5/25/2006

Rosanna Bruno

40 comments:

Painter said...

Rosanna Bruno @
John Davis Gallery
362 1/2 Warren Street
Hudson, NY 12534

pinkandlacepony said...

These are very lovely

dubz said...

i'd like to know more about her process. the compositions have a really great, unfussy quality... a lightness despite the texture and underpainting. compelling. i also like the idea of big sweeping gestures folding into eachother and creating pressure points.

amy boras said...

This is very nice. I love the way she uses line. Is this oil?

amy boras said...

thanks kid.
the graphite works really well with the paint.

no-where-man said...

would look fab in a hotel lobby.

Hudson -eh,

amy boras said...

I totally disagree. This is the best thing I've seen on this site so far. At least she is thinking about form and space. Something I've yet to see in the work posted here, except the Hoffman.

dubz said...

there is aura of dekooning here, but the process of abstraction and pure nonrepresentation are two very different things. even in his abstract paintings, dekooning was referencing the figure. bruno's seem much more about light and imagined space. plus she's dealing with the boundaries/limitations of pictorial space in a very different way.

p.s. dekooning never lost his shit. he just exhausted himself by kicking ass for so long.

youth--less said...

This does nothing for me at all.

Anybody see the Dennis Hollingsworth at Nicole Klagsbrun. I like that stuff a lot:
http://www.nicoleklagsbrun.com/hollingsworth.html

Martin said...

so billowy fresh. i like ww's comments about the "big sweeping gestures folding into each other and creating pressure points".

carol es said...

I like the effect of her technique and the smoothness, but overall it feels too tame for me. It must be my current mood. I'd have to see more.

James Wolanin said...

This painting works on a lot of different levels, composition, color. Very nice.

kelli said...

It's strange. I think we all define neocon or conservative in different ways.

sloth said...

Rosanna is a terrific, smart, and dedicated painter who is genuinely engaged in her work. I was lucky enough to have visited her studio recently, and got a chance to see the small works that will be in the Hudson show as well as some really great larger pieces. I would go on, but anything I would say has already been said on:

http://heartasarena.blogspot.com/

where you can see additional, and larger, JPEGs.

Sven said...

some of the colors in the other work has somewhat interesting implications..kind of hinting at closeups of late 60s early 70s hanna barberra cartoons when they were using chaotic washes and brushstrokes for backgrounds. I dont think thats intentional, though. I was always interested in how some late modernism has almost direct correlations with cartoons at times.....some late Gorky can remind me of those wierd sketchy eastern bloc cartoons and agitprop from the 50s and 60s....some Ren and Stimpy backgrounds looked very Picassoesque.....
Arturro Herrera(sic?) plays with that though I think his stuff runs out of steam quite fast

On the topic, I think late DeKooning work left a lot of intriguing doors open, even if many of them were flawed.

Pan said...

These are great (I went to Heartasarena as well to see others). There is a beautiful physical tension in the compositions which is why I think they seem so confident. Wish I was going to Hudson for the show.

Heart As Arena said...

I couldn't agree more with myself than I already do. It's great to see all these positive comments. Soooo deserved. They are spectacular in person in a way that the jpg's don't capture, so if you like 'em here, you'll love them in the Big Room. This is the stuff, man. And thanks for the shout out, Slothy.

Mark Barry said...

I trust Heartas on this. The others on the site look Fab too. Willem NEVER lost it, he's still painting-with Elvis!

youth--less said...

hey exu--lets go out for coffee and leave these rosanna-luvin dopes to their own devices

meet u at philz
http://www.philzcoffee.com/

Caeruleum said...

I disagree with the generally positive feedback here. I think this is okay, not terribly interesting, just okay. The shapes, lines, and forms are all rather awkward. Stiff and stifling. Trying to be lyrical, but not quite there. Lacks motion, lacks grace.

Caeruleum said...

By far, the late De Kooning paintings are far more dramatic and beautiful. More unifying, with a sense of decisive purpose, more playful, liberating, full of air, lightness, breath. This looks like gestural abstraction school but it falls flat in comparison.

dubz said...

we've seen so many painters dabble with abstraction lately that when someone makes very deliberate steps within an abstract language (like bruno, who seems to be setting formal limitations then working intuitively within them), what is a cohesive body of work can be misread as variations on a theme rather than stages of an investigation. i guess that was kind of a long sentence. i think these paintings are super rigorous and challenging. you can tell from a jpeg and i'm sure the experience is even better in person.

dubz said...

hammy's sculpture reference really makes sense. they don't seem to be about plastic space.

primetime said...

Everyone seems to agree, that her paintings are nice, pretty even. Are those compliments you'd really like to get on your own work though? Does this work move the ball forward even a little? The 'ball' being the evolution of painting/art? Beautiful abstraction is easy on the eyes and even easier on the brain. Would you actually like to live with one these, what would that say about you? That you don't like to think about art much perhaps? They are a bit more compelling than say a Karen Davies but not as challenging as say a Charlene Von Hiel [sp?] but the problem with all of those painters is the work is too good looking for it's own good. What is the point of this? I'm not opposed to art without content but I also can't get too excited about it. Lovely though, Cheers Rosanna

Michael Cross said...

It does seem to call upon late deKooning. But what he 'lost' in the later stages was something worth losing, in painters' terms. His paintings lost their element of ego. They became more pure.

But to do that the work has to be authentic, and has to come from somewhere. I'd see the show before judging, but the danger here is that when ego dissolves from the work, there might be nothing left. DeKooning had it. These... I don't know.

Sven said...

Hudson NY=tame art

Anonymous said...

Um,

Dennis Hollingsworth knows his language backwards, and then still manages to go forward with each new painting. Also he has a number of stock concentrates, including an array of monads, as he calls them, which differ considerably from each other in application and physical tease. Also Dennis is a self-professed 'working within the frame’ artist.

