William Hemmerdinger

William is an abstract painter and maker of collage and assemblage from California. 

Born and raised in Los Angeles, he was encouraged in art by Stanton MacDonald – Wright, Lorser Feitelson, Millard Sheets and Nicholas Brigante. He studied art, architecture, philosophy and education at the University of California and Claremont Graduate University (MFA and Ph.D.) Hemmerdinger traveled widely in Europe, Asia, and Central America. Including living for a time in a Rinzai sect Zen Buddhist monastery in Japan.

An exhibiting artist with over 900 solo and group exhibitions his works are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Barbara Hepworth Museum, St. Ives, Cornwall, England, Federal Reserve Bank, San Francisco, Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, (California), Provincetown Art Association Museum. He maintains a busy studio practice executing four to five paintings on canvas each year, watercolors, drawings, collages, assemblage and occasionally a Zen Garden.

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Michael Ambron

Ortega y Gasset Projects is pleased to present No Time, an exhibition of recent work by New York-based artist Michael Ambron in the gallery’s main space. Ambron’s wildly experimental approaches to painting include working with found substrates, collaged fabrics and packaging materials, surprising additives to his handmade paints, and unconventional tools and applications of various media. Michael Ambron not only uses paint to achieve the mark of a color, but to investigate paint’s materiality and broad possibilities.

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Simon Hantaï

Over at the Brooklyn Rail, Tom suggests that Simon (1922–2008) realized in his later painting that making a mark upon the world can be seen as an act of hubris or a frank recognition of the limits of unique inscription (after having disproven to himself the moral efficacy of the former).

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Lynne Harlow

Lynne’s most recent (2023) show with Minus Space (home to Michael and Gabriele among others) was Lodestar, a new group of monochromatic objects intended to anchor and orient us in the world. Created from found rocks collected in personally significant locations, these pieces engage our surroundings through a lens of color-based and material-based reduction and a commitment to the power of monochrome.

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Jim Gross

A native to Wichita, Jim received his M.A. and M.F.A. at Wichita State University. Among gallery affiliation in New York, his work can be seen in major collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, British Museum, Bibliotheque Nationale and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. He has also been featured in ARTS Magazine and American Abstract Journals. Jim has spent more than four decades exhibiting and teaching.
He is represented by Reuben Saunders Gallery.

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Gail Gregg

In her most recent work, Gail transforms homely, everyday objects that typically go unseen. These repurposed objects and images speak to the possibility of transformation, humor – and the quantity of trash generated in our profligate 21st Century America. Finally, they remind us not to take even the most insignificant things for granted.

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Cris Gianakos

(from the 2019 essay This strange, intoxicating “Almost Nothing” by Yorghos Tzirtzilakis) In discussing the work of Cristos Gianakos one can only start from reconsidering a question: what is the current meaning of that form of contemporary art most people call ‘minimal-ism’? In this case minimalism does not stop at a sketchy, formalized, rational version or at a belated celebration of ‘littleness’; instead it goes on to a dispersion which is, in fact, in tune with the character of our times and our culture.”

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Cleve Gray

Cleve was an American painter best known for his calligraphic abstractions which melded elements of Abstract Expressionism, Color Field painting, and traditional Chinese scroll painting. Hyperallergic’s guide to this season’s museum exhibitions and art events in and around New York City makes note of Neuberger Museum launching a thorough investigation of its history through four ambitious projects, one of which delves into Cleve’s inaugural site-specific painting.

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Nerd fight

Over at Two Coats of Paint, Saul Ostrow and Adam Simon are slinging words, and I’m picking sides. Well, I have picked sides*.

Saul penned Painting simulacra: Brice Marden, David Reed, and Gerhard Richter a couple of weeks ago at this point. If you think any of my writing is dense I’d steer clear; I’ve read it twice and am still not sure I get all his points. Suffice to say, it’s apparently still important for Art-with-a-big-A to have some kind of mission and we’re all supposed to be working that post-structuralist saw, never mind that post-structuralism for all its value is almost only a critique of structuralism. Or maybe I just don’t truck with the idea that painting is only good/correct if it is propped up by conceptual finger-wagging, which in my mind reduces it to a sign or symbol for an idea.

Also, put a pen in Ostrow’s preoccupation with a disdain for authenticity, given our current ethos, supported and propped up by most critics, like Ostrow, that regularly centers identity within Art. One to chew on and write about later (I don’t think he owns that critical bent btw, not even close) …

Simon’s response has this beaut in the first paragraph- “Ostrow’s critique is dense, and appears to implicate most contemporary gestural abstract painters as well as contemporary criticism that dismisses the possibility of radical formalism” -and he finishes with “Art is one of the primary areas of human experience in which something can be itself and its opposite simultaneously.” I think the tldr, and probably the easy button, would be that Simon has, for lack of a better word, a love of and therefore graciousness towards object makers that Ostrow doesn’t. The ungenerous tldr of Ostrow’s article is that he’s resentful of Art that doesn’t illustrate his current critical interests (again- painting exists to point at ideas, not to just, you know, exist), which admittedly sounds like resentment all on its own. Also, he is, in fact, a critic.

*Regular readers (and any friends popping in) will know how I feel about two things being simultaneously true and also the broad strokes of my ideas around formalism (specifically that the “act of contemplation, bracketed outside of our utilitarian social institutions, is imbued with the very spirit of the human condition and relates by default to identity, to politics, and to the striving of all people for connection and transcendence“). I’ve also written that the evaluative elements that are associated conventionally with formalism have a utility that is unique to this moment in human culture (another blog which was inspired by a Two Coats article- they really are my favorite zine).

I’m aware that a phenomenological viewpoint (IE the bracketing I reference above) is generally considered a late Modernist and pre-structuralist stance, so it may seem odd or at least off that I would critique Ostrow’s preoccupation with Art-with-a-big-A. I’ll note that in a truly post-historical world no one cares what the grown ups think and we can point at ideas from history as a way of pointing to a generally understood meaning, rather than pledging allegiance. I’m also 100% certain I’ve written past iterations of artist statements that included the phrase “we should all just make what we want and let history figure out what is Art and what isn’t.” If I was asked to comment on any of those versions today I think it’s clear I’ve moved on from anything after that “and.”

BTW, I’ll make a few additional notes; as one can see for themselves in the comments on Simon’s piece, a) Ostrow responded that he appreciated the thoughtful response and that the critical discourse could use more of this species of dialogue (here here for people expressing disagreement and being willing to have a beer after) and b) the gender divide over who just said “thanks” and who felt the need to pontificate was uh, noticed (says he who just wrote all the stuff above). Also and, “yes” there are blogs on this site about Marden, Richter, Reed, and many of the other artists Ostrow mentions as well as many, many others (search below).