Jim Lambie, Black Metal (2004) (left) and Lisa Beck, Slacker (1991) (right). All images Nicolas Linnert for Art Observed.
Closing this week is Martos Gallery’s group exhibition We Regret to Inform You There is Currently No Space or Place for Abstract Painting. With a title sounding like a submission response dating from earlier half of the 20th century, the exhibition includes a significant amount of abstract painting. It also shows mixed media installation and slightly representational wall pieces.
More text and images after the jump..
Installation view at Martos Gallery.
Wayne Gonzalez, Grey Pentagon (2005).
Lincoln Tobier, June 14 / June 18 2001 (2002).
Opposite the gallery’s street window is Wayne Gonzales’s Grey Pentagon, an acrylic on canvas work covered in oversize Benday-like dots that from afar construct an aerial view of the US intelligence hub. To its left is mounted Lincoln Tobier’s warm pink June 14/June 18, 2001. The large enamel on metal work also references printed paper and is clearly a large reproduction of a photojournalistic image owned by AFP. The date referenced, however, is unharmonious with any such public demonstration or movement that the image clearly represents.
Ben Schumacher, Scarf Key (2011).
Ben Schumacher’s brilliantly disarming works of mixed media on canvas question any stable understanding of surface and feel, as the combination of plaster, cement, latex, and netting produce a visual that appears both flat and incredibly textured. In the rear gallery, one of Jim Lambie’s enamel-bleeding mattresses is situated in seeming conversation with Lisa Beck’s panel arrangements that similarly succumb to gravity’s woes, moving from wall to brushed-concrete. Across the two arrangements, one eye-catching work is also placed leaning from the ground. Devina Semo’s THEIR NOSTRILS SNIFF THE ORGY BEHIND THE WALL OF FLAME AND STEEL recomposes concrete and safety glass by way of its own fractured state.
Davina Semo, THEIR NOSTRILS SNIFF THE ORGY BEHIND THE WALL OF FLAME AND STEEL (2011). (detail)
Martos Gallery, through its ostensibly ironic exhibition title, has arranged a collection of works working within or at the perimeters of Abstraction’s historic trajectory. The complete participating artists are Jules de Balincourt, Lisa Beck, Sarah Crowner, Wayne Gonzales, Tony Just, Alex Kwartler, Jim Lambie, David Malek, Chris Martin, John Miller, Curtis Mitchell, Olivier Mosset, Nathaniel Robinson, Eva Rothschild, Ben Schumacher, Anja Schwörer, Davina Semo, Lincoln Tobier, Daniel Turner, Nick Van Zanten, and Clare Woods. The exhibition closes June 18.
-N. Linnert
Related Links:
We Regret To Inform You There is Currently No Space or Place for Abstract Painting [Martos Gallery]
