Saturday, December 08, 2007

Off The Grid.


Don't even hesitate . . . like I did, when I first walked into the Zach Feur Gallery last Saturday. Tom McGrath's new show is a stunner, but I wasn't even close to being ready for it because I hadn't seen any of the transitional paintings between this show and his last one in 2005. The style shifts and his palette explodes with this series of paintings. This one reminded me of Howard Hodgkin. Not an easy thing to do. Not an easy thing to do at all, from any angle. Off the grid, baby.

5 comments:

fisher6000 said...

Really?

You didn't think it was deBallincourt Lite?

Heart As Arena said...

Y'know, so many people went ga-ga for that deBallincourt show, and it just left me untouched. Un. Touched. And I didn't connect the two artists at all in my head. Hmmm.

fisher6000 said...

I love art because it's subjective...

...and frankly the deBalincourt didn't exactly freak me the fuck out.

But it felt to me like at least deB was poking at something very specific, and these struck me as overwhelmingly general.

I'll try to see the show again. I respect your opinion. Maybe I was in a bad mood, or Mercury was retrograde or something.

Heart As Arena said...

Y'know what's funny? I saw it with a friend who spends a lot of time on airplanes. His enthusiastic response was more immediate than mine, and he prefaced with the disclaimer, "Y'know, I don't know a lot about painting, and I'm just bringing my own thing to it, but . . . ", and then proceded to absolutely NAIL McGrath's intention of exploring the changing landscape. Shifting the vantage point of the traditional Landscape underscores the instability of the grid. Or at least the way we see it.

Anonymous said...

I thought it was jon elliot,gettin jiggy at the bottom