DAVID GIBSON WRITING

  The world as we know it has changed so much in the last 20 years. The technological advancements we expected have for the most part come to pass, and we are living in a highly charged world where the search for meaning has become extremely elusive. Those looking for personal meaning cannot help but become mired in the complexities of contemporary society, which has become thoroughly enmeshed in systems of communication, politics, and issues relating to ethnic and sexual conflict that distract us from the greater importance of our lives. In 2020 we are facing the most profound challenges to our existence. Coronavirus has affected every aspect of our lives. With culture supposedly frozen in order to slow the surge in virus cases, how does consciousness develop? We are now more self-conscious of who and what we are than we ever were before. Our newfound stasis has produced a circumstance perfect for the reevaluation of the concept of consciousness. Dee Solin has chosen this interval as

  KARLA KNIGHT: Voyage (OUM-17), 2019; Oil, flashe, colored pencil, and graphite on ledger paper mounted on linen; 75 x 52 inches The thrill of the unknown is the innocent face of a mystery that only broadens when we give it credence. We are taught that mysteries exist ‘out there’--as in somewhere beyond ourselves, in distant reaches and on planets and territories beyond our understanding. What we do not know about ourselves is the true mystery, constantly being visited by artists like Karla Knight, who reveal the secret codes and symbols that unite us all in both knowledge and fear. Her current exhibition “Notes from the Lightship” at Andrew Edlin Gallery displays a dozen works unique for being simultaneously non-objective yet indicative of a technologically driven and descriptive reality. They read like a cryptic language that invites our curiosity yet offers no key. To decipher them we must look deeply and profoundly into the underlying structure of clues that bind the

  Every writer has at least one precursor who serves as a lodestone--someone whose example recharges their literary batteries. If one lives long enough there can be more than one, for each period in a writer’s growth. One in particular to whom I return again and again is Andre Dubus. He taught at my alma mater for a dozen years before I arrived, but circumstances cut his teaching career short. Dubus was known primarily as a writer of stories, which usually appeared in literary journals and in some commercial magazines also. He was known mainly to other writers and a slew of editors though I am sure there were many fans of great contemporary fiction, like myself, who have loved his writing over the years. He has become somewhat eclipsed by the success of his oldest son, Andre Dubus III, whose novels and a memoir called Townies have become quite celebrated, and with good cause. The unfortunate circumstances of Dubus’s personal story have somewhat eclipsed his

  "Twister" (2019), Oil on canvas, 78 x 57 inches, When Clement Greenberg first espoused the notion of flatness in art, he never suspected it might find its most ideal model in computer screens, which can display color in a pure form unadulterated by the marks of gesture or the illusion of depth. This was decades away from his knowledge. One can trace the paintings of Bernhard Buhmann at Marinaro Gallery all the way back to Barnett Newman, Al Held, and Morris Louis. Hiis painterly constructions achieve a hybrid state in which a sort of lackadaisical geometric layering meets a subtle anthropomorphism aided by his titles. The paintings take two sizes, one nearly monumental and the other intimate. Of his larger paintings, I chose Twister and The Chatterbox , 2019, both with oil on canvas, measuring 79 by 57 inches. Buhmann has an esthetic affinity for the proscriptive appeal of right angles, especially as they can be used to delineate borders and peripher

Impressionistic events in nature naturalistically depicted and those surreally suggesting natural events are the dual streams in Ann Kraus’s work in Above and Beyond . The relationship between these modes of expression rests upon an amorphous middle ground stylistically and formally sourced. Form originates from actual iterations that structure and compound inspiration. Canada Seascape, Acrylic on cavas, 30 x 24 inches There’s a broad range to Kraus’s depictions of the sky. The artist has traveled, and with her she has always taken her fascination with the boundless upper reaches. She sketches them endlessly but also employs a camera to document a sequential engagement with her subject matter, so as not to miss out on especially choice impressions. It’s in the active and the after-the-fact engagement that her subject reveals itself. The implicit rendering of nature not specifically circumscribed by the departure point of a physical landscape into realms of cloudscape are at the heart o

Crush Part 2 , 2015. Clothing, leather, silicone, Plexiglas, wood frame; 70 x 51 x 2 inches Three years ago , on a   cold rainy winter day, I chanced upon a closing party for Donna Huanca, to whom I was quickly introduced. As we exchanged pleasantries I glanced around the gallery, which was hung to the rafters with the various details of her work. There were entire outfits of clothing pressed between panes of glass and framed; vaguely biomorphic masses that resembles torsos as tree stumps or compost cubes; mostly nude models with their bodies painted standing like statues on a balcony above or upon a shelf or pedestal upon the wall, staring blankly over the crowd; clearly Huanca desired to bridge the gap between introspection and spectacle.    Cave Woman , 2015. Makeup on wool; 59 x 37 x 1 ½   inches I recall the space of the Joe Sheftel Gallery. Tall and narrow, it gave the impression of being a marginal space, like a stage with the curtain down,

To have emerged from a past that no longer exists is the legacy, and perhaps the tragedy, of those who live long enough to alter and reconstitute their identity. For Pat Benincasa, the obsolescence of the Industrial Era in American history held not only dreams in its wake, but lives. Her work encompasses the structures, the towns and cities, the greater American landscape around them, and the specific if frequently forgotten accomplishments of figures from this world. She has taken cultural possession of the past. Within its fabric hides a rich palimpsest where memory and the imagination meet. She excavates and celebrates the details that make up this history. Benincasa’s oeuvre encompasses three distinct bodies of work. One is devoted to the industrial structures; the second to the streets and avenues of Rust Belt cities, that were known for specific industrial products, and became communities; and for her newest project, “Women At The Wheel,” a series of history markers commemorating