In an era that celebrates celebrity, vulgar loudmouths, puerile provocateurs, selfie-addicts, and excessive materialists, Merlin James prefers subtlety over din, less rather than more.
Sikkema Jenkins & Co.
Posted inArt
What Does It Mean to Be a Grown-Up Painter?
Isn’t it time we begin putting things in perspective?
Posted inArt
Beer with a Painter: Josephine Halvorson
Josephine Halvorson and I met on a late winter day when the chill was starting to melt, and talked over omelettes at the window of the Red Cat in Chelsea. It was early on a weekday, the restaurant felt quietly elegant, the light outdoors mellowed by cloud cover. As Halvorson noted, even the potatoes in our omelettes were perfectly soft.
Posted inArt
Forensic Observer: The Recent Paintings of Josephine Halvorson
Josephine Halvorson transcribes the anonymous, weather-beaten traces left by those who might otherwise have left no other mark of their existence behind.
Posted inArt
Parallel Strains: Arlene Shechet’s Ceramic Abstractions
Brimming with knockabout energy, Arlene Shechet’s polymorphous clay sculptures at Sikkema Jenkins — exuberantly colored columns, clumps and sacks of glazed ceramic — feel almost illegitimate in their sensuality and humor, a reaction that immediately calls into question why a word like “illegitimate” would spring to mind in the first place.
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Worst.Press.Release.Ever: Word Salad
Every once in a while a sentence comes along and energizes us with its singular lack of meaning, the tinny sound made by so many letters, marched into so many words, all profaning the artworks they are meant to elevate.
Posted inArt
Is Mark Bradford the Best Painter in America?
I didn’t expect to write about the new show from Mark Bradford, who has been called by Guy Trebay of The New York Times “if not the best painter working in America today then certainly the tallest,” when I walked into Sikkema Jenkins on Tuesday morning. Despite the whimsy of Trebay’s “best/tallest” assertions, a credible case can be made for the former.
