An award-winning NYC blogazine, primarily about painting
Tuesday, April 15, 2025
Recently, Adam Simon visited his longtime friend Cathy Nan Quinlan at her Bed-Stuy studio to see the latest paintings, inspired by Nicolas Poussin’s Bacchanalian Revel Before a Term (1632–1633), which hangs in London’s National Gallery. During the visit, they talked about The Temporary Museum, the Talking Pictures blog, and the salons Cathy has hosted in her home.
In this thoughtful exchange, artist Erin Lawlor talks to Diana Copperwhite about the role of intuition and emotion in their work, their love of music, and their mutual interest in painter Howard Hodgkin. Copperwhite’s paintings will be on view alongside Hodgkin’s work at the Auckland Art Fair from May 1-4, and Lawlor ‘s solo “Divining” opens at the Highlanes Municipal Gallery in Ireland on April 26.
Contributed by Jacob Cartwright / It is no contradiction to observe that Rob de Oude paintings in his solo show “Rhyme and Repeat” at McKenzie Fine Art are created with an exceedingly sober methodology, yet achieve intoxicating outcomes. To make something and to see something are two different things, and revealing the interrelationship between them— as de Oude’s do— is one of the greatest pleasures that paintings can offer. While it may seem inapt to call such an exacting technician an experimental painter, the designation fits. De Oude conducts his investigations in the controlled environment of his studio, where variables are adjusted with one goal in mind: to see what happens.
Contributed by Peter Schroth / At Peter Freeman, Inc., esteemed realist Catherine Murphy resurfaces with a new selection of her novel perceptions of the quotidian. In Cathy and Harry, a new documentary about the life, work, and marriage of Murphy and her husband Harry Roseman, also an artist, Murphy says that one of her prime objectives is to express “universal objectivity.” Against some strands of painting tradition, she chooses subjects so mundane as to be otherwise unremarkable, indicating a gentle contrariness.
Contributed by Sharon Butler / On view in the upstairs gallery at Bortolami, Enzo Shalom’s paintings – modest in image and muted in palette – carry a quiet intensity that has felt rare among young New York painters in recent years. At a time when traditional painterly bravado dominates, Shalom takes a different route, making vulnerability seem like a radical act. His work leans into restraint: awkward angles, washed-out tones, and just enough mark-making to read as intentional without seeming overworked. If you can imagine early Luc Tuymans’ bleached-out hues, EJ Hauser’s jagged lines, and Gary Stephan’s off-kilter compositions, you’ll land somewhere near the world of Shalom’s paintings. It’s a subdued, thoughtful space, low-key but deeply engaging.
Contributed by Jason Andrew / Judith Linhares has a fascination with bad taste, the oh-too beautiful, and the color yellow. In her third solo exhibition at PPOW, she doesn’t hold back packing the gallery with paintings that feature strange figurative archetypes, gaudy décor, and kitschy bits all in an embrace of the subversive potential of visual excess.
Contributed by Margaret McCann / “The Soul of Nature”at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of many exhibitions dedicated to German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) on the 250th anniversary of his death. Some of his finest are absent – the epic Sea of Ice’s vision of an arctic shipwreck, The Great Enclosure’s resonant view of a Dresden field Napoleon amassed his troops on, or Ruine Eldena, one of Friedrich’s many depictions of the remnants of the powerful Catholic monastery his hometown Griefswald formed around. But there are numerous studies displaying his keen observation of nature, research he used for paintings creatively orchestrated in the studio.
From my perspective, April has become a prime month for exhibitions in NYC, sandwiched between March’s print and photo fairs and the May Madness of the big spring fairs. The city’s brick-and-mortar art galleries take center stage, and there’s no shortage of engaging exhibitions. I’m looking forward to Rick Briggs’s offbeat abstraction at Satchel Projects in Chelsea, Carolyn Case’s “wild domestic” paintings in Asya Geisberg’s temporary Cortlandt Alley space in Tribeca, and Dustin Hodges’ new work at 15 Orient, also in Tribeca. Artist-writer Mira Dayal has what tracks as an austere, smart solo at Spencer Brownstone. On the opposite side of the emotional spectrum, “Love Poems,” a big, heartfelt group show curated by Chris Martin, is on view at Anton Kern. With due respect to Eliot, April has become one of my favorite months. I’ll see you out there.
