Here are some other more informal thoughts about the shows I saw in Chicago last weekend and reviewed for Hyperallergic.
I liked the meditative, repetitive quality of this ink drawing by Glen Butler at Zg Gallery:
It looks like something generated by 3-d modelling software, and may well be for all I know. I think it was drawn by hand, though. Not much room for error while moving the pen from point to point. Nice improvised feeling about it, despite its appearance of something scientific.
Here are more of the photos on Plexiglass by Glenn Wexler:
They were taken out of moving trains in cities in Asia. Not that you can tell that from the images -- that information came from the sheet provided by the gallery, Zolla Lieberman. The photos succeeded in looking like abstract brush marks. The high gloss of the panels gave them an alluring texture, like glass, or something precious.
I didn't respond so positively to the whimsicality of Amy Grey's etchings, derived from drawings of real houses in Cleveland (where she might be from, I think), but depicted as heaped up on wires, like something from a Dr Seuss book. What I did love about them, though, was that they were aquatint and hardground etchings, executed with a real command of the medium (which happens to be the kind of printmaking that I like doing best, too):
And here's another Marco Casentini painting from Roy Boyd Gallery:
What I notice about it now is not just the contrast of plexiglass square against painted square, but the different textures within the paint. Very smooth and matte in one square, then grainy in another. Also, they may be entirely derived from the classic early twentieth century grid (Mondrian, etc), but these paintings are I think all about light.
I liked the meditative, repetitive quality of this ink drawing by Glen Butler at Zg Gallery:
It looks like something generated by 3-d modelling software, and may well be for all I know. I think it was drawn by hand, though. Not much room for error while moving the pen from point to point. Nice improvised feeling about it, despite its appearance of something scientific.
Here are more of the photos on Plexiglass by Glenn Wexler:
They were taken out of moving trains in cities in Asia. Not that you can tell that from the images -- that information came from the sheet provided by the gallery, Zolla Lieberman. The photos succeeded in looking like abstract brush marks. The high gloss of the panels gave them an alluring texture, like glass, or something precious.
I didn't respond so positively to the whimsicality of Amy Grey's etchings, derived from drawings of real houses in Cleveland (where she might be from, I think), but depicted as heaped up on wires, like something from a Dr Seuss book. What I did love about them, though, was that they were aquatint and hardground etchings, executed with a real command of the medium (which happens to be the kind of printmaking that I like doing best, too):
And here's another Marco Casentini painting from Roy Boyd Gallery:
What I notice about it now is not just the contrast of plexiglass square against painted square, but the different textures within the paint. Very smooth and matte in one square, then grainy in another. Also, they may be entirely derived from the classic early twentieth century grid (Mondrian, etc), but these paintings are I think all about light.