Stone Gravy, curated by David Pagel

STONE GRAVY curated by DAVID PAGEL

31 May – 7 July 2012

AMERINGER M c E N E RY YO H E

525 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011 tel: 212 445 0051 www.amy-nyc.com

POLLY APFELBAUM BRAD EBERHARD ANNIE LAPIN KIM MacCONNEL ALLISON MILLER RICHARD ALLEN MORRIS RON NAGLE DAVID REED MATT WEDEL

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Exhibitions and the publications that accompany them are a Herculean effort. However, Hercules himself could not have carried the weight of Stone Gravy on his shoulders alone.

First and foremost, I must thank the exceptionally talented artists. My deepest appreciation to Polly Apfelbaum, Brad Eberhard, Annie Lapin, Kim MacConnel, Allison Miller, Richard Allen Morris, Ron Nagle, David Reed and Matt Wedel for producing such a poetic, inspired and inspiring body of work.

Many thanks as well to David Pagel for his keen eye and insightful essay. It was his vision and intellect that brought such a rich and diverse cadre of artists together, many for the first time.

Lastly, I am beyond grateful for the enthusiasm and support of the individual artists’ galleries.

Their generosity and willingness to collaborate made the exhibition possible. They are all consummate professionals, and the new friendships that budded as a result of Stone Gravy will flourish long after the exhibition comes to a close. Specifically, I wish to thank the following: Chris D’Amelio and Trina Gordon, D’Amelio Gallery, New York, and Michael Benevento, Los Angeles (Polly Apfelbaum).

Thomas Solomon, Thomas Solomon Gallery, Los Angeles (Brad Eberhard).

Honor Fraser and Michelle Pobar, Honor Fraser, Los Angeles (Annie Lapin).

James Saloman, Saloman Contemporary, New York (Kim MacConnel).

Robert Gunderman, Randy Sommer and Molly Concannon, ACME, Los Angeles and Susan Inglett, Susan Inglett Gallery, New York (Allison Miller).

Ronald Stevenson, R.B. Stevenson Gallery, La Jolla, Calif. (Richard Allen Morris).

Seth Koen, Nagle Studio, San Francisco, and Pierre Marie Giraud, Galerie Pierre Marie Giraud, Brussels, Belgium (Ron Nagle).

Brock Shorno and Rey Akdogan, Reed Studio, New York and Peter Blum, New York (David Reed).

Peter Goulds, Kimberly Davis and Elizabeth East, LA Louver Gallery, Venice, Calif.

(Matt Wedel).

M.M.

MATT WEDEL rock (detail), 2010, Fired clay and glaze, 36 x 38 x 37 inches 4–5

Meat & Potatoes and Mushrooms on Speed STONE GRAVY answers the question “Where does

art come from?” indirectly and matter-of-factly, neither beating around the bush nor oversimplifying things.

This point-blank question sounds as if it might come from a child, particularly one who specializes in asking head-scratching puzzlers—those innocent inquiries in which the no-nonsense directness makes you feel stupid, even a bit mean, if you don’t take the time to think twice about something that had, until that very moment, seemed too obvious to bother with. But children don’t ask about the origins of art. When it comes to life’s mysteries, what they want to know is where babies come from. Adults often answer that question with more fumbling discomfort than necessary. And for some reason, we deal with art similarly, stumbling and stalling and talking around how art came to be present in our lives by telling ourselves all sorts of stories, half-baked and otherwise, about its use and significance, its materials and markets, its intentions and influences, its forms and contexts, its histories and institutions.

There’s nothing wrong with that, if you care more about peripheral issues than art’s heart and soul, its raison d’être, its purpose, power and consequences. These unfashionable ideas (though not as unfashionable as they once were) are grown-up inquiries that bring us to the fundamentals, to the essential core of creativity, to the elusive magic or unnamable poetry that are intrinsic to the various ways various artists make matter matter.

