Thomas Øvlisen, Tomato, at Klaus Von Nichtssagend, Installation View, 2012.

What interests me about contemporary forms that mimic the look of their presumed Minimalist predecessors is their ambivalent relationship to the history of that art. It may very well be that no connection exists but in the spectator’s mind, but it’s difficult to deny the John McCracken-ness of Thomas Øvlisen’s new works in Tomato; where his plank-like pieces are very traceable visual echoes. The scale, shapes and propping, however, are where the similarities end, and it becomes not the art historical alliances but the departure from them which activates his works.
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Joseph Montgomery at Laurel Gitlen, Installation View, 2012.

Joseph Montomgery’s work is one which inhabits the space of its process. Montgomery’s solo presentation, Velveteen, reads like a chronology of his experimentations in scale, composition and form. Each work is named in the order of its completion, placing each individual piece in concert with the works which preceded and which follow.

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From Works in Bronze and Steel at David Zwirner.

The most refined designs exalt primary elements such as light and space, so that the meticulous engineering of architecture is most effective when air and sun permeate it in a way at once natural and supernaturally sublime. John McCracken’s sculptural works achieve this effect with stark formal reductions which at once collapse and expound upon their conceptual foundations. In the strange, reflective luminescence of his surfaces is a microcosm of our universe and those beyond it.

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Lynda Benglis at the New Museum, via Artnet.

In the loosely defined Post-Minimalist moment, Lynda Benglis’ sculptural works suggest a ‘feminizing’ of the artistic process. Benglis’ amorphous blobs reject the serialized regularity of Minimalism, favoring instead materials, processes and forms which are mutable and, to an extent, uncontrollable. The polyurethane, wax and latex often employed by Benglis are the less stable foils to the heavy, polished metals which make up much of the Minimalist geometry. Benglis is the sumptuous answer to that stoicism of form.

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