Kenneth Noland, Adjoin (1980), via Art Observed © Estate of Kenneth Noland/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY www.vagarights.com

Like many of the forms of 20th Century abstraction, the shaped canvas invites both dedication and constant reinvention, a technical fold in the painterly language that allows an artist to work between the picture plane/mark-making relationship of traditional practice, and the more sculptural elements of the art form that have developed alongside critical reappraisals of the medium since the historical avant-garde.  Twisting the canvas and the artist’s gestural vocabulary around edges and into curious re-examinations of space, it has remained a core element of the craft ever since the advent of minimalism pushed a new language of space both within the canvas, and around it.   (more…)

Scott Campbell, Untitled (2011). All images Nicolas Linnert for Art Observed.

Friday evening marked the opening of Marc Jancou Contemporary’s exhibition Blankness is Not a Void, a group show of works by Steven Parrino, Raymond Pettibon and Scott Campbell. Encouraging a dialogue between three artists of disparate time and locale, the exhibition showcases the overlapping thematic and formal references each artist drew not only from their social milieu, but also from each other.

Artist Scott Campbell (left) and gallerist Marc Jancou (right) with friends.

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Installation View  All photographs are via Gagosian Gallery unless otherwise noted

Currently on view at Gagosian Gallery, 6-24 Britannia street, London is the exhibition titled “Crash, Homage to J.G. Ballard” , a group show dedicated, as the name suggests, to the oeuvre of J.D. Ballard, a prominent British novelist and short-story writer, a representative of the New Wave movement in science fiction.  The exhibition was put together to pay tribute to the enormous cultural influence of J.D. Ballard’s fiction on many visual artists. The impressive selection of works by  such prominent artists as Ed Ruscha, Richard Hamilton, AndyWarhol and Helmut Newton illustrates profound engagement of the writer with the works of visual artists of his generation and their mutual influence.

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