16 Dec - Albright-Knox Acquires Works

LAUNCHPROJECTS - The Albright-Knox Museum in Buffalo, New York acquired works by Patrick McFarlin and Eric Tillinghast to be added to their permanent collection. LAUNCHPROJECTS applauds our artists on this great achievement.

When Louis Grachos visited Santa Fe this past summer we had the opportunity arrange a studio visit with Patrick McFarlin to preview the works in our then upcoming show, Obituaries and (mini) Masterpieces. These pieces represented a departure for McFarlin. Eulogizing the work of those who have come before, he placed obituaries and masterworks into new and unexpected contexts, thereby recreating and reframing our assumptions of fame, mastery, and the anticipation of originality.

Grachos was already deeply familiar with McFarlin's work as they worked together for McFarlin's solo exhibition at SITE Santa Fe in 1996 when Grachos was then Director. He immediately responded to this new body of work and began the process of acquisition at that point. The five Patrick McFarlin pieces Grachos ultimately selected from this series were all of Joan Mitchell, one miniature painting, George Went Swimming at Barnes Hole, 1957 (pictured above) was based on the original already included in the Albright-Knox collection.

Grachos was also very familiar with Eric Tillinghast's work, and several of Tillinghast's pieces are already in in the Albright-Knox permanent collection from an earlier donation by Natalie and Irving Forman. The Pools portfolio selected by Grachos is a 24-piece collection of unique images of swimming pools, all depicting a different shape and color of water. In the words of Internationally acclaimed artist and critic Harmony Hammond "in Pools, Tillinghast reworked appropriated photographs of swimming pools. From a distance, the resulting condensed-down shapes— both familiar and strange — read solid turquoise. It’s only upon very close examination, that variation in water depth, reflection of light on the surface, and the side of or steps into the pool are discernible." To read more about this body of work please refer to the review by Jan Adlmann published in Art in America.

Works from both series are currently available at LAUNCHPROJECTS - please contact the gallery for additional information and availability.

15 Sept- Obits and (mini) Masterpieces

LAUNCHPROJECTS - Tomorrow is the opening of Patrick McFarlin's exhibition Obituaries and (mini) Masterpieces. The show is hung and looks stunning - Patrick added a bit of site-specific art to the space with a quotation from Faulkner written above the fireplace. The artist "knows he has a short span of life, that the day will come when he must pass through the wall of oblivion, and he wants to leave a scratch on that wall." This came from Faulkner's bio that Patrick was reading while putting this show together - had he read it a bit sooner Scratch on the Wall would certainly have been the show title... so fitting to this body of work and the concept of the series. The following is the catalog essay - the photos above are an installation shot, and McFarlin "scratching the wall" yesterday at LAUNCHPROJECTS.

Each year, Art in America publishes an “Annual Guide” that includes an obituary section memorializing the notable artists, critics, and curators who passed away within the year. In just two sentences (and sometimes less), whole lives and careers are abridged and packaged into laconic, reusable synopses. Stars of the art world, otherwise the subjects of voluminous biographies, retrospectives, and documentaries become distinguishable solely by an adjective here, an “ism” there. Robert Motherwell is an abstract expressionist while Willem Kooning (pictured left) is a seminal abstract expressionist. Joan Mitchell’s paintings are boiled down to “calligraphic” abstractions; Richard Pousette-Dart’s are “pointillist” abstractions. Lives that teemed with struggle and accomplishments are reduced to their most easily described art genre, a noteworthy exhibition.

Fascinated with the hollow languor of these obituaries, Patrick McFarlin began to meticulously translate such obituary descriptions with their accompanying portraits in a series of graphite drawings. His drawings retrace, with careful attention to detail, the ambiguity of the obituary, the detached, printed summations in pages of a glossy magazine. In this way McFarlin places the artist back within his or her original context—the world of art. McFarlin’s interest in his subjects deepened as the number of obituaries he rendered increased in number.

