Julie Torres at Taller Boricua

Julie Torres, My 12 Hours With Austin Thomas (Acrylic on 55 Sheets of 9 x 12 Inch Paper, 2011) & Another 12 Hours With Austin (Acrylic on 3 sheets of 38 x 48 Inch Paper, 2011)

James writes:

Every schoolkid knows that painting can be fun. Julie Torres (b. 1971) does not let us forget it. This Brooklyn-based artist is an evangelist for the radiant line and the colorful schmear. Much of her work is the result of marathon studio sessions that are part performance and part product. By painting a wall of works in a single day, often in the company of other artists, she tweaks what an abstract artist is supposed to be. Rather than labored, secretive and solitary, her work is ad hoc, transparent and communal.

Julie Torres, Assorted Paintings and Drawings. Gouache, Acrylic, Watercolor on Paper and Sketchbooks, 2011- 2012. courtesy Paul Behnke/Structure and Imagery

Taller Boricua, a nonprofit gallery in the Julia de Burgos Latino Cultural Center in Spanish Harlem, captures this exuberance. The show also demonstrates how New York’s alternative arts scene now includes Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and northern Manhattan. Here, Ms. Torres carries her improvisational style to the carefree placement of work. Paintings of bright shapes and bold colors bend around corners, appear at ceiling height and floor level, and on two doors hidden in the gallery. Mounted with pushpins, these works on paper in acrylic, gouache and watercolor are all left unframed.

Julie Torres, Assorted Paintings and Drawings, Acrylic on Paper, 2011 - 2012. courtesy Paul Behnke/Structure and Imagery

Not everything performs at grade level. A few too many rainbows are scattered about. But underlying the apparent simplicity is smart paint handling. Ms. Torres’s most resonant work is “My 12 Hours With Austin Thomas” (2011). More than 8 feet tall, composed of 55 individual paper sheets, this is abstract art in mural form. The painting has a message, and the message is to paint.

Julie Torres, My 15 Hours With Geddes Levenson, Acrylic on 42 Sheets of 9 x 12 Paper, 2011

Details:

Julie Torres: Bold As Love
Taller Boricua
1680 Lexington Ave.
(212) 831-4333
Through July 14

Julie Torres will next show at Storefront Bushwick, opening July 6

--adapted from An Improv of Color And Threads of Hope, The Wall Street Journal, June 23, 2012

Julie Torres, Assorted Paintings and Drawings. Gouache, Acrylic, Watercolor on Paper and Sketchbooks, 2011- 2012

Julie Torres, Assorted Paintings and Drawings. Gouache, Acrylic, Watercolor on Paper, Sketchbooks and Playing Cards, 2011- 2012

Giuseppe Penone at Marian Goodman

Giuseppe Penone, Nel lengo (2008)

James writes:

Arte Povera was a reaction to the Italian economic miracle that followed World War II. Countering the industrialization of the 1950s and early '60s, Italian artists turned to "poor" materials and craft. The results took many forms, not all of them lasting, but Giuseppe Penone (b. 1947) has endured for his unique take on nature.

Raised on a family farm outside Turin, the home of both Fiat and Slow Food, Mr. Penone connects fingerprints, tree rings and marble veins in a sculptural riff on the parlor game "Animal, Vegetable, Mineral." At Goodman are works from 1968 to the present: photographs; radiographs; vegetal pigment on canvas; grass juice on paper; acacia thorns on silk; and sculptures in wood, bronze and—whew!—white Carrara marble.

Giuseppe Penone, Propagazione (2011)

Mr. Penone starts with diverse materials and draws out their intrinsic similarities. In the spare "Propagazione" (2011), a fingerprint's swirls are extended by concentric ink lines to form a drawing, 13 feet across, that resembles the rings of a giant tree. The stagy "Tra…" (2008) is a bronze sculpture made to look like the broken halves of a tree trunk. The trunk splits at eye level, allowing just enough space to walk through. It's a long setup for a so-so punch line.

At left: Giuseppe Penone, Tra... (2008)

Far better is "Nel legno" (2008), where Mr. Penone carves around the growth rings of a milled block to reveal the remnants of the younger tree within—the process uncovering the true nature of the product.

Detail view: Giuseppe Penone, Nel lengo (2008)

Details:

Giuseppe Penone

Marian Goodman Gallery
24 W. 57th St., (212) 977-7160 Through June 16

--adapted from "Course of Nature and Faust," The Wall Street Journal, June 8, 2012

Jan Müller at Lori Bookstein

Jan Müller, The Concert of Angels (1957, Oil on canvas, 56 1/2" x 148")

James writes:

In 1954, the 31-year-old painter Jan Müller (1922-1958) received a pacemaker, version 1.0, which kept him alive for a few desperate years and provided the drumbeat for his urgent artistic output. With a broken heart, he produced a heartbreaking series of paintings based on "Faust." Praised in their day, they are now largely, and sadly, forgotten. Lori Bookstein has brought them back for an exhibition that includes significant work from the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum and the Museum of Modern Art.

Jan Müller, Walpurgisnacht—Faust I (1956, Oil on canvas, 68" x 119")

Mr. Müller's last museum retrospective took place in 1962 at the Guggenheim; his reconsideration is long overdue.

Born in Hamburg, Mr. Müller fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s and emigrated with his family to the U.S. in 1941. From 1945 to 1950 he studied under Hans Hofmann, the godfather of New York School abstraction. But Mr. Müller soon synthesized the influences of German Expressionism and Abstract Expressionism, becoming one of the first Hofmann students to return to figuration.

Jan Müller, The Temptation of Saint Anthony (1957, Oil on canvas, 80" x 121 1/2")

In "The Concert of Angels" (1957), more than 12 feet wide, white ghosts reach down from the canvas edge. A row of figures with terrifying faces sing. Despite the gothic subject matter, the paint handling and composition reveal a modernist sensibility.

The blocky figures are mosaics writ large; the angular spirits are brush strokes—Abstract Expressionism meets animus.

Mr. Müller energized his final paintings with a life that could survive even death.

Jan Müller, Untitled (Temptation of St Anthony) (c. 1957, Oil on board, 15 3/4" x 17 3/4")

Jan Müller at the opening of his solo exhibition at the Hansa Gallery Photograph by Robert Frank, 1957. Müller (facing the camera) is standing in front of his painting Faust, II. MoMA purchased the similar painting Faust, I from this exhibition for $1,500, at that time the Hansa’s largest sale. (from MOMA)

Details:
Faust and Other Tales: The Paintings of Jan Müller
Lori Bookstein Fine Art
138 10th Ave., (212) 750-0949
Through June 23

--Adapted from "Course of Nature and Faust," The Wall Street Journal, June 9, 2012