Tag: texture

Roxa Smith at C24 Gallery

Pattern and color are the last words in Roxa Smith’s lively paintings of imaginary interiors at C24 Gallery in Chelsea.  Smith, who grew up in Venezuela and moved to New York in the 90s, explains that as a child, family trips exposed her to colonial towns and indigenous and folk art that have influenced her current aesthetic.  Already drawn to interiors, she became devoted to the subject after visiting an exhibition of Matisse’s painting at the National Gallery in Washington DC.  Uplifting, lively and engaging, Smith’s paintings offer a moment of pure pleasure.  (On view in Chelsea through March 11th.)

Roxa Smith, Gated Sanctuary, oil on canvas, 30 x 36 inches, 2016.

Robert Kushner at DC Moore

Robert Kushner’s latest paintings at DC Moore include this gorgeous rendition of a fern, which blends modernist stripes with Japanese-style gold leafing and complex surface texture in a radiant homage to the natural world. (In Chelsea through Feb 14th).

Robert Kushner, Fern, oil, acrylic and gold leaf on linen, 84 x 60 inches, 2014.

Yui Kugimiya at Marlborough Gallery

Known for cheeky stop-motion animations made by photographing thickly textured paintings, Brooklyn artist Yui Kugimiya settles into a vividly colored, thickly painted non-moving images for her current show at Marlborough Gallery’s LES location. Painted as she looked out of her studio window at the East River, their Fauve color and style offers an intensely personal view of the city and here, its geese. (Through Dec 21st).

Yui Kugimiya, Geese on East River – One – 2, oil on canvas, 16 x 16 inches, 2014.

Mika Rottenberg at Andrea Rosen Gallery

Mika Rottenberg’s acclaimed films evoke fascination and repulsion in equal measure as we watch eccentric characters labor to create ambiguous products in claustrophobic, factory-like settings.  With jagged, candy-colored sheets of polyurethane resin propped against the wall at Chelsea’s Andrea Rosen Gallery, Rottenberg transforms her signature mix of sweet and grotesque into sculpture.  (through June 22nd).  

Mika Rottenberg, ‘Texture 1 & 3, Texture 2, part a, Texture 3 & 4,’ polyurethane resin, acrylic paint, installed dimensions variable, 2013.