ALLISON MILLER Solid (detail), 2011, Oil and acrylic on canvas, 72 x 54 inches 6–7

When that happens, it seems as if they have made something out of nothing. In many religions, that’s the job of a god, or a good number of them. In Stone Gravy, it’s what artists do, every day of the week, and without any illusions about being divine, omnipotent, omniscient or any of those fantastic qualities folks commonly bestow upon on their creator, or, if the task requires a team effort, creators. Unlike gods, whose identities are defined by their ability to make something out of absolutely nothing, the nine artists in Stone Gravy make art out of nothing much, or nothing special—just ordinary supplies and substances, like clay, paint and canvas, not to mention sweat, stubbornness and faith—in their own experiences and thinking, which are meticulously observed, rigorously analyzed, and constantly second-guessed. Doubt counts, often above all else, in their art, which follows no formulas and is never impressed with—or comfortable to rest on—its own achievements. The work they do in their studios is pragmatic and pedestrian, both playful in its initial aimlessness and perverse in its relentless focus: salt-of-the-earth stuff that is often labor-intensive, sometimes effortlessly easy, and always a labor of love. Delusions of grandeur play no part in the appeal and impact of their art, which is unassuming and humble, its ambitions and aims worlds away from the egomaniacal entitlement and pretentious sanctimony that go hand-in-glove with people who take themselves too seriously.

In contrast, the earthly—and earthy—endeavors of the artists in Stone Gravy are of the value-added sort. Starting with very little, these painters and sculptors transform basic materials into works of art that are so much more than the sum of their parts that viewers cannot help but be drawn into the worlds they inhabit. Or not. (That’s the chance artists have no choice but to take; in a democracy, it’s impossible to force people to appreciate art.) If you do happen to fall under its spell, or into the reality it conjures, something wonderful—and wonderfully unfathomable—happens, without undue decep-

tion or too much trickery. In Stone Gravy, these ordinarily unsavory attributes intensify art’s affects, adding resonance and richness to its repertoire of effects. Explaining such experiences may be another art altogether. Whatever the case, it’s futile to try to compel others to partake of art’s pleasures and satisfactions by making a rational argument. Other means are necessary. Stories, anecdotes and parables are often better suited to this purpose.

The story of Stone Gravy starts with the title, which refers to a folk tale by way of a colloquial expression, otherwise known as slang. The folk tale is an old one, whose original tellers are unknown. “Stone Soup” begins with privation. In various versions, a handful of hungry travelers arrive in a village, where the locals have barely enough food to provide nourishment for themselves, much less to give handouts to strangers. So one of the enterprising travelers fills a large cooking pot with water, builds a fire beneath it, and tosses in a rock. A curious villager approaches, inquires about what they are cooking, and is told “stone soup,” a delicious dish that would be even better if a garnish were added. Neither a boldfaced lie nor the full truth, the traveler’s statement combines a peculiarly American love of truthfulness (think George Washington and the cherry tree) with an equally deep appreciation of the complexity of case law, despite our disdain for the legions of lawyers who practice it. In any case, the villager rushes off to his cellar and returns with some carrots, which he adds to the soup. This scene is repeated several times as individual villagers stop by, inquire, run off, and return, each adding a single ingredient, including potatoes, peas, beans, turnips, herbs and, in some versions of the story, meat. In the end, the travelers get what they want: Their appetites are sated. And the villagers get something unexpected: a savory feast that turns into a joyous celebration of shared purpose, communal spirit and convivial cooperation. In the process, stinginess, suspicion and small-mindedness give way to openness, participation and civility. What began in privation ends in plenitude, not because of heavenly beneficence or dutiful supplication to an

8–9

external or otherworldly power, but because of human activity, group dynamics and the willingness to share something held dear.

The other half of the show’s title likewise emphasizes the somethingfrom-nearly-nothing aspect of the folk tale, but with a difference. It spins the earnest message of the story about cooperation and shared purpose, toward an outcome that has a lot less to do with self-determination, sensible sustenance and the common good. The gravy part of the title raises deep questions about the links between causes and effects that the folk tale relies on to teach its lesson of productive, socially beneficial sharing, which is a secular version of the biblical story of loaves and fishes—with, of course, civilized sociability replacing divinity as the source of the bounteous feast. In contrast, gravy brings a sense of the miraculous into the picture while remaining true to the earthly ethos of “Stone Soup,” which leaves divinity on the sidelines, out of action, beside the point. That slight but significant adaptation leaves humans in godless territory, where art’s pagan powers work.

