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y melendez and suarez are paired in the front room where their extremely different styles enjoy a sort of perfect balance with each other whereas melendez s paintings are exuberant colorful full of real life suarez s clay graphics a new medium to me that resembles encaustic are more introspective or contemplative and purely abstract suarez has a narrow palette an architectural compositional sense and a complicated directness that will draw you in to study his surfaces from up close every time i see melendez s work i am strongly reminded of the prints and paintings of longtime capital region stalwart lori lawrence and the impression this time was no less strong however melendez also evokes matisse with one painting in particular that features a very lucky cat in a charmingly tilted view of a bedroom mendoza a cuban color field painter has several unstretched canvases of varying sizes nailed to the walls of the back gallery their physicality in this method of presentation goes well with the natural colored wooden sculptures of rubio who like suarez and melendez is puerto rican while mendoza emphasizes subtle color relationships rubio is all about forms in a classically modernist way think arp tinged by botero finally just extended through jan 26 is the excellent eight person group show pt 2 at clement art gallery that features laura glazer christopher murray sergio sericolo jeff wigman dorothy englander robert gullie joe putrock and erik laffer a tantalizing snippet of each is shown above in that order it s a lot of art packed into a little space but that makes for a great concentrated immersion like eating a small cup of really tart lemon sherbet of course i have my favorites among these artists and this show provides some strong experiences of their work in interesting combination for example glazer and putrock two photographers who frequently collaborate have each mounted a grid of nine rather small framed photos forcing a little face off across a small space also employing the grid of nine are two small pieces by laffer while his larger works on view show color variations that are beginning to look more than decorative englander offers some sweetly ethereal seaside landscapes which i had the pleasure of seeing come into existence in stages as she shares my studio and sericolo continues to plumb the possibilities inherent in painstaking drawing on antique anatomical plates resulting in fascinating transformations most impressive to me here though are the concoctions of paint and paper made by murray who uses glorious color and clever graphic design to evoke the lushness of the natural world in summer all in all a darn good walk around troy posted by david brickman at 5 57 pm 2 comments labels art installation painting photography troy tuesday december 15 2009 two exhibitions at the nysm black child 1815 1825 phillip thomas cole tilyard 1785 1830 oil on canvas i was initially disappointed by the exhibition through the eyes of others african americans and identity in american art at the new york state museum in albany but then i was annoyed like a number of recent exhibitions i ve seen it has elements of being of or about art but its overriding purpose is as a history lesson this would be the source of my disappointment after all it is part of the bank of america great art series which has brought us many fabulous shows over the years that were all about the art the letdown was made sharper by my high expectations for anything that comes out of the fenimore art museum in cooperstown so what about the annoyance here it gets trickier the show s agenda as organized and labeled by cooperstown graduate program director gretchen sullivan sorin is to explore the complicated issues surrounding race in american culture as seen in paintings and sculptures from the 19th and 20th centuries and thereby to start the conversation about race anew while i m all for that and am on the public record saying so i went away rather uncomfortable with some aspects of sorin s approach on the plus side she asks a lot of questions but those questions are often presented as if to a child and though the nysm is an educational resource even kids know when they re being pandered to equally there is a heck of a lot of 21st century spin going on here ironic i think when what is being considered was 19th century spin so a less than perfectly groomed young black girl depicted in what seems to me a rather sympathetic light by the popular and skilled 19th century painter edward lamson henry is described as rendering african americans as less than equal to white americans by virtue of their tattered clothes bare feet or thick knots of uncombed hair an example titled kept in 1889 is shown above at right the fact that henry s depiction is probably rather accurate does nothing to deter the curator s interpretation that it is now appropriate to view it as demeaning or distasteful many ambiguities of this sort populate the exhibition in the part of the show dominated by caricatures of black subjects is a mass produced sculpture that shows a white girl teaching her black uncle ned how to read the title of uncle is described as emphasizing inequality in another room where we are meant to see a more uplifting perspective on black subjects a portrait titled aunt effie is praised as giving a dignified presentation of its subject with no complaint about her unequalizing handle several examples of recent art by black americans do a fine job of addressing these issues without becoming either strident or confused including kyra hicks s quilt black barbie a strong mixed media piece by whitfield lovell and a typically subtle and elegant work by lorna simpson i also especially liked faith ringgold s quite large 1967 painting titled u s postage stamp commemorating the advent of black power which depicts a few dark faces among a sea of white ones and was glad to see a 1964 norman rockwell lithograph titled the problem we all live with which could have been deconstructed or even ridiculed but is presented at face value as a positive statement about the shared white and black struggle for civil rights to her credit sorin does leave plenty of room for interpretation in between her blatantly pointed comments especially toward the end of the exhibition where a comical face jug from 1820 1850 is accompanied by these queries what makes a stereotype suppose this jug was made by an african american is it a stereotype suppose it was made by a white american is it a stereotype a possible answer to these questions comes up in another exhibition at the nysm titled this great nation will endure which consists of a great many wonderful photographs from the unforgettable fsa farm security administration era of 1935 1942 this traveling show was organized by the staff at the franklin d roosevelt presidential library and museum in hyde park and it celebrates that almost ridiculously talented group of fsa photographers with 150 very good prints made from library of congress negatives in 2004 and extremely informative wall panels about each of the photographers included they range from the super famous walker evans dorothea lange to the known if you know about that sort of thing russell lee marion post wolcott to the nearly unknown carl mydans john vachon but each has photos worth viewing and a story worth learning the show makes a focal point of lange whose iconic migrant mother is presented very large here