Patrick J. Reed
Caitlin Keogh: Waxing Year
By Patrick J. ReedThis pictorial mimicry of a postcard featuring a photograph of a sculpture, which in turn depicts locomotion through water, typifies Waxing Year’s conceptual somersaults, and it offers a micro-lesson in appreciating the tumbling energy that activates Keogh’s presentation.
Sayre Gomez: X-Scapes
By Patrick J. ReedIn his current exhibition, X-Scapes, Sayre Gomez’s pastiched visions of Los Angeles suffuse urban alienation with the lurid glow of a sunset existentialism particular to the coastal West, land of limitless absurdity.
Stephen Kaltenbach: The Beginning and The End
By Patrick J. ReedStephen Kaltenbach’s story is framed by hereafters. He comes and goes, came and went, reappeared to prove he never left. Fitting that the hereafter is a euphemism for something unending—Kaltenbach is always in the ether of contemporary art.
Susan Philipsz: Sleep Close and Fast
By Patrick J. ReedThe glass and steel material content in Sleep Close and Fast bespeak the disinfecting wipe-downs that businesses, including galleries, perform with regularity. The artworks advertise sanitation, a less comforting quality than it may seem.
Resilience: Philip Guston in 1971
By Patrick J. ReedIn the case of Resilience, the forces responsible for its production are entirely predictable: his estate in all its authority. Thus, it comes as no surprise that the exhibition is exactly what one might expect. The work is masterful. The catalogue is handsome. The curatorial premise—to showcase the artworks Guston made in the year following the Marlborough-Gerson controversy while in residence at the American Academy in Rome (and shortly thereafter), and thereby reinforce his mythos as a phoenix for the modern painter—is compelling.
