Jered Sprecher (new paintings up)

Images from his upcoming show at Steven Zevitas Gallery--and a great way to start the day if you are a painter...at least a painter like me.  Welcome first year grads!

David Hammons

A remarkable show of David Hammons at L&M Arts...

Chris T. posted this review of the show last night to my FB page--definitely worth a read.
I'm completely fascinated by Hammons' recent work work:
1. by the way they somehow elude the categorization of painting and yet are some of the most interesting painting I've seen in a long, long time.  In the first few moments of looking at them, I had this barrage of thoughts, wow, this completely changes my notions of what I thought painting could be--in fact, painting can be so much more!  My own notions have been so limited--the boundaries are wide open once again.  Hallejuah!  (or something akin to that exclamation of supreme delight...) 
2. by the way they are adamantly abstract, utterly, heart-wrenchingly poetic and deeply aesthetic--conjuring all kinds of affinities with what we assume poetic abstraction to be at first--and yet, they do not really reside where we think they should reside in the end.   They flirt with race and politics, attaching the complexities of race and politics to an appropriately complicated form.
3. by the way they teach me how to see painting, aesthetics, abstraction, and politics-as-dealt-with-by-art anew--

Good formalist abstraction is sometimes made by young painters too

I happened onto Meghan Brady's paintings in something of a happenstance way--she's young and is just getting going it seems, but her work is pretty memorable to me because I so rarely get excited by a new painter these days!  The work is varied and unexpected and breathes life into something as seemingly tapped out as good-old-formalist-abstraction.  Don't you just know the best abstraction is being made by women these days?  Some that come to mind at the moment:
Rebecca Morris
Erica Svec
Carrie Gundersdorf
Orly Genger
Michelle Grabner
Sigrid Sandstrom
Lisa Sigal
Now what's that about?

The top image: Untitled (yellow), 2010, oil on canvas, 40.5"x30"
Middle image: Jackrabbit, 2010, oil on canvas, 18"x14"
Bottom image: Gambler, 2008, oil on linen, 16"x16"

Also worth taking a look: Brady's drawing blog.  Collage and all kinds of informality abound.