Alison Fox

Alison Fox, at John Davis Gallery.


these are pics of paintings from the downstairs floor only, i forgot to take pics of the paintings on the main floor.

Alison Fox in Party at Phong's, on anaba 10/13/08.
Alison Fox solo at ATM, on anaba 7/2/07.
Alison Fox at Sikkema Jenkins, on anaba 3/27/06.
Alison Fox at NADA Miami, 12/8/05.
...and of course there is one of those posts that got me on the shit lists way before any of the whatever shit lists i am on now.


Alison Fox - my mom said she was looking at this and thinking 'waterfall', later looked at the list and saw the title - Waterfall.

NEXT few posts are gonna be current John Davis shows. Alison Fox is in the main space but there are good shows in the carriage house.

RELATED - Joanne Mattera on Louise Fishman and Brenda Goodman at John Davis Gallery.

Party at Phong's House

Peter Gallo - it says "Clifford Still".

Party at Phong's House, at Galeria Janet Kurnatowski - good show, curated by Chris Martin.

This was one of the best group shows I saw last week, along with the B. Wurtz-curated show at White Columns. Both are artist-curated medium-specific shows built around central artists... the Chris Martin (painter) show stars Ron Gorchov, the B. Wurtz (sculpture) show grounded by a Sol Lewitt.


Keltie Ferris


forget who.... someone please tell me. also, can't remember this artist's name either. UPDATE: Nora Griffin (?)

The show included 80-something paintings by more than thirty artists. I first checked out all of the work thinking about what I liked most before doing it a second time with the identifying artist list... was glad to discover that two of my "crap" picks were by a kid and an elephant. I should be an art adviser.


Ron Gorchov


EJ Hauser


who is this artist? i had it misattributed for a long time.

Really liked the black Matt Connors painting... but couldn't get an adequate photograph.


Alison Fox

Party at Phong's House closed YESTERDAY... sorry if you missed it.

Hrag Vartanian on Party at Phong's.
Roberta Smith on Begin Again Right Back Here.

chelsea, june 2007 - some interesting solo shows

Tom Meacham, at Oliver Kamm, through July 13th - these paintings are not really paintings....... the one on the left is some kind of print, maybe an inkjet print, directly onto canvas, and the one one the right is black tape on canvas. There is a table of knives, like a street stand, I'm not sure what that is about. Oliver Kamm is consistently interesting.

Oh, surprise, I just did a search of this blog to find any previous Oliver Kamm mentions here, and it turns out I talked about Tom Meacham's O. Kamm show back in 11/2005. Weird. Looking at those pictures of the 2005 show, on the gallery's website, makes me think that maybe if the 2007 me could travel back in time and see that 2005 show I might like it even more than I did at the time. Maybe I am not getting Tom Meacham fully. Maybe the 2009 me would like this 2007 show more than the 2007 me. I need to spend more time at the next Tom Meacham show, really try to get it, and catch up with myself. If nothing else, this blog is maybe good for me to try to keep track of and figure out what I'm interested in, and why.

Earlier this year I enjoyed the Michael Rodriguez show at Oliver Kamm.


Liz Markus, at ZieherSmith, through July 27th - they're sort of ominous, apocalyptic, tie-dye-ish, rohrshachs... of hippies. Stain painting, poured painting, folded painting (it must be folded at some point, right?)... I see in these rorschachs lots of 50's/60's painting references together with the 60's/70's cultural references, all of which are included together within this Cold War/Vietnam time-frame. Seeing the same hippie face in every rohrshach is too much though.


Alison Fox, at ATM, through July 6th - lots of nice small abstract paintings, hung salon style throughout the space, with some of the gallery walls covered by sheets of cork (not really cork, a cork wallpaper). It seemed like they were full of nods and references, like little tributes to technique, but maybe that is my imagination. I think the cork thing contributed to that.. the idea of putting up postcards of your favorite paintings.


David Noonan, at Foxy Production, through July 6th - The floor was covered with a big mat, not tatami, but something like tatami... smelled good. The subdued palette, smell, and central "screen" sculpture all made me think of Japan stuff... plus one of the images was vaguely like something from a Mifune samurai movie (even thought it wasn't at all). The images are all black and white screenprinted photographs, or maybe film-stills... there was definitely a cinematic feel.

