MELANIE WILLHIDE | Modern Painters Review

CATHERINE HOWE | Art in America Review: The Lookout: A Weekly Guide to Shows You Won't Want to Miss

With an ever-growing number of galleries scattered around New York, it's easy to feel overwhelmed. Where to begin? Here at A.i.A., we are always on the hunt for thought-provoking, clever and memorable shows that stand out in a crowded field. Below is a selection of current shows our team of editors can't stop talking about.

This week we check out Charles Atlas's glimmering, foreboding video projections at Luhring Augustine's new Bushwick gallery, Heide Fasnacht's black-and-white digital images, her most ambitious and passionate work to date, at Kent Fine Art, and Catherine Howe's new paintings inspired by Dutch still lifes.  

Catherine Howe

Proserpina (Frenchie), 2012

oil and beeswax on linen, 40 by 30 inches

 Catherine Howe at Von Lintel, through May 5

Walking a tightrope of figuration and abstraction, Catherine Howe explores in her recent work the Golden Age of 17th-century Dutch still life painting. Without simply reflecting or mimicking the sources, Howe's dozen medium-size canvases convey their telltale luminous intensity. In addition, the artist's richly hued, highly textured bravura brushwork and delicate layering highlight the eroticism that is only latent in the work of the Old Masters.

Read more @ Art in America

CATHERINE HOWE | ARTCRITICAL pick

Catherine Howe
Night Painting (Bluestocking), 2012
Oil and beeswax on canvas, 50 x 60 inches

By David Cohen

"The painterly accomplishments of Catherine Howe’s voluptuously feisty new works bursting the seams of the Von Lintel Gallery should not diminish their rare taxonomical achievement: to make action painting out of still life.  These works defy categories of abstraction and representation, stasis and movement, literalism and metaphor.  Their motifs are passive, indeed pacific, a cornucopia of flowers, fruit, glasses of delicious and inviting brew, and yet the artist brandishes her brush like a weapon.  In fact it is more likely roller than brush that delivers willfully misbalanced concoctions of pigment and medium: she is a painter who revels in the wizardry of intaglio printmaking, exploiting with alchemical mischief the repulsions of differing viscosities. Liquid seems to curdle on the surface, generating fissures that make you think someone in heavy boots has just stomped through the canvas.  And yet form and color sing with miraculous sweetness in works of disarming elegance, gutsy delicacy, explosive charm."

Read more @ artcritical

MARCO BREUER | New York Village Voice — Spring Guide pick

By R. C. Baker Wednesday, Mar 28 2012

 Marco Breuer

 
May 10–June 23

 

In an age when photographs consist of ephemeral particles viewed on screens, Marco Breuer delves into the visceral, chemical roots of the medium by using electric frying pans and other DIY tools to burn and abrade photographic paper. The rich colors and sumptuous textures of Breuer's abstractions have a kinship to Gerhard Richter's paintings, not least because both artists have chosen to upend the usual figure/ground balance in their chosen mediums. Von Lintel Gallery, 520 West 23rd Street, vonlintel.com

Read more @ The Village Voice

CATHERINE HOWE | Opening Photos

CATHERINE HOWE | Installation Photos