Interviews by Brainard Carey

Francine Tint In the Studio

Over more than five decades, Francine Tint has created a remarkable body of work. Her paintings display an exhilarating freedom of execution combined with an original and frequently surprising color sensibility, varying in size from 10 inches to nearly 20 feet. Her brushwork ranges from languorous and undulating swaths of paint to aggressive and agitated gestures. Her works speak of a powerful and unwavering commitment to the visual and emotional vocabulary of abstract painting, and they embody the artist's personal and deeply held belief in the power of intuitive creation. ​

Tint's direct heritage may be traced to Abstract Expressionism and Color Field painting. Her admiration for those artists is enormous, but she also reaches more deeply into art history. Artists who are touchstones for Tint include Édouard Manet, Francisco Goya, Pompeian frescoes from the Roman Empire, and especially J.M.W Turner for his reliance on inspiration and radical painting techniques. She is particularly fond of 16th-century Mannerist painters; Jacopo Pontormo's idiosyncratic colors and anatomical and spatial distortions fascinate Tint. She also has a deep interest in Asian brush paintings. Recently, Tint has been mining her books on paleolithic cave paintings where she is captivated by their creators' profound identification with the animals they depicted, an identification which extends to handprints stenciled directly onto the cave walls. She is reminded of the foot and handprints that appear in her paintings. ​

Tint’s work has been exhibited in over thirty solo shows in the United States and Europe, and is in the permanent collections of numerous museums including the Clement Greenberg collection at the Portland Art Museum and the Krannert Art Museum in Chicago. Her work is in private and corporate collections including Pepsi Co. and Mount Sinai Hospital.

Francine Tint, Golden Flutter, 2024, Acrylic on canvas, 54 X 39 in. (137.2 x 99.1 cm), Copyright Upsilon Gallery

Francine Tint, Impressions, 2024, Acrylic on canvas, 52 1/2 x 36 in. (133.3 x 91.4 cm), Copyright Upsilon Gallery

Francine Tint, Impressions, 2024, Acrylic on canvas, 52 1/2 x 36 in. (133.3 x 91.4 cm), Copyright Upsilon Gallery

Mala Iqbal was born in the Bronx in 1973 and grew up in a household where three cultures and four languages intersected. "The Edge of an Encounter," a solo show of her paintings and works on paper is currently on view at JJ Murphy Gallery in New York until November 9, 2024. Other solo exhibitions were at Soloway Gallery in Brooklyn; Ulterior Gallery, Bellwether Gallery, and PPOW in New York; Taylor University in Upland, Indiana; Twelve Gates Arts in Philadelphia; and Richard Heller Gallery in Los Angeles.

Her series of collaborative paintings, made with Angela Dufresne, was shown in October 2021 at the Richard and Dolly Maass Gallery, SUNY Purchase, and at LSU in Baton Rouge in November 2023. Her work has been exhibited in group shows throughout the United States as well as in Australia, China, Europe, and India. Her work has been reviewed in various publications including The New York Times, The Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic and The New Yorker. Iqbal has been awarded artist residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, The Fine Arts Work Center, and the Hermitage Artist Retreat. She received a Joan Mitchell Fellowship in 2023. Mala Iqbal lives and works in New York City.

Animals, 2024 Oil on canvas 12 x 16 inches

Ghost Friend, 2024 Gouache and crayon on gray paper 4 x 6 inches.

Interrupture, 2024 Oil on canvas 72 x 96 inches.

©Studio ROBIN KID - Portrait of the artist at his studio in the Paris area. 

Robin Kid (b. 1991), is a self-taught multidisciplinary artist from Dutch descent. Raised by his grand parents in a post war little mining town in the rural south of Holland, Robin had difficulties fitting in at school and preferred to rush home to find his refuge in front of the American programs on TV.

From re-runs of Davy Crocket, music videos on MTV to explosive fights on Jerry Springer and the commercials in between, Robin was mesmerized by the spectacle and power of American consumerism.