In colloquial language, or slang, “gravy” refers to excessive or unjustified benefits, to pleasures and perks that are beyond what is due or deserved, and often so above-and-beyond belief or reason that they seem to come out of thin air. The beauty of gravy is that it arrives unexpectedly and in great abundance. No amount of dutifully punching the clock, paying your dues or putting in long hours ensures its arrival, which is unbidden, outside anyone’s control and nearly random, like fate. Gravy is a bonus that defies logic and understanding. It does not trickle in slowly and steadily, like some deceptive economic theory, but pours forth plentifully, raining down on our imaginations as if there’s no tomorrow and nothing left for us to do but to be awed by its splendid bounty. Americans who worship work are suspicious of gravy for the same reasons that they are suspicious of art: It does not follow the rules of a balance sheet, it defies bean counting and, when it works, it seems all too easy.

Here’s how it works in Stone Gravy. Polly Apfelbaum, Kim MacConnel, and Richard Allen Morris boil art down to the basics. Each uses the simplest of materials in the simplest of ways, eliminating superfluous flourishes and every hint of fanciness to lay bare the all-or-nothing decisiveness at the heart of their art. The take-it-or-leave-it immediacy of their one-shot compositions leaves no room for compromise, fudging or playing both sides of the fence. It’s as close to an absolute as you can get while keeping your feet firmly planted in reality.

The abstract paintings by Brad Eberhard, Annie Lapin and Allison Miller are all about starting fresh, with no expectations, and starting over, with the goal of getting it right this time, after many wrong turns.

In their delicious arrangements of punched-through picture planes, scraggily shapes and mistake-obliterating brushstrokes, the opposition between unfettered originality and ad hoc adaptation dissolves in a fluid stew of down-to-earth idealism. Pragmatic Romanticism describes their aesthetic philosophy, whose hopefulness is well worn but hardly worn out.

Gravy’s inexplicable, out-of-nowhere pleasures take gorgeous shape in Ron Nagle’s pint-sized pieces, David Reed’s light-saturated paintings, and Matt Wedel’s three-dimensional pictures. The labor-intensity of these savvy works is notable, but next to nothing once you give yourself over to their deep satisfactions. They let you forget about such pedestrian endeavors as painstaking labor because their payoff is so above-and-beyond—so abundantly over-the-top that all else pales in comparison.

The something-from-nothing generosity embodied by these pieces, like all of the works in Stone Gravy, is a gift that is worth thinking about, whether or not you get it. When you do, the question “Where does art come from?” loses its urgency and is replaced by the more important, and consequential “Where does it take you?”

DAVID PAGEL David Pagel is an art critic who writes regularly for the Los Angeles Times. He is an associate professor of art theory and history at Claremont Graduate University and an adjunct curator at the Parrish Art Museum. An avid cyclist, he is a three-time winner of the California Triple Crown.

10–11

POLLY APFELBAUM Polly Apfelbaum’s “Feelies” take us back to summer-camp crafts by way of a detour, both circuitous and speedy, through all kinds of smart stuff.

Mixing and matching 20th century abstraction in painting with its sidekicks in architecture, design and fashion, the New York artist also draws on memories of chocolate covered sundaes, Sunday-best dresses, and oven-warmed kitchens, where happy kids roll out cookie dough, select the cutters, press them just so, and savor the smell of freshly baked goodies, which may be better than actually eating them.

Laid out on tabletops so there’s no room to spare, Apfelbaum’s “Feelies” put abundance, anticipation and excitement front and center, while never forgetting that such experiences are fragile and fleeting—vulnerable to the cold facts of reality and hardly business as usual. In her richly layered pieces, grown-up knowledge and childhood delight do not work at cross-purposes; they feed off of each other, creating complex emotions that tug viewers in different directions, often simultaneously. Apfelbaum (b.1951) does not return us to childhood so much as she brings its most resonant memories to life in the present, stripped of nostalgic sentimentally and full of the power of the real thing.

Each of her “Feelies” plays well with others. This is part of their power and an even larger part of the pleasures they elicit, which are promiscuous, exploratory and open to just about anything—while still being, like all pleasures, decisive, discriminating and anything but simple. To survey a tableful of “Feelies” is to be inundated with loads of associations: works by Paul Klee, Blinky Palermo, Stuart Davis, Lynda Benglis, Sam Francis, Anni Albers, Arthur Dove, Larry Poons, Ree Morton and Albert Pinkham Ryder flash through the mind’s eye. So do the patterns on quilts, skateboards and summer dresses; the graphics in stylish, high-end magazines; and the architecture of tastefully designed homes, where individuality matters. Apfelbaum’s love of abundance, coupled with her refusal to settle for fixed meanings and set references, keeps her “Feelies” free— and does the same for anyone lucky enough to cross paths with them.

