Molly Zuckerman-Hartung’s show of paintings entitled “She-Male Guitar Solo” sounds a bit more hip on the surface than it looks. The disparate but familial canvases draw heavily from the history of painting, with Klee and Debuffet cohabitating with a host of turn-of-the-century modernists. Two of the paintings show a kind of tight knit array of semi-flat geometric shapes painted with or on top of encrustations of paint. The dry but delicate areas display an intricate and subdued color sensibility worthy of careful scrutiny. The whole show exudes this subdued feeling of history like of a pile of rubble being tentatively built upon. Another group of canvases have thick slabs of dark blue paint slathered over them and carved into revealing a vivid under-painting beneath. The embedded lines travel around the canvas deliberately a bit like a wonky Brice Marden painting. One large ochre portrait sits alone by the door. The person with blood orange hair blocks one eye with their hand while holding up a limp braid of paint as if for inspection. The other eye is closed. The thing under inspection in Ms. Zuckerman-Hartung’s work is undoubtedly painting itself. (Dan Gunn)
Through April 19 at Rowley Kennerk Gallery, 119 N. Peoria.
Lost in Translation: A Review of Crip* at Gallery 400 The strongest works in the exhibition succinctly express the ways the artist relates to their own body while calling out how the artist’s body and body of work has been perceived or coded against norms or ideals.
