Calling it Faith Ringgold’s “moment to shine,” Janyce Denise Glasper writes about the experience of spending an entire day immersing herself in Faith Ringgold’s detailed expressive works at The New Museum and ACA Galleries. She comments that Ringgold “invested so much in her brave, revolutionary practice. The audience must perform that same duty to her.” Both shows are up until early or mid-June, 2022. Links and more information at the bottom of this post.
Read MoreKate Brock reviews “House and Travels,” paintings by Dona Nelson, Emily Davidson and Zachary Rawe. Though each artist’s painting style and subject matter is distinct, their handling of color and paint reveals their connection: Davidson and Rawe both studied under Nelson at Tyler School of Art, and they all share an interest in breaking down the hidebound categories of “abstraction” and “representation.” Organized by the artists themselves, Kate Brock says this is a “stubborn, delightful group of paintings,” on view at Atelier Art Gallery through April 15th.
Read MoreKate Brock says this rich and complex tpairing of shows at Arcadia invites “dialogue around intergenerational, artistic exchange.” Polly Apfelbaum- maybe best known for her hand-dyed, velvet “fallen paintings”- is is an artist who shows widely; David Ellinger, who was born 42 years before Apfelbaum, was a painter of some renown, of Dutch-German-influenced scenes. He was also an antiquarian and a ‘female impersonator.’ The show, and its documentary materials about Ellinger’s life, explores the intersection of two artists of different generations who never met but whose work seems to be in dialogue.
Read MoreSyd Carpenter’s Farm Bowls are mini-portraits of the farms and people she met on trips through the South. Named after these family farms, the Farm Bowls are “remarkable variations on the same, simple form” says reviewer Andrea Kirsh, who also comments about the “Mother Pins” that “they have stunning ranges of textures, coloring, and forms.” The exhibit is at Rowan University Art Gallery until March 26, 2022.
Read MoreKate Brock has a close encounter with Sarah Gamble’s paintings and drawings, works that Brock says are in the lineage of the “spiritual-abstract” of Hilma af Klint and the surrealism of Leonora Carrington. She also brings up the exoticism of Elvis! “I see Gamble’s kaleidoscopic worlds as an effort toward a speculative realm, wherein the spiritual, the creaturely, astronomical, atomic, and Elvis all bump into each other, and new poetry is formed.” Enjoy this great review, and catch the exhibit at Fleisher-Ollman, up until March 12, 2022.
Read MorePatrick Coué sees the materially-complex paintings by Shwarga Bhattacharjee and calls the works a perfect immersion into a reverie space far away from our “world of constant mediated inputs.” The works are both abstract historical landscapes and topographic maps, that are layered with meanings and feelings, Patrick says.
Read MoreMary Obering’s geometric abstractions glow from the placement of gold leaf on their tops or sides and Andrea Kirsh says they are like nothing else being made today. The work is up at Bortolami through Feb. 26, we recommend you get over and see this under-known artist and her glowing works.
Read MoreUsing hand-bent neon sculptures, artist Alissa Eberle installs a warm, candy-colored electric cavern into a small gallery space at HOT•BED. Our contributor Corey Qureshi’s review plays with the ideas of an intimate space treated with what are typically public and extroverted sign materials, and says the installation will put you in two different moods that feel loose and enjoyable. The show is up til Feb. 19, 2022.
Read MoreDeborah Krieger interviews Kelsey Halliday Johnson, artist and current Executive Director of Portland, Maine’s SPACE (plus former Philly resident/ arts worker/ member of Philly’s DIY-alternative community). Kelsey is enthusiastically dedicated to her role at SPACE, a multi-disciplinary independent maker hub; in particular their grantmaking program, the Kindling Fund.
Read MoreAn installation that resembles the interior of a house frames the multidimensional art of Scout Cartagena. The Afro-Latinx artist’s subjects are the fragility of the body and the slipperiness of identity and memory. There are prints, furniture and an eye-catching tree stump with red-colored glass flames coming out of the top. Corey appreciates the intimate look into the artist’s identity. Go see the show before it closes Nov. 24.
Read MoreCalling some works startling and unnerving, Logan Cryer makes the case for the importance of Mike Cloud’s provocative, Afro-pessimistic multi-layered non-painting paintings. This is a show you should see, Logan says.
Read MoreCorey Qureshi reviews ‘Strange Nature,’ a two-person exhibition of lockdown-inspired paintings by Nancy Mladenoff and Karen Heagle. The show– which Corey says elicits eerie memories of early-pandemic times– is on view (by appointment) through July 29th, at PEEP Projects.
Read MoreCorey Qureshi visits ‘Unfolding,’ a group show of 22 artists, at Atelier Art Gallery. Corey says you’re sure to find something that captures your interest- so check it out before the show closes on July 23, 2021!
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