abstractsculpture – Painting After Art is Dead

Melvin Edwards

ArtNews asks us who gets to be abstract in the context of revisiting Frank Bowling‘s show from 1969, “5+1”(a show which also included Al, Jack, Daniel and William)? I had heard of Melvin Edwards before from listening to this amazing artist talk. In my head I didn’t lump Melvin in with Sam and William because candidly there is a lot of recognizable materials in his work (see below) and then of course this article made me question that. tldr- the punchline of the essay is that, when Stony Brook attempted to re-stage the show the curators found significant archival gaps because the academic gatekeepers of the late ’60s didn’t deem the show important enough to document. The show reboot also includes many black women such as Howardena and Mary.

More (and more #blackartists)

#melvinedwards

Richard Smith

Richard Smith, CBE (27 October 1931 – 15 April 2016) was an English painter and printmaker. Smith produced work in a range of styles, and is credited with extending the field of painting through his shaped, sculptural canvases. A key figure in the British development of Pop Art, Smith was chosen to represent Britain in the 1970 Venice Biennale.

#richardsmith

Margaret Saliske

In her newest work, Margaret imagines a shape and then works it out against the wall altering it perhaps the way a potter manipulates clay pushing and pulling angles. The form then suggests how the black will interact with it and connect it to the wall. In some of the pieces there is a visual sequence that moves from object, to actual plane, to implied plane. There is an ambiguity in the relationship between these planes that the viewer resolves by moving around the pieces.
#margaretsaliske

Mel Kendrick

Artforum notes that for more than five decades, sculptor Mel Kendrick has created visual puzzles by taking things apart and putting them back together again. The resulting works invert spatial oppositions, giving dimension to feelings of inner conflict.

#melkendrick

Stephen Walling

shows at Carrie Haddad with Donise.

#stephenwalling

Lee Bontecou

Lee Bontecou (January 15, 1931 – November 8, 2022) was an American sculptor and printmaker and a pioneer figure in the New York art world. She kept her work consistently in a recognizable style, and received broad recognition in the 1960s. Rich, organic shapes and powerful energy appear in her drawings, prints, and sculptures. Her work has been shown and collected in many major museums in the United States and in Europe.

#leebontecou

Kristi Cavataro

Chemists call glass an amorphous solid. Positioned between states of matter, it features a slightly tweaked, irregular molecular fabric that deviates from the crystalline compositions forming other types of hardened material. Like plastics and gels, glass is defined by a structural ambiguity at the most granular level, one split between strict organization and total disorder.In Kristi Cavataro’s current exhibition, the artist seems to have taken her signature material’s idiosyncratic makeup as a cue for her sculptures’ beguiling forms.
#kristicavataro

Tom Bill

Jonathan at Two Coats says Tom, who for decades was primarily a large-scale sculptor, has recently translated that vocation into riveting compact-yet-monumental wall-mounted pieces and that their highly wrought finishes and elliptical narratives invest them with an improbably kinetic presence and stern gravitas that leave the viewer both sobered and assured.
#tombill

Beverly Buchanan

Dead Lecturer / distant relative: Notes from the Woodshed, 1950-1980 focuses on works by Asian American and African American artists whose approaches to abstraction provided alternatives to prevailing vocabularies for representation and resistance during the social movements of the 1960s and 70s, and for whom the parameters of visibility continue to remain a problem for thought today. Beverly is one of the selected creatives (also including Howardena and Al). Her work mined a strong motif for decades and slowly became more abstracted although never was true “abstraction.” Readers of who like below should also explore Jennifer and Nicky.

#beverlybuchanan