Carl Ostendarp

There is nothing like escaping to upstate NY in February; wintry landscapes decked out with snowy waterfalls, frozen lakes, and houses with actual backyards for building snowmen in.  Six months ago, I did just that. Winter's white adornments weren't my only reason for driving up; I also had the chance to do a studio visit with artist Carl Ostendarp. I lived in Ithaca for a couple years during graduate school at Cornell University and had the pleasure of being in the presence of a first-class painter and simultaneously having one as a teacher. After taking a brief hiatus from the writing portion of my project, I am happy to be getting back to it with thoughts on my time spent in Carl's studio. His perfectly thought-out nuances of color and highly meditated canvas configurations address the history of minimalism and also Ostendarp's own involvement in color field painting while mixing in a heavy dose of humor, timing, and optical irony. Needless to say, his paintings were a joy to sit in front of and draw.

A crucial part of our daily existence, one that often goes unacknowledged, is its downright banality. Currently, Ostendarp makes life's banalities and the banal's onomatopoeias the subject of his work. Brghhhh, Aaargh, Pfppp. We've all released these heavy sighs at some point or another. Brilliantly pairing a vast array of exasperations with an utterly obsessive attention to detail when it comes to his choice of color, proportion and composition, it seems to me that Ostendarp is composing the perfect viewing experience while making a comment on possible frustrations with the human intellect and the limitations of language. It is a satisfyingly sarcastic gesture he is making as he hides the paintings' complexity in its simplicity. I can only imagine he lets out a couple of Iffffpfp's in the process.  While at Cornell I TA'd for Carl. I remember him writing out these indecipherable schemes or plans while the students were on their break, much like he was doing while I was in his studio. Pieces of paper would fill up with numbers crossed out by other numbers, columns of seemingly senseless digits, and measurements of rectangles that were just short of being squares. Some real Frankenstein-looking stuff. I could see the joy he took in this part of the process. I came to understand that his idea of the banal was directly related to his practice, his composition needing to be so perfect that his audience couldn't even detect his efforts. Even the penmanship of the text is faked to look like it was casually written out when in fact it is painted in multiple painstaking layers.

Piles of drawings are collected in his flat files. I was lucky to have the chance to go through them. A fake gallery show on black walls, a question mark, a farty sound. The fake gallery wall brought to mind the curatorial projects that also act as installation pieces Ostendarp has done internationally in the past several years. He combines artworks from a museum's collection with his own wall paintings of fake paint drip panoramas and then surrounds the viewer in a soundtrack that coincides one way or another with the works he has chosen to display. An all encompassing experience, his first was "All Tomorrow's Parties," at the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt in 2007.

Installation of Carl Ostendarp: Fat Cakes at the Johnson Museum, Ithaca, NY 2012

Our conversation, as I recalled from years before, still ranged from Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times all the way to the adequate paint brands to use. In the evening, we visited the Chapter House for pints and super salty popcorn, while my husband and Carl had the chance to discuss their dueling vinyl obsessions. All in all, my visit brought a full spectrum of color to an otherwise dreary winter season. To see more of Ostendarp's work go here Elizabeth Dee Gallery.    

PITS:UPDATE with Erik den Breejen

For another edition of PITS:UPDATE, I spent the afternoon in New Jersey drawing the paintings of Erik den Breejen. His work is being shown in the exhibition appropriately titled Word at One River Gallery, a newly opened space that is nestled in the heart of Englewood. Den Breejen shares this two person exhibition with Jim Torok, a much loved Brooklyn artist who has been a part of the Williamsburg art scene from the beginning. Several of den Breejen's hits are on display, spanning all the way back to 2006. He has had a long lasting love affair with finely tuned painted marks, the seductive poetry of popular music and rock and roll, and colors that are turned on by complimentary palettes. All of this being more then apparent when viewing this satisfying chunk of his artistic career.