I. 4 some, 2010-2011, Plasticine and polymer clay, 6 7/8 x 6 1/2 inches II. color nest, 2010-2011, Plasticine, polymer clay and glitter, 5 3/8 x 7 inches III. red curls, 2010-2011, Plasticine, polymer clay and glitter, 6 x 6 1/2 inches IV. gene-d, 2010-2011, Plasticine and polymer clay, 6 1/4 x 7 1/4 inches V. parchisi, 2010-2011, Plasticine and polymer clay, 61/4 x 7 inches VI. rainbow glow frame, 2010-2011, Plasticine, polymer clay and glitter, 6 x 6 3/8 inches VII. red check, 2010-2011, Plasticine and polymer clay, 6 3/4 x 6 3/8 inches VIII. golden calf, 2010-2011, Plasticine and polymer clay, 51/2 x 6 3/4 inches IX. 60’s modern, 2010-2011, Plasticine, polymer clay and glitter, 51/8 x 7 1/2 inchess X. membrane, 2010-2011, Plasticine, polymer clay and glitter, 6 x 8 1/8 inches XI. fleury, 2010-2011, Plasticine, polymer clay and glitter, 7 1/4 x 7 1/8 inches XII. waspy, 2010-2011, Plasticine, polymer clay and glitter, 51/2 x 6 3/4 inches

APFELBAUM 12–13

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

X.

XI.

XII.

APFELBAUM 14–15

BRAD EBERHARD In paintings like The Vision After the Sermon (2011), Pinto, Pacer, Gremlin (2012) and Big Sleeper (2011), Brad Eberhard (b.1969) goes to great lengths to make it look as if he didn’t go to great lengths.

Hiding one’s painstaking labors in works that don’t seem to be the least bit labored may seem deceitful, even dishonest. But in Eberhard’s case, it is gracious, a welcoming gesture to individual viewers, who are invited to follow their own paths through these loose compositions, where surprisingly vast spaces, filled with expansive possibilities, open out of cramped nooks and crannies, which are no bigger than cracks in the sidewalk—and no more fussed-over than such quotidian parts of mundane reality.

Strictly speaking, the meandering passageways and compositional chinks in Eberhard’s quirky works should be too small to get lost in. But the facts of reality, in these paradoxical paintings, are not all that matters. Having been scraped across, stained into, washed over and smudged atop raw, roughed-up canvas, paint is both a literal entity and a literary vehicle—a multipurpose medium and a metaphorical portal that spurs the imagination into action and lets viewers make what we will of what Eberhard has made for us. Cool anonymity and startling tenderness rub shoulders in his user-friendly works, which are pedestrian and dreamy, intimate and odd, loaded and lovely.

Eberhard’s titles touch on the range of his interests: an 1888 painting by Gauguin, in which a cluster of French villagers watch Jacob wrestle an angel; a trio of subcompact cars from the 1970s; and his dog, Carrot, whose capacity to nap like a champion is a compelling demonstration, contra-Socrates, that the unexamined life is certainly worth living and that those moments when everything falls perfectly into place are the high points we strive for, in life and in art. That’s how Eberhard works in the studio. He doesn’t set out with a particular image in mind. His titles come to him well into the process of noodling a painting into existence. Nothing happens by accident. Nor does anything go as planned.

Serendipity and vigilance commingle as Eberhard cultivates a love of happenstance that gets the job done.

I. The Vision after the Sermon, 2011, Oil and gesso on canvas, 36 x 48 inches II. Big Sleeper, 2011, Oil on canvas, 18 x 141/4 inches III. Pinto, Pacer, Gremlin, 2012, Oil on canvas, 20 x 16 inches

I.

EBERHARD 16–17

II.

III .

EBERHARD 18–19

ANNIE LAPIN In Phase Untitled (Preportrait I) and Phase Untitled (Preportrait II) (both 2011), Annie Lapin takes the idea of making something out of nothing to its logical conclusion—which turns out to be even more unbelievable, and weirdly mysterious, than the fantasy with which it began.

