TheHamptons.com

I started off the month at the opening of the beautiful photographs of Alex Kirkbride. He is one of the featured artists in this season’s roster of folks in TheHamptons.com Gallery. Alex has been at work on this project for five years, traveling fifty states producing stunning photos of water in all its forms. The prints are best described as holding a shimmering radiance, even when you’ve no idea what the actual subject matter is. One of my favorites looked like shiny red Christmas ornaments magically floating along. No, actually it turned out to be cranberries shot from bellow the bog. The prints are either 40 to 60 inches or 20 to 30 inches. Alex’s exhibition is at the Hammer Gallery in NYC thru the end of the month.

The next weekend was back to Bridgehampton to the Silas Marder Gallery for a show entitled Countryside featuring mostly local artists but with some very interesting twists. Beautiful hard-edged paintings by William Steiger, harking back to early mid-century modernism (admittedly one of my favorite moments.) I was also very taken by some oversized landscapes by Kelly McRaven. Somehow they should have been redundant given their gauzy expressionistic style, but they were totally original. I pretty much went for Barry Anderson’s Treebeasties too.

Moving ahead here thru the fall, not withstanding the perfect summer weather we’ve been blessed with, it was on to Ashawagh Hall for a show curated by Barbara Groot. Ipaperism was its name and I’m sad to say as I write this it will be gone. This was one of those local shows that can only be described as great fun. Joyce Silver’s slightly Larry Riverish big collages had a wonderful look. Because this was a wave to “Dada”, some of the collages had a political slant, some pure silliness, such as Bob Rothstein’s,”I’m sure the pills areworking.” Eileen Mislove made some grand black and white drawings, all in all the whole show held together beautifully. The person whose work most impressed me was Ms. Groot herself. Three black red and white collages in the main room were completely without any gimmicks at all. Just things taken form magazines and glued down. Wow, what a triumph. Totally understated and honest. Right down the street was The Perfect Storm curated by Edsel Williams at the fireplace Project, up until November 26. Listen, the two times I’ve been to this space I’ve found the work to be just that much more sophisticated than most of the other, smaller east end galleries. The more I stood looking at Lisa Bingham’s little canvases the more I liked the simplicity and the brokenness of them. Bits and pieces of hedge making for disturbing little landscapes that very much mirrored my impression of the way things are out here now. I think if I had space I might buy one of Mike Wright’s sculptures.

That’s it for this month. The Spanierman East Hampton has Gertrude Greene(1930-1956) a wonderful abstract artist working at the heyday of abstract expressionism. Don’t kid yourself, being on the cutting edge of your own time makes a big, big difference in the quality and sincerity of your work.