After dropping out of high school and a short-lived career at Mc Donalds, he decided he would teach himself to paint and sculpt through YouTube as a way to navigate today’s world by drawing on the one of his childhood. His work hijacks a variety of social, political and traditional imagery of the past and present, with rebellious, religious, fantastical and in some ways offensive undertones. He pulls intuitively from the world of advertising, the Internet, the entertainment industry and his childhood memories, to produce ambitious, enigmatic and thought-provoking narratives, which question our polarized world of the 21st century.

In parallel, Robin Kid’s solo exhibition The Future Is Old is on view at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art MOCO in Barcelona following his three-year solo exhibition at MOCO Amsterdam, and his monumental sculpture The State We Are In, In The Consciousness Of A Country’s Empty Mind as well as four paintings by the artist are on view at the Twenty-First Century Museum 21C in Louisville as part of the group exhibition This We Believe after its three-year exhibition at the 21C Museum in Chicago. ROBIN KID works are part of public, corporate and private collections in Switzerland, France, Netherlands, Spain, Germany, China, South Korea, the UK and the USA.

Searching for America by ROBIN KID - Solo show at TEMPLON NYC from Sept 04 to Oct 26 2024. 1 Left - SFA III and IV - Oil paint on canvas cast aluminum stainless steel various materials - Variable dimensions ©ROBIN KID. Courtesy the artist. 2 Middle - SFA VI - Oil paint on canvas cast aluminum stainless steel various materials - Variable dimensions ©ROBIN KID. Courtesy the artist. 3 Right - SFA VIII - Oil paint on canvas cast aluminum stainless steel various materials - Variable dimensions ©ROBIN KID. Courtesy the artist.

It’s New Venom, 2023-2024 – ROBIN KID Oil on canvas, stainless steel, aluminum. 118 × 196 × 12 in. / 300 × 497 × 30 cm.

Can You Tell Me The Way To Sesame Sreet?, 2023-2024 – ROBIN KID Oil on canvas, stainless steel, aluminum. 149 × 158 × 12 in. / 380 × 400 × 30 cm.

Adam Simon (born Hampstead, England, 1952) is a visual artist based in Brooklyn, NY, known both for his paintings and for projects addressing the presentation and distribution of art. Simon’s paintings often mine cultural phenomena, including newspaper layout and content, stock photography, iconic images from art history and (most recently) corporate logos. His current exhibition at OSMOS address, in NYC, combines fragments from past paintings.

Simon’s public projects began with Four Walls, an artists’ forum and exhibition space that featured one-evening exhibitions with discussion. Simon co-directed Four Walls first with Michele Araujo in Hoboken, NJ (1984-1988) and subsequently with Mike Ballou in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, NY (1990-1998). The Four Walls archives are now housed in the Smithsonian Archive of American Art. Simon’s other well-known public project was the Fine Art Adoption Network, in collaboration with the NYC nonprofit, Art in General. Beginning in 2006, over 350 artists posted images of works they were willing to give to adopters they selected from among those that solicited the works online. Over 600 works were adopted through FAAN.

Simon has exhibited his paintings in the United States and Europe. He has been the recipient of several awards and grants including a NYC Percent for Art commission and a Yaddo artist’s residency.

As Much As 18 x 14 inches, acrylic on canvas mounted on wood panel 2024

 SeeSaw by Neatlight 48 x 36 inches, acrylic on canvas mounted on wood panel 2024

Gloaming 48 x 36 inches, acrylic on canvas mounted on wood panel 2024

Soumya Netrabile (b. 1966, Bangalore, India) received a BFA from the School of Art Institute of Chicago and a BS in Electrical Engineering from Rutgers University. Recent solo exhibitions include Rachel Uffner Gallery (New York, NY); Andrew Rafacz (Chicago, IL); Anat Egbi (Los Angeles, CA); Gana Art (Seoul, South Korea); Pt.2 Gallery (Oakland, CA); and The Journal (New York, NY). Recent group exhibitions include Andrew Rafacz (Chicago, IL); Anat Egbi (Los Angeles, CA); Rachel Uffner Gallery (New York, NY); Trinta Gallery (Santiago de Compostela, Spain); Indigo + Madder (London, UK); and Karma (New York, NY). Netrabile has exhibited in art fairs in Chicago, Miami, New York, San Francisco, Dallas, Seoul, and Hong Kong. Her work is in the public collections of the Orange County Museum of Art (Costa Mesa, CA); Crocker Art Museum (Sacramento, CA); University Club of Chicago (Chicago, IL); Aïshti Foundation (Jal El Dib, Lebanon); and Museu Inimá de Paula (Belo Horizonte, Brazil). Netrabile lives and works in Chicago, IL.