Like God in the Old Testament, Lapin’s diptych begins with darkness: the somber, nearly black browns of each monochrome rectangle suggesting the light-swallowing darkness of the void. But rather than going for sui generis creation by applying new marks to these empty spaces, Lapin does something simpler and a bit more backward. Like anyone who has ever scrubbed a tabletop, she picks up a rag, soaks it in turpentine and rubs vigorously—as if trying to wipe the nothingness off the canvas. In a sense, Lapin out-nothings nothingness, beating absence at its own game. Her perversely reductive diptych demonstrates that in the right hands nothing from nothing equals something, even if you’re not sure what it is. A pair of ghostly presences, one rosy pink, the other olive-tinted, haunts her stripped-naked under-paintings, which burrow back in time to open onto what lies beneath the surface. Painting’s primordial stew mirrors the real one, out of which all life burbled.

The bare necessities of suggestiveness take shape in Lapin’s inside-out portraits. Something similar transpires in Wall Still Extrusion (2012), a meticulously messy meltdown of a painting that belongs to a genre all its own: anti-landscape.

Lying behind Lapin’s fractured composition is a memory bank full of images of golden skies, majestic mountains, tumbling waterfalls, sublime clouds and shadowy caverns. Yet you’d be hard-pressed to identify a single passage or part of the painting as representing anything specific. Its compositional structure reinforces the artifice Lapin is after: Purple and white brushstrokes form an outline that echoes the edges of the canvas. This suggestion of a painting within a painting, or a landscape spilling out of itself, makes it hard to know where external reality ends and internal reality begins. That’s the territory Lapin (b.1978) traverses in her slippery pictures of hints, figments and intimations.

I. Wall Still Extrusion, 2012, Oil on canvas, 66 x 64 inches II. Phase Untitled (Preportrait I), 2011, Oil on canvas, 57 x 44 inches III. Phase Untitled (Preportrait I), 2011, Oil on canvas, 57 x 44 inches

I.

LAPIN 20–21

II.

III.

LAPIN 22–23

KIM MacCONNEL Homegrown exoticism is Kim MacConnel’s specialty, and it has never looked better than it does in his recent paintings, which transform solid colors and simple shapes into handmade patterns that throb, pulse and percolate with more electrifying energy and in-the-moment exuberance than seems possible.

Your eyes dance across the surfaces of these works, “reading” their left-to-right (and back again) rhythms not symbolically, as signs that refer us elsewhere, but sensually, as physically stimulating instants that root us right where we stand—scanning the sum total of what we know in order to figure out what sort of magic MacConnel might be working on us, while delighting in the way he appeals to the present as a point of departure for unanticipated trips that take us far and wide, through our imaginations and beyond.

It’s irrational to imagine that rational analysis explains everything, and that’s OK with MacConnel, who has titled his last two shows on the West Coast “ABRACADABRA.” The ancient incantation, once believed to have healing powers, is now mostly spoken by part-time entertainers who work the children’s party circuit. MacConnel uses it to get at the magic that happens in the studio, when he surprises himself with what he manages to pull out of the hat. His “Bunnies,” “Doves” and “Rabbits” form three series: small, medium and large pieces, each a seat-of-the-pants improvisation within a simple set of rules: limited palette, basic shapes, segmented compositions.

The results are astonishing, even to MacConnel: skinny slices of punchy patterns comprised of diamonds, triangles and circles squished into spaces too tight for comfort.

Sometimes MacConnel, who was born in Oklahoma in 1946 and has lived in San Diego since 1965, stacks these elements vertically, suggesting harlequin patterns. At others, he cuts them in half, evoking badly cropped photos, poorly registered silkscreens and patchwork fabrics whose colors clash garishly. Moroccan interiors, by way of Matisse, come to mind, as do African patterns, by way of Picasso, Spanish tiles, via their California revival, and Color Field painting, by way of board shorts and other sorts of swim wear. A master recycler, remixer and rearranger, MacConnel makes repetition sexy, thrilling and endless.

