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| Andy Coolquitt, ruby44 From ga Age Over 60 Gender Female How often do you shop at jcpenney? FrequentlyRecommends this product? No (detail), 2013, Fabric, metal, electric cable, and lightbulbs |
Andy Coolquitt: somebody place - Lisa Cooley
A new collection of works by the agreeable Coolquitt that
seems a bit over placed but still has the quirky, nice guy quality that makes
his work so easy to digest. Less
color, more textures and a general sense of quick experimentation of material
to form were refreshing to see although this drive for variety gave the show an
all over feeling that may have been better served if edited more
carefully. If you like Coolquitt,
this is a safe bet and if you really-really like Coolquitt, this may seem a bit
too vague. Perhaps this is just an excising of possibilities though and the
next time there will be more focus to allow that tender subtly of his work to
shine through.
Heather Guertin, Development - Brennen & Griffin
Guertin’s first solo show at this gallery is uniform in
scale and has a feeling of direct reference to abstract paintings’ past. Darker in hue and more opaque then
previous works this new series is lacking in a luster that makes Guertin’s
brush and use of color so exciting.
Use of eye forms were distracting to this viewer but perhaps that’s just
a simple matter of taste. Linked
in video from her upcoming book, “Not Yet Titles, Cambodia” displaying typing
of text from this novel seemed disconnected and perhaps unnecessary. Guertin is a painters painter and she
proves that every effort at it is accumulative, a process and there is an
appreciated beauty in that alone even if the current product seems distracted.
Eternal September, Bradley Kronz, Jason Matthew Lee, Mary Ann
Aitken,
Oto
Gillen,
Valerie
Keane - Tomorrow
This new space is doing some of the same that usually occurs at
small new spaces in the Lower East Side but it was still a nice show to peak
into and to measure the future vibe of this gallery. This group show, with a conceptually wide theme, had all the
things of success, bright lights, and heavy emphasis on the monochrome, mostly
in the black, white, and beige variety.
This was the only show seen last night though that had me asking, “who’s
work is that?” to a pair of lovely paper, collage, minor assemblaged works by
Bradley Kronz. They were very nice
indeed. That being said, there is something to look forward to in Tomorrow’s
upcoming shows, even a little bit of surprise and visual freshness is better
then none.
Darja Bajagić, C6ld C6mf6rt - Room East
A solo exhibition of this
intriguing artist who has a love it or hate it aesthetic that incorporates
found, often times pornographic, images with a system of bounding forms, in
this case it is black squares and rectangles to
create hidden narrativized possibilities.
There is a calculated coolness in these works that may possibly haze
over actual content but it is true to say that these look very different then
what most art being made currently looks like, and that is something to chew
over. There is a crudeness to the
material uses that doesn’t seem to be by choice and that seems slightly
unforgivable in the case of Bajagić’s possibilities to meet her potential. Someone give this artist a large budget
and then let’s see what she can really do.