Soumya Netrabile, Passage, 2024, oil on canvas, 48 x 60 in (121 x 152 cm), courtesy of the artist and Rachel Uffner Gallery.

Soumya Netrabile, Wild Donkeys at Blackrock, 2024, oil on canvas, 24 x 24 in (60.96 x 60.96 cm), courtesy of the artist and Rachel Uffner Gallery.

Soumya Netrabile, Water tower, 2024, oil on canvas, 60 x 72 in (152 x 182 cm), courtesy of the artist and Rachel Uffner Gallery.

Hein Koh (b. 1976, Jersey City, N.J.) lives and works in Brooklyn. She graduated from Dartmouth College with a dual B.A. in studio art and psychology in 1998, and received her M.F.A. in painting from Yale University in 2004. 

Koh has exhibited internationally, receiving features in Artforum, ArtNews, The Atlantic, The Brooklyn Rail, The Huffington Post, Hyperallergic, New York Magazine, The New York Times, Time Out New York, and The Wall Street Journal, among others. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Garage Museum in Russia and the Xiao Museum in China.

In 2019, the artist mounted her first public installation at Rockefeller Center with the Art Production Fund. In 2021, Koh presented her first institutional solo show at SCAD Savannah College of Art and Design Museum, titled ‘Hope & Sorrow’. The site-specific installation transformed the museum’s Jewel Boxes into gardens for larger-than-life anthropomorphized flowers—made up of the artist’s very own soft-sculptures of metallic spandex, velvet, and satin, set against vinyl backdrops and Astroturf. In 2022, her first exhibition catalogue was printed in conjunction with her solo show ‘On the Edge of a Precipice’ at the gallery. ‘Hope Springs Eternal’ marks our fourth solo project with Koh, and her first in the main gallery space at 16 East 55th Street.

Hein Koh, Awake, 2024, Acrylic and oil on canvas, 72 x 96 inches (182.9 x 243.8 cm)

Hein Koh, Mammo, 2024, Acrylic, oil, and oil stick on canvas, 96 x 72 inches (243.8 x 182.9 cm)

Hein Koh, Four Burners, 2024, Oil and oil stick on canvas, 30 x 22 inches (76.2 x 55.9 cm)

Hein Koh, Drooping Flower, 2024, Acrylic, aluminum foil, archival spray varnish, armature wire, concrete, copper pipe, cotton string, duct tape, epoxy clay, fiberglass cloth, gauze, plaster, styrofoam, Weldbond glue. 62 x 26 x 29 inches (157.5 x 66 x 73.7 cm)

Dike Blair (b. 1952, New Castle, Pennsylvania) uses gouache, oil, his own photographs, and strategies appropriated from Postminimalist sculpture to create intimate tableaux that transform quotidian sights and materials into exercises in formalism. A writer and teacher as well as an artist, Blair came up in the downtown scene of 1970s New York among punk rockers and Postmodernists. In the early 1980s, against prevailing art world trends toward Neo-Expressionism, he began rendering scenes from his life in gouache on paper. These ongoing diaristic paintings are devoid of human figures but nonetheless evoke the specter of the artist whose daily life plays out at a remove across their finely-wrought surfaces. Blair lives in New York and Sullivan County.

Blair’s recent solo exhibitions include Edward Hopper House, Nyack, New York (2024); Karma (Los Angeles, 2023, New York, 2022); Various Small Fires, Seoul (2020); The Modern Institute, Glasgow (2019); Linn Lühn, Düsseldorf (2019); Secession, Vienna (2016); and Jüergen Becker Gallery, Hamburg (2016). In 2022, Karma presented an exhibition of Blair’s paintings of Gloucester alongside Edward Hopper’s paintings of the same small Massachusetts city. Blair’s work is featured in the collections of the Whitney Museum, New York; Brooklyn Museum, New York; The Morgan Library & Museum, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Dallas Museum of Art; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, among others. Blair’s work is on view in Matinee: Dike Blair at Edward Hopper House, Nyack, New York through October 27, 2024 and at Karma, New York through October 26, 2024.

