Dennis Hollingsworth

baldachin

baldachin
2017
20" x 12" diameter
Oil on Wood Armature under Glass Vitrine

Instagram Reviews

I've been posting capsule reviews on Instagram as I tour NYC and see the shows. You can find me there via the handle "pacificohollingsworth" (Pacifico is my grandfather's name). It started with a sentence or two, then I followed up with a short paragraph. Mind dump. Germs of criticism. I'll keep them succinct, that's the charm. As I wrote in reply to a comment recently:

...there's something very nice about this experiment, capsule blurb reviews of shows I see around town. Feeling the flow. Thinking on my feet. Going Ginsberg, "First thought, best thought."

(I'll splash with one and follow under the fold with 5 others.)

Cecile Brown "A Day! Help! Help! Another Day!" @paulacoopergallery titled after a poem by Emily Dickinson, which ends "What issues / Upon thine arrow hang!" Indeed. In the previous Instagram, I wondered about how far down Gary Hume's facture was dialed down... but here with a Brown's paintings, she delivers an avalanche. Now I wonder about the lack of modulation: edge to edge with all instruments playing at once in the orchestra, you're on the slippery slope to monochrome-land. Why does Pollock's "Lavender Mist" feel so different? Here at Paula Cooper, footing feels perpetually unsure. No rest for the eyes. One can't help but feel anxious in the mud wrestling arena. It's as if the camera was left in the field, aperture open for a day, all of creation moving a blur.

A post shared by Dennis Hollingsworth (@pacificohollingsworth) on Nov 29, 2017 at 11:52am PST

Gary Hume "Mum" @matthewmarksgallery ... three paintings each presented here with an orthogonal and an oblique. 1) There is no facture possible in cloisonné painting. 2) This show is a tribute to his mother. 3) Art is powered by feeling, and few feelings are stronger than what we have for mom. 4) Feeling is exercised via facture: more feeling, more facture... therefore less facture, less feeling. 5) Enamel leaves no brush marks, leveling them out of existence. 6) Feeling numb and disembodied is still a feeling.

A post shared by Dennis Hollingsworth (@pacificohollingsworth) on Nov 29, 2017 at 11:20am PST

Nayland Blake #IDrawEveryDay @matthewmarksgallery ... Claes Oldenburg has a better hand than Blake by several orders of magnitude... but he never extended his Pop project via his own comportment and image the way Blake has done... which is to say that Blake could probably sit himself quietly in a gallery and people would want to watch... which is to say that Blake probably needs to cast himself into his scenes whereas Oldenburg does not. For all the edge, there's something Hello Kitty filtered thru classic cartooning before it arrives at nut sack tattoo-gone-wrong. Curious, that sculpture at the entry... I think I've seen it's kind already at three other galleries in the LES this week.

A post shared by Dennis Hollingsworth (@pacificohollingsworth) on Nov 29, 2017 at 10:56am PST

Nayland Blake #IDrawEveryDay @matthewmarksgallery ... Claes Oldenburg has a better hand than Blake by several orders of magnitude... but he never extended his Pop project via his own comportment and image the way Blake has done... which is to say that Blake could probably sit himself quietly in a gallery and people would want to watch... which is to say that Blake probably needs to cast himself into his scenes whereas Oldenburg does not. For all the edge, there's something Hello Kitty filtered thru classic cartooning before it arrives at nut sack tattoo-gone-wrong. Curious, that sculpture at the entry... I think I've seen it's kind already at three other galleries in the LES this week.

A post shared by Dennis Hollingsworth (@pacificohollingsworth) on Nov 29, 2017 at 10:56am PST

Donald Baechler @cheimread I can relate to the battery strategy of making paintings: generate a background, superimpose a foreground image, done. I thought that painting needed a charge (this was in the early 90's when the "Death if Painting" was itself smelling necrotic. After some time, I realized that batteries needed to be discharged after all, if the potential energy never became kinetic, then no work will be done. Once the superposition began to notice the substrate, that was my first phase out of the grad school chute. SO... I keep looking at the Baechler show, imagining the two levels independent of one another as paintings or freestanding sculpture in the gallery. Set the schizoid free.

A post shared by Dennis Hollingsworth (@pacificohollingsworth) on Nov 29, 2017 at 9:36am PST

Nina Chanel Abney: "Safe House" @maryboonegallery the graphic poster format of the exhibition lowered my expectations once I entered the room but once I approached the paintings close up, what a world of delight! An economy of means yielding a universe of possibilities. Masked ares blocked and brushed, stenciled spray and overspray. Careful and not. Elegance of line everywhere. Sitting easily on the shoulders of masters. Where have I seen those noses before??? 50% Stuart Davis, 30% Ben Shaun, 20% Romare Beardon. And then a funny thing happened: I backed up to take the whole thing in and the graphic format sapped my enthusiasm by just enough. A safe house is another kind of prison, a self administered sequester. Something sad about that. I'll visit again twice: once to stay three feet from the surface (nose to the familiar -can't put a finger to it- noses), and again to test the long view to see if I feel estranged again.

