Abstract Masters

Frank Wimberly's For Barbara (1958), between a Frank Bowling and a Herbert Gentry.

African American Abstract Masters, at the Opalka Gallery, Sage College, in Albany.

This is the same show I saw split up in two places in NYC back in March... at Anita Shapolsky's and the Wilmer Jennings Gallery.


Joe Overstreet, Carry Back (1960) - this painting has already been 'favorited' three times since posting it to flickr a few days ago....


Frank Wimberly... Frank is the only surviving artist who was able to attend the opening... he's eighty-four!!


Ed Clark Louisiana Series (1978) back wall. Joe Overstreet Black Star Line (1990) front wall.

- Ed Clark at G.R. N'Namdi got a lot of comments
- I visited Joe Overstreet's studio
- definitely click on the Anita Shapolsky post to see some better images and a great photo of Anita.


Frank Wimberly talking about Ed Clark's Red, Black and Blue Movement (2009)... oh yeah Ed Clark is also eighty-four.

(Ed Clark had a great website but it's down hope it gets fixed)

Edwin Ruda

Edwin Ruda, Tecumseh, 1969... in the concourse underneath the Empire State Plaza.




Edwin Ruda.



RELATED: still trying to find out... WHO IS THIS ARTIST?

Every Day is Earth Day

Every Day is Earth Day

Went back to take some better pictures of the amazing collection in the concourse under the Empire State Plaza... this time I explored a little further and went into one of the buildings.


Not as much stuff to see in the building but the walls are all cool milky cosmic marble. No sign to say who made this painting.


Walked upstairs and it was all marble everywhere... no more art... until I saw this blue and green piece floating in space at the end of a long hall.


I peeked. The back says XOX, D. Kohler, N.Y., 1970-71.

WHO IS IT? There is no Kohler listed on the Empire State Plaza Art Collection website and no D. Kohler listed on Artnet.



RELATED: old pics at the plaza... mostly cellphone... i will post better ones soon.

David Herbert

David Herbert, Holiday, 2009, in Uncharted, at University Art Museum of SUNY Albany.

Too weird... an identical paper crew of Scrooge McDucks on the deck of a ship like a piece of walking furniture. Absurd hopeful greedy comic determined futile sameness.


David Herbert on America. This ship of near-sighted McDucks looks fantastically oblivious in the context of Edward Durrel Stone's Islamic-inspired architecture.


MUSEUM. Love this campus.

Steve DiBenedetto

Casa Amnesia, 2008

Steve DiBenedetto at University Art Museum, SUNY Albany.


detail of Casa Amnesia - i love red and blue together... they are Spider-Man colors.


detail of Casa Amnesia


detail of Casa Amnesia - hot pool of grenade green.


Half a Place, 2005


detail of Half a Place - carnival Eiffel Tower of electro-guns, zap.


Edge Dwelling, 2008


detail of Edge Dwelling - glyphs like guns, in each pane.


Breakup, 2003-04 - better in reality, maybe you can see some of the good stuff if you click the picture to make it bigger. Here's a much smaller helicopter+spinning color-wheel+octopus painting from 2000.

The many helicopter paintings and drawings are full of short choppy strokes, spaces, and breaks... like the choppy thwack sound of helicopters. The lines and ridges shared the same pulsing blade whop. It was a synaesthetic experience like what I get with some of Charles Burchfield's paintings and the pulsing hum of ciccadas.

Helicopter sounds (third one down is good), blade whops. Some intense sounds, I want to make music. Here I am playing the Netflix strip.

Red and Green Abstraction, 1997-98 - pre-helicopter and octopi? maybe he didn't even start those until he was forty? here's another (relatively) early abstraction, i didn't get the date or title.
Fester, 1999 - earliest of the helicopters and octopi in the show...
Untitled, 2000
Cryptopsy, 2000-01 - sort of a bio-Lasker... like J. Lasker and T. Winters got caught in the same transporter.
Octotech, 2007


detail of helicopter from Octotech, 2007.


Steve DiBenedetto is upstairs, Keith Edmier is downstairs.


Ceilings are fantastic... place feels like Iran or something, even the outside.

