November 12, 2005
November 11, 2005
November 10, 2005
November 09, 2005
November 08, 2005
James Siena Interview
In the Brooklyn Rail:
In Conversation: James Siena with Chris Martin
The Brooklyn Rail visited James Siena at his compact Canal Street studio on a rainy October morning. The two-room space felt like some archetypal medieval workshop. Recent paintings were glowing like icons on shelves and on the floor. Framed pieces, books, documents, various tools and paints are carefully organized in shelves and cabinets—along with part of his collection of antique typewriters. A beautiful Alan Saret drawing hangs between the two windows.
Suzan Frecon Interview
In the Brooklyn Rail:
In Conversation: Suzan Frecon with John Yau
One Sunday afternoon last month at Suzan Frecon’s Hell’s Kitchen studio, Rail’s consulting editor John Yau spoke with the painter about her new body of work which will be exhibited at Peter Blum Gallery from November 17 to January 14, 2006.
November 07, 2005
Fernando Colón González at Larry Becker Contemporary Art, Philadelphia
Fernando Colón González at Larry Becker Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, September 24 - November 12, 2005
Fernando Colón González presented twelve paintings in a two-person show with Rebecca Salter at Larry Becker Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. All of these paintings are Flasche on horizontal panels measuring 11 x 14 inches— certificate size— except for one vertical with the same dimensions. A brace on the back of each panel makes the painting hang a half inch or so off the wall; the space this puts between painting and wall, and the shadows this casts, make the paintings feel independent of the wall, while also creating the effect of lightness, thinness, and momentary vulnerability.
Each painting has a solidly colored background. At first glance this field appears relatively flat, but a brief investigation of the surfaces and edges of these panels reveals that many have been painted a few times, in successive iterations, so that the surfaces have just the slightest topography and the edges have a little crust from previous action.
On top of each ground, located more or less in the middle of the panel, is a kind of figurative element painted in a color different from the background. They all seem to be painted in a short period of time with the same size brush. What are these— trees, rocks, hills? Plumbing, radiators, schematics? 
Coat racks, Bullwinkle, cartoonish limbs and organs? Maybe they are nothings hinting at or masquerading as unnamable somethings. Maybe they are wannabes. Or maybe they are somethings for which we don't have a name.
These are two-color paintings landing in-between something depicted and something invented. Flasche, a water-based vinyl paint often used in animation, is opaque and bright and, when painted more thickly, as Colón González uses it, gives the paintings the quality of having a soft Play Doh skin. This makes the paintings feel doughy, fleshy, rubbery, and pliant. It's hard to put your finger on what exactly these figures might be. Are they from somewhere in the lands between cartoons and serious abstraction? And would that be the Hinterlands, the Wastelands, or the Promised Lands? There is a determined self-consciousness here of restraint and purpose that hints at something more like the latter, which the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionarydefines as, "a place or condition believed to promise final satisfaction or realization of hopes."
This body of work shows a consistent treatment of scale, paint, and mark. It is impressive how these small paintings, intimate and sensual yet so modest on first impression, project a delicate muscularity and endurance. By this I mean that there is an intricately human physicality present in the way the strokes are carefully placed with an even pressure and delineation. Each mark shows the quivering movement of the hand; this might be evidence of a heart beat, a blink, or breathing or, instead, breath being held. This is nervous system art; the marks result from an arm poised ready to receive a signal to begin and end, and for a brief moment the painter's body is right behind and pushing into and pulling back on the brush. It is a fine line between success and failure.
Although each finished painting may happen quickly, the resulting images feel slow and deliberate. Lines build in passes, turns, stacks, and overlappings to aggregate into the figures which possess in retrospect an intuitive logic. Each figure is new and inventive. In some cases one stroke is laid after another in a barely-interrupted sequence of pulled and lifted marks that result in a constructed, almost architectural figure. 
In other cases the brush is never lifted, but instead stops and turns in a continuous path of paint that might form a more organically grown shape. The marks show very brief moments of hesitation, thought, and decision. This kind of painting is primitive and basic; it is pre-literate and sign-like, between extemporaneous and planned. The absence of language lingers in these forms, leaning towards symbol.
