Tag: abstraction

Rebecca Morris at Bortolami Gallery

In a recent interview, Rebecca Morris explained that color is the content of her painting.  On view through Saturday at Bortolami Gallery in Tribeca, Morris’ light pink, blue and green abstractions are easy on the eye, even when accented by attention-grabbing metallic colors.  All titled just with the date of their making, it’s up to the viewer to puzzle out how each artistic decision – the checkerboard pattern, the shape of each zone of color and the variety of pink tonal contrasts in Untitled (#04-23), for example – creates meaning and mood.  In this painting, Morris considers cultural values placed on color saying, “Gold makes pink important…Often pink is seen as pretty, and pretty gets devalued.”  In this opulent, complex and intellectually engaging painting, pink steals the show.  (On view through Nov 4th).

Rebecca Morris, Untitled (#12-23), oil and spray paint on canvas, 2023.

Graham Anderson at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery

Like an orderly stack of oranges in the supermarket, Graham Anderson’s new paintings at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery in Tribeca are both organic and curving, arranged with rigid geometry, just one contrast of many that generates visual interest and tempts exploration.  Some paintings feature a sheet of orange spheres – so orderly they appear stamped out – alongside circular forms with green leaves and shading that suggests natural citrus fruits.  Most contain areas of pointillist painting in orange, blue and white color that contrasts flat monochrome orange spheres with no shading.  In this painting, that dotted surface breaks up to reveal a background devoid of natural referents.  Christmas ornaments, planets, fruit, punctuation, billiard balls and more come to mind in a strange space ripe for invention.  (On view through July 29th).

Graham Anderson, Reflected Fortune, oil and acrylic on canvas, 26 x 18 ½ inches, 2023.

Helen Frankenthaler at Gagosian Gallery

Helen Frankenthaler’s abstract paintings allude to landscapes and moods; a showcase of the artist’s work from the ‘90s at Gagosian Gallery conveys the pleasures of colors and feelings observed in nature.  Pioneer of an influential staining technique in mid-century American abstraction, Frankenthaler here adds an overt, textured brushstroke that emphasizes the surface of the canvas.  Appearing to hover over aqua-toned pools of color and an underlying dark depth, the long orange mark sets in play a complicated and shifting illusion of depth. (On view through April 15th on 24th Street in Chelsea).

Helen Frankenthaler, Poseidon, acrylic on canvas, 70 ¾ x 100 inches, 1990.

Albert Oehlen at Gagosian Gallery

German painter Albert Oehlen’s continuously morphing style has been associated with ‘bad painting’ and a sense of being “on the way to becoming something else,” two qualities which linked him in his mind to another celebrated and influential artist, Paul McCarthy who he has invited to show with him now at Gagosian Gallery.  Oehlen’s new work features a recurring abstracted form resembling a corporate logo, a modified pi symbol or, in proximity to the figurative sculpture by McCarthy, a squat torso with two long legs.  Seen in various color combinations and even as a cast aluminum sculpture, the form merges with or boldly erupts from fields of gestural abstraction.  Here, the ambiguous shape appears defaced by paint, a suggestion that the medium still has power to shake things up.  (On view in Chelsea through April 22nd).

Albert Oehlen, Omega Man 15, acrylic and oil on canvas, 2021.

Renata Bonfanti at Kaufman Repetto

Experimentation and a quest for the new has been at the heart of Italian textile designer Renata Bonfanti’s work since she traveled from her native Italy to complete her studies in Olso in the early 50s.  A selection of woven work from 1968 – 1990, now on view at Kaufmann Repetto in Tribeca, foregrounds Bonfanti’s inventive techniques and varied geometries, which she explains are always inspired by the built environment.  (On view through Feb 18th).

Renata Bonfanti, Kilim 3 (from the Bengala series), linen, wool, and meraklon, 89 x 71.5 inches, 1982.