J. J. Murphy

SUPPORT WHITE COLUMNS!!! White Columns is a very special alternative arts institution. I stopped by the preview of the 2026 Benefit Auction yesterday, which has over 100 artworks generously donated by artists and their galleries. They are currently on view in the gallery and on the website until May 27. White Columns is New York’s oldest alternative art space, and the Benefit auction is the organization’s core annual fundraiser. To view all the donated artworks, register to bid and purchase tickets to the live auction on May 27, visit whitecolumns.org Among the many outstanding works in the auction: 1) David Hornung; 2) Nora Sturges; 3) David Humphrey; 4) Clare Grill; 5) Florian Krewer; 6) Na Kim; 7) Peter Shear; 8) Melissa Joseph; 9) Silas Borsos; 10) Jacob Littlejohn @white_columns @matthewhiggs2015 @davidhornungart @norasturges @silasborsos @aikenhump @claregrill @derekellergallery

The New Yorker did an extended piece on the Indian-born British artist Celia Paul last year, but I confess that I hadn’t seen her work in person prior to catching her current solo exhibition “Innervisions” at Gladstone in Chelsea. I was initially struck by “Room in Bloomsbury” (2026), which depicts an empty room that contains a bed and window, as well as a ghostly white figure. The painting made me think of Michael Snow’s avant-garde classic film “Wavelength” (1967) in suggesting that rooms, like people, also contain memories of what has transpired in them. I was reminded of Manny Farber’s description of Snow’s 45-minute zoom of a loft as a “document of a room in which a dozen businesses have lived and gone bankrupt.” Paul’s small painting somehow feels like a key to the show, which otherwise consists of self-portraits and portraits of Paul’s family—her mother, sister Kate, and son Frank—as well as paintings of trees, lilies, and the sea. Her portraits are not static but have a shimmering, luminescent quality. “Kate and Shadow” (2025) feels as if it represents a time-lapse of the subject by depicting ever-subtle movements of her body. In fact, Paul, who has obviously read Proust, seems to be attempting to convey the element of time, both past and present, in all her paintings. In painting herself and family members, there’s a sense that Paul wants to document the physical and emotional changes in her sitters over time. Her figures all feel insubstantial, giving the impression that they might suddenly disappear before our eyes. “Two Trees After the Storm” (2025) recalls those backyard scenes of Stanley Lewis in feeling like images superimposed over themselves, slightly out of alignment. It’s not surprising that Paul would paint the sea, which, by its very nature, seems to embody the effects of time that the artist strives to record. @gladstone.gallery #celiapaul #portraitart #femaleartist #contemporaryartist #britishartist

Elizabeth Peyton had a major survey exhibition, “Live Forever,” at the New Museum in 2008–2009. Her current show at David Zwirner in Chelsea, entitled “mountains in my heart (the death of Sarpedon),” provides a chance to see how her work has evolved since then. Peyton is still making portraits, but the new paintings and drawings are more abstract than her early ones. The title is a reference to Homer’s “The Iliad” and alludes to Zeus’s decision to accept fate and not save his beloved son, Sarpedon, who was killed during battle in the Trojan War. The mythological figure of Sarpedon became a model for Peyton in dealing with her grief over the loss of a loved one. Peyton has created both a monotype and a painting of the “Death of Sarpedon” for the show, with the latter based on the 1874 painting by Henri-Léopold Lévy at the Musée d’Orsay. The exhibition’s small works are not simply portraits but also seem to be about the act of perception. They demonstrate how the brain configures the human face, which is called “holistic processing” or, as the artist once noted, “how the elements of the face relate to each other.” Her portraits consist of myriad individual brushstrokes surrounded by negative space. Peyton seems to understand that the act of perception is a complex process that also relies on memory, both for the artist and the viewer. She observes about the process of making a painting, “It’s like the narrow end of a funnel, shaped by everything that has already taken place.” Many of the portraits are of specific people, such as friends or public figures, notably Simone Weil; the Catholic cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça; or the black drawing of Bob Dylan, entitled “The Man in Me” (2023). A favorite is the mysterious portrait of two faces, “Yes!” (Vampire), 2024, which shimmers like a reflection in water. @davidzwirner #elizabethpeyton #portraitart #portraitartist #contemporarypainting