From the Soul-In! 8-track he painted earlier on, to a recent masterful portrait of Jarvis Cocker snidley puffing on a cig and formed out of the lyrics to Pulp's "Its a Dirty World," den Breejen demonstrates in more than one way his ability to turn the sounds of our culture, past and present, into dynamic abstract paintings. If you have yet to see the whale of a painting that contains all the words to Pink Floyd's The Wall, which he last showed in 2008, you might want to make the trip to Jersey before the exhibition comes down on February 24th. "So ya, thought ya, might like to, go to the show." A challenge for the viewers: see if you can find that quote without your eyes going blurry. To see more of Erik's work go to http://www.freightandvolume.com/artists/erik-den-breejen/.

Jim Torok's work

Jim Torok's work

Lauren Luloff

A couple years back, I visited Lauren Luloff's studio in Williamsburg to go to the opening of an  HKJB group show that she was hosting. Since then, her space has been on my "dream studios" list. A drool still dangles every time I think of it. I had the pleasure of spending a day there with Lauren recently. The immense room she works in fills up with a lambent light at midday, flooding in from a large wall of windows that frame the trains that closely and frequently pass them by. A collection of plants, from succulents to vines, gather along the windows' edge turning a seductive dark green when the sun sneaks in past their growth. I could see clearly how her space must influence her work. I found a cozy couch that sat diagonally in the corner to set up for my drawing while Lauren worked on many large paintings that were spread out across the floor. It was a cold day, but I was kept warm by our conversation and the fabrics that piled up around me.

Wooden pillars that break up the room reminded me of the stretchers that are often visible in Lauren's paintings by either holding a partially translucent canvas or by being seen when her work is shown in the round. Lauren enhances found bed sheets with delicate bleach-drawn still lifes and landscapes. She also makes block printed patterns on them, a technique she learned while visiting India. The bed sheets give the work a soft and long lived texture. She then collages the sheets together on canvas to create an initial surface. She further develops the complexity of her compositions by adding oil painted motifs that mimic her original marks, saturating portions of the fabric with pools of solid color, and interrupting the surface of the canvas by cutting out sections to create mysteriously dark breaks in its form. Her work begins to create the illusion of a proudly undulating pennant for the state of color and line. Oftentimes, she will even hang her embellished fabrics on a string similar to a clothesline giving them a life of their own in their movement. Lauren spoke to me highly of the ocean, and with this as one of her influences, her work becomes one where construct meets the ethereal qualities of nature.

Up until recently, Lauren's studio was a live in. There was a seamless quality to both uses of the space — she certainly seemed to be living her art. Her use of found bed sheets as a surface and bleach as a painting element blur the line of domesticity and art as the products morph into the artist's material. Even the kitchen has taken on the characteristics of her work, with its chipped, brightly painted walls and strong aging lines of architecture.

We made our way back through a narrow hallway to where the living is done in her live-in studio for a bite of lunch. Lauren whipped up a lovely veggie-tofu stir fry that we ate with her boyfriend, Alexander Nolan, who was taking a break from working on a painting he was doing of the kitchen. While we ate, Lauren told me about her stay in an Indian village called Ajrakpur (near Bhuj in the northwestern state Gujarat) where she learned traditional block printing with natural vegetable dyes from Irfan Khatri. The whole village is an Islamic caste —  all family —  who block print in this tradition. Enriched by the stories of her experience, we returned to work. To check out more of Lauren's paintings go to  http://laurenluloff.blogspot.com/

JJ Manford

How another year has sped by so quickly, I don't know, and I am certain that the students are feeling the same way — once again it is time for Hunter's MFA Thesis Exhibition. I had been holding out visiting JJ Manford's studio for awhile now in order to draw up proper anticipation. A few weeks back, on a cold and particularly windy Sunday afternoon, JJ and I met outside his studio building.  While still working on our dollar slices, we headed up to the fourth floor for a joint day of art making. I was immediately dumbfounded by the new body of work that filled JJ's space, having not visited him in such a long time. Not only is he tackling very large sized canvases, but also very large sized ideas. No holding back here, JJ is jumping into Thesis with full gusto.

