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Using my my trusty maxim, Two's a coincidence; three's a trend, I'd say we've got a trendlet. Call it "Glop Art"--paint that's slathered, plopped, squeezed and smeared. The paint companies must be so pleased.
My favorite artist in this genre is the British painter Phillip Allen, work shown above and here. I'm wild about his unlikely combination of linear geometry and schmear, which I find visually and viscerally satisfying. (The love child of Thomas Nozkowski and Scott Richter?) At first you try to connect the two disparate elements, as if the surface has been scraped to reveal the painting at the center. But no, that's not the process at all. There's no logic to why a geometric painting would require this buildup of paint at its borders, and that's part of what attracts me: the mystery--no, the oddity--of it. The other part is, damn, I just dig them.
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But the two artists artist shown below, Allison Schulnick and Kim Dorland, not so much. Sure Schulnick's solo at Mike Weiss Gallery a few months ago reportedly sold out, and I hear the sales were huge at Mark Moore's booth at Pulse. I'm not swayed. What's the opposite of 'love it'? A few booths away from Mark Moore (and let me say, the paintings themselves were beautifully installed), the Angell Gallery was showing big, sludgy paintings by Kim Dorland.
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Here, see for yourself.
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