It’s been four years since the last Leon Kossoff show at Mitchell-Inness & Nash in 2022. Kossoff has a new survey exhibition at Luhring Augustine in Chelsea, providing an opportunity to see the work of one of the major figures of the acclaimed School of London. The group, which included such artists as Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, and Frank Auerbach, focused on figuration during a time of abstraction, which is why they were initially considered outcasts, especially Kossoff (1926-2019). Yet that’s changed since the mid-1990s following a show at the Tate and his inclusion in the 1995 Venice Biennale; one of his paintings just sold for $6.9 million at auction last month. Kossoff focused his art on the world directly around him. In his paintings, buildings and places have as much personality as people; whether it’s a red brick school building or Christ Church, the forms seem animated. It’s as if the structures are uncomfortable in their static forms and yearn to participate and interact with the humans who pass by them. The result are scenes that feel remarkably lively. At first glance, “The Flower Stall, Embankment Station” (1994) could be mistaken for an outdoor dance party. “Demolition of YMCA Building No. 2” (1971) feels like the viewer is a participant in the chaotic destruction. Kossoff’s highly gestural use of thick impasto creates a swirling motion. Even a reclining figure, “Nude on a Red Bed” (1972), has a vitality, largely because the bed resembles an abstract expressionist painting by Jackson Pollock. Besides street scenes in London, Kossoff also painted portraits of family and friends. In a painting of his brother, “Portrait of Philip” (1962), it takes a while to see his face, which has so much paint that it feels three-dimensional. There’s a sense that the subject has fallen forward or is about to lurch out of the frame. @luhringaugustine #leonkossoff #londonart #figurativepainting #contemporarypainting

Following the Vuillard exhibition at Skarstedt in Chelsea, the new Matisse show “The Pursuit of Harmony” at Acquavella Gallery, uptown, is another museum-quality event. The organizers want to emphasize “form and figure,” which seems evident from the many sculptures and paintings of reclining female subjects. It represents a chance to view a number of rarely seen works from private collections but also to revel in the work of the leader of Fauvism and one of the great masters of modern art. Matisse’s paintings feature vibrant colors, carefully arranged compositions, an emphasis on pattern, and flattened space. In “Woman in Front of a Window” (1905), the figure’s curved form contrasts with rectangular shapes. Matisse incorporated flowers and plants in many of his works. In “The Idol” (1906), the woman has a floral halo. Matisse shades her face with myriad colors, set against a green, blue, and orange background. The large vase of flowers in “The Black Table” (1919) is nearly as dominant as the figure. Compositionally, Matisse tends to be more interested in creating balance. Stripes dominate not only the woman’s robe but also the background of “Odalisque in a Striped Coat” (1937). His interiors often contain sections that are, in effect, still lifes, such as “Harmony in Yellow” (1927–28), in which a woman dressed in black upends our expectations. Matisse frequently uses areas of unpainted canvas to create a sense of immediacy but also to emphasize where he’s applied paint. He also employs a loose gestural approach that allows the underpainting to show through, as in “The Italian Woman” (1917) or “Still Life with Gourds and a Blue Pitcher” (1916). Yet it’s Matisse’s wondrous sense of color that feels invigorating, an antidote to these dark times. As the artist once famously noted, “From the moment I held the box of colors in my hands, I knew this was my life.” @acquavellagalleries #matisse #modernart #modernpainting #fauvism