Contributed by Karlyn Benson / As spring unfolds in the Hudson Valley new exhibitions are opening every weekend. On April 5 William Corwin, Things: Wheels, Ladders, Teeth, Alps, Gods, Boats, Etc. opens at Geary along with a presentation of Corwin’s work at The Re Institute, both in Millerton. On April 12 Amy Talluto and Heather Cox have solo shows opening at the Garrison Art Center, and there are openings nearby in Beacon at Bau, Super Secret Projects, and Distortion Society. Kingston has two new galleries: Roundaboutsnow, which opened in March with the group show Middle Ages, and 68 Prince Street Gallery, which opens on April 26 with a solo show of paintings by Francine Tint. In addition, the River Valley Arts Collective is active again for the season with Nicki Green: Fruitful Vine at the Al Held Foundation in Boiceville, NY (visits by appointment only).
Contributed by Theodora Bocanegra Lang / Nearly half the paintings included in Kaiadilt artist Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori’s first solo show in New York, at Karma in Chelsea, are titled My Country. A few more are called My Father’s Country, and a few others Dibirdibi Country. Though her works are firmly abstract, it is impossible not to think of landscapes and location when viewing them. The artist, whose name is sometimes shortened to Sally Gabori, was born in 1924 on Bentinck Island in Australia, the ancestral homeland of the Kaiadilt people. In 1948, missionaries forcibly displaced Gabori and her people to nearby Mornington Island, where she lived for the rest of her life. She began painting in 2005, when she was about 81, and died a decade later in 2015. While she had not lived on Bentinck Island for nearly 60 years, her work reflects sharp yearning for, and irreparable separation from, her home.
Contributed by Adam Simon / The five abstract paintings in Medrie MacPhee’s “The Repair,” at Tibor de Nagy, have just enough indications of figure/ground and observed reality to evoke landscape, interior space, aerial view, blueprint. What also connects these paintings to the physical world, as we perceive it, are minor shifts of line, contour, or color that activate the surface and keep the paintings from being flat. While the paintings are large, all but one measuring 64 x 84 inches, somehow the small gallery doesn’t feel crowded.
Contributed by David Carrier / Gertrude Abercrombie (1909–1977) was a Chicago-based painter. Basically self-taught, she was inspired by Rene Magritte or perhaps Paul Delvaux to create small, highly distinctive Surrealist paintings. She was a great friend of jazz musicians and much written about by Chicago writers. She had real success in the local art market. Though gone for almost 50 years now, she has recently gained wider attention. In a deft exercise in revisionist taste, Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Art has mounted a substantial and intriguing display of her work.
We’re up in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts. The floor of Dudek’s studio is covered wall-to-wall with objects. One can ascertain individual sculptures, or perhaps parts of sculptures that might become sculptures one day. I ask if this is how it always is.
Contributed by Sharon Horvath / Prominent critics have written extensively about the paintings of Merlin James, and James himself is an erudite art writer. Still, I am compelled to explore how it is that his painterly magic works on my mind. As I walked through the two rooms of his current show “Hobby Horse” at Sikkema Malloy Jenkins, the paintings struck a chord, bringing up half remembered lines of Wallace Stevens’ poetry, plucked out of context.
Contributed by Katarina Wong / The recent 15th Havana Biennial, organized around the aspirational theme of “Shared Horizons,” unfolded across the city in November 2024 and ran through February 2025. It involved about 400 artists, curators, and art historians among 80 listed venues throughout Havana, several discussed here. Like its predecessors, the exhibition showcased art from Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East – art of the global majority often not seen in American or European galleries or museums.
