing the illustration of objects in space while remaining distinctly non-objective. Bartlett's house maps depict rows of tiny, colorful houses created from a few vertical and horizontal lines and two diagonals to show the triangular roof. The artist includes one-word notes delineating the locations of various elements of the house like the doors and bushes. The house drawings are reminiscent of rudimentary architectural diagrams when viewed up close, yet upon taking a few steps backwards and looking again, the same drawings feel as non-representational as the artist’s purely abstract compositions. 

Using readymade graph paper, Bartlett achieves a level of stylistic uniformity that exposes her rigid process. Unlike her 1976 work Rhapsody, which spans 153 feet and contains an extraordinary variety of painting styles and color, these works on paper feel intentionally restrictive. Nonetheless, seeing these small, early works helps contextualize the massive, wall sized works that Bartlett would go on to make. 

Katherine Bernhardt: I'm Bart Simpson, who the hell are you?

    Bernhardt’s show at Canada invites the viewer into an acid pipe dream world of neons soaked in 80’s nostalgia. Viewers are greeted by bright yellow half-moons of character Bart Simpson, as well as glowing mushrooms, toilet paper, cigarette butts. Even ET, Garfield, and Pink Panther are featured. Bright pinks, oranges and yellows splashed and soaked into canvas against dark backgrounds evokes strong references to 80’s childhood of arcades, laser tag and unnatural food dyes. Bernhardt plays with her format of oval moon Bart on canvas with a 7.5 foot tall wooden cut out sculptural painting of Bart mooning the viewer out in our world. This particular piece brings the character off the canvas to confront viewers while maintaining a two dimensional nature. The pushing of scale is explored even more in the main gallery with the largest piece in the show, which takes up an entire wall and is full of all aforementioned characters. This piece really shows what Bernhardt is all about: paint. She is masterful at letting paint bleed, run, mix and glow. The exploration of the medium through this subject matter of icon Bart Simpson, a true representation of rebellion, is very refreshing. The show cuts loose from the tightness that can be brought to painting and is a must see. Bernhardt is majorly successful with this body of work and brings a strong bold voice to the contemporary painting scene.

Neil Welliver - Selected Works by the Alexandre Gallery

     The Welliver Woods are unlike any other, distinct not only in technique and composition but in the energy that perfuses from the canvas.  This energy is kinetic, perpetual, and psychedelic: you are listening rather than looking- melting into the scene in front of you.  The Alexandre Gallery presented 25 paintings spanning three decades of the artist's career.  Each painting is large- square panels 72 inches tall- and stands alone on the wall.  HOwever, his paintings don’t appear on the wall at all, but rather doorways to another world. 

    Quotes posted between the artwork provided helpful insight into the method and priorities Welliver had when creating a painting.  In one quote he denies having a method at all, relating himself to de Kooning's improvisational approach. Welliver usually worked en plein air, hiking through the woods “loaded down with easel, canvas, brushes, oil, thinner, and tubes of color, to the spot where he will paint.”  There he would stay for hours creating a study, which he will then use to make a large drawing before and then a large painting.  His final paintings contain very few layers; every stroke stands alone and unmuddied.  Even the smallest blade of grass in Marsh Shadow works in harmony among the thousands of others to create a story of light and flow.

Renata Bonfanti: The Art of Weaving

Bringing together mechanical work and handmade craft, textile designer Renata Bonfanti weaves a variety of colorful wall hangings that capture viewers' attention. The works, which consist of nine large scale woven pieces, cover the gallery space in warm gradient tones that create a comfortable environment. These brightly colored wall pieces are eye-catching from a distance due to their bold, simple shapes, but upon closer inspection, or incredibly complex, and their weaving techniques and textured materiality consisting of raw wool, linen and meraklon. The precision of Bonfanti’s designs are  impeccable, and mimic the density of a modern day city skyline. 

Bonfanti’s work demands attention and questions the role of women in artmaking. By revamping the traditional rug and making a soft sculpture wall hanging with sharp architectural features, she transforms something originally viewed as feminine into something more masculine. Bonfanati proves that the craft done by woman’s hand is important and especially cannot be replaced by machine, and by doing so, insists that woman’s crafts have an essential role within society. The creativity and ingenuity needed to design these pieces have been created through the lens of someone who continuously proves that woman's craft is essential. She does so with her innate ability to create mathematically complex designs that cannot be manufactured by machine or easily invented without years of dedication to the craft. Textile works need to be treated with as much dignity and respect as those of traditional fine art.

-Erin Benard

Alex Prager's Part Two: Run at Lehmann Maupin

     One is greeted by a life-size sculpture of a woman getting crushed by a chrome ball when viewing Alex Prager’s Part Two: Run at Lehmann Maupin. The representational nature of the work makes the piece captivating, but the lack of realness is what increased my intrigue. If this woman was getting crushed, there would be blood. Every aspect of the sculpture is hyperreal, but there is no blood to be seen. This piece is a representation of a continuing theme in Prager's work: the everyday disrupted by the nonsensical. Prager's work is digestible and keeps the viewer at a distance by excluding all gore and replacing it with a 1950s aesthetic. The sculpture is a physical representation of a moment in Prager’s film Run, where civilians are being chased by a chrome orb. 
    On the surrounding walls are photographs from the film. Each has the power to stand alone as a still image independent of the film. In one of the stills, Sleep, dozens of people are laying on the ground and the framing of this moment brings to light the absurdity. When watching the film we know that all of these people get up after a couple of moments, but in the photograph time is infinite. Prager, by playing into a sterile aesthetic and absurdity, brings to light how an ordinary day can change into a ludicrous one.