A post shared by Dennis Hollingsworth (@pacificohollingsworth) on Nov 15, 2017 at 12:07pm PST

Shipyard

Review Panel

artcritical hosted another Review Panel last night at the Dweck Cultural Center / Brooklyn Public Library at 1 Army Plaza. It was moderated by Publisher & Editor David Cohen and he was joined by NYC critics Jason Stopa, Lily Wei and Siri Hustvedt. I never tire of saying that this is the best venue for live critique of art in NYC. You can hear the voice of critics mostly only read and hear them think on their feet, sharpen their arguments against each other.

The exhibitions under review:
Peter Doig at Michael Werner Gallery.
Dana James: "Sometimes Seen Dreams" at The Lodge Gallery.
Kate Shepherd: "Bagels and Locks" at 56 Henry.
John Zurier: "Stars Without Distance" at Peter Blum Gallery.

I took notes...

Instagram Reviews

I've been posting capsule reviews on Instagram as I tour NYC and see the shows. You can find me there via the handle "pacificohollingsworth" (Pacifico is my grandfather's name). It started with a sentence or two, then I followed up with a short paragraph. Mind dump. Germs of criticism. I'll keep them succinct, that's the charm. As I wrote in reply to a comment recently:

...there's something very nice about this experiment, capsule blurb reviews of shows I see around town. Feeling the flow. Thinking on my feet. Going Ginsberg, "First thought, best thought."

(I'll splash with one and follow under the fold with 14 others.)

Whiting Tennis @derekellergallery. Picasso lives forever, free rent in our heads. Overtones of Max Ernst's decalcomania. Collage in a painter's masquerade ball. Then, a plaster object hung in the wall installation reminded me of the Elizabeth Murray exhibition at Pace seen a few hours earlier. The coda was surprising: as I was signing the guest book, there was this curiously innocuous object, a nightstand! Some parts second hand, some parts hyper realized by hand. I hoped to G-d that the plug and outlet was fabricated. Was all the Picasso in the main gallery second hand too? Was Pablo rescued from the local Goodwill store?

A post shared by Dennis Hollingsworth (@pacificohollingsworth) on Nov 12, 2017 at 10:39am PST

Roy Dowell & Richard Kalima @lennonweinberg. Dowell: five or six moves, combinant and recombinant. Freedom within limits. Kalima: architecture, anyone? Facture action within each single color application... and then come the edges and corners, ultra tight. The pairing: 70's TV show "The Odd Couple"

A post shared by Dennis Hollingsworth (@pacificohollingsworth) on Nov 12, 2017 at 10:25am PST

Richard Prince @gladstone.gallery "The Ripple Paintings". Handsome objects that fit smartly into seven figure uptown apartments. Joan Katz wrote an interesting statement, it begins a few beats down: "A little of this. A little of that. / How hard can it be?" Not hard at all, apparently. The labor is in the clever, nothing to sneeze at. The facture from a jet ink printer is as small as quantum spin, so it's no surprise to lean that Prince insisted on the 1/8 inch from fabricator Kevin from Philadelphia. Like the Mary Kelly show at Mitchell Innes & Nash, this show is a paean to '68. It takes a lot of cleverness to hide sentiment.

A post shared by Dennis Hollingsworth (@pacificohollingsworth) on Nov 12, 2017 at 10:09am PST

Elizabeth Murray @pacegallery "Painting in the 80's". Spent most of the time looking at the support, daydreaming about how much better the paintings would look if they were sprayed monochrome, wondering how much involvement there was with the fabricators. The construction always emulated stretcher bars, never leaving the reservation. Who was the fabricator? A single person, a singular sensibility? What was the degree and character of interaction between them and Murray? Only a few scraps of paper are shown as evidence. The painting? Muddy, aging badly. I thought of the LA Chicano school: Carlos Almaraz and Frank Romero... then, the Chicago Imagists came to mind. Chicago in NYC.

A post shared by Dennis Hollingsworth (@pacificohollingsworth) on Nov 12, 2017 at 9:50am PST

Mary Kelly, "The Practical Past" at Mitchell Innes & Nash. Nostalgia or requiem? Affect says yes and no, the title says otherwise. Overtones of technology, like a telescope/TV to a place in the wake of time. TV static reveals the afterglow of the Big Bang of '68. Grounding in everyday chores: dryer lint catcher talisman working like an ouija board. Brings to mind Philip K. Dick's "Exegesis " in his ability to find science fiction miracles in prosaic events.

