028. "Exquisite banality"
painting and SCULPTURE to see now.
On Saturday, the day before the blizzard blew into town and heaped a foot of fresh powder on the city, I did a perfect little crawl across Manhattan to see some art. It was a beautiful day, a respite from the cold and the carbon-coated slush that I was determined to enjoy.
My main plan that day was to attend a conversation between New Yorker critic Naomi Fry (whose podcast, Critics at Large, is one of my favorites) and the artist Dike Blair at Karma’s new-ish space in Chelsea.
Arriving a few minutes before the talk began, I circled the gallery, feeling the magnetic pull of certain paintings from across the room. His colors are honest, stark, saturated. He seems to relish in capturing reflections and subtle textures, challenges he deftly tackles with the confidence of someone who has been painting for a long time. Yes, that’s it, he has confidence both in subject matter and composition. There are no gimmicks here. It’s pure painting. Pure obsession with the world. That’s what painting is when it’s good: a portal into how much someone else loves what they see in the world. Not loving the world, per se, but loving the way it can sometimes look. As people, we are so desperate to understand how everyone else sees things. Or, at least, I am. Painting is still our best representation of the vision of another. Not film or photography. I firmly believe in the fidelity of painting.
Blair used the word “fun” several times when discussing the process of painting. We don’t always allow art to be fun. Oftentimes, people want art to be important and serious, they want it to speak for the artist or a group of people the artist belongs to, like an academic paper or a lecture. While I believe in the transformative, communicative power of art, I also believe art deserves the opportunity to be emancipated from the tyranny of discourse. Art deserves the opportunity to be FUN as well as serious. And making art can be FUN as well as laborious.
I’ll stop pontificating and will leave you with my favorite train of thought from the conversation. There is a painting of a green faux-marble elevator that looks like it could be in any midtown building because it IS Blair’s dentist’s office in midtown. The show is full of ordinary sites made extraordinary by the alchemy of one person’s fixed attention. Fry quoted herself telling a friend over drinks that she is “becoming more spiritual with age”, noting that she meant that the banal things in her everyday life have accumulated deeper meaning with time and history. Blair quoted his friend David Humphries’ phrase “exquisite banality” to refer to his choice in subjects.
When I started painting, I struggled to figure out what to paint. I was all desire and no direction. Then I started to move around the world following this tugging sensation I would have, not towards anything especially flashy, but towards what seemed sublime in the every day: a tan fall leaf on the pavement, a dog with a ball, fruit ripening on the kitchen counter, a friend captured in a candid moment, awash in sunlight. Nothing could be worthier than what already exists, what doesn’t have to be chased but what presents itself to us readily.
I highly, highly suggest checking out this show before it closes (Karma, 549 West 26th Street through March 28) - let me know what you think!
“Grand Opening” at Scroll (291 Grand Street, 4th Floor - until 3/14) - I knew I definitely needed to stop by Scroll’s new spot in the Lower East Side, conveniently located above Shu Jiao Fu Zhou, the cash-only dumpling spot that is worth the long line. Wow. What an incredible space—open, airy, the pale wooden floors still smelling of sawdust. 35 artists’ work lines the walls, mostly figurative painting. This is a show I’d want to shop if I were a young collector trying to find accessible pieces to live with. I’m excited for their next hang: an Adèle Aproh solo show, opening March 20th. Her drawing, below, was one of my favorites.
Cathleen Clarke at Margot Samel (295 Church Street - until 3/28) - I’ve been waiting for this show since Clarke’s last solo show with the gallery! I love to look at her paintings. In this body of work, I was particularly interested in setting. Her ghostly forms and vibrant color are unmistakable, but something about the way she is portraying spaces - interiors, mountainscapes, planets in the sky, open windows - feels poignant. The open door or window in Clarke’s work seems to represent an opening to another world, or maybe to our dreams, something like life but not quite, where there are sort of people but not really, things might slip in and out of being.
Anne Truitt at Matthew Marks (523 West 24th Street - until 4/18) - I can admit that I didn’t understand Truitt’s work until I watched a 12-minute documentary called Anne Truitt, Working (2009) directed by Jem Cohen. The film opens with a tight, black-and-white shot of Truitt’s hands, veined and spotted with age, stacking jam jars filled with paint, explaining each color and how they would “zoom” “sing” and “lift” with as much authority as a physicist explaining gravity. I promise, you’ve never heard anyone talk about color like this. It’s a real treat to watch ahead of visiting this show.
A snippet of the voiceover, which I adore:
“Wish I could say how much I love them. But I guess, the work says that. Happy life it is, being artist. So what if you don’t have any money and nobody pays attention and blah, blah? It’s a privilege, isn’t it?”
Robert Gober at Matthew Marks (522 West 22nd Street - until 4/18) - The brilliance of this show, in my opinion, is the contrast between the enigmatic works Gober himself made (the sculptures in the front of the gallery) and the straight-forward, wholesome, accessible paintings he curated in the back room. Something about it all just demonstrated a belief in art that felt truly profound while I was there.
I have always appreciated Gober’s ability to balance formalism and conceptualism—his work is so visually captivating that there is something to glean at the surface level, but plenty to dissect conceptually if that’s your game. And I don’t think there’s a wrong interpretation, here. I think these sculptures are assembled like Rorschach tests, designed to make your mind race but not in one particular direction.
Ron Nagle at Matthew Marks (526 West 22nd Street - until 4/18) - Nagle’s sculptures are typically displayed like this, in a room full of plinths, each bearing a small and unique ceramic piece with a distinct personality. The gallery describes them as “intimate”, and that’s exactly what they are, requiring and rewarding a close viewing. Talk about FUN art, I always smile when I see Nagle’s work. Some of them are funny. Each of them is special.
Happy hopping! xx