Caroline Larsen

I drove to Wave Hill (one of NYC's best kept secrets) with Caroline Larsen and her husband in early April for the opening of her show "Fruit and Foliage." The weather was just beginning to feel hopeful and Larsen's succulent paintings made the tulips outside the main house burst brighter and bigger than ever. A couple months later, on the cusp of summer, she had a show open at The Hole on Bowery. In "KaBloom" Larsen's panels brought the cool air of the post rainstorm tropics and a desert's crisp night to our already sweaty Manhattan streets. You might find the same escapes I do if you follow Caroline's work. And it isn't just her paintings that bring relief; after a long day together in her studio, followed by a night of openings and beers, I was left feeling especially uplifted.

The piercing colors and high contrasts of Larsen's paintings stun you into submission before beginning the process of hypnosis with their intricately built tapestries of oil. In long pastry bags filled with oozing paint, Larsen has perfected her application by slowly squeezing out color onto panels that have been marked off to contain varying organic shapes and architectural formations. She will often use two pigments side by side in the bags to seriously optimize the vibrancy of her colors. The highs and lows of a leaf's pattern gets spelled out in molecular detail. Croton plants tangle up with hibiscus flowers and bananas trees as they drench her panels with varying greens, tangerine oranges, and ripe yellows. Sometimes her paintings are completely taken over by fauna, like a flourishing, but unmanaged garden. Other times she exaggerates the xeriscaping of a Southern California home with exuberance. The glistening cool blues of her swimming pools are enough to make you salivate. In her recent show (still up at the Hole), there are sunset-lit mountain tops hit with zig-zags of deep purples and reds and paintings of cars that have been set ablaze with fire. The contrast of the naturalism of light on a mountain and the horrors of man-made destruction calls attention to the ways humans are destroying the very beauty she is depicting so well.

 Image Courtesy of The Hole NYC

 Image Courtesy of The Hole NYC

Image Courtesy of The Hole NYC

Mutual understandings of lizards, sunsets, humidity, and florescent colors forged our bond when we first met a few years back and realized we both spent our teens in Florida. That might also be why we left her studio before sundown for a cold beer and fun times. It was an altogether lovely day. Caroline's show at The Hole is up until July 24th, and her show at Wave Hill is up until August 28th. To see more of her work go to http://carolinelarsen.com/home.html.

Adam Parker Smith

 I have always thought that art, or at least the personality of an artwork, resembles its creator in one way or another — sort of the dog and their owner theory. Case in point: Adam Parker Smith. His current show, "Oblivious the Greek," up now at The Hole NYC, is a playfully sharp body of work that uses just the right amount of social sarcasm to keep the viewer from feeling made fun of. I swung by to make a drawing a couple weeks before the show was complete. Like parts of Frankenstein before his assembly, balloons collected on the floor halfway between their helium release and their new life as artwork. It was a complicated, but rewarding, mess to draw; a real behind-the-scenes experience.

Smith uses objects that overflow the shelves of party supply stores and suburban mega-marts to build his sculptures. You'll only find fake marble and plant-life tangled up in these pop explosions, nothing that is actually derived from the earth, as opposed to the Greek sculptures that he alludes to in the title of his show. With the work laid out in the middle of the gallery space like a sculpture garden, the viewer is encouraged to weave in and out of the gigantic forms before discovering their hollow backs. On the walls hang collections of celebration: everything from the brightly colored wacky noodles that  we float mindlessly around on in swimming pools to the dust covered display cakes that sit in the windows of Lower East Side bake shops. While experiencing the sheer joyousness of the works' bright and shiny character, Adam leaves you with room to consider their somewhat ominous familiarity. What makes our society tick? Crappy pretend stuff. Baudrillard argues that a simulacrum is not a copy of the real, but becomes truth in its own right. There is a whole lot of truth in these pieces. Smith's large scale sculptures encourage a poignant kind of self reflection while still managing to make that contemplation fun.

                                                              Image Courtesy of The Hole NYC

 Image Courtesy of The Hole NYC

                                                      Image Courtesy of The Hole NYC
I was able to partake in the after party for Adam and painter Caroline Larsen's openings at The Hole a few weeks back. As energetic as the work itself, the table overflowed with pop conversation, boisterous karaoke, and amazing Chinese food. A proper celebration and a night to remember. Smith is in a group show at Eric Firestone Gallery that opens July 16th in the Hamptons, and his show at The Hole NYC is up until the 24th of July. To see more of his work go here http://www.adamparkersmithwork.com/