PAINTING SHOWS; FALL 2019

Fall, or Autumn as we say over the pond, is our favourite time to visit galleries. Following the summer season where many galleries host extended exhibits or close their doors altogether, in September galleries will often re-open with their most highly anticipated shows. As the days cool and nights grow longer, temperatures remain mild enough to get a little lost en route from one gallery to another without needing to dip into a coffee shop to warm your hands. As ever, our non-exhaustive selection below includes a mix of exhibits showing emerging to mid-career artists, peppered with recommended shows at mega galleries showcasing some of today’s most sought-after stars.

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Jenna Gribbon
When I Looked At You The Light Changed
Sep 5 - Nov 2, 2019
Fredricks & Fraisers - 536 W 24th St, New York

‘When I Looked at You the Light Changed’ presents a solo exhibition of works by Brooklyn-based painter Jenna Gribbon at Chelsea’s Fredricks & Fraisers. Drawing on personal memory, art history and contemporary life, the show presents two evocative series of works; one renders the artist’s close companions within tranquil erotic or familial scenes, and the other depicts her semi-nude female subjects entangled in charged acts of wrestling. Gribbon is a rare painter who is able to sample freely from various representational techniques and movements from the past and still creates a pictorial language that is uniquely her own. Impressionistic brushstrokes compliment expressive brushed-on walls and gently distorted architectural features, as if vigorously rushed in order to fully capture the fleeting moment in paint. Gribbon offers the viewer visual access to a private world, offering intimate moments from her past and present-day life that explore the malleability of memory and the beauty of every day connection.  

Jenna Gribbon, When I Looked At You The Light Changed, 2019, Oil on linen, 16x12in. Courtesy of the artist and Fredricks & Fraiser

Jenna Gribbon, Working Mother, 2019, Oil on linen, 10x8in. Courtesy of the artist and Fredricks & Fraiser

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
A Mind For Moonlight
Sep 6 - Nov 26, 2019
Corvi-Mora - 1a Kempsford Road, London

Corvi-Mora presents "A Mind For Moonlight", an incredibly captivating exhibition of new work by London-based artist Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. Featuring a group of portraits and figures in landscapes, the gaze of her subjects are deeply enticing, meditative as the same time as they are resilient; evoking a series of narratives, rendered in otherworldly brushstrokes, that is up to us to reconstruct and ponder.

Speaking of her subjects the artist says: 
“Although they are not real I think of them as people known to me. They are imbued with a power of their own; they have a resonance – something emphatic and otherworldly. I admire them for their strength, their moral fiber. If they are pathetic, they don’t survive; if I feel sorry for someone, I get rid of them. I don’t like to paint victims”. Lynette Yiadom-Boakye

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Albaster for Infidels, 2019, oil on linen, 98 x 62 in, 250 x 160cm. Courtesy of the artist & Corvi Mora

Shona McAndrew
Muse
Sep 6 - Nov 2, 2019
Chart Gallery, 74 Franklin St, NY

“When are women able to be honest with themselves, and what do they do when they are?”

Shona McAndrew presents 9 new paintings and 5 sculptures portraying women who are owning their surroundings; physically, mentally and emotionally. Curated by Mario Britto and hosted by Chart Gallery, a brand new gallery located in TriBeca, McAndrew’s playful artistry investigates art historical narratives rooted in paintings of the female nude. Borrowing heavily from conventions of female figure painting staged in interiors that reflect the contemporary world, McAndrew’s subjects are granted a quality of both vulnerability and strength.

Five papier-mâché sculptures compliment the new series of paintings, smaller versions reminiscent of her large installation that caused a stir at Spring/Break Art Fair last March, when the artist created a scene of two lovers lounging naked in a bedroom made entirely out of papier-mâché.

Shona McAndrew, Daniella, 2019, acrylic on canvas, 52 x 84 x 1 1/4 in, 132.1 x 213.4 x 3.2 cm. Courtesy of the artist & Chart-Gallery

Light Paintings
Ridley Howard
Sep 6 - Oct 13
Marinaro Gallery, 1 Oliver St, NY

Marinaro presents a new body of work by Georgian artist Ridley Howard. Consisting of large and small works all made in 2019, Howard’s subjects are caught in private moments -- alone in their thoughts, sun-bathing or engaged in an intimate exchange. Deceptively simple, a distillation of detail and flat planes of colour create an elusive sense of place, giving the paintings an air of non-linear surrealist film stills offset by Howard’s finely-tuned, soft-edged painterliness. 