RELATED: as seen on anaba!!
- Lane Twitchell at University Art Museum
- Judith Linhares at University Art Museum
- James Siena at University Art Museum
- Mr. President at University Art Museum

Betty Blayton

Betty Blayton, Souls Transcending, 2005

Painting by Betty Blayton in the show with the three pieces by Al Loving. She has three pieces, but this is the most interesting. Here's a detail.


Gregory Coates, Blue Smoke, 2006, Blue powder pigment and acrylic on cigar boxes

Gregory Coates has two pieces in this show also, which I revisited after seeing his show at Opalka Gallery.


The one on the left is Permission, 2007, Blue pigment on rubber over wood. Click here to see it much better.

Gregory Coates

Gregory Coates, Positions, at Opalka Gallery, in Albany....

Piece above is a detail shot of one of the twelve bars pictured below, all of them wood wrapped with black inner tubes, painted.

Wrapped and woven, gorgeous up close... it's hard choosing images.


3 x 4 = 1, 2006, acrylic on rubber on wood pallets.

Like Donald Judd.


How Do You Like Me Now?, 2006, acrylic on rubber with pvc

The title is a reference to David Hammons' white Jesse Jackson.


Inner-tubes sprayed white.


Installation shot of Kiki: Short for Christiane, 2007, pigment on rubber on wood pallet (left), Monument For Steve Cannon, 2007 (right), Strut, 2006 (foreground)


Detail of Kiki: Short for Christiane, 2007, pigment on rubber on wood pallet.

Stretched, wrapped, tied, and painted. Looks like powder. Like seeing the air valves poking out everywhere.

This blue still doesn't quite match the blue of the piece...


Daytime, 2007, acrylic on feathers on wood panels.

One of four large feather paintings in the show... I like this one, but the two next to it not so much. This one is better.

Gregory Coates is one of the artists I liked in the show with Al Loving. I was loving Alvin Loving so much I never got around to posting Coates and Betty Blayton.

Roam, 2006, industrial plastic wrap on wooden pallets.

There are so many tiny lines in the plastic...


Detail of Roam, 2006, industrial plastic wrap on wood pallet.


Monument For Steve Cannon, 2007

Monument For Steve Cannon consists of a sofa on a carpet, facing a large black feather painting. Steve Cannon is the poet-professor founder of A Gathering of The Tribes. Is this sofa from Tribes??

James Kalm talking to Steve Cannon at Tribes.

it's a sofa-bed sofa.

Gregory Coates is also showing at Magnan Projects, through March 29th. Go to my flickr set to see more work, or to see any of these images larger.

James Wines

This James Wines sculpture - Grey Disc, 1968, painted cement and steel - is another of my favorites from the concourse underneath Empire State Plaza.

Grey Disc at Empire State Plaza is almost like a proto-Sculpture in the Environment piece.... perhaps the experience of placing his piece within the Rockefeller/Harrison context contributed to ideas leading to the founding of SITE two years later.

SITE is maybe BEST known for the nine BEST Products showrooms, commissioned by BEST art patrons Sidney and Frances Lewis... here is some more info on those buildings. BEST Products has gone out of business, and all but one of SITE's BEST buildings has been destroyed... the overgrown and grassy Forest Showroom is now a church.


Ghost Parking Lot, 1978, commissioned by the Hampden Plaza shopping center. Here is what it looked like when it was still new, and here is a gorgeous photo taken in 2002, shortly before it was destroyed.


Indeterminate Facade Showroom, 1975 - everybody who has been to art school in the past thirty years is familiar with this building.


Indeterminate Facade Showroom today. This photo was taken from Diebold Essen's Magellan's Log, where you can see that in this panoramic photo taken in 2002 (scroll right) the original architecture was still extant.

James Wines more recently did the Shake Shack.

RELATED: God Bless Sidney and Frances Lewis.
RELATED: 1983 Time article on James Wines and SITE.

Lane Twitchell

Lane Twitchell at University Art Museum, in Albany.




detail.


detail.




detail.




detail.


Lane Twitchell.

RELATED: Judith Linhares at University Art Museum, James Siena at University Art Museum, Mr. President, at University Art Museum.