Wilderness now exists only through acts of human beneficence. Three Bay Area artists examine this state of affairs.
Reviews
Hadi Tabatabai @ Brian Gross
Displaying a level of obsession that rivals Agnes Martin’s, Tabatabai makes a strong case for the ongoing vitality of Minimalism.
Shows & Waterston @ Haines
Shows, a peerless collagist, and Waterston, an established master, explore geologic wonders.
Rex Slinkard @ Cantor Arts Center
He’s been described as a “latter-day Transcendentalist with a brush.” But did he succeed as an artist? Ben Marks reports.
Peter Wayne Lewis @ JAYJAY
The relationship between jazz and abstract painting is long and storied. Lewis, channelling that history, shows he can hold a painterly groove.
Masters of Venice @ de Young Museum
“Beauty that was luxuriant, carnal and worldly” — that’s how critic Mark Van Proyen describes painting in Venice’s “Golden Age”.
Painting Between the Lines @ CCA Wattis
A picture may be worth 1,000 words, but can it compete with a reader’s imagination?
Dragons @ Intersection for the Arts
Maps promote the notion of consensus reality. Artists, the cartographers of our no-consensus zones, remind us that there is no such thing.
Sarah Bostwick @ Gregory Lind
Bostwick’s cast-relief sculptures evoke a sense of nostalgia for the visual language of architectural drawing and the structures that once arose from them.
Susanna Bluhm @ Michael Rosenthal
A painter of resplendent abstract landscapes, Bluhm displays an unpretentious, off-kilter virtuosity, painting for the sheer thrill of it.
Art + Environment @ Nevada Museum of Art
How art can address the environmental crisis? Thirteen shows demonstrate. Maria Porges reports.
Richard Serra Drawing @ SFMOMA
Whether he’s building massive steel sculptures or afixing oil-stick coated canvases to walls, Richard Serra is, at root, about drawing.
Thoughts on Recent Abstract Painting
Are we witnessing a deep rethinking of the historical enterprise of abstract painting? Mark Van Proyen investigates.
Nathan Oliveira Memorial @ Berggruen
Oliveira’s finest late paintings are magisterial, poignant and profound. More spirit than corporeal, they are exquisite contemplations of mortality.
Jay DeFeo @ Hosfelt
“DeFeo”, a prelude to the artist’s 2012 retrospective at SFMOMA, is a show of mostly small works that offer insight into the artist’s remarkable mind.
Gale Antokal @ Patricia Sweetow
Her lucid-dream drawings appear to be anodyne at first glance. But they’re not. Look closely and shudder as you see yourself inside of them.