Author Archives: jolanta

The title of this exhibition, “In the Age of Innocents,” brings to mind The Age of Innocence, a novel by Edith Wharton who writes about society, class and culture. However, I suspect Tony Moore is not making a reference, with his spelling of the word “innocents,” to the rules of this society. No. Instead, Moore […]

With the world in crisis, it is rare to find a painter who dares to enter the collective unconscious to explore a solution. Yet, this is precisely the monumental task that Michael Manning sets for himself in his dazzling “Contradictions,” exhibited at Pablo’s Birthday in New York this spring. At the turn of the millennium, […]

In the last 100 years, the male figure has been put into a closet, seen as too potent, homoerotic or even gay. Since long before the time of Michelangelo, the male form was seen as ideal. As Biblically described in Genesis 1:26, “Man was perfect, made in the image of God,” and E. Gibbons is […]

A friend of mine once remarked that, “honesty lives in the water.” I expect that what he meant by this was that when we are immersed in water we are more concerned with the preservation of the self than with the presentation of the self; water is not home to the ego. My “Underworld” works, […]

Butt Johnson’s work is obsessive to a degree that could overcome even our most severe expectations of an artist confined solely to his work. His elaborately detailed ballpoint pen drawings, some of which have taken as many as two years to complete, combine complex ornamentation from a range of historical repositories with various cultural iconographies; […]

 “I’m no Britney Spears,” said Brian Kirhagis as he walked me into his show at the Brooklyn Artist’s Gym. Given the recent state of the pop star, I was not sure how to take this. He sensed my confusion and laughed. “I mean I can do everything you see here right in front of you, […]

Sheila Isham is a real throwback—a pre-war, early German Expressionist kind of gal whose heart lies in a peaceful, mystical place. Her recent show at Walter Wickiser Gallery opened with #420 Cosmic Earth—Oasis Series 41, Nature’s Eve, a highly textured painting that reads as a collage with its somewhat abrupt and technically out of context […]

“Almost Safe,” an exhibition by Anthony Giocolea, examines a post-apocalyptic world redolent with anxiety, nostalgia and a futuristic science fiction quality. The exhibition consists of six large format black and white digital photographs, drawings alluding to 19th century portraiture, a painting and a 75-second, 16-millimeter film. The artist, Photoshop whiz and master choreographer, travels the […]

Mark Sharp leaves his remarkable acrylic paintings and works on paper untitled intentionally to give free rein to each viewer’s imagination and reading of his pieces. He doesn’t object to the audience finding figurative references in his abstract works. In fact, his studio practice oscillates between moving forward and moving backward, stylistically and within his […]

The somewhat lukewarm nuances and peculiar qualities in life are what we enjoy most. While beauty definitely plays an important role in the rag trade, and while our pictures play into this, there is also a certain vulnerability to each of them. Appealing to the senses, we embark on the idea of misplacement and discomfort. […]