Tomma Abts works slow, the pieces labored, using traditional blending of color light to dark to create form, often ripples on the canvas that ribbon around certain geometric anomalies, that in their later manifestation are interesting, though hardly gesture, much more sculptural.

Rosanna Bruno’s painting is new to me (sorry I’m right out of town). Never the less, due to some hard working bloggers, and google I can see them over the Internet.
I like them.

What would they say about me if I had one on the wall?

- It would say that I am a person, who has an eye and intellect in fine balance, and appreciate art coming from the person, and believe that the person who painted the piece is known to focus on their art--on their art.

- It would say that I had looked at the work carefully before deciding to buy it, and had noticed the machination at work. It would say that I am in wonder that the color and line move far out beyond the canvas, and then come back in, possibly from the artist's own arms outstretching, waving, moving in circular or crisscross fashion through the air, as rehearsals before the real moment.

- It would say I have good ki.

- It would say that I enjoy how the space is opened by another brand, this time erasures, pulling out knots and off-centers that are crowding the space that work to intelligently integrate the outside air with the in.

That's what it would say!

Sven said...

hey brent when I was in Tokyo 4 years back I thought the contemporary art scene was kinda weak..did it get any better?

Stelios Argiros said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

Cooky,

It's a very different sensibility within scenes, so four years ago, yesterday, tomorrow, if you have trouble adjusted to the different rims and lenses then you could say the scene is a little flat. But you know, like that famous guy says, Here it is Flat, so it's different. You need a good tour guide to see what's really going on.
A friend on a recent visit explained their predicament: that the art was not coming to them. It was over there. It was all just over there. Walls looked empty deprived of any art. Floors had all too often 'I don't know': Nothing you could even trip over, just squash.
I thought that showed very good observational power. Also the person's fourth visit, so... ( more experienced)

We talked about!
Things like looking at people and how they move in the everyday was a starting point. How, you notice, people touch things. How you notice the way someone approaches this or that! It's very different!
I suggested that the art then might reflect this, and that some of the better local stuff, you need to approach not looking for the meaning or the message, but the voice of the author, what ever it is!
There was a pause.

It's not NYC, LA, not London, nor Berlin. Though is Tokyo!

You didn't have a good time?

anyway, back to Rosanna's art...

Stelios Argiros said...

People keep saying late De Kooning and I do see it but I see Brice Marden too minus the filled up areas. There is a quiet investigation here and it's nice to see the mix of rough organic lines with sharp 'poppy' ones. The composition in this painting also adds the necessary tension to prevent it from becoming too balanced. There's a lot of subtlety here in her lines that are very interesting to look at. It's pretty but no too intentionally so.

I have to see them in person to really get it.

no-where-man said...

late D.K. = lyrical line, this is not so lyrical.

will make drawing from your picture said...

This work really shows how painting conventions have evolved over the last 6 years, transformed by technology and globalism. And the varied comments reflect this evolution of painting philosophy as well as the keepers of the faith. I think this painting is nice. Not great, nice, as it reveals little about our current existential condition. Work so couched in 20th century abstraction really stands out now for it's formula of signifiers: painterliness, minimal composition, impressionistic color and continuous pictorial surface. I recommend that all painting lovers go see Dennis Hollingsworth's show at Nicole Klagsbrun (Painter?). Here is an artist with a keen understanding of 20th century abstraction that has fashioned completely fresh and powerful compositions using physics and nature as a paradigm. His is perhaps the best painting show of the season, which has gone virtually unnoticed because he doesn't live and schmooze in New York. Rosanna Bruno truly understands how to make a beautiful and pleasing painting.

Martin said...

"I was merely saying that I liked Abts' paintings because they seem fresh. These don't."

my sense is the opposite, that these feel fresh and abts are dense, disquiet, tight, almost stifling. maybe it is a different use of the word fresh. i'm thinking of light and air and breathing room.

(tomma abts is one of my favorite current painters)

bsch said...

I like these but they seem like closeups of something larger. Folds of multicolored cloth. The line overlaps and value shifts that look like cast shadows undercut the abstract. Compare these to Frank Nitsche. These lack a sense of completeness.

youth--less said...

reminds me of georgia okeefe

http://www.happyshadows.com/okeeffe/Images/music--pink_&_blue_II-1919.jpg

zipthwung said...

Im over the whole revealing your process thing. Unless its your thing. THe "erasures - stuff where you dont fully paint stuff out - bryce marden does it - W dK did it - what is the point? TO porve how sensitive you are? To efface the monumentality of your genius?

At this juncture the painted out or self conscious underpainting is a referent to a tradition, an oath of allegience.

THis painting is a capitulation - as well as a museum - one couold well imagine historical reenactors painting in this manner in the future to illustrate a mind set, and to demonstrate a way of living.

THis is a lifestyle painting. The painting itself is less interesting than the traditional life it advocates.

zipthwung said...

I'm from the year 2090, so much has been lost. But the whole "sequential art" thing has been around too - nude descending a staircase is a sort of compression of ideas that have been around for ages, for example, caviat emptor, do ut des.

King of Pomp.

youth--less said...

Oooohh devinlevin. dont dis the elephants and their painting. if rosanna painted more like an elephant, she'd be better. as would we all.

ec said...

I have followed this artist's work for many years. You can bet it's a lifestyle painting--painting forged from commitment, piercing observation, awareness of her surroundings and desire to join tradition with contemporary painting. That explains its caliber of surface and gesture, while I beg you to find the luminscent surfaces and particularities of color in more historical work. One issue I take with art scene is an insistence on contemporary with innovation. Innovations aren't always so fast. They can go slowly as in this work and not suffer the more for it. Slow down, this painter is worth savoring.