Contributed by John Fritsch and Jen Pepper / Shari Urquhart, artist and educator, died on November 21, 2020. She was born in Racine, Wisconsin and grew up in Kenosha, just a few miles south. Although her first media were painting and printmaking, she ultimately found her true medium in fiber to express her take on popular culture and art history.
Contributed by Laurie Fendrich / When I walked into the large middle gallery at Matthew Marks, where the stunning work of Miyoko Ito (1918–1983) from the 1970s is concentrated, a person in the gallery turned to me and said, “Give me a coffee machine and a cot and I can spend the rest of my life here.” I completely understood. I first encountered Ito’s work when I was in graduate school at the Art Institute of Chicago. Along with my teachers Ray Yoshida and Richard Loving, Ito joined my roster of painting heroes. The current exhibition includes three small, figurative lithographs, but the thrust of the show is the paintings – painstaking abstractions with allusions. Sixteen, spanning the period 1942 to 1983, the year of her death, are on view. All are modest in scale and, though there are color constants, each has its own particular – and novel – composition.
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / As “Ass Backwards,” the title of David Humphrey’s new show of paintings at Fredericks & Freiser, suggests, they are less in-your-face than much of his recent work. But they remain as busy, visually precise, and narratively provocative as ever, suggesting that it is not Humphrey’s approach to painting but rather his apprehension of the world and his place in it that have changed.
Contributed by Riad Miah / “Bracing Against the Wind,” the title of Alyse Rosner’s solo exhibition at Rick Wester Fine Art, can be read literally and poetically. While her paintings depict dynamic elements of nature, they also reveal the intuitive hand of the artist. This allows the viewer to decode her process in making them, which includes rubbing, repetitive application, imparting decorative motifs, and more.