Wangechi Mutu, Throw (2016), via Art Observed

Blackness in Abstraction is Pace Gallery’s museum level survey of a candid, simple concept—the use of the color black in art since the 1940’s—stemming from the visual impact of its subject color and spreading toward its various pertinent connotations.  Curated by Adrienne Edwards, the selection, featuring twenty-nine intergenerational artists, puts a particular emphasis on monochromes, yet a broad array of media, including video, sculpture and photography, is available in an exhibition that joins in on the highly populated list of conceptually potent summer group shows.   (more…)

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Alice Neel, photographed by Sam Brody courtesy of Victoria Miro Gallery

“In The Company of Alice” is currently on view at Victoria Miro Gallery. This is a group exhibition of paintings honoring the life and work of Alice Neel. Each of the painters participating in the show drew inspiration from their admiration for Neel’s work. Some of the artists in the show often create portraits–but for others this is a new endeavor, and their very first portraits are being shown in this exhibition. “In the Company of Alice” coincides with a retrospective of Neel’s work at Whitechapel Gallery, opening on July 8^th. Studying Alice Neel’s work as a point of departure for modern and contemporary portraiture, “In the Company of Alice” aims to broaden the viewer’s perspective of figuration and portraiture. The exhibition also brings forth the importance of  these modes of practice in relation to contemporary art.

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Alice Neel, Richard, 1973, courtesy of Victoria Miro Gallery

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Jonathan Meese, “mutter mit roter Brille und roetlicher Perlenkette,” part of “The Figure and Dr. Freud,” a group exhibition on at Haunch of Venison New York.

Haunch of Venison’s New York branch is showing “The Figure and Dr. Freud,” a group exhibition by 31 artists from the last century.  These include past and currently producing artists, from the sculptor Alberto Giacometti to the painter Daniel Richter.  The show, which closes on August 22, focuses on the human figure as the artists have rendered it, through the lenses of the late Dr. Freud’s psychoanalytic theories.

Related links:
Haunch of Venison
Sigmund Freud [freudfile]

David Salle, “With All Due Respect Sir, We Need Modesty Blaise,” at Haunch of Venison.

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