John Ashbery, a Poet With Paper and Glue
A new book pairs some of Ashbery’s poems with the sophisticated and playful visual collages he also made over the course of his career.
By Gregory Cowles April 6, 2018
Born in Britain in 1944, Trevor Winkfield has lived in New York since 1969 and exhibited here almost as long. For decades, he has cultivated a style of Formalist Pop Surrealism that balances between fine and commercial art. His precedents include the proto-Pop paintings of Gerald Murphy; Paul Outerbridge’s advertising photography; and Picabia’s mechanical portraits which Mr. Winkfield might be said to have fleshed out.
While I was on my way to see his current exhibition, Trevor Winkfield – Saints, Dancers and Acrobats, at Tibor de Nagy Gallery (February 17 – March 25, 2018), I began to wonder — as someone who has followed his work since the late 1970s, and who has read many of the things written on his work, as well as much of his own writing — if I could add anything to what has already been said.
Winkfield begins with a collage, which is a hybrid of geometric forms and representational motifs rendered in solid colors. Whether the resulting image is a bird or an unidentifiable thingamajig, it is composed of outlined abstract shapes, which may be patterned or solidly colored. Over the years the artist has accumulated a vocabulary that ranges from heraldry to cartoony biomorphism, from crisp patterns to sly nods to artists he admires, such as Rene Magritte, Piet Mondrian and Kazimir Malevich. Along the way, he seems to have become an expert in vexillology, the study of flags.
PHILADELPHIA — The morning I began this review, my street was littered with used scratch-off lottery tickets from the local corner store. Some were stuck to tires; others were windblown against the gutter. One was smashed flat in the middle of the road. As I walked in one direction on the sidewalk, a guy walked towards me down the middle of the street. When he saw the smashed ticket, he picked it up, brushed it off, and slipped it in his pocket. There was both hope and anxiety in his gesture.
In this fast-paced reality, one which is rapidly blurring the lines that used to separate human biology and the 'human self' from technological advances, this artist’s creatures stand out not as an aberration but as a possible dystopic future.
In the paintings, figure-like apparitions congeal and dissolve as if governed by internal psychology or consciousness in the act of becoming. The DNA of these characters originates from blown glass—a material at once mercurial and fixed—with which Butler has worked extensively over the past 15 years.
“Mercurial and fixed,” “familiar albeit fantastical.” Paradoxical terms such as these came up repeatedly in conversations with painter Jim Butler as he discussed his new "Synaptic Reverb" series on view at New York's Tibor de Nagy Gallery through December 22, 2017.
Larry Rivers became an artist in the 1940s, and was soon part of a New York avant-garde scene of dancers, musicians and writers. A saxophonist-turned-painter, he refused to adhere to any genre, and his puckish work has an air of jazz improvisation. He’ll be celebrated at (RE)APPROPRIATIONS, an exhibition spanning five decades of his work at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery in New York from 6 September
Tibor de Nagy Gallery will be hosting an exhibition “(Re)appropriations” by artist Larry Rivers at the gallery’s new downtown location in New York.
"Using all of the inherent metaphors of language to visually suggest things like what is real and what is imaginary. What is the subplot? Is there transparency or opaqueness? Do these colors suggest something urgent/edgy or is the attitude more of stillness?" -Medrie MacPhee
"An extremely accomplished painter, MacPhee makes adjustments as she goes along — to her paintings; to her understanding of space; to the objects of her attention. "
- Stephen Maine
Weekly Standard contributor Lee Smith and friend to gallery artist Trevor Winkfield discuss paintings, writing and artist in two recent interviews.
"But her new work has an ingenious twist: the compositions combine oil paint and salvaged scraps of clothing. Buttons, seams, and the like remain intact, and the results have an irresistible weirdness."
This is Ms. MacPhee’s first exhibit with Tibor de Nagy and the simplified pictures here represent a change of course for the artist. In previous exhibitions she presented busy canvases, painting architectural renderings of construction site detritus.
THE DAILY PIC (#1814): MacPhee’s new body of work, with its collaged garment parts, is a big departure for her, and I think it succeeds.
Review of Medrie MacPhee's exhibition Scavenge at Tibor de Nagy Gallery's new Lower East Side location
Fabrics and paint combine into architectural forms in the work of this veteran artist who has lived in New York for more than 40 years.
Published 2017
Cloth over board | 20 pp
10 1/4" x 13"
Granary Books
Edition size: 30
Brand new moblie friendly artist website featuring extensive image gallery and biographical information.
John Newman makes drawings before, during and after his sculptures, many of them as ways to understand how to realize new ideas. Noted for his eccentric combinations of natural, manufactured, computer-generated and hand-crafted elements in his modestly-scaled sculptures, Newman likewise uses a variety of materials and techniques in his works on paper.
" For the next half-century, working in a small apartment-studio on the Left Bank, Ms. Jaffe refined and extended her inquiries into the drama of form and color — always at a distance, literally and figuratively, from the currents of American art."
-William Grimes
September 30, 2016
Susan and I talk about how she constructs her paintings, and how she balances precision with those spontaneous a-ha moments.
The War Years Collages are and old man's reflections on what he imagines he has experienced as we boy living at the New Jersey coast during World War II.
The new paintings on view act as mirrors, reflecting McEneaney’s core identity as an artist and activist and continuing her ongoing investigation of autobiography in her work.
The Jess Collins Trust has now launch the official website for gallery artist Jess
Jane Levere covers the Parrish Art Museum's in her New York Times article The Divergent Styles of Jane Freilicher and Jane Wilson
Jen Mazza contributed an essay to Tilted Arc relating to her gallery exhibition " \ /\/\/\/\/\ /\\\\\\\\\///////////\ A PAINTING IS A MACHINE."
This exhibition brings together paintings and works on paper by Jane Freilicher and Jane Wilson—two notable figures in American art who emerged from the pursuit of rigorous abstraction to develop highly individual and beautifully compelling approaches to representation, fundamentally reinventing traditional definitions of landscape and still life painting.
Grey Art Gallery at NYU
Poetry Foundation and Valerie Carberry Gallery, Chicago
Figuring Color: Kathy Butterly, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Roy McMakin, Sue Williams