I. 24 BUNNY, 2012, Enamel on panel, 18 x 18 inches II. 25 BUNNY, 2012, Enamel on panel, 18 x 18 inches III. 26 BUNNY, 2012, Enamel on panel, 18 x 18 inches IV. 31 BUNNY, 2012, Enamel on panel, 18 x 18 inches V. 34 BUNNY, 2012, Enamel on panel, 18 x 18 inches VI. 28 BUNNY, 2012, Enamel on panel, 18 x 18 inches VII. 35 BUNNY, 2012, Enamel on panel, 18 x 18 inches VIII. 32 BUNNY, 2012, Enamel on panel, 18 x 18 inches IX. 29 BUNNY, 2012, Enamel on panel, 18 x 18 inches

I.

II.

III.

MacCONNEL 24–25

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

MacCONNEL 26–27

ALLISON MILLER Allison Miller’s first solo show, in 2006, included only six paintings. Each measured 4-by-5 feet, was hung vertically or horizontally, and stood on its own as a heart-warming testament to the pathos we feel when we see people strive for goals far beyond their God-given talents.

Miller (b.1974) did this with pencils and marking pens. Most of her draftsmanship seemed so unsure of itself that you found yourself rooting for each quivering line, hoping that it didn’t run out of gas before it made it across a perilous expanse of forlorn emptiness or peter out before it joined forces with enough other lines to make a shaky pattern whose geometry, far from ideal, embodied homegrown charm.

A year later, Miller followed up with an exhibition of eight works, still 4-by-5 feet, that were bolder and beefier yet equally riddled by the vulnerabilities, risks and sentiments that were quickly becoming the heart of her art (which she still wears on her sleeve). Her tentative, anxiety-laced lines formed concentric triangles, diamonds and circles, the oddness of each segment growing in proportion to its distance from the center. These compositional building blocks added up to off-kilter abstractions whose architectural solidity was tense and jittery yet sufficiently freewheeling to leave viewers with ample room to maneuver.

That sense of movement—of nearly dancing back and forth, around an animated composition—takes shape in Miller’s latest paintings, which manage, very deftly, to share with viewers the embarrassment embodied by the lines in her early works. Rather than inviting us to be sympathetic witnesses to someone else as she stumbles through a task outside her comfort zone, paintings like Diptych (2010), Sail (2011) and Solid (2011) draw us into the picture, eliciting interactions that can’t be had from a distance. A fairly high dork quotient suffuses Miller’s new works, in which she forgoes her standard, 4-by-5 format for different dimensions including squares. Dopey plaids, toy-boat sails, chain-link fences and pigment mixed with dirt—along with confident, swiftly applied lines—set the stage for participatory dramas that go beyond appearances to get to what’s real, even if it’s embarrassing.

I. Diptych, 2010, Oil, acrylic and gesso on canvas, 48 x 60 inches II. Sail, 2011, Oil, acrylic, dirt and gesso on canvas, 48 x 48 inches III. Solid, 2011, Oil and acrylic on canvas, 72 x 54 inches

I.

MILLER 28–29

II.

III. MILLER 30–31

RICHARD ALLEN MORRIS At a time when attention spans are shrinking almost as quickly as technology is speeding up our lives, Richard Allen Morris embraces the moment like nobody’s business. His little paintings seem to go with the flow, shrinking the big dimensions we associate with gestural abstraction down to the size of an iPad. But rather than accelerating the pace at which we scroll through existence, Morris’s compact abstractions throw a monkey wrench into the machinery of instantaneous communication, which has recently replaced the fiction of instantaneous gratification as the holy grail of modern culture, both for folks on the go and those who like to think themselves so.

Morris’s capacity to get viewers to slow down and savor the details of his jampacked paintings links him to a tradition of old-fashioned connoisseurship, in which careful looking leads to pleasures that reward the time they require with wisdom, serenity and other long-lasting satisfactions. What distinguishes Morris from this approach to art is the breakneck speed at which he makes his whiplash works. The 79-year-old artist, who has lived in San Diego since 1956, when he completed his service aboard an aircraft carrier in the Navy, spends minutes—sometimes only seconds—on a single painting.

Think Zen master on speed. Or Warholian deadpan raised to the 10th power.

