Washington D.C. – Matthew Langley Artblog

Exhibition: 2016 Year In Review at Susan Calloway Fine Arts

Published January 15, 2017

Opening Reception: January 13, 6 – 8pm
Exhibition runs January 13 – February 4
Susan Calloway Fine Arts is celebrating the nine exhibitions spanning abstract to landscape from 2016, She is hosting an exhibition highlighting the dynamic artworks that were on view. Come see select works by Dana Westring, Mark Willems, Mark Giaimo, Carol Reed, Dean Fisher, Katie Pumphrey, Natasha Karpinskaia, Maud Taber-Thomas, Steven S. Walker, Antonia Walker, and Matthew Langley.

Susan Calloway Fine Arts
1643 Wisconsin Ave NW
Washington, DC 20007

Morris Louis: Art Supplies Edition

Published July 29, 2014

I was doing a bit of research on the web earlier today when I stumbled over this letter from Morris Louis to Rene Bocour. It’s from the National Archives Leonard Bocour Collection. It’s essentially an order from Louis, but at the same time it’s a complaint letter.

Rene Bocour and Sam Golden supplied a paint called Magma – it is best described as an early type of acrylic paint, however, it is thinned with mineral spirits or turpentine. Magma was used by Louis, Newman and Roy Lichtenstein.

To note Magma was sold through Bocour Artists Colors. Golden is the nephew of Bocour and would later go on to create a different successful paint company called Golden Artist Colors, where an updated version of this paint is called Golden MSA Colors.

The full size easy to read letter is at the National Archives website.

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Robert Fripp – Let the Power Fall

Published May 16, 2011

One of the things I really appreciate in the work of Robert Fripp is the structure that oversee’s his work while at the same time there are clearly areas that allow for the occasional “happy accident” or just enough looseness to allow for new things to be found and explored inside the work. I recently stumbled over this document that was included in the album of Frippertronics called “Let the Power Fall” I’ve included it here – as I find it pretty interesting.

A personal story: I worked at Crown Books in the early – through mid eighties in the DC suburbs and at one of the locations I worked at we would drink Schweppes ginger ale – which in an afternoon of store hijinks, we retitled “schweppetronics”. At the time, we considered ourselves to be pretty clever…

Let The Power Fall – By Robert Fripp

I
1. One can work within any structure.
2. One can work within any structure, some structures are more efficient than others.
3. There is no structure which is universally appropriate.
4. Commitment to an aim within inappropriate structure will give rise to the creation of an appropriate structure.
5. Apathy, i.e. passive commitment, within an appropriate structure will effect its collapse.
6. Dogmatic attachment to the supposed merits of a particular structure hinders the search for an appropriate structure.
7. There will be difficulty defining the appropriate structure because it will be always mobile, i.e. in process.

II
8. There should be no difficulty in defining aim.
9. The appropriate structure will recognize structures outside itself.
10. The appropriate structure can work within any large structure
11. Once the appropriate structure can work within any large structure, some larger structure are more efficient than others.
12. There is no larger structure which is universally appropriate.
13. Commitment to an aim by an appropriate structure within a larger, inappropriate structure will give rise to a large, appropriate structure.
14. The quantitive structure is affected by qualitative action

III
15. Qualitative action is not bound by number
16. Any small unit committed to qualitative action can affect radical change on a scale outside its quantitative measure.
17. Quantitative action works by violence and breeds reaction.
18. Qualitative action works works by example and invites reciprocation.
19. Reciprocation between independent structures is a framework of interacting units which is itself a structure.
20. Any appropriate structure of interacting units can work within any other structure of interacting units.
21. Once this is so, some structures of interacting units are efficient than others.

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East Coast / West Coast

Published March 16, 2011

I’m currently in two shows that are both pretty interesting – funny enough they are on opposite coasts, so if you can see one, you will probably miss the other one unless you are some jet setting international man or woman of mystery.

Material World at Art DC in Hyattsville, MD is Curated by Stephen Boocks.

Material World features; Sherill Anne Gross, Michael Janis, J. T. Kirkland, Matthew Langley, Katherine Mann, and Marie Ringwald

The commitment these artists have for their materials and craft lets their processes inform the content of the work, not overwhelm it,” notes curator Stephen Boocks. “While viewers will inevitably wonder how the works were made and will marvel at the technical prowess, the pieces selected ultimately transcend the materials used, allowing each finished object to stand on its own.

Material World runs from March 17th – April 3rd

Life of The World To Come: Darkness Falls Upon Us, at NIAD, Richmmond, CA is curated by Timothy Buckwalter.

Shattering the conventions that have until now segregated artists with disabilities from their mainstream contemporaries, Darkness Falls Upon Us blends more than 70 works culled from artists and galleries across the country with those from the National Institute of Art and Disabilities studio program.

Darkness… features; Kate Bingaman Burt, Martin Bromirski, Bill Dunlap, Sylvia Fragoso, Stephen Hendee, Cliff Hengst, Eva Lake, Matthew Langley, David Martin, Tim McFarlane, Mike Monteiro, Rosita Pardo, Michele Pred, Kevin Randolph, Edmund Shea, Danny Thach, Vincent Villenueva, Billy White, Deirdre F. White, Jim Winters, and Michael Zahn

Life of The World To Come: Darkness Falls Upon Us is on view April 4 through June 3, 2010

Blinky Palermo at the Hirshhorn

Published March 7, 2011

I found myself in DC this weekend and early Sunday morning found me at the Hirshhorn for the much-anticipated Palermo retrospective.

The timing of this travelling exhibit is just about right as many people are now directly or obliquely referencing Palermo – he is clearly one of the artists the current zeitgeist is looking at. To look at this show and to hope to find direct relations with new art may not be the hardest thing to do in places, but to look at his body of work and to see the openness that went through his work is quite another.

This quality, his “porosity” is what draws many to his work before the period of his living in New York – but in reality this is his strongest period. From the cloth images to the wall paintings and the rough hewn sculpture/paintings Palermo’s early work is a idea and subject rich outpouring of artwork created in such a short period of time (+/- 10 years).

That porosity would start to come to an end with his relocation to New York, as Palermo would start to produce a series of paintings that would be executed on aluminum panel, usually in a small series (most often groups of three and four). However to be fair about the end of the porosity in New York, it is unknown what the future would have held for Palermo as his early death in 1977 would dictate that future works would be very hard to produce.

Installed here is the painting series “To the People of New York City” considered the zenith of his New York body of work. This brutal and yet sophisticated artwork balances itself between both of these two approaches, it is an amazing body of work – my only complaint is that the install seems bit too open for my taste – I would have loved to have seen this just a bit tighter to see and feel some of the overlap between the images. In a way a slightly tighter hanging would let some visuals bleed over into the viewer just a bit, visually pulling the suite of images into a more connected state.

The images I was most interested in seeing was the Cloth “paintings” as these are more often found in Europe than the United States – primarily being due to the location of their origin and relative fragile-ness of the artworks. The cloth works seem to take the many approaches from post war painting and distill them in a way that is clean, open and yet slightly subversive. They are a great opening salvo to a career that was cut short.

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Category: Washington D.C.