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Michael Ashkin might agree with the New Jersey Tourist Board’s claim that the state is, “America the Beautiful, only smaller,” but his idea of beauty is found in the desolate landscape around chemical plants, truck yards and industrial compounds. Last year, he tramped through the undergrowth and slipped under fences to create a monumental photographic series based on the Meadowlands. Developed for efficient production rather than human enjoyment, these active work environments are so perfectly ugly that they challenge the notion of a ‘beautiful’ outdoor environment. Exploring the gritty side of the industrial aesthetic, Ashkin also traveled to the old mining town of Butte, Montana and locations in and around Palm Springs, California, producing eight photographic series for his third solo show at Andrea Rosen Gallery.

‘Meadowlands,’ is a group of 133 black and white photographs that was commissioned by Documenta XI. Presented in a compact grid, the photos formed one large composite that simulated the experience of seeing the Meadowlands as a series of glances from the Turnpike. Most photographs documented traces of a still active human presence: a memorial on a chain-link fence, a graffiti covered wall and a careful arrangement of truck storage containers along a canal. By contrast, the Butte series was a vision of advanced industrial decline. Shot on a hill near an abandoned pit mine, Ashkin’s subjects include a rusting basketball backboard, cracked building foundations and a lonesome bench next to an empty, six lane highway. Occasional disused mines appear in this series, but the focus is on the dilapidated housing and barren landscape of a dying neighborhood. Several shots were taken in or near the artist’s car, suggesting that he, too, would soon make his getaway.

In “Notes Toward Desolation,” a text recording Ashkin’s thoughts on post-industrial landscape, the artist characterizes Butte, the Meadowlands and Palm Springs as places where “…the frenzy of consumption has exhausted itself….” As a consequence, property owners make little effort to conform to landscaping ideals, ironically making these places attractive to the artist for what he calls their, “absence of false beauty.” The Meadowlands photographs document two worlds: one populated by truck drivers and gas station attendants by day, and one in which vandals and joyriders leave evidence of their activities under cover of night. Unlike Butte, which is desolate day or night, the Meadowlands series challenges viewers to see these landscapes not as industrial wastelands, but as sites free from rules imposed by urban planners and the arm of the law.

For ‘Flash Art’ Magazine

‘New Wave,’ a group show curated by Franklin Sirmans, inaugurated Kravets/Wehby’s new gallery space last December. Still located on the same block of 21st Street in Chelsea, the formerly closet-like space has given way to a gallery big enough to accommodate large paintings by emerging artist Kehinde Wiley and expansive work on paper by William Cordova. Five other young artists with an urban sensibility rounded off what seemed like a mini-spin off of Sirman’s popular ‘One Planet Under a Groove’ exhibition at the Bronx Museum last year. Paying homage to an influential exhibition at PS1 in 1981, the show presented artwork indebted to hip hop music and culture with a focus on portraits. Iona Brown’s painting on a Japanese screen of a half Asian, half African woman with Louis Vuitton logos stamped across her skin complimented Kehinde Wiley’s painting of young man nearly swallowed up by his over inflated puffer jacket. Jeff Sonhouse painted two sharply dressed men whose faces, clothing and hair were created out of burnt matchsticks. Sanford Biggers altered an old army recruitment sign, one of the first to feature an African-American man, to read as a statement of inclusion and exclusion, while pieces by William Cordova and Luis Gispert speak to a fascination with boomboxes and turntables, the instruments of DJ culture. Set to the beat of a sound installation by DL Language/Josh Taylor, the exhibition smartly mixed admiration of and critique of hip hop culture.

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Photons blast into a menacing blob, a rock monster stalks his terrain, and two otherworldly demigods, only their faces visible, square off in a bloody battle. Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic in six new paintings with Davis’ signature blend of hard edge abstraction and sci-fi menace. Davis’ abstract patterns are so dynamic that they lend themselves to a narrative, aided by the painting’s suggestive titles and the recognizable, figurative elements.

In ‘I Think It’s Time to Leave,’ a goofy looking figure of a goat’s head with blindfolded, gem shaped eyes and a flame coming out from under his chin seems to blast off from a ground composed of various geometric patterns. Splatterings of blood red paint dot the patterns, suggesting violence even if it’s not obvious what might have happened. This painting, with its clear differentiation between ground and sky, is one of the few that connects these paintings to Davis’ early work. ‘Who’s Asking Questions,’ on the other hand, enters a whole new dimension of space, with a mirrored ‘v’ shape dividing the canvas between top and bottom. A mask-like face dominates each sphere. Above, an indistinct, oval shaped face, outlined in wavy blue and red lines and framed by what looks like bloody gashes, peers down at a second visage, this one with distinct features composed of clear lines.

It’s unclear why these Janus faces are locked in confrontation, but this feeling of conflict comes across in nearly all of the new work. It’s a fight that seems to extend to the composition of the paintings themselves. As if from the tightly controlled blocks of seemingly random patterning, the creatures have managed to wrench themselves free, allowing abstraction and representation to go to war against each other. Under the spidery trace of a psychedelic, tie-died snowflake pattern that appears in some variation at least once in every painting, Davis expands to a cosmic stage where the fundamental oppositions of painting can battle it out alongside other masters of the universe.

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Since its supposed rebirth in the past decade, painting has been the subject of international exhibitions, books and magazine articles. Last fall, ‘Painting as Paradox’ at Artists Space took its own look at the genre in an exhibition of work, hung salon style, by over sixty emerging artists. Hanging on the wall at the entrance to the show, ‘Minotaur 1.1,’ a labyrinth constructed of gilded picture frame by Jan Baracz, alluded to the multiple paths available to the artist without employing an ounce of paint. It also introduced the ‘paradox’ of the artist who still manages to work in what has been called a ‘dead’ or underrated medium. The show’s main proposition was that painters are avoiding dead ends and make the medium relevant to contemporary art and life by embracing the influence of photography, architectural images and computer ‘painting’ software.

One long wall devoted almost exclusively to photographically influenced realist portraiture included Octavius Neveaux’s black and white self-portrait that mimicked the act of looking into the camera, and Isca Greenfield-Sanders’ sunbather, painted from composite photos. A wall of landscapes favored abstract compositions like Millree Hughes’ light infused lenticular prints and Odili Donald Odita’s angled horizontal planes painted on canvas. In a separate room devoted to architecture as subject matter, Carla Klein and Marc Handelman each presented foreboding futuristic interior spaces, that contrasted with the kitschy Miami Vice vibe of Australian painter Kieren Kinney’s hand painted island cityscape at night that resembled a computer generated image. Several paintings adopted a mechanical look, and several digital prints affected the look of painting, like Claire Corey’s complex skeins of looping color. Artists even used video to ponder the concerns of abstraction, like Robert Bermejo’s software program generating patterns on a flat screen monitor and Perry Hall’s DVD of paint, bubbling like lava.

The conceptual framework of “Painting as Paradox” was built on the understanding that painting is still not entire out of trouble. By focusing so heavily on paintings that adopt elements of digital technique, the show implied that the genre needs to ‘do something’ to make itself more relevant to those who would dismiss it in favor of new media. This point of view isn’t surprising given curator Lauri Firstenberg’s own tastes and respectable track record, both of which tend toward exhibitions of photography and architecturally inspired artwork. But this organizational principle doesn’t do justice to the wide range of painting being made today. A more concise exhibition that clearly stated its biases could have avoided a true paradox, which is that the tired discussion of painting’s health continues to occupy center stage in art discourse.