James Kalm was on an art recon marathon recently, and wrapped up a long day of recording with a visit to a pair of painting exhibitions that couldn’t lay further apart on the aesthetic spectrum. Joanne Greenbaum’s “Scaffold” at Mitchell-Innes & Nash is an expansion of Greenbaum’s signature scribbly bio-morphic abstraction. These works contrast curvy shards of intense matte paint with underlaying networks of drawn in compositional webs. These largish paintings have the spontaneous one-shotedness of a quick sketch or collage.
Neil Jenney at this point, is one of America’s masters of conceptual naturalism. As an early member of the Soho art community, Jenney has participated in various movements or trends that shaped the historic trajectory of New York painting. He was curated into Marcia Tucker’s 1978 “Bad Painting” show at the New Museum which signaled a paradigm shift, away from Minimalism and Conceptualism. In Jenney’s contrarian fashion, no sooner than he’s labeled a “Bad Painter” than he begins a decades long journey into an investigation of “Good Painting”, which doesn’t exclude problematizing presentation tactics, the political implications of the frame, and narrative devices that evoke each viewer’s relationship with American art. A musical introduction is provided by Renaedamuse. This program was recorded May 17, 2024. #jameskalmreport #jameskalmroughcut #lorenmunk