Colón González's paintings are playful and ambiguous, open to viewer response despite an apparently iterative process that demonstrates a yearning intention to say something. Intention is intimated in the iterations and in each painting's appearance of having been made almost at once, or in two or three short steps. One can follow their making like a performance. This kind of painting requires a presence in the moment— even a planned image is spontaneous. But this is not gestural, expressive work, and it is not easy. It is hard to paint something that stays, that holds its place, and to do it consistently with wit and intelligence. In this is the conceptual basis of the work: the painter sets up parameters in which to act, and the resulting painted image is the end product of a performance.
The performative aspect of this work makes me wonder: is this genuineaction painting? I mean this in a way different from how the term has been used historically. In 1952 critic Harold Rosenberg first used the term Action Painting regarding Abstract Expressionists such as Pollock, Kline, and de Kooning, when he wrote that, "the canvas began to appear to one American painter after another as an arena in which to act — rather than a space in which to reproduce, redesign, analyze or 'express' an object, actual or imagined." In Rosenberg's usage, however, the label ended up being quite useless except when applied to second and third-generation AbExers who, according to commonly accepted, although perhaps inaccurate, critical analysis carried on a kind of mannerist expressionism. Instead, I think Colón González's intention is to produce, design, analyze or 'express' an object, actual or imagined, and he does this through a loosely ruled, procedure-based practice that demands a physically sensitive and emotional involvement which requires stamina, a light touch, charm, and sense of adventure and invention.
In addition to being concise yet a little mysterious, I think Colón González's paintings are funny, which is a kind of intelligence I admire. The figures are maybe a little goofy, and an initial take on size, color, and image might bring the words fun or cute to mind. I have read that the painter Thomas Nozkowski isn't fond of the idea of humor that some people have about his work. I can understand why he wouldn't want one's experience or understanding to stop there. Certainly, there are lots of other things going on in Nozkowski's work, but I think that there are such surprising and offbeat passages in his paintings that the label of humor is simply the highest praise. I feel the same way about the paintings here.
I am wondering about what I think I perceive as the ethics of Colón González's paintings. Uh oh, ethics and art— what do they have to do with each other? Broaching this places one very far out on a very thin limb. Isn't art supposed to be beyond morality and ethics? Wasn't postmodern art supposed to do something like expose the hypocrisy of a corrupted capitalist fine art in culture, and isn't art in this post-postmodern period in turn supposed to celebrate and revel in this hypocrisy? Well, sure, when I read all about that kind of situation, and when I intellectualize the dilemma from afar, I suppose the answer is, for me, a dreaded yes.
But when I walk in the woods, am in good company or eating good food, then neither the postmodern nor the post-postmodern really applies to me. I see a whole other range of cultural possibilities that are expressive, pleasant, beautiful, communicative, emotional, funny, earnest, ambiguous, quirky, touching, sentimental, resilient, personal, perceptive, persistent, studied, rigorous, tough, resonant, and so on. I can't help but think that intention and commitment— staying true to a concept, staying human in the process, staying present in the making, and finding real resolution in the making of a painting— has an ethical quality, something with a sense of purpose and honesty. To do that with wit and charm, which seem like lighter things, but also with full awareness and consistency within a conceptual framework, which has more gravity, and to bring both the light and heavy together successfully, seems to me a moral dilemma, requiring a highly ethical navigation, which is not an easy thing to do. I think Colón González's paintings do that with tremendous success.
Chris Ashley
Oakland, CA
November 2005
1,414 words
All paintings Fernando Colón González, Untitled, 2005, Flasche on panel, 11 x 14 inches; photos Larry Becker Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; used without permission. Gallery views Chris Ashley, 20051010.
November 06, 2005
Felix Gonzalez-Torres at the Fabric Workshop
Felix Gonzalez-Torres at the Fabric Workshop, Philadelphia, 20051010:
