Displaying a level of obsession that rivals Agnes Martin’s, Tabatabai makes a strong case for the ongoing vitality of Minimalism.
Reviews
Shows & Waterston @ Haines
Shows, a peerless collagist, and Waterston, an established master, explore geologic wonders.
Rex Slinkard @ Cantor Arts Center
He’s been described as a “latter-day Transcendentalist with a brush.” But did he succeed as an artist? Ben Marks reports.
Peter Wayne Lewis @ JAYJAY
The relationship between jazz and abstract painting is long and storied. Lewis, channelling that history, shows he can hold a painterly groove.
Masters of Venice @ de Young Museum
“Beauty that was luxuriant, carnal and worldly” — that’s how critic Mark Van Proyen describes painting in Venice’s “Golden Age”.
Painting Between the Lines @ CCA Wattis
A picture may be worth 1,000 words, but can it compete with a reader’s imagination?
Dragons @ Intersection for the Arts
Maps promote the notion of consensus reality. Artists, the cartographers of our no-consensus zones, remind us that there is no such thing.
Sarah Bostwick @ Gregory Lind
Bostwick’s cast-relief sculptures evoke a sense of nostalgia for the visual language of architectural drawing and the structures that once arose from them.
Susanna Bluhm @ Michael Rosenthal
A painter of resplendent abstract landscapes, Bluhm displays an unpretentious, off-kilter virtuosity, painting for the sheer thrill of it.
Art + Environment @ Nevada Museum of Art
How art can address the environmental crisis? Thirteen shows demonstrate. Maria Porges reports.
Richard Serra Drawing @ SFMOMA
Whether he’s building massive steel sculptures or afixing oil-stick coated canvases to walls, Richard Serra is, at root, about drawing.
Thoughts on Recent Abstract Painting
Are we witnessing a deep rethinking of the historical enterprise of abstract painting? Mark Van Proyen investigates.
Nathan Oliveira Memorial @ Berggruen
Oliveira’s finest late paintings are magisterial, poignant and profound. More spirit than corporeal, they are exquisite contemplations of mortality.
Jay DeFeo @ Hosfelt
“DeFeo”, a prelude to the artist’s 2012 retrospective at SFMOMA, is a show of mostly small works that offer insight into the artist’s remarkable mind.
Gale Antokal @ Patricia Sweetow
Her lucid-dream drawings appear to be anodyne at first glance. But they’re not. Look closely and shudder as you see yourself inside of them.
Michele Pred @ Jack Fischer
Michele Pred takes objects confiscated by security personnel at San Francisco Airport and turns them into assemblages that bring us face to face with the security state we have become.