Featured Artworks in Gallery Network

James Walsh, Untitled, 2018, featured on Artnet.

It was standing-room-only at the opening for "James Walsh: The Elemental" at Berry Campbell (through February 8).  Nor did this long-awaited show disappoint: it more than lives up to advance expectations and shows this gifted mid-career artist spreading joy along with pigment and molding paste in peak form. Indeed, James Walsh is one of the best.

True, he has not gone off on any wild tangents in this exhibition.  He is still creating small to medium-sized paintings on canvas, using multi-hued acrylics mixed with molding paste.  And (as far as I know) he still manipulates the molding paste with everything from his hands to a battery of tools.

The molding paste enables him to alter the thickness of his medium from raised curls, twirls, swirls, twists, blobs, and upward or downward strokes or pours of color right down to only barely tinted and scraped areas of canvas  -- often all in the same image.

He has become if anything more adept in orchestrating these opposites from thick to thin.  And he is experimenting – if still very carefully – with creating larger and smaller pictures.

The last time I reviewed a display of his work (at Berry Campbell on June 22, 2014), the smallest painting was 18" x 14" and the largest was 41" x 27¾ ". In this show, the largest painting is 48" x 36" and the smallest is only 6¼" x 4". 

The former is entitled "Opus Eight, Number Twelve (2017). It is unique in its scale, and hangs in a prominent position in the first large space at Berry Campbell.  Done in blacks, browns and other autumnal colors, it is very authoritative-looking, and fits nicely into this front space, which I mentally characterized as occupied by the most ambitious paintings in the show.

(However, I have to confess that the smaller "Crin-Crin" (2019), hanging just to the right of "Opus Eight," seemed to me more successful.  With its green vertical on the top half of the painting, and horizontal strokes below, I was also mysteriously reminded of "The Piano Lesson" (1912) by Henri Matisse.  Aren't art critics irritating?)

Art, science, and technology have become increasingly intermingled. The distinctions between the disciplines are less clear, leading into unknown territory where all things are possible. The eight artists included in Uncharted: American Abstraction in the Information Age, drawn from the membership of the American Abstract Artists organization, explore some of the unexpected ways that math, science, and technology are transforming our perception of the visual arts. Using a range of styles and materials, creating both two-dimensional, three-dimensional, and site-specific works, these artists investigate mathematical or scientific principles, in both explicit and implicit ways, and often use technology to produce their work. The works of art in the exhibition – by artists James O. Clark, John Goodyear, Lynne Harlow, Daniel G. Hill, Gilbert Hsiao, Irene Rousseau, James Seawright, and Patricia Zarate – can be difficult to categorize.

NEW YORK, NY.- Berry Campbell is presenting an exhibition of recent paintings by James Walsh (b. 1954). An abstract painter who has been an active member of the New York art scene since the early 1980s. Following in the Modernist tradition, Walsh relentlessly explores the properties and limits of paint and the results of his inquiry are spectacularly wide ranging. Experimenting with innovative acrylic formulas, Walsh produces large masses of pigment that project outward from the surface of the canvas, creating unusual forms in high relief. In some works, the paint is sculptural and three-dimensional, while in others, it rises from richly treated surfaces. Although Walsh makes specific compositional choices, the spontaneous appearance gives his paintings a feeling of the accidental. 

Eric Dever: A Thousand Nows, an exhibit of 22 new oil paintings inspired mostly by the East End of Long Island, will be exhibited at Suffolk County Community College’s Eastern Campus Lyceum Gallery from February 1 through March 11. An artist’s reception will be held on February 5th from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Refreshments will be served.

Layering veils of exuberant color, Dever creates the illusion of depth while describing atmosphere that falls over views of Montauk Point, Sag Harbor’s Clam Island, and Southampton’s Flying Point Beach. Forms appear weightless and at times dematerialize reversing figure and ground. Similarly, Dever paints his experience of plants that he cultivates in his Water Mill studio garden. Agapanthus, Bird of Paradise, and roses that are past their prime become metaphors for the past, evocative of places and characters from literature.

Dever’s work harkens from experiences deep within his sensory memory of growing up in California.  “Los Angeles is subtropical, the sun is more intense and sets over the Pacific, my paint selection, when working with a full palette has remained consistent, especially a love of Cadmium Orange; but the blue hues I am mixing echo the long late spring and summer twilight of the Northeast,” Dever said.

These sensations inform Dever’s work today here on the East End becoming examples of a type of compressed time.

Syd Solomon (1917–2004), who described himself as an ‘Abstract Impressionist’, made the city of Sarasota in Florida his home from 1946 until his death, establishing the Institute of Fine Art at New College, which brought artists such as Philip Guston and Larry Rivers to teach in Sarasota. He was also the first living artist to have work in the collection of the Ringling Museum. Find out more from the Ringling’s website.

The retrospective of the longtime Sarasota artist’s work opens this weekend.

Prior to the public opening of the exhibition Syd Solomon: Concealed and Revealed, at the John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art this Sunday, Dec. 15, events open to museum members provided a preview of this retrospective of the work of the longtime Sarasota artist.

Solomon lived and created here for many years, including a long stint at the home and studio on Midnight Pass Road he shared with his wife Annie. He’s famed for his abstract paintings, often involving nature, the beach, wind, the shoreline and more. But the exhibit also allows museumgoers the chance to see earlier works, some figurative, some portraits, and to learn more about Solomon’s background. Both his time spent as a camouflage artist during World War II (concealing Allied planes and troops to prevent enemy attack) and as a commercial artist (creating sign lettering and graphic design) are on view here, along with personal photos and items from the vast Solomon family archive.

Navigating the complex paths presented to visitors at Art Miami is no small feat. Faced with the mountain of galleries on view, we’ve pulled together a handy reference guide for must-see presentations at this year’s Art Miami. Located at One Herald Plaza in Miami (NE 14th Street and Biscayne Bay,) the fair shares the grounds with its sister fair, Context.

From secondary market prospects to mid-career artists, Art Miami marks a diverse cross-section of modern and contemporary art reflecting a wide assembly of tastes. From the merging of digital and material to the large-scale mid-century modernists, no other fair holds quite the range of gems on display at Art Miami.

Make sure to survey the show, and keep an eye out for the following art galleries.

Berry Campbell (AM122) – Frank Wimberley and Syd Solomon steal the show at Berry Campbell gallery’s presentation, while stunning pieces by Nancy Graves, Elaine de Kooning and others round out an impressive survey of painters and mixed-media artists spanning from the post-war period to the present day. Wimberley’s ruminations on texture and minimalism alone feel shockingly contemporary. Syd Solomon’s work will be featured in an upcoming solo show at the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, so take a peek at his works on view here to familiarize yourself with his style and deft mastery of color tones.