Small panels were scattered across the studio floor. JJ explained that he is working simultaneously on all the paintings, with the large ones leaning up against every available wall space. He told me that he often over-mixes a batch of paint for working on a section of a larger piece and quickly uses the remains on a smaller piece — never messing with his studio rhythm and making good use of his vibrantly colored concoctions. Having had a pretty long history of talking to JJ about his work, we arrived at some of the same places we had been before, but were mostly entering entirely new territory. I told him that I saw elements of these new paintings reading like a fantastical projection of what you might see happening inside the artists' mind or behind their eyes. I suppose this could be visual, intellectual or scientific. It is almost as though he has arrived at the work by painting what he sees when he closes his eyes just after looking at a bright light, with his marks that make up noisy circular flashes and strings of electric color. Maybe he is giving the synapses (those rapid transfers of signals that happen in the brain from one cell to the next) a pictorial description. I liked thinking that the figures that he has begun to use, which act somewhat autobiographically, form a narrative of his past experiences. The figures appear quite appropriately with the abstracted synapses — as they play a major role in the formation of our memory.

I snuck a look back into the files of paintings that record his time spent in graduate school and caught a glimpse of a vaguely suggested figure hidden within the swirls of color used on the canvases. JJ makes pours of paint on the surface at the beginning of a new piece, later finding a way of giving definition to the pour. These preliminary actions record his use of chance and once again make me think of the many swirls going on in the artists' mind as they begin the process of making.

At the end of our visit, as he walked me downstairs, we stepped in to take a look at the space where JJ will be hanging his paintings. While gazing up at the emptiness that stretched across the vast white walls, I saw the excitement and anticipation on his face to be finally ending his time at Hunter. We had a splendid day together and I am so pleased to have seen him in his final stages of production. So, firstly, I encourage you to come out to see the Hunter MFA Thesis Exhibition that opens on December 12. Also, he is showing some smaller works the following evening, December 13, at The Hogarth Worldwide Biannual, 6-9, at Hogarth Worldwide Inc., 230 Park Avenue South, 11th Fl, 19th. And if you are up for more, come to Peaces on Earth, an exhibition that Jon Lutz of Daily Operation is hosting in collaboration with Sardine which opens December 15th, 5-10. You will see a lot of work from various PITS artists represented here and all the works are under $200, perfect for pre-holiday consideration. For more of JJ Manford's paintings go to http://jjmanford.com/.

Chuck Webster

Several weeks ago I went to Pat Berran and Chuck Webster's opening at No Globe Exhibition Space on the corner of Division and Morgan. Each of the artists had filled their own large wall, ceiling to floor, with drawings or works on paper. On an adjacent wall, each hung a singular painting. I appreciated this presentation — particularly interested in how an artist's drawings can inform their paintings and vice-versa. I soon started up a conversation with Chuck. I was taken by his abundant wall of abstractions, varying in size and chock-full of his particularly gratifying brand of mark making, shape formation, and color. Realizing that these small works on paper were closely related to the large paintings hung at his recent solo show at ZieherSmith this past Spring, it reminded me once again how drawing often starts our artistic fires. Chuck and I decided to pencil in a visit — time being of the essence — as several of the paintings he was finishing up were being shipped off to St Louis for a solo show at Philip Slein Gallery that opens November 16th.

I got a real sense of the activities to come when I entered his studio and saw the effects of the previous day. Chuck explained that the first order of business for him was to straighten up his space: sweeping, moving paint around, sifting through drawings, placing the panels that he would be working on where they needed to be worked on, and putting his dog Sophia on her bed. He told me that this is how he always starts things off — going through the studio helps him figure out what his next painting moves will be. I was set up in the corner, carefully laying out the groundworks for my drawing as he finished up reorganizing. He asked if I would mind listening to some episodes of The Sopranos as we worked. Not at all, I told him. I kind of find that the blurred sound of voices and confusion of a cut up story line can act like a healthy distraction when making art. The nineties Mafioso crew insisted we stop for a laugh from time to time while Chuck attentively fast forwarded through the super-violent parts to keep the conversations we were having over the show light — or at least painting oriented.

