Painting

When Rock Star Fantasies Go Too Far

This post was originally written for Art21.org and published on October 25, 2012. When photographer Laura London’s show opened at Coagula Curatorial in Chinatown last month, it was called Once Upon a Time…Axl Rose was my Neighbor. By the time it closed on October 20, its title had been cut down to just Once Upon a Time… and all direct reference to Axl Rose, famous[…..]

Art & Vexation: Interview with William Powhida

William Powhida, Oligopoly (Revised), 2011. Watercolor, acrylic ink, and colored pencil on panel

William Powhida’s text-based drawings* skewer the contemporary art world with relish. From fake Rolling Stone magazine pages to charts explaining economic relationships, or trompe l’oeil pages torn from the notebook of an art-world malcontent, Powhida sticks his finger into the wounds of modern culture. For example, What Do Prices Reflect? pessimistically lists the rationale used to determine an artwork’s financial value: “Whether or not the work[…..]

Revelations in Paint

Prior to this exhibition, I associated Jules Olitski with his stained color field canvases from the early 1960s. But like my experience of most solo exhibitions, I was pleasantly surprised to discover the dramatic range of paintings he produced throughout his nearly fifty-year career. Revelation: Major Paintings by Jules Olitski at American University Museum walks the viewer through Olitski’s creative evolution as an abstract artist,[…..]

The Art Fair Boyfriend or How I Survived Frieze Week and Learned to Love the Fair

Hugh Mendes, Obama Lama at The Future Can Wait

It’s autumn in London – the sun-dappled days at Hyde Park become distant memories as my brief trip back to California enters my rear view. The temperature drops, the leopard-print bikini begins its hibernation, and I stock up on Wolford tights again. The droves of art world professionals have returned from their envy-inducing Facebook check-ins in Saint-Tropez and Positano to the sudden realisation that Frieze week is[…..]

Fan Mail: Mathew Zefeldt

Mathew Zefeldt, Cube Painting.

For this edition of Fan Mail, Mathew Zefeldt of Vallejo, California has been selected from our worthy reader submissions. Two artists are featured each month—the next one could be you! If you would like to be considered, please submit your website link to info@dailyserving.com with ‘Fan Mail’ in the subject line. Dripping paint shows us that paint is there. Love of paint often draws in[…..]

Ugly Painting Competition

Ken Price, "Hunchback of Venice" (2000), acrylic on fired clay, 14 ½ x 29 x 13 inches. Photo by Fredrik Nilsen. Courtesy Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

L.A. Expanded: Notes from the West Coast A column by Catherine Wagley When LACMA curator Stephanie Barron arrived in the galleries of the museum’s new Ken Price (1935-2012) retrospective yesterday morning, she saw three women bent over trying to get a look underneath Price’s sculpture The Hunchback of Venice. The sculpture is one of the first you see when you enter the show. “Apparently, they[…..]

Macho Boogie-Woogie in Mexico

Adrian S. Bara sculpture installation, Cafe Benito, 2012

It’s a rainy summer night in Guadalajara. Zooming through the dark, the jeep I’m riding in feels more like a powerboat as it leaves a black wake in the flooded streets. This ain’t no British rain – and thank God for that. (I’ve had enough drizzle for two lifetimes.) Palm fronds shake and the heavy rain suddenly turns to hail. The frothy water in the[…..]