The German-born, Marrakesh-based artist Katherina Wulff is better known in Europe than here. Her solo exhibition “Day and Night Before My Eyes” at Greene Naftali in Chelsea, her first show in ten years, takes up the entire lower gallery and includes an Islamic decorative latticework screen, something she has incorporated before. Wulff renders the paintings in different styles, as if she’s demonstrating her ability to mine the figurative traditions in art history, including Neue Sachlichkeit. “Untitled” (2022) is a stylized profile portrait of a woman with blonde hair, wearing a black-and-white striped collar. The image is closely cropped; her tightly coiffed hair evokes the 1940s, while dark red lipstick creates a severe look. Wulff’s best works contain strange and mysterious narrative elements that suggest a kind of magic realism. In a recent untitled portrait, the woman’s hair appears to be on fire. Other paintings are more dream-like, with ghostly figures that appear in scenes of fantasy. Several reflect on female childhood, such as “Nocturnal Allegory” (2025–26). In an illuminated scene, five female figures sit outdoors. A young girl holds a rabbit in her lap, while another older one seems ethereal—the surrounding foxgloves make her appear like an angel beneath a shimmering sun. The figure, whose back is to us, is wearing more formal attire and seems oddly dressed for the occasion. The fairy-tale landscape includes rabbits, a snake, mushrooms, and a snail. Less typical is “Britta in Hagen” (2025), in which Wulff uses charcoal marks to separate and blur a woman’s face as she stands in front of buildings. In “Downtime” (2025), the impassive expression of a woman walking down an empty street in light snow is haunting. In a manner similar to the figures of George Tooker, Wulff manages to capture the eeriness of daily life, as if the tensions of the world are reflected in both the subject’s face and gait. @greenenaftali #germanartist #contemporaryart #contemporarypainting #contemporaryartist

Steve DiBenedetto, who has been actively exhibiting in major galleries since the 1980s and was included as part of “Remote Viewing: Invented Worlds” at the Whitney in 2005, is a painter whose work only seems to get better with each show. His latest solo exhibition of paintings, “The Spiral Architect,” fills both the front and back galleries of Derek Eller Gallery in TriBeCa. DiBenedetto’s new paintings continue to feel strange and otherworldly. They create a strong visceral effect by depicting the kind of creatures and forms that you might encounter underwater or discover in outer space—or perhaps a meld between the two. One of the larger paintings, “Quip Gland” (2025–2026), seems compartmentalized initially. Yet the more one looks at it, the more the geometric elements provide structure. The same is true of another large painting, “The Octopus Paradox” (2025–2026), where organ-like limbs extend and connect the various parts while myriad eyes peer out at us. They make me think of Arshile Gorky paintings from the 1940s, most notably “One Year the Milkweed” (1944) and “The Liver is the Cock’s Comb” (1944). Yet, whereas Gorky’s late paintings have a gestural flow, DiBenedetto’s works feel deliberately clotted and congested. The appeal of DiBenedetto paintings is very much about their carefully built-up surfaces. They feel weathered and rough, like the skin of a pachyderm. It’s as if his images have become ossified through layer upon layers of thick oil paint. There is crustiness to certain works like “The Cage of Structure” (2026) or “Astral Rejection” (2026) that makes a viewer want to scrape away the paint on the surface to uncover the mysteries of what might lie underneath. In terms of their imagery, DiBenedetto’s paintings are a mixture of biology, science fiction, psychedelic drugs, and scary horror movies. As Dike Blair astutely observed, they seem to evoke “childhood’s fascinations and fears.” @derekellergallery @dibenedettosteve #visionaryart #contemporarypainting #nycartist

Margaret Curtis gained prominence in Marcia Tucker’s “Bad Girls” exhibition at the New Museum in 1994 and had three subsequent solo shows at PPOW, the last one in 2003. Since then, her career has occurred outside NYC. Small galleries have been attempting to fill a void lately. Curtis’s extraordinary new exhibition “’S” at Post Times on Henry Street, her first solo exhibition in NYC in over 20 years, is visually stunning. The fragmentation—involving objects and body parts—in the five paintings in the front gallery feels as if we’re witnessing a series of explosions. Her painting “‘S” (2026), in fact, suggests the upheaval of a major tornado—a whirl of orange safety fencing, a human leg clothed in patriotic stripes, sections of signage, a hand holding a gun, and a cartoonlike gust of wind. Certain images in her landscapes reoccur: Southern stereotypes, such as naked feet and moonshine, along with a checkerboard pattern that references both Photoshop and its use in plotting American Indian reservations. “Collapse” (2023) features remnants of a roadside billboard of a crying woman reminiscent of the pop artist Roy Lichtenstein. Paintings and comics are not the only references. The central figure having a tantrum in “Self-Made Man” (2024) depicts a combined male and female figure that recalls the character Major Kong (Slim Pickens), who rode a bomb in Stanley Kubrick’s political satire “Dr. Strangelove” (1964). The same painting depicts fracking and an oil spill. Yet despite the overtly political and gendered content of her imagery, what’s more intriguing is Curtis’s masterful technical proficiency. Her imagery might appear realistic initially, but, on closer inspection, she employs various techniques of faux finishing: variations of wood panels, disparate surfaces, stenciled patterns, directional brushstrokes, and pulverized ash mixed with paint. Curtis’s representational paintings are remarkably complex. They are ultimately about the act of painting itself and all the different ways that an image might be rendered. @post__times @margarcur #roylichtenstein #contemporaryart #contemporarypainting