Morris literally gets modern technology—and the lifestyle it fosters and feeds—backwards. Instead of laboring to produce devices that make us move faster, he speeds up his work in the studio to make pieces that stop us in our tracks. His three paintings in Stone Gravy mash straight-out-of-the-tube immediacy with all-or-nothing decisiveness and flick-of-the-wrist disregard to create dynamic extravaganzas of bypass-thebrain stimulation. Difficult to commit to memory, these sumptuously funky paintings never get old because they look different each time you see them. A virtuoso of stop-and-start suddenness, Morris makes art that is all about breaking habitual inattentiveness; his little symphonies of serendipity get us to see things with fresh eyes, as vivid and exhilarating as never before.

I. Power Bar, 2000, Acrylic on wood panel, 16 x 4 1/2 inches II. Masquerade, 1999, Acrylic on canvas, 14 x 11 inches III. Book Markers, 2009, Acrylic on canvas, 18 x 14 inches

I.

ALLEN MORRIS 32–33

II.

III.

ALLEN MORRIS 34–35

RON NAGLE Ron Nagle’s unforgettable confections make a virtue of uselessness.

Serving no clear purpose, his dysfunctional cups, mutant bookends and ersatz paperweights play fast and loose with the fetishizing of functionalism that has dominated the history of ceramics and still defines much of what we take seriously in the United States.

Pragmatism, purposefulness and utilitarian workmanship mean more to most citizens than do the delights of aesthetic delectation, both cerebral and hedonistic, that are commonly derided for being out-of-touch and elitist, the provenance of snobs whose knowledge of what regular folks love could fit in a thimble and leave plenty of room for a finger.

That’s about all the space Nagle needs to bring some highly sophisticated riffs down to earth and right in front of your nose, where you must come in for a closeup to behold the details of finish, form and texture; color, contrast and composition; weight, shape and placement—all of which are exquisite and nothing if not deliberate.

Smaller than pint-size, Nagle’s extraordinarily efficient ornaments may be miniature, but they’re not diminutive. Each commands every bit of your attentiveness as it welcomes you into its world, which is a lot like the real one, only better: more focused, concentrated and fantastic; every annoyance, distraction and interruption banished, so you get a glimpse of perfection and have time to bask in its presence.

For Nagle, perfection is nothing special. A fundamental part of everyday life, it’s neither fetishized nor idealized by the industrious virtuoso, whose labors of love over the last 55 years have transformed the Protestant work ethic into a pursuit of pleasure that echoes the founding fathers’ commitments to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Born in 1939 in San Francisco, Nagle treats perfection as a practical matter—a problem to be solved in the studio so that the work that comes out of his one-man factory is resolved: energized by a sense of spot-on precision that makes even a smidgen of anything different absolutely superfluous. That’s the way laugh-out-loud jokes and stick-in-your-craw songs function. Like them, Nagle’s riveting things embrace elegance and economy as means to an end, which is where your pleasure comes in.

I. Son of Fudge, 2012, Ceramic, 5 1/4 x 5 1/4 x 6 inches II. Death on appointment we must all keep and for which no time set, 2007, Ceramic, 6 x 51/4 x 41/2 inches III. Beirut Canal, 2009, Ceramic, 33/4 x 5 x 3 3/8 inches

I.

NAGLE 36–37

II.

III.

NAGLE 38–39

DAVID REED David Reed has spent a large part of his life in the studio driving a wedge between gestures and expressions.

That may sound like academic hair-splitting, but it’s not. It’s easy to see—and even easier to feel—what the New York painter, who was born in San Diego in 1946, has done to free gestural abstraction from old-school ideas about its duty to capture, in paint, the inner life of its maker.

In the old days, swift, energetic brushstrokes signified hot, high-keyed emotions. Furiously made marks gave form to the fury of the artist’s struggling self, especially as it strived, with desperate urgency, to break language’s stranglehold so that unfettered energy might explode all over the canvas, in singular frenzies of true communication. Reed’s genius has been to unleash the energy of gestural abstraction from the burden of self-expression. At once cool and moving, alien and intimate, the roller-coaster curves and squeegeed flourishes in his light-saturated paintings leave more room for viewers because they let Reed paint himself out of the picture.

That’s the Pop (Art) side of Reed’s paintings, and it goes a long way toward defining the demeanor of his abstractions, whose hands-off aura and photo-mechanical look have less to do with dispassionate, deadpan inhumanity than with self-effacing humility, impeccable manners and old-fashioned graciousness. Blander than Andy, Reed is a model host: His paintings not only give viewers permission to have a great time, they get the ball rolling by abandoning high-minded intentions and getting down and dirty with the world of hyper-stimulated sensations that entertain us every waking moment—and beyond.