A post shared by Dennis Hollingsworth (@pacificohollingsworth) on Nov 12, 2017 at 9:35am PST

Theresa Hackett and Shari Mendelson @johnnolloygallery Upper East Side NYC. Hackett's paintings have a tie in 3 dimensions, Mendelson's vessels are crafted from plastic detritus, both make work that hearken towards the roots of Malloy's gallery as a purveyor of Native American antiques. Molloy's program unselfconsciously anticipates the current interest in de-hierarchical exhibitions of Museum collections. Given the domestic setting of the gallery and the way Molloy refuses to scrub his space clean of traces of previous shows, the visitors eye glides between cultures past and present, making connections.

A post shared by Dennis Hollingsworth (@pacificohollingsworth) on Oct 18, 2017 at 10:29am PDT

@metbreuer reuer, "Delirious: Art at the Limits of Reason". Not an interesting show, had hoped that it would be. Great topic, which too needs to be presented at the limits of reason. The only pleasant surprise: Christina Romberg (1946-95), "Vertical Amnesia", 1980... I can see the Chicago in her... and Beckmann too. I'm seeing a lot of Beckmann in today's Upper East Side art tour. PS: other pleasant surprise- early Peter Saul (1964), you can see how his technique has become over refined. PPS: Paul Thek (1966). Now THIS artist fits the show.

A post shared by Dennis Hollingsworth (@pacificohollingsworth) on Oct 14, 2017 at 2:14pm PDT

John Chamberlain @gagosiangallery "Masks" ...Knock me down with a feather, who woulda thunk? A non-objective to objective trans lateral move ... or is it visa versa? The masks were made in the 1960-90's. Now I'm seeing masks and faces in his formal agglomerations.

A post shared by Dennis Hollingsworth (@pacificohollingsworth) on Oct 14, 2017 at 1:24pm PDT

Michael Reafsnyder @ameringer.mcenery.yohe Old friend, catching up on the haps in LA. Abstrakts Bild's escaped inner child. Choc-a-bloc with incident. Not Protestant. Dubuffet? Facture by trowel. Squirting figures. Buttery de todos lados.

A post shared by Dennis Hollingsworth (@pacificohollingsworth) on Oct 12, 2017 at 3:36pm PDT

Ruth Asawa @davidzwirner Fruit of Black Mountain-Albers/Bucky Fuller. Single material. Single technique. Single procedure. For an entire life. One of the few forms from the fifties to survive unquestioned sixty years later.

A post shared by Dennis Hollingsworth (@pacificohollingsworth) on Oct 12, 2017 at 2:53pm PDT

Ad Reinhardt @davidzwirner First room, I thought: "Madmen" cigarette and whiskey, neat, please. Second room, I thought: James Turrell. The final turn into monochrome cul-de-sac. The Last Painting, the last call before the bar closes. Fastidiousness. Monomaniac. Most of these paintings were made in the early to mid fifties. Miles Davis created "Kind of Blue" in 1959. Did Miles go to the openings at Betty Parsons too?

A post shared by Dennis Hollingsworth (@pacificohollingsworth) on Oct 12, 2017 at 2:31pm PDT

Diana Al-Hadid: "Falcon's Fortress" @marianneboeskygallery , first thought, Pat Steir. Then I thought, the Alhambra. Sculpture is indeed that which when you bump into when you are looking at a painting in this show. But, the long view surrenders to the close up as I go into overtime, trying to figure out how they were made. At first, I thought: "...she cast a canvas into bronze...". But no! Was she carving into luan ply? But no! Then, little by little, the reverse engineering project gave a small yet delicious fruit.

A post shared by Dennis Hollingsworth (@pacificohollingsworth) on Oct 12, 2017 at 1:55pm PDT

Leslie Wayne "Free Experience " @jackshainman, the rare experience of finding a fellow corporeal-paint traveler. Wayne Thiebaud came to mind. Firmly illusionistic and firmly paint-qua-paint. Press release begins with Rosalind Krauss (art media historically bound) and ends with the glancing blow of Robert Irwin. Did notice the absence of facture, unless you look for it at the tip of the knife blade.

A post shared by Dennis Hollingsworth (@pacificohollingsworth) on Oct 12, 2017 at 1:30pm PDT

Chris Ofili at #davidzwirner 1. Did John Milton bump Maya Angelou? 2. Milton says that the uncaged bird sings the sweeter song (re: press release). 3. a)basketball court b) prison c) the art world d) bearded Indian/Balinese dancing ladies 4. Close ups not allowed 5. Colorless 6. Missed opportunity: the back of the stretchers? ...unless the vertical data code serves 7. Press release too full of credentials. 8. See Peter Halley at Naftali, contrast and compare

A post shared by Dennis Hollingsworth (@pacificohollingsworth) on Oct 10, 2017 at 12:13pm PDT

Peter Halley at Naftali. (Music: Lila Downs "Urge, Palabras de Mujer, Peligrosa, Tus Pencas", the first time Halley has animated paintings with audio)

A post shared by Dennis Hollingsworth (@pacificohollingsworth) on Oct 6, 2017 at 10:10am PDT