Dike Blair, Untitled, 2024, Gouache, pencil and chalk on paper, 15 x 20 inches, 38.1 x 50.8 cm, 16 5/8 x 21 5/8 inches, 42.23 x 54.93 cm (framed), © Dike Blair. Courtesy the artist and Karma.

Dike Blair, Untitled, 2024, Gouache, pencil and chalk on paper, 15 x 20 inches, 38.10 x 50.80 cm, 16 5/8 x 21 5/8 inches, 42.23 x 54.93 cm (framed), © Dike Blair. Courtesy the artist and Karma.

Dike Blair, Untitled, 2024, Oil on aluminum panel, 28 1/8 x 21 1/8, 71.44 x 53.66 x 2.54 cm, 28 3/4 x 21 3/4 inches, 73.02 x 55.24 cm (framed), © Dike Blair. Courtesy the artist and Karma.

Photo by Brad Trone

Maja Ruznic (b. Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1983) fuses personal narrative, psychoanalysis, mythology, and esoteric thought into vivid paintings that hybridize figuration and abstraction. Painting variably with oils and gouache on immense and small scales alike, she extracts order from layers of diluted pigment. Ruznic’s practice is informed by her studies, from Slavic shamanism and alchemy to Jungian psychoanalysis and sacred geometry.

Imbued with a discordant beauty, her compositions emerge without a premeditated outcome. Ruznic’s introspective, mystical approach places her into a lineage of visionary

painters including Paul Klee and Hilma af Klint. Ruznic lives in Placitas, New Mexico.

Recent solo exhibitions include those held at Karma (New York, 2024, Los Angeles, 2023); Tamarind Institute, Albuquerque (2022); Karma, New York (2022); and Harwood Museum of Art, Taos, New Mexico (2021). Ruznic’s work is held in the collections of the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California; Dallas Art Museum; EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Espoo, Finland; Harwood Museum of Art, Taos, New Mexico; Jiménez–Colón Collection, Puerto Rico; Portland Art Museum, Oregon; Rachofsky House, Dallas; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Her work was recently on view in the Whitney Biennial 2024: Even Better Than the Real Thing at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

Maja Ruznic, On the Other Side, 2023, Oil on canvas, 100 x 150 x 2 1/2 inches, 254 x 381 x 6.35 cm. © Maja Ruznic. Courtesy the artist and Karma

Maja Ruznic, Arrival of Wild Gods II, 2023, Oil on canvas, 100 x 150 x 2 1/2 inches, 254 x 381 x 6.35 cm. © Maja Ruznic. Courtesy the artist and Karma

Maja Ruznic, Geometry of Sadness, 2023, Oil on canvas, 100 x 150 x 2 1/2 inches, 254 x 381 x 6.35 cm. © Maja Ruznic. Courtesy the artist and Karma

Maja Ruznic, Arrangement of a Nervous System, 2023, Gouache on paper, 16 3/8 x 11 5/8 inches, 41.59 x 29.53 cm. 24 x 29 1/4 inches, 60.96 x 74.30 cm (framed). © Maja Ruznic. Courtesy the artist and Karma

By Danielle Durchslag October 6, 2024

Leora Fridman

Leora Fridman is a writer whose work is concerned with issues of identity, care, dis/ability, and embodiment.

She is author of Static Palace, a collection of essays about chronic illness, art and politics, Bound Up: On Kink, Power & Belonging,just out this month, and other books of prose, poetry and translation. She is currently faculty at the Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts at The New School and Director of the New Jewish Culture Fellowship.

 

 

 

A provocative look at historical trauma as bound, incarnated, and processed through intimate and sexual expression.

In an autotheoretical journey through bondage, domination, and intimacy, Leora Fridman uncovers how Jewish historical trauma can be challenged and explored in embodied relations. Drawing on her experiences as an American Jew in Germany, Fridman delves into BDSM practices and experimental communities from Oakland to Berlin. This work weaves personal encounters with critical analysis founded in feminist theory, queer literature, Holocaust history, and memory studies. 

