Art News

By Charles Kessler

Jersey City Art News

Installation view, Material Tak; paintings by Jsun Laliberté on the left, and Anne Sherwood Pundyk on the right.

Material Tak, Panepinto Galleries, 371 Warren Street, Jersey City (Until July 15th)
Almost everything that’s now happening with abstract painting is represented in this handsome exhibition located in what used to be the Warehouse District of Jersey City. The exhibition was curated and sensitively installed by Kara Rooney, who has brought some life into the moribund art scene here. The artists in the exhibition, Mark Dagley, Anne Sherwood Pundyk, Kati Vilim, Jsun Laliberté, and Peter Fox, are from Manhattan, Brooklyn and Jersey City; and all their work is accomplished and complex (in a good way).

Anne Sherwood Pundyk, Levels, 2012, acrylic and oil on panel, 14 x 11 inches (not including the painted background).

I was particularly interested in Anne Sherwood Pundyk’s installation. By creating a wallpaper-like background for her paintings, Pundyk transformed this large, Chelsea-style space into a congenial environment — a more private, almost residential, space that allows you to slowly savor this rich work.

Two of my favorite Jersey City artists currently have exhibitions on view.
Nancy Cohen, whom I wrote about here, is in two shows: Accola Griefen Gallery, 547 W. 27th St  #634 in Chelsea (until June 23rd), and Precarious Exchange at The Hunterdon Art Museum, 7 Lower Center Street, Clinton, NJ (until September 9th).

Nancy Cohen, Spill, 2011, glass, metal, wire, resin, handmade paper, wool, 77" x 16" x 9" -- and detail on the right (Accola Griefen Gallery).

And Edward Fausty will be showing photographs at the Mayson Gallery, 254 Broome Street on the Lower East Side, from June 13th until July 18th.

Art House Productions, one of the most active and vital cultural organizations in Jersey City, is presenting the original play Something to Remember Me By from June 14 - 23. It should be a real treat; their publicity states: ... Please join us at the Morris estate where your hostess, Ms Abigail Morris, will welcome her closest family and friends for an evening of celebration and forgiveness. ON THE MENU: An assortment of sweet memories, bitter grudges, and dark secrets. The audience will be sitting at the dining room table with the cast. Tickets are only $15 to $25 and you can buy them online here.

After their Saturday, June 23rd show, Art House will have their annual Summer Blowout, with live music, food, raffles and all kinds of silly fun. Tickets are $10.

If you took my advice and went to the Nimbus Dance Works Spring Season Dance Concert, you saw an enthralling performance that included new pieces by Artistic Director and Founder Samuel Pott, and by the Turkish choreographer Korhan Basaran. Hopefully next year Nimbus will install steeper risers so everyone will be able to see better. You can find photos of the concert here, on their Facebook page.

Museum news:
The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC may sell its landmark building. Art blogger Tyler Green has been on this potentially scandalous story. The good Corcoran news is, beginning June 30th they will be presenting a retrospective of Richard Diebenkorn's Ocean Park series of paintings. It is a major show consisting of more than 80 paintings, drawings and mixed-media works that Diebenkorn made from 1967 to 1988. The Corcoran is the only place this travelling exhibition is going to on the East Coast. It will be there until September 23rd.

The Whitney Museum sent out an email updating the progress on its new museum near the High Line. Here's a video about it.

The New Whitney - Image courtesy of Renzo Piano Building Workshop in collaboration with Cooper, Robertson and Partners.

They are saying the new 200,000+ square foot facility will have three times the space as the old museum devoted to exhibiting their permanent collection; a 170-seat theater with double-height views of the Hudson River; a 13,000+ square foot space on a stepped roof facing the High Line for outdoor sculptures, installations, new media, and performance presentations; and an 18,000+ square foot special exhibition gallery— the largest column-free art museum gallery in NYC. Sounds good.

The New York Times reports on Dia: Chelsea's plans for a new building in Chelsea.

Other News:
Also from the Times is this: How the Art Market Thrives on Inequality.

Because each piece of fine art is unique and can’t be owned by anybody else, it does a more powerful and subtle job of signaling wealth than virtually any other luxury good. High prices are, quite literally, central to the signal — you don’t spend $120 million to show that you’re a savvy investor who’s hoping to flip a Munch for $130 million. You’re spending $120 million, in part, to show that you can blow $120 million on something that can’t possibly be worth that much in any marketplace.

Pacific Standard Time (PST) is a series of more than 60 exhibitions about the art history of Southern California that the Getty Foundation and the Getty Research Institute instigated. Once again they have shown leadership by putting their entire PST archives online. Not only that, but the Los Angeles Times reports the Getty Research Institute, partnering with several other major art institutions, has created The Getty Research Portal, an art history version of Google Books with about 20,000 titles already online and much more to come. What a resource!

Two Chelsea exhibitions I recommend:
Brice Marden's new paintings at Matthew Marks, 526 West 22nd Street, are small and tactile. Delicious work.

Brice Marden, Years 2, 2011, oil and graphite on marble, 21 ¼ x 11 ¼ inches.

And yet another sign of the positive influence of Richard Tuttle that I wrote about here is the work of  Michelle Segre, Derek Eller gallery, 615 West 27th Street.

Michelle Segre, Let Me Love Your Brain, 1997-2011, mixed media, 83 x 69 x 41 inches.

And finally, From Dance Magazine, is a discussion with six choreographers about making work for film.