Noël Dolla

Noël Dolla is a French artist, and if he is known at all in the United States it is for his participation in Supports/Surfaces, a collective of like-minded artists who in the late 1960s to 70s shared common ideas about the identity and symbolic function of art. Their project emerged as the political and philosophic debates arose from the student and worker protests of May 1968. These debates, which had their foundation in Marxist and post-structuralist thought, emphasized the questioning of all established norms and led to a re-evaluation of how we perceive, represent, and understand the complexities of the self in the world, ushering in the critique of modernism that came to be known as postmodernism.

#noeldolla

Walasse Ting

has recently been the subject, belatedly in the opinion of some, of a retrospective. A colorful and wide-ranging retrospective of the Chinese American visual artist and poet might finally change that. The show, titled “Walasse Ting: Parrot Jungle,” opened on November 10 at the NSU Art Museum in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and sheds light on an artist who spent nearly five decades living and working in Europe and United States across several styles and movements (he made both figurative and abstract works), but whose impact and influence was often overlooked.

More

#walasseting

Modernism redux

Earlier this week I was reading this Adam Simon piece on David’s newest in which Adam notes at one point his impression that Diao is “working out his complicated relationship to modernism.” I also think a good bit about that epoch, both as a creative whose forms reference it and whose studio practice could fairly be described as Modernist (in the sense that my visual vocabulary is intentionally stripped down). I’d say to follow that up that I relate to Simon’s description of one particular aspect of Diao’s practice- the recognition that the artist is clearly rejecting some of the ethos (in the terms that motivate me- it is true that both Modernism offered us new, relevant ways of seeing *and* had problematic aspects that contemporary artists should address).

One of the general tenants of at least late Modernists was a general belief or at least a sense of some universality of humanity. I won’t spend time unpacking the ways that’s problematic (it’s class 2) as I’d rather use the references of my work to the Modern epoch as a sort of key that contemporary art viewers should think about those ideas (as they might be applied today). Naive notions about universality aside, I think it is valuable to explore ideas about the desires we share- to be as free as possible (I’m not a Libertarian) and if possible loved, and certainly, *certainly*, to belong. I’m not sure how human society exists without some tie that binds us.

It is (was) the prominence of this concern among many Modernists that led to many, probably most if not truly all, of them espousing various forms opposition to war. I think have written (though I can’t point to a specific post) about similarities between the epoch of Modernism and our current moment. To be specific, I think many people share a general belief that our past institutions and values are not likely to serve as if we desire to move into the future. War, as state-sanctioned and enacted violence, has no place in a prosperous, meaningful future. We must end it if we wish to preserve human life on our planet, and we must relinquish it as a means to resolve human conflict.

Sherin Guirguis

Sherin’s new works are an expansion of A’aru // Field of Reeds which the Egyptian-American artist exhibited during her 2023 residency at Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture & Design in Honolulu, Hawaii. Continuing her dialogue with contemporary and historical antecedents, Guirguis posits cultural identity and intersectional feminisms through an integration of oral histories, abstracted motifs and a consideration of minimalism and ornamentation in Egyptian aesthetics.

More
#sheringuirguis

Dyani White Hawk

Hyperallergic says Dyani’s newest at Various Small Fires is one of 10 Art shows to see in Los Angeles in December (2023). Her mixed media works incorporate beadwork and painting, referencing both Native American traditional art forms alongside European and American modernisms. In doing so, she highlights the influence that Indigenous aesthetics have had on Western art, specifically geometric abstraction.

More

#dyaniwhitehawk

Steve DiBenedetto

David Nolan Gallery recently presented Uncertainty Takes a Holiday, Steve’s fourth solo show with the gallery, Possessed by a desire to “maximize” a painting, DiBenedetto continues to find new ways to exploit the possibilities of oil paint through crusty, built-up surfaces and bright, jewel-toned shapes that gleam in the midst of gritty, impastoed muck. Though he can apply paint so thickly it might qualify as bas-relief, the forms themselves are flattened into the background in a way that often feels like massive amounts of time and space have been compressed into a single plane.

More

#stevedibenedetto