but it also provides many strong moments from such greats as arthur rothstein ben shahn and gordon parks whose 1942 government charwoman is shown above at left parks the only black photographer in the bunch who went on to direct the seminal blaxploitation movie shaft is not the only one to present images of blacks in this exhibition so it offers a nice opportunity to ask some of the same questions that sorin poses is his charwoman a stereotype notwithstanding her purposeful resemblance to the wife in grant wood s american gothic would she be one if the photographer had been white what about the other photographs of blacks made by whites some of whom were jewish what about the stereotyping or exploitation of poor people of any color in museum quality art whatever your answers this show is every bit as instructive and provocative as through the eyes of others but with a bit less academic pretension it runs through march 14 through the eyes of others will end on jan 6 posted by david brickman at 2 31 pm 2 comments labels albany art history photography thursday december 3 2009 dona ann mcadams at opalka gallery geary street san francisco 1974 gelatin silver print by dona ann mcadams the final exams are over and the grad student is back to blogging just in time to talk about an almost absurd abundance of important photography shows going on right here in the fair city of albany they include keith carter at the college of saint rose s massry gallery through jan 17 a large group of depression era photographs at the new york state museum through march 14 and berenice abbott also at the nysm and now extended through jan 3 i wrote about the abbott show in an earlier post and will weigh in soon on the other two but first up is some women a solo show by dona ann mcadams at sage college of albany s opalka gallery through dec 16 note the show was originally scheduled to end on dec 11 but has been extended a collection of 35 gelatin silver prints from 35 years of photographing mostly in the street some women is both a personal retrospective and an homage to street photography itself the title is a purposeful evocation of a very influential book from that genre s heyday women are beautiful by garry winogrand whose work mcadams sometimes very much resembles mcadams work can also look like that of henri cartier bresson robert frank william klein and lee friedlander comparisons that i imagine have already been made many times and that i trust will not bother her in the least because they are both apt and instructive at any rate the resemblances don t diminish this work one bit it is honestly just as good as that of those great earlier photographers and most important has its own clear voice mcadams is a fun study because her work crosses so many boundaries and mixes freely from contrasting sources first there is the nostalgia of her traditional rigorous 35mm black and white technique right down to the 12 x18 darkroom made prints in this digital world we don t see much of that anymore and it is still refreshingly direct and visually rich second mcadams is extremely politically engaged yet thankfully her work does not put you off with strident messages like all the sincere i hope documentarians whose shoulders she happily straddles mcadams records the world as she experiences it which in her case means with great sensitivity clear eyed passion a healthy sense of humor and a very open mind i expected feminism from this show and mcadams is most definitely an unapologetic feminist but not of the sort you worry about running into at a cocktail party rather she quite honestly and convincingly portrays women and girls some of whom are involved in political acts but most of whom are simply living their lives the best they can and nearly always looking enchanting as they go about their business the range here is impressive from innocent tots to performance artists prostitutes to nuns in a few cases there is no female person visible in the shot one shows a well lived in room where photo portraits are the only concrete presence of humans another depicts a crowd of well dressed young men on bourbon street in new orleans during mardi gras we follow their interested gazes upward and understand they must be watching a woman on a passing float presumably in some flagrant display of her charms but the rest are quite direct many of them are portraits always affectionate like the one above at right and many are chance encounters that share the pathos of the situation before the camera such as the image at the bottom of this post with these the gallery has added to the fun by creating telling juxtapositions such as placing a somewhat chaotic barcelona street scene in which a couple appear at first to be dancing then to be fighting next to an equally off kilter shot from new york city in which women of various shapes are dressed for a carnaval style parade their gazes going every which way like those of the bystanders in the barcelona scene that pair is also side by side in the accompanying catalog which reproduces in good black and white every picture in the exhibition it s a nice little book and a fitting throwback to the days when photographers regularly produced this sort of ephemera i m talking about the 70s and 80s when printing was pretty affordable and when mcadams did too a display case in the entry area of the gallery shows off six or eight of her artist book efforts from that time some of the other pictures in the show are set up circumstances not my favorite approach in general but here they work a dozen barechested women lined up on a too small roll of studio paper each holding a sign in front of her breasts that says either porn star or feminist a trio of women jugglers in everyday attire performing in front of a nuclear power plant a spanish wedding couple being pelted with a blizzard of rice the one photo that seems out of place in this selection is of the multimedia performer meredith monk onstage though mcadams is known for her pictures of performance artists in action this theatrically lit shot lacks the subtle shades of the rest of the work in the show i guess it was just too hard to resist including something from that series aside from having been extended this exhibition will have a special guided tour by mcadams at 7 p m on friday dec 4 and the artist will also be present for a screening of the film guest of cindy sherman in which she appears at 7 p m on wednesday dec 9 these are both good opportunities to go and see a really great collection of work carrer san ramon barcelona 1988 gelatin silver print by dona ann mcadams posted by david brickman at 4 48 pm no comments labels 1st friday albany art photography thursday september 17 2009 note from the publisher dear readers it had to come to this my grad school mba demands are such that i will likely post very little from now until december my hope is to review or promote a few important shows or events during this period but even that may be impossible under the circumstances thank you for all of your wonderful support and encouragement please do not lose faith i will be back db posted by david brickman at 6 17 pm 3 comments tuesday september 8 2009 fall exhibition preview the season is upon us and we will never ever catch up with it but it s worth trying no here in chronological order based on their opening dates are some of the exhibitions that are happening in the region this fall that are on my radar i will try and fail to see all of them but i pro...