“The eccentric, collage-like compositions featured timeworn items from his late parent’s home (crusty wallpaper, shabby kitchen tiles, a misshapen pegboard) in sensational colors (electric yel­lows, lurid greens, lambent blues). The pieces were strangely abstract–­the pegboard, for instance, became a Color Field painting, the bit of wire dangling from it an expressive gesture. The images had a certain naive and clumsy charm, a quality we would expect from the art of an autodidact. But Slota is no such thing. Though his pictures have a hesitant sophistication, they demonstrate an
acquaintance with reified modernist ideas of artmaking. The works are built step-by-step-indeed, they are a via dolorosa of mourning-and bring with them the conviction that art has healing power.”

“But his latest photographs, though made with similar methods, are more colorful and more minimal than previous series. A few of them verge on abstraction. They were made shortly after Slota’s father died (the show at Ricco/Maresca was called simply After), when he took hundreds of snapshots of the rooms in his father’s house. Back in his studio, he began collaging, reshooting, and marking and cutting the prints: a hand-drawn black line zig-zags down a yellow peg board in one; in another, triangular pinkish shapes rupture the picture plane of pale green, delicately flowered wallpaper. Two photographs of a curved iron railing – one in color, one in black and white – fit together to suggest the outline of a peaked roof in a child’s drawing of a house. The practice of combining black-and-white and color prints has the effect of juxtaposing alternate versions of reality. What is fact and what is fiction? How reliable is a photograph, and more to the point in this work, how reliable is memory?”

“One of the fair’s most exciting booths is that of Ricco/Maresca, which turned over its entire presentation to work by Gil Batle. The artist—formerly incarcerated in California for forging checks and troubles related to methamphetamine addiction and now based on an island in the Philippines—makes ostrich-egg sculptures that feature ornately carved renderings of strange visions. Surrounding those are drawings of imprisoned bodies amid tangles of barbed wire.”

“Gil Batle is the straight-no-chaser antidote to an art world chained too tightly to an ecosystem of privilege. A self-taught Filipino-American artist who spent 20 years tumbling through the California penal system on fraud and forgery convictions, Batle honed his draughtsman skills to serve as both a currency and a protective talisman in the brutal prison-block economy.
While he’s best known for his ornate narrative carvings on ostrich eggshells—the first exhibition of which sold out “instantly,” according to gallerist Frank Maresca—Batle’s series of Playing Card drawings incorporates nearly as much technical virtuosity and storytelling power in a vastly more manageable format”

“It’s worth noting that the gallery list seems to have been shaken up a bit, and the inclusion of galleries like Ricco/Maresca notes an increasingly adventurous and exciting path for Independent, looking deeper into the fair as a space for research, comparison and counterpoint. Celebrating its first 10 years this year, it should be interesting to see how the fair evolves in its next 10.”

Ken Grimes was selected to participate in the 2019 deCordova Museum Biennial, presenting a survey of contemporary artists based in New England. Featuring work across diverse mediums including painting, video, sculpture, photography, fiber art and ceramics, the Biennial will occupy all galleries of the Museum and extend into the Sculpture Park with new site-specific commissions. An accompanying publication and full-slate of public programming will complement the exhibition’s presentation
April 5 – September 15, 2019

Laura Craig McNellis: “Ode to Dolly” in partnership with Shrine Gallery.
“Ode to Dolly” will be a retrospective of artworks made by Laura Craig McNellis (b. 1957), from her earliest creations on folded sheets of newsprint to her more recent tempera paintings depicting clothing with abstract patterning and motifs on cut and shaped paper. McNellis was born with severe mental disability and autism, and she has remained nonverbal throughout her life. Despite this, or perhaps in light of it, she has become a prolific artist and maker. This exhibition will be the first time works from all stages of her artistic career will be shown together, and brings forth many works that have never been exhibited.
March 22 – April 20, 2019

Frank Maresca was invited to participate in “A Specific Eye: Seven Collections,” at Demisch Danant, an exhibition of seven personal collections of art and design objects from celebrated New York connoisseurs. These collections are presented within an environment of French furniture and lighting of the 1970s in juxtapositions that evoke the decade when classic and modern tastes famously merged in French interior design. Frank contributed a group of American heads and busts dating between the 19th and early 20th centuries.
ON VIEW: March 4 – April 6 at 30 W 12th Street

Gil Batle’s work was included in “The O.G Experience” (February 20 – 25), a pop-up exhibition and immersive art installation organized by HBO featuring the work of formerly incarcerated artists.
Photo © Kisha Bari