From the top down
Robert Kushner
Alex Katz
Hans Hofman

Ted Kennedy Supports Obama, video

According to cable pundits and major newspapers, Barack Obama will be the Democratic candidate for president in 2008. During a rally in Montgomery County, P.A., that I taped back in April, Senator Edward Kennedy gave a strong speech in support of Barack Obama.

Quicktime version (higher quality)
YouTube version

Ted Kennedy on Heath Care, video

I had the opportunity to tape Senator Edward Kennedy while attending a rally because my wife Lisa Romaniello is running for State Representative. It was really inspiring to hear him talk so passionately about trying to get health care reform passed during his career. In this video he talks about his own family's struggles in the past with sickness and injury, and now as we have just learned, he faces a battle of his own with cancer.

Quicktime version (higher quality)
YouTube version

Fragments

Artists often have the same idea about something they want to try out. But making an idea work is much more difficult than coming up with a thought. Plus everyone can start with the same idea and end up at a totally different place. I am sure before there was something called abstract painting someone said to themselves, "I wonder what it would be like to make a painting with no identifiable subject matter." But pulling it off was the hard part. This leads me to fragments. People have found broken and deteriorating objects interesting for a very long time. Donald Kuspit wrote a great piece on the work of Thomas Chimes and Lynda Benglis and talks about how entropy can be beautiful.

For the past six months or so I have been working on 3D objects made out of the same materials I have been using in my paintings. Through experimentation I found little things that I liked and have spent months trying to get them larger and trying to find a way to display them. The above image shows a detail from a piece in progress. Here is a group hung together with the largest piece measuring approximately 12 inches.

Sorry I missed this one

Above, Untitled (8-107), 2008, oil on linen on panel, 22 x 28 inches by Thomas Nozkowski. At Pace Wildenstein, NY.

New York Trip

A few painter friends and myself made a trip to New York to check out some exhibitions in Chelsea. Appoximately 30 shows later we all agreed that the most impressive was Christopher Wool at Luhring Augustine. A few others worth mentioning are Neo Rauch (and others) at David Zwirner, Joan Mitchell at the Lennon, Weinberg Gallery and Dona Nelson at Thomas Erben.

DEEP Closing Soon

City Paper gave a nod to the closing of my exhibition DEEP at the Philadelphia Art Alliance in their Catch it or Regret It section. Officially the show ends this Sunday, May 18, but you can still see it through Tuesday, May 20. There are a couple of other good shows in walking distance from the Satellite Gallery that City Paper mentions too. And while you are in the neighborhood visit Schmidt Dean to see the work painter of Anne Seidman.

Above, a still from a video about my working process, click here to watch it.

Robert Rauschenberg, RIP

NY Times slideshow. Also see the film "Painters Painting: The New York Art Scene 1940-1970" by Emile de Antonio.

Above, Tracer, 1963, oil and silkscreen ink on canvas 84 x 60 inches by Robert Rauschenberg. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

Olafur Eliasson, MOMA video

It was only a matter of time until the mega art institutions got video right. A good example of this are the nicely produced videos on artist Olafur Eliasson that help introduce and explain the work that is currently on view at MOMA. Mr. Eliasson has another show at PS1 through June 30, 2008.

An interesting take on the work of Mr. Eliasson by Peter Schjeldahl can be found in The New Yorker. "What are these works, besides fun? Perhaps not much, in themselves. They are choice instances of institutionally parasitic art that exists only because space-rich, audience-hungry museums and Kunsthallen must fill their schedules with something, and preferably not the inefficiently small and expensively insured objects that are traditional paintings and sculptures. I have been unhappy with the reign of such circusy manifestations, which are called into being less by anyone’s desire than as fulfillments of a job description. (Our jobs constrict us. Art should give us compensatory glimpses of freedom.) But there is a lyrical aura to any job that is done really well, and Eliasson routinely distills that aura into a Platonic essence of know-how and impeccable execution."

Philadelphia critics on Olafur Eliasson
Color Schemes at City Paper
Color Me Rad at Philadelphia Weekly

Above, “I Only See Things When They Move,” 2004 by Olafur Eliasson. Courtesy Tanya Bonakder Gallery, NY.

Milton Resnick exhibition, video

Everyone who loves painting knows who Milton Resnick is. We are fortunate to be able to see an exhibition of his work from 1958-1963, including some very large pieces, at Cheim Read in New York. The show opened on May 1 and continues through June 14.

There is a also nice in-depth movie of Mr. Resnick in his later years talking and working in his studio. It really is amazing to see the white bearded elder grunting and groaning as he applies paint to a number of huge works in progress. He has so many interesting things to say that I think you will see it is well worth signing up at learner.org to view this video.

Above, paintings by Milton Resnick from A Question of Seeing: Paintings 1958-63 at Cheim Read.

Geoform

If you haven't been keeping up with Geoform this would be a good time to visit. Geoform has grown to be an important resource for geometric painting and 3D works. The site features images, information and interviews on a large number of artists from around the world. It was developed by Julie Karabenick and Howard R. Barnhart, both artists who I have had the pleasure of exhibiting with.

Above, Unfolded Sphere, oil & alkyd on canvas, 36 x 36 inches, 2006 by W. C. Richardson. (A video clip on Chip produced by Romanblog).