Catalogue - "Sherie' Franssen: Driving Into the Ocean"

So this'll be my last entry for catalogue fever. ...and your last chance to go see this show as it closes January 31.

"Sherie' Franssen: Driving Into the Ocean" at Dolby-Chadwick Gallery, San Fransisco is a remarkably straightforward painting show, and the accompanying catalogue is equally so. I've liked her work for a while now, and I'm impressed that she works in relative autonomy. She lives and works in Orange County, and enjoys success and attention, but isn't so overboard- hyped that it just gets annoying. She's got really great cadaver drawings on her website too.

The catalogue, 8.5" x 11", full color with a short forward, is of high quality and worth buying if you are a fan of painting.  However be warned that it doesn't contain every work in the show. "Waist High", 2008 (77" x 81"), which isn't in the catalogue, was one of my personal picks, as it was a little bit of a departure (from her usual format of overall compositions) with a viscous, buttery blob of brushwork in the upper-center of the canvas. Even the size of the brush is a lot bigger, so it feels like more a bold decision, and offers sort of a resting place.  


Sherie' Franssen, "Waist High", 2008, 77" x 81". Courtesy of Dolby Chadwick Gallery

Catalogue - "Amy Sillman: Third Person Singular"

2nd entry for catalogue fever.

"Amy Sillman - Third Person Singular" at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution.

Note: If, like me, you're on the west coast (and, like me, unable to have seen this particular exhibition of works), New York painter Amy Sillman is currently one of six contemporary painters in "Oranges and Sardines" at Hammer Museum. Go see it if you get the chance, it's up until February 8.

The catalogue for "Third Person Singular" is a 7" x 9" hardcover edition with full color plates, and contains an interview between the artist and Ian Berry, and an essay by Anne Ellegood. The reproduction and page quality is really nice.

Her paintings are honest, with little dogma, and a nice variation on the concerns of abstract expressionism. There is history, decision-making, and discovery. I just feel like looking at a painting should be a journey that takes the viewer through the various intellectual and physical processes of the artist. This is her expressing with paint what words cannot do.

Oddly enough, I'm glad I chose this one over the catalogue for "Oranges and Sardines". It just seemed like the better choice...
Check www.si.edu to get your copy.


Amy Sillman, "S", 2007, Courtesy Smithsonian Institute