One of the paintings Chuck was working on took several turns while I was there. Witnessing this progression in real time made me hyper-aware of what kind of attention to the surface each panel is given. The results being vast areas of ethereal and diverse color fields, the kind only oil paint can make. At some points entire skins of paint where scratched or rubbed off with sprays of turpentine, while piles of paper towels collected on the floor to once again be swept away the next morning. It was an exciting and somewhat intense thing to watch, or listen to, or occasionally look up at — seeing sections of paint with their thick black borders, turn from white, back to green, back to white, then to a luscious very light blue with portions of startling red.

After having done several of these visits, without fail, I find a few secrets to the studio on the book shelves around me. I wasn't surprised to see an easily accessible shelf that held books on Joseph E. Yoakum, Dubuffet, Carrol Dunham, and Matisse. And that's only the tip of the iceberg; Chuck had a large collection of oversized art books. However, this doesn't necessarily help me to explain what I see when looking at Chuck's towering panels — heavy black contours giving a contradictory sense of heft to his otherwise delicately considered formations. His invented lexicon of characters allows the viewer to decide for themselves if it is figure, furniture or hieroglyph. They do seem like exaggerated or blown up small drawings, or, to quote Roberta Smith (and the title of his show in St Louis) "Little Big Paintings." I also see them as singular thoughts — a perfect one word description — made on a grand scale.

We listened to a few more Sopranos episodes before switching to one very poignant episode of Louie, closing out our studio day while sipping on a couple Bay Area beers to cheer on the SF Giants as they got ready to win their 3rd game in the World Series later that night. I ended up leaving in a hurry to catch the beginning of the game and left a drawing behind. I went back a week later to pick it up just before the paintings got packed away. Chuck was sitting in his chair, quietly staring at his large panels when I came in. He told me the last step of his process was four hours of looking. I was happy to see that Hurricane Sandy hadn't placed her heavy hand on his studio space; sadly this doesn't go for all the artists with studios in Greenpoint and my heart goes out to those less fortunate. To check out more of Chuck Webster's rad work go to http://chuckwebster.biz/home.html.

Sarah Mattes

I found myself in Red Hook again in the same building that Michael Berryhill's studio is in. This time I was visiting with artist Sarah Mattes, entertained by the fact that for the second time around I was convinced it wasn't the right building because of a sign at the top that reads "STORAGE." Lost on the huge floor where the artists are "stored," Sarah tracked me down and escorted me to her space. Sarah had quite a few new pieces laid out on the floor and hung on the walls. It felt like it was somewhere between an art installation, a working studio and construction zone - it was brimming with energy. As we began the day talking about her new work and catching up on what shows we had seen and which openings we had gone to so far this fall, I got out my little bag of pencils and she got out her big bag of clay. We were ready to do our studies, hers in the third dimension and mine in the second.

Two hours into looking at her work, I began to really let my imagination make a run for it. Sarah's sculptures/paintings are good at giving that run a head start. I began to think that her sparse yet intricate pieces sometimes look like scaled down stage sets. Not a set you might find for the newest Broadway Musical hit, but more like one that would be used for a play associated with the Theatre of the Absurd. I could almost envision thumb-sized actors walking back and forth among her collages of found objects. Maybe it is Nagg and Nell from Beckett's Endgame, sitting nestled in their dustbins at the edge of one of the repainted faux tiles Sarah uses as a base for one of her pieces. Discarded planks of wood stand like pillars or suggest the corner of a room - the details of dried up vines that once grew on the wood giving it a definitive history. Her work allows the otherwise discarded objects to live in a kind of fantasy world, where all things hold importance, from a spoon used to mix plaster and paint to a drop cloth saturated with yesterday's stains.

Sarah explained to me that much of the materials she uses in her work she happens upon on the street or down the hall in her building. It is very rarely a Home Depot sort of situation. I loved hearing about the free pile that has developed on her floor. She told me that at the beginning there were these crazy finds and slowly the finds began to have price tags on them as folks realized they might be able to make a profit from their studio debris, which is not so good for scavengers like Sarah. She did buy several bags of clay from the pile at a very low price, and she later discovered that she could fire clay works down the hall on her floor. I could see how this kind of serendipity finds its way into her life as an artist. Her work is alive with the chance happenings of her experience.

