Dennis Hollingsworth

Instagram Reviews

I've been posting capsule reviews on Instagram as I tour NYC and see the shows. You can find me there via the handle "pacificohollingsworth" (Pacifico is my grandfather's name). It started with a sentence or two, then I followed up with a short paragraph. Mind dump. Germs of criticism. I'll keep them succinct, that's the charm. As I wrote in reply to a comment recently:

...there's something very nice about this experiment, capsule blurb reviews of shows I see around town. Feeling the flow. Thinking on my feet. Going Ginsberg, "First thought, best thought."

(I'll splash with one and follow under the fold with 14 others.)

Whiting Tennis @derekellergallery. Picasso lives forever, free rent in our heads. Overtones of Max Ernst's decalcomania. Collage in a painter's masquerade ball. Then, a plaster object hung in the wall installation reminded me of the Elizabeth Murray exhibition at Pace seen a few hours earlier. The coda was surprising: as I was signing the guest book, there was this curiously innocuous object, a nightstand! Some parts second hand, some parts hyper realized by hand. I hoped to G-d that the plug and outlet was fabricated. Was all the Picasso in the main gallery second hand too? Was Pablo rescued from the local Goodwill store?

A post shared by Dennis Hollingsworth (@pacificohollingsworth) on Nov 12, 2017 at 10:39am PST

Roy Dowell & Richard Kalima @lennonweinberg. Dowell: five or six moves, combinant and recombinant. Freedom within limits. Kalima: architecture, anyone? Facture action within each single color application... and then come the edges and corners, ultra tight. The pairing: 70's TV show "The Odd Couple"

A post shared by Dennis Hollingsworth (@pacificohollingsworth) on Nov 12, 2017 at 10:25am PST

Richard Prince @gladstone.gallery "The Ripple Paintings". Handsome objects that fit smartly into seven figure uptown apartments. Joan Katz wrote an interesting statement, it begins a few beats down: "A little of this. A little of that. / How hard can it be?" Not hard at all, apparently. The labor is in the clever, nothing to sneeze at. The facture from a jet ink printer is as small as quantum spin, so it's no surprise to lean that Prince insisted on the 1/8 inch from fabricator Kevin from Philadelphia. Like the Mary Kelly show at Mitchell Innes & Nash, this show is a paean to '68. It takes a lot of cleverness to hide sentiment.

A post shared by Dennis Hollingsworth (@pacificohollingsworth) on Nov 12, 2017 at 10:09am PST

Elizabeth Murray @pacegallery "Painting in the 80's". Spent most of the time looking at the support, daydreaming about how much better the paintings would look if they were sprayed monochrome, wondering how much involvement there was with the fabricators. The construction always emulated stretcher bars, never leaving the reservation. Who was the fabricator? A single person, a singular sensibility? What was the degree and character of interaction between them and Murray? Only a few scraps of paper are shown as evidence. The painting? Muddy, aging badly. I thought of the LA Chicano school: Carlos Almaraz and Frank Romero... then, the Chicago Imagists came to mind. Chicago in NYC.

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Mary Kelly, "The Practical Past" at Mitchell Innes & Nash. Nostalgia or requiem? Affect says yes and no, the title says otherwise. Overtones of technology, like a telescope/TV to a place in the wake of time. TV static reveals the afterglow of the Big Bang of '68. Grounding in everyday chores: dryer lint catcher talisman working like an ouija board. Brings to mind Philip K. Dick's "Exegesis " in his ability to find science fiction miracles in prosaic events.

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Theresa Hackett and Shari Mendelson @johnnolloygallery Upper East Side NYC. Hackett's paintings have a tie in 3 dimensions, Mendelson's vessels are crafted from plastic detritus, both make work that hearken towards the roots of Malloy's gallery as a purveyor of Native American antiques. Molloy's program unselfconsciously anticipates the current interest in de-hierarchical exhibitions of Museum collections. Given the domestic setting of the gallery and the way Molloy refuses to scrub his space clean of traces of previous shows, the visitors eye glides between cultures past and present, making connections.

A post shared by Dennis Hollingsworth (@pacificohollingsworth) on Oct 18, 2017 at 10:29am PDT

@metbreuer reuer, "Delirious: Art at the Limits of Reason". Not an interesting show, had hoped that it would be. Great topic, which too needs to be presented at the limits of reason. The only pleasant surprise: Christina Romberg (1946-95), "Vertical Amnesia", 1980... I can see the Chicago in her... and Beckmann too. I'm seeing a lot of Beckmann in today's Upper East Side art tour. PS: other pleasant surprise- early Peter Saul (1964), you can see how his technique has become over refined. PPS: Paul Thek (1966). Now THIS artist fits the show.

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John Chamberlain @gagosiangallery "Masks" ...Knock me down with a feather, who woulda thunk? A non-objective to objective trans lateral move ... or is it visa versa? The masks were made in the 1960-90's. Now I'm seeing masks and faces in his formal agglomerations.

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Michael Reafsnyder @ameringer.mcenery.yohe Old friend, catching up on the haps in LA. Abstrakts Bild's escaped inner child. Choc-a-bloc with incident. Not Protestant. Dubuffet? Facture by trowel. Squirting figures. Buttery de todos lados.

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Ruth Asawa @davidzwirner Fruit of Black Mountain-Albers/Bucky Fuller. Single material. Single technique. Single procedure. For an entire life. One of the few forms from the fifties to survive unquestioned sixty years later.

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Ad Reinhardt @davidzwirner First room, I thought: "Madmen" cigarette and whiskey, neat, please. Second room, I thought: James Turrell. The final turn into monochrome cul-de-sac. The Last Painting, the last call before the bar closes. Fastidiousness. Monomaniac. Most of these paintings were made in the early to mid fifties. Miles Davis created "Kind of Blue" in 1959. Did Miles go to the openings at Betty Parsons too?

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Diana Al-Hadid: "Falcon's Fortress" @marianneboeskygallery , first thought, Pat Steir. Then I thought, the Alhambra. Sculpture is indeed that which when you bump into when you are looking at a painting in this show. But, the long view surrenders to the close up as I go into overtime, trying to figure out how they were made. At first, I thought: "...she cast a canvas into bronze...". But no! Was she carving into luan ply? But no! Then, little by little, the reverse engineering project gave a small yet delicious fruit.

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Leslie Wayne "Free Experience " @jackshainman, the rare experience of finding a fellow corporeal-paint traveler. Wayne Thiebaud came to mind. Firmly illusionistic and firmly paint-qua-paint. Press release begins with Rosalind Krauss (art media historically bound) and ends with the glancing blow of Robert Irwin. Did notice the absence of facture, unless you look for it at the tip of the knife blade.

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Chris Ofili at #davidzwirner 1. Did John Milton bump Maya Angelou? 2. Milton says that the uncaged bird sings the sweeter song (re: press release). 3. a)basketball court b) prison c) the art world d) bearded Indian/Balinese dancing ladies 4. Close ups not allowed 5. Colorless 6. Missed opportunity: the back of the stretchers? ...unless the vertical data code serves 7. Press release too full of credentials. 8. See Peter Halley at Naftali, contrast and compare

A post shared by Dennis Hollingsworth (@pacificohollingsworth) on Oct 10, 2017 at 12:13pm PDT

Peter Halley at Naftali. (Music: Lila Downs "Urge, Palabras de Mujer, Peligrosa, Tus Pencas", the first time Halley has animated paintings with audio)

A post shared by Dennis Hollingsworth (@pacificohollingsworth) on Oct 6, 2017 at 10:10am PDT

Posted by Dennis at November 12, 2017 9:08 PM