Haunted by the artists and the stories of their lives, he began painting flawless miniature representations of their paintings. McFarlin’s art expresses an homage in paint that the obituaries alone could not exact. The artist’s paintings are a virtuoso display of technical skill, re-interpreting the exact brush strokes of painters as diverse and challenging as Joan Mitchell (pictured right), Francis Bacon, Robert Motherwell, Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Diebenkorn, and Willem de Kooning.

The formal rigor and intimate scale of McFarlin’s paintings are reminiscent of the miniatures made by Richard Pettibone (pictured left) a pioneer in appropriation art in the United States. Originating as they do from divergent concepts, the impact and poignancy of Pettibone’s perfect miniatures strongly resonate with McFarlin’s recent body of work.

In a 1995 New York Times article covering a Pettibone retrospective, art critic Roberta Smith asked, “What happens to visual experience when previously large, famous paintings are reduced to the size of the viewer's face, while, at their best, looking mind-bogglingly like the real thing?” She mused that the method is “a new, transformative, maybe original sense of intimacy and ownership that is unusually empowering. It is rather amazing to see art cut down to size with its integrity intact.”[i]

Empowerment is what McFarlin grants his viewers along with the artists he covers, while paying a tribute to all of art history’s painters of note. McFarlin’s unquestionable love for painting is balanced by his humility as he meditates on death’s inevitability. By imbuing these miniature masterpieces with precise brush strokes and conceptual integrity, McFarlin re-contextualizes many highly celebrated and iconic paintings in an intimate setting that allows for very personal contemplation and a space for transformation.

- Cyndi Conn, LAUNCHPROJECTS
September 1, 2010

---

[i] Smith, Roberta. Imitations that Transcend Flattery. The New York Times. July 15, 2005. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/15/arts/design/15smit.html web. 25 Aug, 2010

5 Sept - The Art of the Everyday

LAUNCHPROJECTS - Ben and I were at the post office buying stamps and found out that in March the USPS hired Jonathan Fineberg, professor and author of Art Since 1940, to select 10 seminal Modernist paintings to be reproduced as the "Abstract Expressionist" stamp collection. The stamps included in the collection are: The Golden Wall by Hans Hofmann, Romanesque Façade by Adolph Gottlieb, Orange and Yellow by Mark Rothko, The Liver Is the Cock’s Comb by Arshile Gorky, 1948-C by Clyfford Still, Asheville by Willem de Kooning, Achilles by Barnett Newman, Convergence by Jackson Pollock, La Grande Vallée 0 by Joan Mitchell and Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 34 by Robert Motherwell. They are "curated" onto the page in a format to represent a museum exhibition. And I thought it couldn't get better than the Simpsons collection.

The Motherwell selected also happens to be one of the paintings that will be featured in Patrick McFarlin's upcoming exhibition "Obituaries and (mini) Masterpieces at LAUNCHPROJECTS opening September 16. More information on that show is on our website: http://www.launchprojects.com/

Pictured above: Stamps, McFarlin's (mini) Motherwell.

22 July - Patrick McFarlin's Art in America

LAUNCHPROJECTS - Studio visit today with Patrick McFarlin. Patrick is such an incredible painter and it is always a treat to see his latest projects. This trip blew our minds and prompted us to schedule a solo show for McFarlin this September, 2010.

Two years ago he began creating drawings based on Art in America's annual obituary section. The "all-stars" of the recently deceased, the practice was a sobering homage to the artists who had passed away that year. Patrick recently folded the project into something he had long wanted to do - painting covers of some of the most notable painters and paintings in modern history. As a musician covers timeless standards, this series "covers" such iconic artists as Francis Bacon (pictured above, Joan Mitchell, Robert Motherwell, Allan Kaprow, Theodoros Stamos, and Larry Rivers. This new body of work is such a testament to his skill, and these little paintings are unquestionably masterpieces in their own right.