David Whelan
Gaby Collins-Fernández: To A Portrait
By David WhelanGaby Collins-Fernández’s solo exhibition To A Portrait unraveled my defenses. Borders give me a sense of calm and control, but the six wall-height paintings on view at Anonymous escape these boundaries, giving a broader dimension to one’s psychic, emotional, and bodily life. Words and images entwine and stretch past their limits, shattering into fragments of human desire. The work sneers at my guarded caution in its excess, passing up my small world for one with much more fascinating, beautiful complication.
Mark Thomas Gibson: WHIRLYGIG!
By David WhelanA solid band of Patriot blue stretches across the back gallery of Sikkema Jenkins, creating a powerful backdrop for Mark Thomas Gibson’s large, thinly framed drawings and paintings. In Gibson’s exhibition WHIRLYGIG!, bad things are off the rails. Cartoonish images of marching boots, steampipes, hooded masks and ominous hands show us a world of non-stop conflict, frozen in a state of perpetual alarm.
Peter Halley: Paintings and Drawings, 1980–81
By David WhelanThe 1980s were formative years for Peter Halley, a New York artist best known for geometric paintings evoking prisons and cells, painted in florescent colors with industrial techniques. His dual shows currently on view at Karma and Craig Starr offer a privileged view into the artist's earlier experimental work.
Snow Day
By David WhelanSnow days are coveted by those who tire of winter gray, bringing the excitement of flurries and the stillness of bright snow banks to an otherwise bleak landscape. The ten artists exhibited in Snow Day, the Drawing Room’s latest exhibition, tap into this attraction. Snow as a subject goes to the heart of something in all works of art: the attempt to capture something fleeting.
Lois Dodd: Natural Order
By David WhelanIn Lois Dodd’s comprehensive exhibition Natural Order, now on view at the Bruce Museum, the artist’s unique approach to observation is laid bare. Dodd’s paintings of modest subjects read like field notes, recording her perception of the immediate environment. The frenetic energy and physicality of her work reminds us that making sense of the world is not an instant phenomenon.
