Month: December 2024

When entering the downtown Los Angeles studio of artist Gabriela Ruiz, I was struck by a painting of an eye. Not just any eye, but a puffy, surreal orb that turned out to be inspired by a horrific ocular infection, which resulted in an obsession for looking at eyes and how constrained and odd they could be. It’s her gift, thinking beyond, designing an opening and pushing the idea into strange places. She brings these concepts to life through zany … Continue reading “Gabriela Ruiz: Valley Girl”

As soon as I first read about the practice of London-based Christian Quin Newell, I knew I wanted to interview him. His show there this past summer at Public Gallery was a collection of—and I directly quote—“Cosmological paintings opening up portals to an internal realm informed by Buddhist philosophy, mysticism, meditation, and the dream.” See what I’m talking about?

We have a longstanding romance with the American train, a slow and poetic vision that crosses rivers, slices through mountains and connects towns, cities and new frontiers. The railroad has been the subject of songs, novels, paintings and film, but the train car itself has an intimate and unique relationship to graffiti. The American folk history of hobo and rail worker graffiti is steeped in our culture, from the Beatniks to the contemporary graffiti movement that has stretched from Colossus … Continue reading “Tim Conlon the Freight Painter”

Kyndacee Harris is busy painting, otherwise I’d ask her to run for office. She had me at first glance—a painting of her own elementary school drill team—and again when I looked her up and found this quote: “To see more of my work, send me money to buy a computer.”

It begins with a space. The original, creaking floors of GRIMM’s Tribeca space brings out something special in the viewing of Anthony Cudahy’s paintings, a show I wanted to see before speaking with the artist on the brink of another show, his museum show, Spinneret, opening at the Green Family Art Foundation this fall. Cudahy paints emotion and something quite moody, and when you circle the gallery, the timeworn floorboards enhance the intimacy of the works on view, evoking an … Continue reading “Anthony Cudahy: The Inflections of Somebody”