Posted inArt

Scar Tissue

One of the things that I admire about Brenda Goodman is her willingness to push a painting into a territory all its own. She isn’t interested in stylistic consistency or any of the other common denominators that can be used to brand one’s work.

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Before We Are Completely Swept Away: Joshua Marsh’s Recent Paintings

The changes that Joshua Marsh has made since his debut show at Jeff Bailey in 2010 — which I reviewed for the Brooklyn Rail (October 2010) — should be mentioned. In As If, his second exhibition at the same gallery, he shows drawings for the first time — thirty works on clay-coated paper measuring 5 ½ x 7 inches. Marsh relies on scribbling and shading to locate forms. Some drawings are airy and open, while others are dark and dense, where he has gone over an area countless times.

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A Playful Take on Modernism’s Austerities

As a painting major in Albany, New York during the late 1980s, it was easy to sprint a few blocks from the art department over to the Nelson Rockefeller Art Collection to grab some inspiration from museum-quality art. Nostalgia for the collection’s treasure trove of modernist work came to mind while taking in Christian Maychack’s latest exhibit at Jeff Bailey, being that so much of his work, to my eye, playfully sends up or gently skewers high modernism.