Ridley Howard, Window Sill #1 (Fog), 2019, Oil on linen, 30x36in. Courtesy of the artist & Marinaro Gallery

Ridley Howard, Sundress, 2019, Oil on canvas, 6x6in. Courtesy of the artist & Marinaro Gallery

Farley Aguilar
Contrariety
Sep 13 - Oct 19, 2019
Edel Assanti - 74a Newman St, London

Farley Aguilar is a self-taught painter born in Nicaragua who now lives and works in Miami, Florida. Marked by the artists distinct pictorial language, his first solo exhibition in the UK is a stunning and charged visual journey depicting portraits of children from wealthy backgrounds, young coal miners and young female factory workers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Aguilar uses all manner of brushwork, oil sticks and pencil in his practice. Drawing inspiration from Thomas Piketty’s theses that inequality is a feature of capitalism, Aguilar’s haunting scenes are an aesthetic journey that serve as a vehicle to question western societies’ egalitarian aspirations and current trajectory. 

Farley Aguilar, Breaker Boys, 2019, Oil, oil stick, and pencil on linen, 73 x 102 in / 185.4 x 259.1 cm. Courtesy of the artist & Edel Assanti.

Plumb Line
Loie Hollowell
Sep 14 – Oct 19, 2019
Pace Gallery - 540 W 25th St (2nd Fl), NY

Pace Gallery presents a solo exhibition of new paintings by Loie Hollowell. Featuring nine large-scale paintings that expand upon the artist’s dynamic use of dimensionality, color and geometric shapes, Hollowell evokes bodily landscapes using geometric shapes to move a figure or its actions into pure abstraction. This new body of work delves into the artists experience of pregnancy, from conception, to birth, to motherhood; exploring the duality of light, volume and scale, and elegantly blurring the lines between the illusory and the real.

Loie Hollowell, Boob Wheel, 2019, oil paint, acrylic medium, sawdust and high density foam on linen mounted on panel, 72-1/4" × 54-1/8" × 3-1/2" (183.5 cm × 137.5 cm × 8.9 cm). Courtesy of the artist & Pace Gallery

Loie Hollowell, Postpartum Plumb Line, 2019, oil paint, acrylic medium, sawdust, and high ednsity foam on linen mounted on panel, 72x54x3 1/2in (192.9x137x8.9cm) Courtesy of the artist & Pace Gallery

Sara-Vide Ericson
Interior Ambush
Oct 5 - Nov 17, 2019
Galleri Magnus Karlsson - Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Stockholm

Stockholm’s Galleri Magnus Karlsson presents a solo exhibition by Swedish artist, Sara Vide Ericson at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm. Interior Ambush features a brand new series of paintings, several large-scale, that explore our relationship to nature, artefacts and rituals. Ericson’s paintings are charged with an enigmatic quality characterised by the piercing light of an early winter morning in the Scandinavian countryside, or an emotionally intense sunset. Using her own personal history, body and surrounding landscapes, the artist transforms the painting process into beautifully urgent narratives.

Sara-vide Ericson, The Vault, 2019, Oil on linen, 74x106in / 190x270 cm. Courtesy of Galleri Magnus Karlsson

Adam Lee
My Thousand Souls
Oct 18 - Nov 23, 2019
Beers London, 1 Baldwin St, London

Beers London presents My Thousand Souls a solo exhibition of works by Australian painter, Adam Lee. 
Lee’s warm new series of paintings continue his ongoing fascination with the process of painting as a type of spiritual voyage or private pilgrimage. In what is the artists third exhibition with Beers London, this new body of work ventures into imagined fantastical scenarios, whereby each painting acts as an altarpiece, mirror or threshold between worlds or realities. Borrowing its title from a poem by Christian Winman titled “A Small prayer in a Hard Wind” which suggests the notion of a divine presence amidst human fragility, the evocative body of work is visibly marked by implied narratives of lamentation and grief, and the imagination as a means to expand upon yet-to-be-realized worlds.

Adam Lee, Cave Painting, 2019, Oil, synthetic polymer and pigment on canvas 79x77in / 202x197cm. Courtesy of the artist & Beers London.

Adam Lee, Votive Tree, Oil, synthetic polymer and pigment on canvas 64x59in / 165x150 cm. Courtesy of the artist & Beers London.