We ended our time together with scrumptious bites of fig on toast and some talk over whether or not we would make it out to openings that night. Sometimes after such a productive day it just feels so good to go home and prepare for the next day in the studio - nothing to disrupt the flow. She is curating a show at her alma mater Collgate University in the Clifford Art Gallery called External Original, which is up from October 29 - November 20, 2012. She is also in a show upstate titled Excursions on a Wobbly Rail that is curated by Brad Hajzak at Roos Art in Rosendale NY and is open until November 17th. That would be a nice trip up the river, equal parts foliage viewing and gallery going. All and all Sarah and I had a choice time together. Please check out more of her work at http://www.sarahmattesstudio.com/.

Chris Martin

Except for the tiny sign that hangs outside the door simply reading "studio," you would never know what magic lay behind this covered up storefront building on a busy street in Williamsburg. Greeted with an exuberant handshake by artist assistant Max Heiges, I was led further and further back, past walls of art books, shelves packed with sketch books, and numerous paintings, into the storefront turned studio space of Chris Martin. He acquired the building in 1984 after having moved his studio to Williamsburg from SoHo in 1980. Along with Max, assistant Linnea Kniaz was hard at work building large stretchers, 135" x 118" in size, for canvases that Chris had worked on while upstate in the Catskills this past summer. There was a lot going on between the four of us, drills drilling, painters painting, pencils drawing. Not to forget tails wagging - much to my delight, Tamara Gonzales and Chris' Pomeranian also spent the day romping in and out of the space.

Towards the back of the work room there is a moveable wall where Chris has put up images he will eventually use in his next installment of 280 + Cover. The first book in this series, the "Yellow Book," was sold at Koch Oberhuber Wolff in conjunction with a solo show in the Fall of 2010. He sent me home with a copy. Leafing through its sundry collection of photos, the book gave me an even deeper look into his practice, acting like a dialogue between his thoughts, his work and his everyday world: images consisting of his paintings, upside down trees, piles of junk, drawings, gnomes on rooftops, fluffy dogs on mountaintops, jam sessions, painted faces and cars, mushrooms, and award winning sheep. Chris' paintings and drawings already seem to come directly and generously from his life, calling on both his memory and immediate reality. Sometimes he does this by merely hinting at a landscape that he has experienced and physically attaching images or objects he has come across to the canvas. Or, in other ways, he might do this more explicitly by paying homage to the things that are influential or important to him, as he paints an artist's or musician's name across the bottom of his canvases.

Chris explained to me that he painted on the soon to be stretched canvases while they laid in the grass behind his house upstate. You get the sense of how much his summer backyard had a hand in his process: the sky dropping water and shining a drying sun, the vibrant greenness and growth of the garden and grass giving an influence of color, footprints of animals and human's bare feet showing up scattered across the surface. In this instance, I see Chris playing two roles: part painter and part facilitator, collecting Summer's vitality by making these works a history of his days spent under the open sky of the Catskills.

The three working walls in Chris' studio are covered with layers of paintings. I thought that eventually the whole space might close in on him like some trippy Twilight Zone episode -- the artist enveloped by his own artwork. His incredibly large paintings tend to do this to the viewer on their own, enveloping us in their size and liveliness. Max and Linnea put together the massive stretchers throughout the day, having time towards the end to stretch a canvas on one. Propping it up against the wall, I imagined this to be the painting's vertical unveiling.

Chris and I talked about our mutual love for drawing. He told me that he had piles of stuff drawn on loose paper and showed me the shelves where he stored years of sketchbooks; he told me how his drawings often becomes the basis for his paintings. For me, spending the day drawing his new paintings, squinting to get the photo of Dylan pasted to the front of one of them to halfway resemble Dylan, while Chris closed out the studio day with some beats on his bongo drum, was an affirmation of why I love art. Check out more of Chris Martin's work at Mitchell-Innes & Nash.