Strong Work At Adair Margo

My Top 3

Walking into a good gallery and seeing new strong contemporary work can produce an almost hedonistic pleasure-not just visual but something more all encompassing. At Adair Margo’s last night I found that sort of joy in Fermin Gutierrez’s strange, dreamlike paintings. The elongated seemingly boneless figures luxuriating on divans, peering up at the sky, the presence of birds throughout all evoke another world. He told me he is a spectator of his own paintings. He is seized or struck by the image he needs to paint without fully understanding it. He said he believes an artist must be concerned with carefully and skillfully arranging colors, composition and space, but the idea of the image, of what he will paint is something which essentially smacks him in the head and he puts it down. Only later he said, will the secrets reveal themselves He is going to give a talk at the gallery on either the 20th or 21st.
Upstairs Susan Davidoff continues her exploration of structure imposed on nature. She points to a Chinese concept of Li as her inspiration. Perhaps these might be viewed as architectural designs for nature, landscapes with skeletal detail imposed. This is a continuation of her show at EPMA a number of years ago “Air Pressure”. In this she works with Rachelle Thiewes, who here has brooches and bracelets.

There is an excellent thought provoking interview in Glasstire with Michael Auping, chief curator of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth who is speaking about theircurrent show
“Declaring Space.”-david sokolec