mountshang: April 2022

Poojah Pittie, Still Stranger, 2022

Yes, I'm a Poojah Pittie person . I would have bought this if I hadn't bought her showpiece from last year's virtual Expo. All that watery passion - it drives me nuts. Such a strong sense of tunneling into the infinite.

Gabrielle Garland,untitled , 2022

As noted when I reviewed her here, I'm a fan of Garland's cityscapes -- and now I'm even more enthusiastic as they are becoming less goofball cartoonish and more like an ordinary hangover on a bright sunny day.

Margot Bergman, Carrie, 2016

Somehow, I've missed the exhibitions of this local artist's work. Which is a shame. She's lots of fun and full of life.

Clare Grill, (b. 1979). Chirp, 2022

Wanton, playful,

a free life full of opportunity

Clare Grill, Rasp

reminds me the Turkish modernist, Bedri Rahmi Eyübo?lu, seen at the Block Museum a few years back.

Julio Larraz (b. 1944, Cuba) Les Amours de Neptuno, 2018

This is a large, dreamy piece. The artist often imagines beluga whales in the background - though they do seem most appropriate in an inter-coital bedroom scene. Mellow surrealism is really the only kind I like.

Gertrude Abercrombie, 1947

Here's some more whimsical, mellow surrealism from our local master. If only she could have benefited from the current sale of her work back when she was old and broke.

Here is a review of her recent show at the Elmhurst Museum.

Albert Irvin (1922-2015) , Upper Thames , 2010

ABX need not be angry or depressed!

Over-the-top, ever expanding joy..... all from a man who was 88 years old.

Claudio Bravo, 1992

Yikes! what a great painting.

Those damn big melons are still growing!

(and every time I look, there seems to be one more)

Claudio Bravo, 2002

The drama, wonder and amazement of the ordinary.

Daniel Massad, Providence , 2016, (pastel on paper)

The energy in these forms is so driven inward, I'm surprised the entire sheet of paper is not sucked into a black hole. One of the scariest pieces in the show.

Michael Reafsnyder, Deep End, 2021

Love this urban chaos. An earlier piece by him was seen in Expo 2017.

Matthew Eguavoen : The Collector III

There were many black bodies depicted in this Expo - but this is the only one that was more painterly than cartoonish. This Nigerian's figures have a real flair .

Reminds me a lot of Peter Uka whom I saw recently at a local gallery. Would Eguavoen also mention Kerry Marshall as an influence ?

Donald Teskey, Ballygass, 2013

That fresh, clear, ice cold water is flowing right into the gallery. It seems so Irish to make things feel so vital yet so depressing.

???

Could not find this artist's name - either at the show or on the Artsy online exhibit catalog. I really liked its brutal spaciousness. The paint is quite thick.

Claire Oswalt

These large pieces run from floor to ceiling - and they're magnificent. Georgia O'Keefe seems to be lurking in the background - but these paintings have their own unique power - and Oswalt does several other kinds of work as well.

After failing to find a CV on her website, it suddenly occurred to me that Oswalt might be called an "outsider" artist. Not because she's poor or crazy - quite the reverse. Coming from a family of physicians, she was on track to become one herself when she realized that she hated hospitals. (and who really likes them?) So she started making art - got picked up by some designers - and her career was launched. No MFA -- not even a BFA - just a born artist.

Hats off to her!

Kim Piatrowski, (b. 1965), Anxious Heaven, 2022

It's good that this local painter has finally found a local gallery after Linda Warren closed her doors. Her energy is over the top - or - out the window.

Guillermo Munoz Vera (b. 19560 2021

Born in Chile, Vera has that cool precision and mystery found in Claudio Bravo who is twenty years older. His figurative work is also wonderful -- too bad it did not come to this exhibit.

Brian Rutenberg, (b. 1965), Banner of the Coast, 2021-22

Rutenberg is also something of an outsider, despite his MFA, because his is painting for viewers who want to be entertained rather than shocked, puzzled, or instructed. Which is to say that he is in that middle-brow artworld inhabited by landscapes, portraits, nudes, and all the other 19th century stuff.

Nothing wrong with that ! But it does restrict his museum exhibitions to his home state of South Carolina (except for Butler Institute in Ohio - which specializes in old school art)

Alida Cervantes (b. Mexico, 1972) : Santa Babelica, 2017

Presumably, Santa Babelica is the patron saint of confusion.

A powerful and delightful expressionist. The brush strokes on the canvas seem to be only the tip of a very tall mountain of burning lava.

Jane Freilicher (1924-2014), 1980

she half incloses worlds in her eyes,
she moves as the wind is said to blow,
she watches motions of the skies
As if she were everywhere to go. -- Frank O'Hara

She was a good painter - but it's not really obvious why Freilicher was felt to be so integral to the New York School of poets and abstract-expressionist painters. I wrote about her recent pair of Chicago shows here

I suppose that her stubborn, retro, authenticity was much appreciated in the avant-garde world of big money.

Sean Scully (b. 1945) , Doric Air, 2016

Wikipedia tells us that Scully adopted Minimalism, but then rejected it after 1980.

36 years later, that conflict still seems apparent.

By themselves, each of the monochrome boxes is Minimalism.

But taken together, they are not.

Candida Alvarez, Are you listening to this, 2022

Our local Puerto Rican master still hasn't run out of steam.

I wrote about her 2017 retrospective here

Allie McGhee (b. 1941)

This black Detroit painter would be an excellent candidate for a retrospective in a Chicago art museum - except that his work is not about blackness -- it's about the universe. Not surprisingly, he appears online wearing a John Coltrane t-shirt.

John Little (1907-1984) , Nasasholm, 1970-74

Joyfully balanced on the edge of awkward - without falling over.

Nancy White

Cool, mysterious, non-threatening --as peacefully domestic as upholstered furniture in evening light.

Matthew Hansel: to love fully is to find yourself in uncharted waters

Perhaps not as profound as other Surrealism

-- but I enjoy the tan line over those buttocks.

Bob Thompson, The Entombment, 1963

I wrote about his 2022 show at the Smart Museum here

This is a fine, small piece.

Liliane Tomasco (b. 1967), All that We Want, 2021

Perhaps presenting the conflict between the orderliness of where she lives, Switzerland, with the turbulence of her ethnic identity (Hungarian)

Kyle Dunn, The Match

The homoeroticism upfront in Dunn’s other work is more subtle here - suggested by the partially obscured wall hanging in the background - but mostly felt in the warm glowing color applied to such an intimate moment.

Without such color, you get something like the piece shown below:

John Moore (b. 1941), Sea View

Less like a cityscape or seascape, and more like a passing glance out a window.

Jonni Cheatwood, He was a the third

The artist is now putting ABX masks over all of his faces - where every mask, even if unique, expresses the same thing. It’s more like a gimmick than anything else… but I still like this painting.

Marc Dennis

An excellent joke piece. The little Black Hat in the center can't take his eyes off the barmaid's bosom, while his companions are looking at each other (as they should)

And, of course, there's also Manet’s Black Hat in the corner of the painting itself.

Elijah Burgher: Apollo and Marsyas, after Antionio de Bellis

Antionio de Bellis

Richard Willenbrink painted a luxuriant version of this story about thirty years ago, back when he lived in Chicago. Regrettably, it cannot be located online.

Burgher's version is pretty repulsive - but that is more fitting for the subject matter. Evidently he felt that Apollo's head needed to be much larger than De Bellis did. I’m guessing that his Apollo is a portrait someone he knows. This is a very large work with colored pencil and watercolor.