In a psychological context, confabulation refers to obvious falsehoods invented by individuals to fill gaps in their memory. In art it’s more nuanced.
Peter Malone
A lifelong resident of NYC and environs, Peter Malone is an exhibiting artist, a retired assistant professor of art, an involved grandfather, and an amateur musician. He really has no time to write art reviews ... but does so anyway because he can't help himself.
In These Paintings, Nature Is Both Imagined and Real
Julian Hatton’s landscape paintings demonstrate how liberating a painting genre can be when approached with inventiveness, humor, and intelligence.
From a Dot, Joseph Kosuth Finds Infinite Possibilities
The Kosuth-curated ‘Dot, Point, Period’ suggests the endless possibilities of the exhibition’s pinpoint focus — the small black dot.
A Young Painter Burlesques the Role of Outsider Artist
Mystified as ever by the rise of Josh Smith whose work resembles the efforts of a tipsy van Gogh in an art bar, seeing this show, my inner critic is confronted with mostly disagreeable choices.
Why Landscape Painting Is Thriving in the 21st Century
Art critic Barry Schwabsky’s new book presents a global survey of contemporary landscape painting.
The Late Robert Morris’s Final, Political Exhibition
Morris, who died last week, left us with this intelligent, stimulating, and typically open-ended show.
Giving Bruce Nauman a Makeover
Disappearing Acts finds a balance between the harmlessly nonsensical and the strangely aggressive parts of the artist’s body of work, thus creating a more palatable Bruce Nauman.
Painter Rackstraw Downes’s Methodical Vision to Extract Poetry from the Mundane
As many artists develop visual ideas through fits of revision and reworking, the consistency in the evolution of paintings in Rackstraw Downes’s current exhibition is remarkable.
The Luminous Effects of a Light and Space Painter
It is Mary Corse’s use of the humble paint brush that allows the viewer to become sensitive to how light is dispersed in the space they occupy.
Immigrant Stories Dock at Governors Island in Two Exhibitions
Artists in both exhibitions were inspired by the harbor itself and how it has been a witness to immigrant narratives.
Urs Fischer and Gagosian Bank on a Big Pop-Up Show on Fifth Avenue
The artist’s massive aluminum sculpture “Things” commands a former bank space in Midtown Manhattan.
Deciphering Inka Essenhigh’s Blurred Visions
Essenhigh reveals a freedom that resonates with all manner of fusion: of figure and design, of abstraction and narrative, of sentiment and humor, and more generally, of ambitious painting with a readable narrative.