Bound Up begins with kink and leads us through a sensual and intelligent approach to intergenerational trauma and lived politics. What kind of healing can take place in the relational and physical realm? How can intimacy contradict and complement the process of political reparations? Fridman layers a nuanced understanding of shame, responsibility, and power with explorations of cinema, contemporary art, and popular culture to shed light on topics from personal and political relationships to victimhood and blame. Both timely and timeless, this work is an address to history and the contemporary moment, relevant to Jews, diasporic scholars, and all exploring ethical relationships with history and with other humans.

Margaret Cogswell- In Mother’s yukata, giving presentation on my work in Japanese at the opening for my mixed media installation- Karasu to Issyoni Kaerimasyo: A River of Memories in Ichinomiya, Japan- 8/24/2024.

Margaret Cogswell is a mixed-media installation artist residing in West Shokan, New York. Cogswell is the recipient of numerous awards, including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2009),  Pollock-Krasner Foundation (2017-18, 1991 & 1987) and the New York Foundation for the Arts (2007, 1993). Cogswell’s most recent project (2024), “ Karasu to Issyoni Kaerimasyo:  A River of Memories”, was made possible by a generous grant from The Tree of Life Foundation. Cogswell was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and raised in Japan where she lived until she was 13 years old.

Since 2003, the main focus of Cogswell's work has been an ongoing series of RIVER FUGUES projects exploring the interdependency of people, industry and rivers. RIVER FUGUES began in Cleveland, Ohio with Cuyahoga Fugues, a mixed-media installation inspired by and incorporating generations of stories reflecting the life and dreams embodied by the Cuyahoga River.  Expanding on this idea, Moving the Waters: Ashokan Fugues was created for a solo exhibition at the Cue Art Foundation in NYC in 2014, and re-created in 2016 for a solo exhibition at the Kleinart /James Center for the Arts, Woodstock, NY.

RIVER FUGUES have been commissioned by museums and art centers for exhibitions nationally and internationally including  Moving the Water(s):  Croton Fugues, at Mid-Manhattan Library of New York Public Library, in New York, NY ( solo 2017); Water Soundings, for the Zendai Zhujiajiao Art Museum, China (solo 2014);  Wyoming River Fugues at the Art Museum, University of Wyoming, Laramie (solo 2012);  Hudson River Fugues at Tang Museum, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY, (group 2009-2010); River Fugues for a traveling group exhibition at the BOZAR Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels, Belgium (2007), the Monaco Ministry of Culture (2008) and Chicago Field Museum (2009); Mississippi River Fugues, Art Museum, University of Memphis, Tennessee (solo 2008); Buffalo River Fugues at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Buffalo, NY (solo 2006); Hudson Weather Fugues at Wave Hill, NYC (group 2005), and Cuyahoga Fugues at SPACES Gallery, Cleveland, Ohio (solo 2003).

All RIVER FUGUES mixed-media installation projects include a parallel body of works on paper. Recent exhibitions of such works include In the Elements at Kentler International Drawing Space in Brooklyn, NY (2022);  Fragile Rainbow at Williamsburg Art and Historical Center, Williamsburg, NYC, NY (2022).  Upcoming in March, 2023, Cogswell’s work will be included in an exhibition titled This Earth at the Concord Center for the Visual Arts (Concord, Massachusetts) for artists who were awarded residencies at the Montello Foundation in the Great Basin of Nevada in 2022.

Margaret Cogswell, Karasu to Issyoni Kaerimasyo: A River of Memories (2024)Mixed-media installation: sunset “painted” with tulle; river= fishing nets over wire fencing mesh; LED candles on river; fishing nets on floor; black shadow on veneer board; fishing pole with bamboo & wire; photo in white fishing net; grey acrylic ground cloth on walls & bamboo structure; crows painted with sumi on washi paper stitched onto tulle and stretched over bamboo circle frame.

Margaret Cogswell, Karasu to Issyoni Kaerimasyo: A River of Memories (2024) Detail of photo of artist at 4 years old with playmate in swing in hometown of Marugame, Japan.

Margaret Cogswell, Departing - Fearlessly Buoyant (2024) Collaged watercolor, sumi ink, acrylic ink & color pencil on paper. 26” x 47” (unframed dimensions)