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Alice Baber: Reverse Infinity
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Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / A striking feature of the paintings and works on paper of Janice Biala (1903–2000), now on view at Berry Campbell in a show craftily curated by Jason Andrew, is their seamless reconciliation of civilizational clutter and spatial order. Fixing that notion is the earliest painting, The Studio (1946), arraying the artist’s active workspace and establishing her intent to embrace the world through it. (Coincidentally, Vera Iliatova’s “The Drawing Room” at Nathalie Karg gamely recaptures and updates kindred impulses.) Biala’s work here, spanning the immediate postwar period almost to the end of the Cold War and blending the New York School and the School of Paris – she lived in both cities – also bears the considerable weight of twentieth-century history, art and otherwise, with extraordinary grace and weightless cohesion, free of the strain of obvious contrivance.

(New York, NY – April 2, 2024) – The Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA) today announced the addition of 11 new member galleries: Berry Campbell (New York), Cavin-Morris Gallery (New York), Hales Gallery (New York), Nina Johnson (Miami), Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery (New York), Magenta Plains (New York), Charles Moffett (New York), Sargent's Daughters (New York and Los Angeles), William Shearburn Gallery (St. Louis), Louis Stern Fine Arts (West Hollywood), and Timothy Taylor (New York). These eleven galleries join the ADAA’s contingent of over 200 members, each of which is admitted after an evaluation of their exhibition and programming history, established expertise, and intellectual rigor, ensuring that each member is emblematic of the very best that the American art market offers. The Association will support these exemplary institutions by providing information essential to navigating the current art market, as well as technical, legal, and business resources. 

Beverly McIver, Black Beauty (2024). Photo courtesy of People For The American Way

A group of artists including Shepard Fairey and Carrie Mae Weems has been enlisted by the advocacy organization People For The American Way (PFAW) to create art encouraging U.S. citizens to vote against former President Donald Trump ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

“People For The American Way is giving talented artists a voice to express their political beliefs because there are not enough outlets to do so,” Fairey said in a phone interview. “Political commentary is frowned upon because art is portrayed as an escapist luxury for rich people who don’t want to think about injustice. It doesn’t need to be that way.”

The art created for the Artist For Democracy 2024 campaign will be released to the public through prints, merchandise, radio and digital ads, celebrity videos, and bus wraps. PFAW has launched a Kickstarter fundraiser for billboards in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona with the hope of expansion to North Carolina and Georgia. And the group seeks to spur texting and boots-on-the-ground efforts.

Janice Biala, Homage to Piero della Francesca, 1984, Oil on canvas, Berry Campbell, New York.

“Janice Biala: Paintings 1946–1986,” at Berry Campbell, New York (through April 13): The paintings of Janice Biala occupy that open space between abstraction and figuration, much as this artist freely cross-registered between the School of Paris and the New York School. Born Schenehaia Tworkovska in 1903 in Biała Podlaska, a city in Russian Poland, Biala came to the United States in 1913 and, in order to distinguish her work from that of her artist brother, Jack Tworkov, eventually took the name of her birth town. An exhibition at Berry Campbell, New York, now brings together thirty of Biala’s paintings and works on paper, beginning with her return to France in 1946 and spanning the next forty years of portraits, landscapes, and still lifes. Living until the age of ninety-seven, crossing paths with artists on both sides of the Atlantic, Biala straddled most of the twentieth century with work that absorbed and reflected the wide influences of her remarkable bohemian milieu. —JP

Installation View, Larry Zox: Gemini, Berry Campbell, New York, 2024.

Harmon Siegel for Artforum
March 2024

Why do some “Gemini” paintings succeed where others fail? As I study a given example from Larry Zox’s 1967–69 series of concave polygons, I feel that I know when one is working, but not necessarily why. It would satisfy no one to shrug, “I just like it,” or to cite some personal preference for a particular color combination. To apply standards enumerated in advance or derived from encounters with other artists’ work would also be misguided. Perhaps I should simply refrain from any qualitative judgments, disavow my initial instincts and restrict myself to neutral description. Yet their seriality invites––even demands––assessment, for it follows such tightly defined parameters that each canvas is directly comparable to the others. We are then left with the question: What criteria do the paintings themselves pose to help us evaluate them on their own terms?

Zox (1937–2006) named his series for its principal figure: his riff on the astrological sign. The eponymous shape is eight-sided and hard-edged, as though someone had pinched each side of a Bicycle playing card to form an obtuse angle. One so-called gemini molds four triangles in its negative space. Each composition thus comprises five figures with which the artist can try unique color combinations. As a whole, the series assays this configuration’s pictorial properties, testing its possibilities. In some of the earlier works on display, horizontal stripes cut across the central shape, while later ones distilled the artist’s project into a finite number of core variables.

The figure can be more or less symmetrical along one or both axes. Very slight unevenness among the four angles has an outsize effect on overall balance. Zox also played with contour, whether and how much to outline the edges. A slight white border amplifies figure/ground ambiguity between the gemini and the oblique triangles to each of its four sides. A thicker band does the opposite, thrusting the design off the surface, especially when bisected by a thin stroke of vibrant color. The acute angles that form the gemini’s points are usually congruent with the corners of the canvas, enhancing its graphicness. But when they seem to slip out of bounds or stop short of the edge, the whole surface becomes painterly. To that end, the artist varied his application, either embracing a housepainter’s uniformity or disavowing it via subtle gradations of opacity. 

More dramatic effects come with color, number, and size. Zox claimed that he chose his hues randomly. Whether or not that is true, the juxtapositions usually feel well-calibrated to the gestalt. They can play a compensatory role, offsetting imbalances in geometric structure or perceived weight, as in Palanpup [sic], 1967, in which mauve and terra-cotta triangles seem to stop the airy, robin’s-egg Gemini from floating away. Or they can exaggerate the gestalt, as in one of the untitled works from 1969, where dusky surroundings intensify the void-like darkness of the center form. That year, Zox also experimented with repetition, placing double and triple Geminis laterally on horizontal canvases. Where their corners meet, the facing triangles form a diamond, amplifying figure/ground oscillation to the point of optical illusion. When the central motifs are all the same tone, the frame feels arbitrary, as though the pattern could continue ad infinitum. When the motifs are differently colored, the work enforces internal unity, dynamized by ineluctable imbalances.

While scale is relatively constant, the dimensions of Zox’s paintings can range from fifteen by fifteen inches to more than seven by seven feet. The difference prompts wildly disparate forms of bodily engagement. When more uneven design combines with points in the corners, the largest works evoke biomorphic forms. The points become tacks pinning the gemini in place, its span recalling the slaughtered oxen of Rembrandt or Chaim Soutine. 

So why do some geminis work better than others? Because each is an experiment. As Zox modulated the series’ constitutive variables, he produced a series of singular results. Counterintuitively, the invariant parameters yielded unusual risk, for the success of each work teetered on the slightest adjustment to each element. The paintings thus gestated in a medium of uncertainty, resolved only when the last mark was made.