That screen sculpture mentioned above consists of a group of flat cut-out screenprinted figures - like the Clockwork Orange gang, but they also could be mimes, or clowns, or street performers.

Robert Motherwell, Alison Fox

Robert Motherwell - this is one of the paintings in the Albany concourse I talked about last week.


Alison Fox - I wonder if Alison ever saw the Motherwell.... she went to school in nearby Saratoga, so it's possible.

I like both these paintings.

chelsea, march 2006, #2

Stephen Westfall at Lennon Weinberg - I liked every single one, but none of them quite as much as Dogwood, the piece I saw here last summer. I think because Dogwood made me think of Japan.

Jason Fox at Feature - Jason Fox kicks ass. This was so cool to see right after seeing the Stephen Westfall paintings next door. This painting is in the back and the guy let me look at it, and even pulled out a bigger older one that Fox had painted on the back of a Meyer Vaisman (they are former studio mates).

Everything at Feature was good - the current show in the front room is Lucky DeBellevue; James Wagner has a beautiful photograph here. The paintings are like something from Maurice Tuchman's The Spiritual in Art. Tyler Vlahovich is in the back room with interesting work.


Louise Fishman at Cheim & Read - I really liked seeing the little sailboat De Kooning homage in this painting. That's what it is, right? That's how I read it, anyways. Didn't like all of these paintings, some of them got to thick with brushstrokes and flattened themselves out or something. My favorite was in the back room, on the wall on the right. Can't find an image but it was called Ramon De La Vida Loca - it had a lot of variety of strokes and direction and action, and the space was the best. The lightest part was farthest away, the darkest parts closest; and the far away strokes were the sharpest, with the closest the blurriest. There was a big sweep coming down from the top, a little left of center. Like a gauzy curtain.

Lots of Louise Fishman talk on PaintersNYC and at Edna's.

Alison Fox at Sikkema Jenkins - Another sailboat, maybe(?). Okay, I have now seen enough Alison Fox paintings to know that I generally like them, and in this show she and Paula Wilson were my two favorites, although I didn't like the Fox image that was chosen for PaintersNYC at all, too cake-y. I like her colors and designs, sense of structure, and the seemingly casual brushwork. Some of these paintings get very complicated but they don't become weighted down (except for that cakey one).

The Paula Wilson's were freaky. On some of them all of the crinkly paper add-ons kind of got in the way for me, but on this big butt face one it works well.

The Matt Connors and Mark Handelman were both just completely blah for me, and Chris Dorland's stuff I always find boring for some reason, but not necessarily badly painted. Not sure what it is... the monochrome, the stifling feeling, the sterile settings? Can't get into them or get anything out of them.

They talk about this whole show on Fairy Butler's blog, lots of different thoughts in the comments. Most of them didn't like Fox's paintings, and did like Connors'.

ABMB: NADA, Miami, 2005

Fie Norsker at Mogadishni - I first admired the painting on a wall outside the booth, and then inside the booth I was enjoying the unlabeled sculptures - it was a nice surprise to learn they were by the same artist.


Blake Rayne (front) and Sean Paul at Sutton Lane.


Alison Fox at Atm - Nice green, nice scale, and nice spaaaace.


Donald Baechler at (?)


Chris Smith at General Store - This is something I would have bought if I had any money. Like a Friedrich. Love the dirty snowbank and the bright reds.

He's the same guy that made American Movie and co-directed The Yes Men.




Anj Smith at Ibid Projects


Nick Evans at Transmission Gallery. Here's another angle. He also had a nice, small wall-piece, you can kind of see it behind the (ceramic) stick in that link.

All That's Wrong - PLUS!

From NYMagazine's article on the stomach turning art market -

"this is a market in which collectors are even queuing up for works by kids who are still in art school—like Alison Fox, a painter in Hunter’s grad program whose current one-woman show at the East Village’s ATM gallery sold out before opening night, according to gallery owner Bill Brady. He’s quick to add that the British collector Charles Saatchi and the Guggenheim were among early buyers for the paintings (priced at $1,400 to $5,000), and that Fox already has a twenty-person waiting list for new work. “My list isn’t full of speculators,” he insists."

Um, please correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that Zach Feuer's wife?