The Outsider Art Fair used to be a venue to make major discoveries in the world of self-taught art but has now become a place to see works by recognized artists, such as the entire booth of Jon Serl at Shrine. Given the packed booths, it’s easy to overlook new work. The New York Times touted “surprises,” but didn’t mention the booth of Steven Powers and Joshua Lowenfels, which stood out. It contains a series of “tenement” drawings by Lee Brozgol and microtexts by Robert Witz. Brozgol (1941–2021) worked in the same Lower East Side neighborhood around Stanton Street as Martin Wong, and his drawings share the same obsession with the repetitive pattern of brick buildings. Witz, an artist from Tomah, Wisconsin, wrote microtext letters to Artforum complaining about the nature of their art criticism. The magazine published his diatribes in the September 1973 issue, which included opinions such as “Bruce Nauman is a dilettante” and “Annette Michelson talks professional Artforum journalese.” His texts create graphic designs on the page and contain hidden messages: “No to General Motors. No to Hollywood. No to bad housing and high rents.” There are other text-based pieces that countered the visual overload of the fair. Whereas Witz’s letters can be deciphered with a magnifying glass, that’s not possible with the British artist Carlo Keshishian’s tiny drawing (3.1 x 2 inches), “The Disadvantages of Time, Part XVII, 27 Beats (1955 words),” 2022, at Jennifer Lauren Gallery. That’s also true of Melvn Way’s alchemical drawings, including an exceptional one, “Ruler of the Universe” (c. 1996), on display in the booth of Andrew Edlin Gallery. I was taken with typewriter-on-paper pieces by Dan Miller at Creative Growth. Other notable works include the cigar-influenced collages of Felipe Jesus Consalvos at Fleisher Ollman, a small double-image gem, “Mes Nuits,” by Robert Coutelas at Andrew Edlin, and ceramic plates by Gil Batle at Norman Brosterman. @outsiderartfair @stevenspowers @shrine.nyc @ployaarrtt #selftaughtartist

Édouard Vuillard’s museum-quality exhibition “Early Interiors,” at Skarstedt Gallery in Chelsea, reveals the French artist to be an extraordinary poet of the everyday. His small paintings of domestic scenes, made between 1890 and 1905, are the equivalent of snapshots. It is perhaps important to note that George Eastman introduced the Kodak camera in 1888, only two years earlier, which created the phenomenon of individuals more easily documenting the world around them. Vuillard’s primary interest here is not in the figure or traditional portraiture, as was the case with most early photographic snapshots, but in the entire scene. In “The Lady of Fashion” (1891–1892), the woman blurs, allowing the thick yellow line in the background to become more prominent. The same is true of “Woman in front of a Glass-Partitioned Door” (1891) and “Woman by the Open Door” (1893), causing them to verge on becoming abstract paintings. The male figure is hidden behind a large newspaper in “The Newspaper” (1896–1899). In the painting “In Front of the Tapestry . . .” (1899), the two figures with their backs to us, identified as Misia and Thadée, have equal weight to everything else. If anything, our eyes gravitate to the indecipherable splash of golden yellow. The pattern of the garment becomes the focus of interest in “The Flowered Dress” (1891). For Vuillard, it’s about harmonies, about how each element relates to another or the sum of its parts, which the artist emphasizes through his use of flattened space. Legibility becomes a significant issue. Vuillard wants the viewer to struggle to perceive the work. As we look at each painting, questions arise. In “The Flowered Dress,” we wonder: Is that a chair beneath the woman’s shadow? In the painting “Annette Seated between her Mother and Grandmother” (1901), we strain to locate the young child in the very dim light. It’s almost as if we’re trying to solve a small mystery. @skarstedtgallery #edouardvuillard #modernart #modernpainting #frenchartist

