An award-winning NYC blogazine, primarily about painting
Thursday, July 10, 2025
Contributed by Lucas Moran / On Instagram, where most artists list their websites, exhibitions, and accomplishments beneath their handles, Dan Schein keeps it simple: “artist/painter,” followed by “Person Who Stutters.” It’s fitting for a painter whose work, some now on display at JJ Murphy Gallery, feels as though it may sometimes have a tough time coming out of him. But Schein, a painter’s painter, knows how to elicit beauty from struggle….
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / “The Messenger,” Jack Whitten’s momentous and flawlessly curated exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, is a signal event not just in American art history but, arguably, in American history simpliciter. To be sure, it showcases an art polymath who broke and cultivated important ground across a broad swath of artistic endeavor. But its timing as a socio-political statement seems perhaps singularly important.
Contributed by Michael Brennan / Pierre Obando presents ten paintings, made between 2021 and 2025, in “Some Kind…,” his first exhibition at the Bushwick salon Starr Suites. While his imagery is for the most part recognizably organic, it is not easily decipherable.
Contributed by Kate Sherman / “Ghost Coast,” Ray Hwang’s solo show at Tempest Gallery in Ridgewood, conjures an alchemical whirlpool of memory, meaning, and the self. In the line of sight from the gallery’s entrance hangs where there’s smoke-, a large and densely layered painting that evokes stained glass reliquaries or maybe a personal treasure map of candle-lit memories….
Contributed by Almog Cohen-Kashi / A rose has never had a fixed meaning. This simple flower swings between adoration and destruction, purity and rot, natural beauty and artificial symbolism. Seamlessly interlacing art history and literature, “A Rose Is” at the FLAG Art Foundation brings together 39 artists of varying generations and backgrounds for a poetic exploration of how society views an idealized plant to project shifting attitudes towards love, romance, commercialism, commemoration, and decay in an elegantly curated exhibition….
Contributed by Margaret McCann / In two shows at Bookstein Projects, excess and essence complement one other from opposite ends of simplicity. Janice Redman’s “Rough Alchemy” in the side gallery presents mostly small, hand wrought sculptures that project vulnerability, earnestly offering themselves in all their imperfections to our subjective examination. In the main gallery, Diana Horowitz’s “Light is a Place” highlights objectivity in landscape paintings that broadcast optical truth from across the room despite their tiny size. In portraying distance, they keep their own, reticently holding the walls.
Recently, Adam Simon visited his longtime friend Cathy Nan Quinlan at her Bed-Stuy studio to see the latest paintings, inspired by Nicolas Poussin’s Bacchanalian Revel Before a Term (1632–1633), which hangs in London’s National Gallery. During the visit, they talked about The Temporary Museum, the Talking Pictures blog, and the salons Cathy has hosted in her home.
In this thoughtful exchange, artist Erin Lawlor talks to Diana Copperwhite about the role of intuition and emotion in their work, their love of music, and their mutual interest in painter Howard Hodgkin. Copperwhite’s paintings will be on view alongside Hodgkin’s work at the Auckland Art Fair from May 1-4, and Lawlor ‘s solo “Divining” opens at the Highlanes Municipal Gallery in Ireland on April 26.
Contributed by Jacob Cartwright / It is no contradiction to observe that Rob de Oude paintings in his solo show “Rhyme and Repeat” at McKenzie Fine Art are created with an exceedingly sober methodology, yet achieve intoxicating outcomes. To make something and to see something are two different things, and revealing the interrelationship between them— as de Oude’s do— is one of the greatest pleasures that paintings can offer. While it may seem inapt to call such an exacting technician an experimental painter, the designation fits. De Oude conducts his investigations in the controlled environment of his studio, where variables are adjusted with one goal in mind: to see what happens.
Contributed by Peter Schroth / At Peter Freeman, Inc., esteemed realist Catherine Murphy resurfaces with a new selection of her novel perceptions of the quotidian. In Cathy and Harry, a new documentary about the life, work, and marriage of Murphy and her husband Harry Roseman, also an artist, Murphy says that one of her prime objectives is to express “universal objectivity.” Against some strands of painting tradition, she chooses subjects so mundane as to be otherwise unremarkable, indicating a gentle contrariness.
Contributed by Sharon Butler / On view in the upstairs gallery at Bortolami, Enzo Shalom’s paintings – modest in image and muted in palette – carry a quiet intensity that has felt rare among young New York painters in recent years. At a time when traditional painterly bravado dominates, Shalom takes a different route, making vulnerability seem like a radical act. His work leans into restraint: awkward angles, washed-out tones, and just enough mark-making to read as intentional without seeming overworked. If you can imagine early Luc Tuymans’ bleached-out hues, EJ Hauser’s jagged lines, and Gary Stephan’s off-kilter compositions, you’ll land somewhere near the world of Shalom’s paintings. It’s a subdued, thoughtful space, low-key but deeply engaging.
Contributed by Jason Andrew / Judith Linhares has a fascination with bad taste, the oh-too beautiful, and the color yellow. In her third solo exhibition at PPOW, she doesn’t hold back packing the gallery with paintings that feature strange figurative archetypes, gaudy décor, and kitschy bits all in an embrace of the subversive potential of visual excess.
Contributed by Margaret McCann / “The Soul of Nature”at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of many exhibitions dedicated to German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) on the 250th anniversary of his death. Some of his finest are absent – the epic Sea of Ice’s vision of an arctic shipwreck, The Great Enclosure’s resonant view of a Dresden field Napoleon amassed his troops on, or Ruine Eldena, one of Friedrich’s many depictions of the remnants of the powerful Catholic monastery his hometown Griefswald formed around. But there are numerous studies displaying his keen observation of nature, research he used for paintings creatively orchestrated in the studio.
From my perspective, April has become a prime month for exhibitions in NYC, sandwiched between March’s print and photo fairs and the May Madness of the big spring fairs. The city’s brick-and-mortar art galleries take center stage, and there’s no shortage of engaging exhibitions. I’m looking forward to Rick Briggs’s offbeat abstraction at Satchel Projects in Chelsea, Carolyn Case’s “wild domestic” paintings in Asya Geisberg’s temporary Cortlandt Alley space in Tribeca, and Dustin Hodges’ new work at 15 Orient, also in Tribeca. Artist-writer Mira Dayal has what tracks as an austere, smart solo at Spencer Brownstone. On the opposite side of the emotional spectrum, “Love Poems,” a big, heartfelt group show curated by Chris Martin, is on view at Anton Kern. With due respect to Eliot, April has become one of my favorite months. I’ll see you out there.
Contributed by Karlyn Benson / As spring unfolds in the Hudson Valley new exhibitions are opening every weekend. On April 5 William Corwin, Things: Wheels, Ladders, Teeth, Alps, Gods, Boats, Etc. opens at Geary along with a presentation of Corwin’s work at The Re Institute, both in Millerton. On April 12 Amy Talluto and Heather Cox have solo shows opening at the Garrison Art Center, and there are openings nearby in Beacon at Bau, Super Secret Projects, and Distortion Society. Kingston has two new galleries: Roundaboutsnow, which opened in March with the group show Middle Ages, and 68 Prince Street Gallery, which opens on April 26 with a solo show of paintings by Francine Tint. In addition, the River Valley Arts Collective is active again for the season with Nicki Green: Fruitful Vine at the Al Held Foundation in Boiceville, NY (visits by appointment only).