Think of Reed’s paintings as slow-motion, time-release reveries. They function like dreams not in terms of content (that’s far too personal, presumptuous and pushy for a formalist like Reed), but in terms of structure: in the precise ways their sharply edited sections overlap, intersect and abut, leaving viewers free to cut back and forth from one moment, or scene, to another. The abstract movies Reed screens in your mind’s eye leave special effects behind to pursue eye-opening insights and mind-blowing pleasures, whose magic vanishes in a flash yet lives on as ghostly recollections that are anything but bloodless.

I. #483, 2001-2002, Oil and alkyd on linen, 36 x 144 inches II. Studio Still: #12, 2012, 2012, Oil and alkyd on illustration board, 12 1/2 x 27 5/8 inches III. Studio Still: #13, 2012, 2012, Oil and alkyd on illustration board, 9 15/16 x 25 5/8 inches IV. Studio Still: #15, 2012, 2012, Oil and alkyd on illustration board, 12 1/2 x 27 5/8 inches V. Studio Still: #59-2, 2011, 2011-12, Oil and alkyd on illustration board, 12 15/16 x 27 5/8 inches

I.

REED 40–41

II.

III.

IV.

V.

REED 42–43

MATT WEDEL Lumpen luxury takes potent shape in Matt Wedel’s sculptures, which turn clay’s second-class status into a launching pad for flights of fancy that are both fun and rebellious, filled with whimsical disregard for what others think and aimed, with bull’s-eye precision, at the lazy clichés and elitist pretenses that shore up the status quo by treating rambunctious upstarts as ill-mannered pariahs.

In the same way that court jesters once used bawdy humor to ridicule aristocratic hypocrisy (without going too far and getting convicted of sedition), Wedel uses thick glazes and crudely fashioned forms to make pointed fun of unspoken rules about clay’s place in art’s hierarchy. At the same time, his weighty works demonstrate that—despite the snarky cynicism that defines our times—there is still plenty of fun to be had without others being made fun of. Such innocent actions are anything but naïve, especially in the works of Wedel, whose profound charm is that of an underdog who flat-out refuses to believe that he’s overmatched.

Wedel’s trio of pieces covers more than its fair share of territory. The genres of portraiture, landscape and still life are evoked, respectively, by boy (2007), rock (2010) and flower tree (2011). Each of these larger-than-life-size sculptures also falls into one of the three categories that have, since the Enlightenment, classified everything that exists in the natural world: animal, mineral and vegetable. Similarly, Wedel’s glistening glazes stick to the basics, coloring the simple things he depicts with single tints and familiarly shaded gradations. But his colors are mutts: mongrel primaries and crossbred secondaries that function as fugitive riffs on the norms and conventions by which color is organized.

Best of all, Wedel’s works bring broad swaths of history into the picture, evoking, in the mind’s eye, hazy images of ancient Chinese statues, Mesopotamian talismans, Polynesian monoliths, medieval icons, baroque candelabras, and industrialstrength Hummels. Nothing is safe, and less is certain, in Wedel’s uncanny art, which manages to make preposterous scenarios seem perfectly reasonable.

I. flower tree, 2011, Ceramic, 41 x 31 x 31 inches II. boy, 2007, Fired clay and glaze, 64 x 36 x 32 inches III. rock, 2010, Fired clay and glaze, 36 x 38 x 37 inches

I.

WEDEL 44–45

II.

III.

WEDEL 46–47

Published on the occasion of the exhibition

AMERINGER M c E N E RY YO H E

STONE GRAVY curated by DAVID PAGEL

31 May – 7 July 2012 Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe 525 West 22nd Street New York, NY 10011 tel: 212 445 0051 www.amy-nyc.com Publication © 2012 Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe All rights reserved Catalogue designed by Hannah Alderfer, HHA Design Printed by Capital Offset, Concord, NH Printed and bound in the USA Photography by Carlin Mayer Jeff McLane page 4, 47-49 ISBN: 978-0-9850184-0-5

ATT WE 51–51

STONE GRAVY curated by DAVID PAGEL

31 May – 7 July 2012

AMERINGER M c E N E RY YO H E

525 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011 tel: 212 445 0051 www.amy-nyc.com