Courtesy of the artist

Vince Contarino is a New York based painter. His multi-layered canvasses explore the  language of abstraction.  From first glance there is something illusive in Contarino’s canvases, a tension between the forthright and the concealed. The artist often repurposes forgotten brushstrokes and colors, pasting them into his collages and works on paper. The result is something both beautiful and challenging, a floating soup of the painterly. Contarino’s belief in the ongoing relevance of abstraction is mirrored in his extracurricular activities. His most recent curatorial project, “The Working Title”, organized with painter Kris Chatterson, opens at the Bronx Art Center next Friday. I recently had the chance to speak with the artist over the phone. Continue Reading More »

Reclining Plate Face, 2009 ©Andrew Guenther

Paper Plate people, hotdogs and drug paraphernalia. These are some of Andrew Guenther’s subject matter. Referenced from his own life and pop culture, his work is highly personal even though it may seem even the slightest bit anonymous. Guenther’s unique aesthetic sensibility combined with vibrant colored drawings and paintings, immediately grab the viewer. His silver gelatin photographs look like they could have been taken decades ago. His latest sculptures of fish and naked ladies accompanied by a photograph of the full moon seem pure and earthly.

Andrew Guenther is based in Brooklyn and was born and raised in Wheaton, Illinois. Andrew has exhibited widely both in the US and abroad, and curated an artist’s storefront space in Brooklyn for a few years called Arts Tropical. He is represented by Freight and Volume Gallery in New York. Continue Reading More »

When I walked into Thierry Drefus’ aged mirrors firmly planted on the wooden floors of the Invisible Dog – it was during the opening of (naked) absence – (blinding) presence, which also coincided with their holiday dinner party back in December. The entire space being spliced by these large reflections, instantly drew me to knowing who was the artist behind the installation. Eiji Sumi soon joined the party, and over a bowl of homemade cocktail, the artist Thierry Dreyfus introduced himself and advised us to see his other piece in the back of the gallery. Walking through the door, the room opened up to something of a lucid dream. The diffused light changed the dimensions of the air, and without knowing what to expect, I became in sync with the heartbeat that was intensely thumping in the background. Peaking in and out of the white shadows is a godly figurative sculpture. Then, hearing muffled voices from other human figures, the magic spell was broken. A few weeks later, after the artist returned to Paris, I decided to investigate Sir Thierry Dreyfus, an internationally renowned and respected artist, through the eyes of a New York based emerging lighting artist, Eiji Sumi. Both artists, living in influential cities, tell their stories using the element of light. Continue Reading More »

This month, I had the opportunity to have a studio visit with legendary photographer Martha Cooper.  We sat and “talked shop” about photography and New York City, thirty years back and now. I always knew of Martha Cooper, but there were things about her photographic career I only learned of that day. The 1980’s movie Beat Street – little did I know that she was the still photographer.  Perhaps she is best known for her extensive coverage of the early Hip Hop days, as it emerged from the Bronx. These images have been published worldwide, helping make Hip Hop the predominant international youth movement it is today. Looking at her collection of images and many published books,  (Street Play, Subway Art and New York State of Mind – to only name a few) it is evident that Martha had the desire to document NYC simply as it was, making images which hold views of complete authenticity which add to historic preservation.

Martha’s work has been exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide and published in numerous magazines from National Geographic to Vibe. She lives in Manhattan where she is the Director of Photography at City Lore, the New York Center for Urban Folk Culture. For the past five years Martha has been shooting a personal project in SoWeBo, a neighborhood in Southwest Baltimore. Continue Reading More »

I met this week’s featured artist, Robert Janitz, at Momenta Art in Williamsburg, where he is part of the new exhibition, Winter Break. Janitz grew up in Germany, and honed his artistic practice in France. His relationship to the space reflects this background. He arranges his paintings like installation, employing artificial backdrops made of cardboard. His interventions push as much against the old architectures of Western Europe as they do against the white of contemporary art galleries. When he speaks of the old great halls, and palaces of Europe, there is awe in his voice, though he speaks of tradition as an impossibly binding force.

When I first encountered them, the four paintings included in his show seemed sparse and harshly minimal. Looking closer, I realized each painting functions on a variety of levels. In them we see evidence of process, whether it’s the back of a canvas, or a portion of the stretcher, viewed through a translucent varnished surface. There is a serious level of self reflection in these paintings. This is not merely process painting, or art about art. Though they might speak with a different accent and walk with a strange gate, these are paintings nonetheless. To view Janitz’s work is to join the artist on a circuitous journey. Following him one gets the sense that the artist is searching for a new kind of space, somewhere to create work that is both powerful and approachable. Continue Reading More »

De la Nada Muerte A la Nada Vida, 2010

Lush and tactile, the canvases heavy with paint, José Lerma is known for his texturally seductive, semi-abstract paintings that allude to the idea of a formal portrait. Recognized for his abstract, expressively personal paintings, Lerma ventures off the canvas to a conceptual, almost sculptural practice in his latest show, “I am Sorry I am Perry” at Andrea Rosen Gallery. In three parts, the bankers, the curtain, and the keyboards, Lerma references both personal and historical narratives, yet encourages the viewer to create their own.

José Lerma (b. Spain, raised in Puerto Rico) lives and works in New York and Chicago, where he is on faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Currently, he has a solo show at Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York, NY. “I am sorry I am Perry” is on view through January 22, 2011. Additionally, “A Person of Color/A Mostly Orange Exhibition” – a group show curated by Lerma, opens at Green Gallery, Milwaukee, WI, on January 22, 2011.

Amanda Schmitt: Rather than just a showing of new paintings, “I am sorry I am Perry” seems to me to be a very thoughtful exhibition with clear formal and conceptual intentions. Are you both the artist and the curator?

José Lerma: I planned this exhibition around 3 elements that I had worked with in the past.   Curating is a good way of putting it.  Even before I started making art, I loved Mardsen Hartley’s paintings of Von Freyburg. I like the idea of a collection of objects and stories collapsing on each other and becoming, in effect, a portrait.   In that sense, all my shows are a kind of curated self-portrait. However I didn’t want it to feel like discreet parts that were there to be decoded instead I wanted the viewer to arrive at kind of “fourth reading”; I love when clarity devolves into babble and facts become aesthetics. What I mean is that what matters to me is the effect that the parts have on each other and not their individual meanings. Continue Reading More »

Over the course of seven years, photographer Timothy Briner created “Boonville”, taking place in six different towns spread across the U.S. from New York to California. During this unique solitary road trip, his itinerary consisted of New York, North Carolina, Indiana, Missouri, Texas, and California. Importantly, Briner did his best not to be an anonymous traveler just passing through, he chose to ground himself within the communities for weeks and months at a time. He became familiar and close with the locals and was fortunate to get to know the rhythms of their everyday lives. Within the portraits of hunters and smoke stacks, Briner has a clear opinion, which is never condescending or reductive. These images of different zip codes all with the name Boonville form a unique series of the commonalities of small towns in contemporary America, as seen from the inside. Currently, he has a solo show of the work at the Brauer Museum of Art in Valparaiso, Indiana and a trade edition of the book is in progress.

Briner was born in Indiana. He currently lives in Brooklyn, and is represented by Daniel Cooney Fine Art in New York. Continue Reading More »