Studio Nights Mag | on art and culture

John W. Carlson, Interior, Ink on paper, 20 x 30", 2016 Courtesy of SHED Projects

Interior Cloud

February 29, 2024 By Alex Vlasov

Like it or not, SHED Projects, which opened its doors to the Cleveland art scene less than a year ago, is the most notable art space in town. I find it difficult to keep in mind that a one-night event with a single painting is still possible in the contemporary culture of consumption. Recent world events sting me, and it is hard to believe in the magical power of art. On a Saturday evening, a single painting of John W. Carlson at SHED Projects was like a beautiful cloud that just happened to be there. It appeared for a moment, and then it disappeared.

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Joseph Beuys_I Like America and America Likes Me_1974.png

Joseph Beuys, I Like America and America Likes Me, 1974 © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, Germany

I Like the Artworld and the Artworld Likes Me

February 23, 2024 By Alex Vlasov

My goal here is to point out the problem. The fetishized character of bureaucracy in today’s artworld is something that needs to be addressed. Otherwise, all those little schmoozes at the openings will cover up the facts, and art will remain nothing more than decorative fodder. Or visual Muzak, if you might, in Joseph Kosuth’s words. But I do not need to quote anyone or use a few scholarly footnotes in Chicago Style that make me look smart in the eyes of a magazine editor who publishes standardized articles in slick ink. I write for my friends and colleagues in the field to have a discourse.

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Photo by Alex Vlasov

AM Radio

February 12, 2024 By Alex Vlasov

This story begins when I got sober, packed my bags, and left New York. I almost knew nothing about art history or painting upon entering art school. I reveled in the bravura moments of stretching canvas and mixing paint. My education in Painting was paramount. I belonged to something for the first time in my life. Nothing was more exciting than talking about color, form, mark, space, noise, Abstraction. We read Kosuth, Sillman, Plato, Schjeldahl, Graw, Sontag, Danto, Barthes, hooks, Derrida. We went to coffee shops and talked about morphologies, centripetal and centrifugal grids, plane images, atemporality, varnishes, rabbit skin glue, and GAC 200.

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Catherine Lentini, Night Vision II, Acrylic on canvas, 30 x 44", 2023

Being With Painting

February 5, 2024 By Alex Vlasov

To connect Catherine Lentini’s paintings with the figures of the Op Art movement (Julian Stanczak, Richard Anuszkiewicz, et al.) or people related to the so-called “Systemic” painting (Frank Stella, Al Held, Ellsworth Kelly, et al.) might be too provincial. For someone, I imagine, that could be a paradigm shift. Of course, the connection is there, but Lentini’s work has its foundations that correlate to the development of Abstraction. And that has nothing to do with the famous boys club from the 60s. Lentini’s oeuvre deals with something more than formal concerns. Like in the cases of Robert Delauney or Paul Klee, the artist’s goal is in vision itself. “What you see is what you see,” Stella famously proclaimed. In Lentini’s work, the question is how you see what you see. The enigma of visibility is what the artist is after.

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Daniel Graham Loxton. Portrait by Salem Hilal

Daniel Graham Loxton with Alex Vlasov

March 11, 2024 Painter's Tape

I first met Daniel Graham Loxton about two years ago in Cleveland. Seeing his work and chatting with him was a blast. All the time after, we stayed connected online. Periodically talking about Jonathan Lasker, Peter Acheson, painting, and Loxton’s work or mine. His words often have an aphoristic quality, his vocabulary is rich, and he is always in search of something deeper than a practical response. Alluring stories and descriptions of Loxton amass like brushstrokes on his picture planes. Loxton’s remarkable candor opens up a range of topics essential to painting, such as love or beauty. I can’t wait to see Dan and his work in person again.

-Alex Vlasov

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Daniel Graham Loxton. Portrait by Salem Hilal

Daniel Graham Loxton with Alex Vlasov

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