James Kalm is slipping up and down the streets of West Chelsea, on a late winter afternoon/evening, when he decides to check out some shows, and bring viewers along for the ride. “Ass Backwards” at Fredericks & Freiser is Dave Humphrey’s sixth show with the gallery. Your correspondent has been keeping an eye on this artist’s work since meeting him in the early 1980s, and is always surprised. Melding a sardonic sense of humor with references to historic modes of painting, Humphrey creates “…the language of contemporary art: postmodernism, post-postmodernism, and the aporia of hyper-pluralism.”
With just minutes before closing, we run across West 24th Street, and dip into “Drawing within Nature: Paintings from the 1990s” an impressive exhibition of late works by Helen Frankenthaler at Gagosian. Since the publication of “Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art” the hunger for works by these pioneer painters has become insatiable. Finally, we visit David Zwirner for the opening of “Franz West Echolalia, 2010 Paper-mȃché, foam, gauze, cardboard, wood, steel, acrylic paint, foam and linen” an installation of seven over life sized whimsical sculptures.
This program was recorded March 9-11 2023. #jameskalmreport #jameskalmroughcut #lorenmunk