The noted former gallerist Jay Gorney has put together an impressive, must-see show, entitled “Inventing Abstraction: Nonrepresentational Self-taught Art,” at Shrine Gallery in TriBeCa. The premise is that the abstract works of the artists shown are not part of a modernist lineage or historical progression but rather reflect their intuitive perception of the world, independent of the abstract/figurative dichotomy that continues to persist in some circles. That divide is certainly not the case with artists such as Madge Gill, Minnie Evans, Marlon Mullen, Abraham Lincoln Walker, and Martin Ramirez, whose work encompasses both. Mullen, for example, often employs text and riffs on the cover of art magazines, but the show only features three of his abstract pieces. The same is true of the English spiritualist artist Madge Gill (1882–1961). She often created detailed pieces portraying female faces, but the show includes small, 5.5 x 3.5-inch untitled ink-on-found-postcard drawings, such as a blue-green one that is one of my favorite pieces in the exhibition. Nebraska artist Emery Blagdon, known for his massive “healing machine” project, is the standout. He is represented by both colored wire assemblage pieces, which John Yau has referred to as “drawings in space,” as well as raw, abstract paintings, such as an untitled cream and a red oxide one that has a zigzag and triangular pattern that suggests a kind of symmetrical energy. In discussing the work, Steven Powers pointed out that Blagdon reverses viewer expectations by placing the cream shapes on the red ground (notice the drip of cream on top of the red paint). An early, atypical Minnie Evans pencil and crayon drawing, circa 1940, contains a section that looks like a butterfly wing. Photos: 1 & 2) Emery Blagdon; 3) Marlon Mullen; 4) Madge Gill; 5) Minnie Evans; 6) J. B. Murray; 7) Philadelphia Wireman; 8) Judith Scott; 9) Hawkins Bolden; and 10) Abraham Lincoln Walker. @shrine.nyc @jaygorney1 @stevenspowers #abstractart #selftaughtartist

Elizabeth Hazan’s exhibition of landscape paintings, “Double Fantasy,” at Hesse Flatow in TriBeCa, is as much about hallucination as memory. Starting with “stream-of-consciousness” drawings, the new works feel softer, looser, and more fluid than her last show. They remind me of the work of the painter Franz Marc (1880–1916), who was a founding member of the group Der Blaue Reiter (“The Blue Rider”). Marc, who died early, was known for his depiction of animals, especially horses, whereas Hazan focuses largely on trees. The connection lies in their use of curvilinear forms, the strong suggestion of motion, and odd color combinations. Hazan’s “Field # 196” (2025), for instance, features three colored trees: tangerine, magenta, and turquoise. “Field # 184” (2025) employs gestural swirls that dissolve into abstract shapes, as in Marc’s “Das Schaf (The Sheep)” (1913). Hazan’s work also recalls that of Arthur Dove, such as his painting currently on display at Schoelkopf Gallery, entitled “Nature Symbolized # 3: Steeple and Trees” (c. 1916), in which the artist reduces the church steeple and trees to a series of overlapping triangles (see last photo). Hazan employs a similar strategy. In “Field # 195” (2025), she renders the central one of three trees as a simple triangle, outlined in a different color. Dove famously observed, “It is the form the idea takes in the imagination rather than the form as it exists outside.” Hazan’s landscapes are clearly more interior than observational. It’s as if she’s reducing external forms to line, color, and shape. Most of Hazan’s landscapes are brightly colored, such as the yellow, sun-drenched “Alphabet of the Sun” (2025), while “Field # 200” (2026) suggests the fading of the magic hour into night. Hazan’s work is fundamentally about light, which again connects her to Dove, who suggested, “We cannot express the light in nature because we have not the sun. We can only express the light we have in ourselves.” @elizabethhazan @hesse_flatow @stevehicksstudio @alexiworth