Author Archives: Rachel Nackman

Tristan Perich on Edda Renouf

By Rachel Nackman | Published: 01/23/2010

Like the haze from 42 meteors, Renouf’s marks capture both the essence of an action and the separate but related flurry of activity around it. Our laws of physics tend to rip things apart over time, from rusting metal and organic decomposition to the large-scale expansion of our universe.

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Christina Rosenberger on Robert Ryman

By Rachel Nackman | Published: 01/22/2010

Robert Ryman’s earliest known painting is also one of his most anomalous: a 28 1/8-inch square canvas covered in orange oil paint—“such a shocking color,” as Ryman later observed of the painting, Untitled (Orange Painting) (1955/1959). “Of course it’s not all the same hue,” Ryman clarified. “There are many oranges in here, there are reds, light oranges, and dark yellows…there are many nuances and many oranges.”

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William Anastasi on Karen Schiff

By Rachel Nackman | Published: 01/21/2010

First viewing the drawing without knowledge of its energizing motivation, I found the organization and colors musical in the extreme–a work that I believe would survive repeated audition.

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Joan Witek on Richard Serra

By Rachel Nackman | Published: 01/20/2010

“I understood that drawing was like writing in another language. I have never felt that drawing per se is inadequate as a device, even though I’m aware of its limitations and conventions. As an activity it is sufficient within itself and as such has nothing to do with any other mental or physical activity. It is the most conscious space in which I work. Drawing gives me an immediate return for my effort and the result is commensurate with my involvement. The give and take is instantaneous.”

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Kathleen McEvily on Richard Serra

By Rachel Nackman | Published: 01/19/2010

The drawings on paper are mostly studies made after a sculpture has been completed. They are the result of trying to assess and define what surprises me in sculpture, what I could not understand before a work was built.

Richard Serra

Mary McDonnell on Joel Shapiro

By Rachel Nackman | Published: 01/18/2010

I am here
here I am
I was here
this is me
I am

( four hundred thirty-two times )

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Teo González on Mark Sheinkman

By Rachel Nackman | Published: 01/17/2010

Rubbing and erasing, dark and light, simple yet complex; all of these contradictions weave together to form 9.21.95 – a graphite drawing, which artist Mark Sheinkman erases as much as he draws.

Jill O’Bryan on Robert Smithson

By Rachel Nackman | Published: 01/16/2010

Asphalt Spiral is a completely perfect yet craggy schematic for an imagined earthwork, so I just walk right into it. The line quality encodes signifiers immediately read: crosshatching on the even, solid surfaces of the roads; dots and up and down strokes indicating the earth; squiggly lines indicating the dripping ooze of pure liquid asphalt.

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Joseph Zito on Robert Smithson

By Rachel Nackman | Published: 01/15/2010

I was looking at some scatter pieces by Richard [Serra] and Barry [Le Va]. I’m thinking of doing one of my own …

Frank Badur on Sara Sosnowy

By Rachel Nackman | Published: 01/14/2010

Sara Sosnowy’s Gold Drawing # 77 evokes the fact that the value system of any society is shaped and defined by a continuous process of cultural interchange. Sosnowy’s very intensive work on paper appears, on the one hand, as a subtle reference to the reductive work of the French artist Yves Klein. On the other hand, her delicate drawing opens the door to intercultural dialogue with India’s ritualistic tantric art, the principal quality of which lies in its complex creative freedom. In this art form we encounter small colorful gouaches on paper, as well as abstract diagrams visualizing complex principles of cosmic order.

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