Interviews by Brainard Carey

Tony Bechara, April 29 2018, ©Maku-Lopez

Tony Bechara’s dynamic, color-saturated paintings create a pure field of physical perception. You can see a walk through of his show here.

Each canvas is meticulously painted with multicolor areas of quarter-inch squares. Using strips of masking tape, Bechara arranges carefully formulated hues into a playful and invigorating optical surface, made up of a multitude of small colored units. The work’s overall rhythm is determined by a process that is systemic but designed to allow combinations of color to emerge by chance. Bechara cites influences across art history, including the colors of Matisse and Vuillard, the pointillism of Seurat and Signac, traditions of weaving and crafting, the precision of hard-edge abstraction, and the famed Byzantine-era mosaics at Ravenna. These influences are evidenced in Bechara’s approach to painting: he uses a tile-like grid as the basis for his explorations into the principles of color usage, particularly the intersection of organization and randomness. The division of the surface of the painting into small modular boxes is similar to pixels; the gaze is constantly in motion. Bechara presents the viewer with their retinal and neurological relationship to color, balancing one’s immediate impression of hue and the overarching logic of pattern.

Tony Bechara was born in Puerto Rico in 1942 and today lives and works in New York City. A graduate of Georgetown University, Bechara attended Georgetown Law School and New York University before later studying at the Sorbonne in Paris and the New York School of Visual Art, benefiting in particular from the lessons of Richard Serra and Joseph Raphael. In the 1970s and 80s, Bechara was included in exhibitions organized by the Boulder, Colorado based Criss-Cross pattern printing collective and featured work in the group exhibition ‘Islamic Allusions’ at the Alternative Museum in New York. His work was included in the 1975 Biennial Exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. In 1980 he was granted a fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts, and in 1981 he was included in ‘The Shaped Field: Eccentric Formats’ at MoMA PS1 in New York. Bechara has had solo exhibitions at the Alternative Museum in 1988; Artists Space in New York in 1993; and el Museo del Arte Puerto Rico in 2008. Recently, Bechara has participated in exhibitions ‘With Pleasure: Pattern and Decoration in American Art, 1972-1985; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA, USA (2019), which travelled to the Hessel Museum of Art, CCS Bard, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, USA (2021); ‘Point of Departure: Abstraction 1958-Present’, Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln, NE, USA (2021); and ‘Artists Choose Parrish’, Parrish Art Museum, NY, USA (2023).His work can be found in numerous public and private collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, USA; El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY, USA; el Museo del Arte, San Juan, Puerto Rico; the Sheldon Museum of Art, University of Nebraska, Lincoln NE, USA; Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT, USA; and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.

Tony Bechara, Abstract Composition, 1970-71 Acrylic on canvas, 208.6 x 166.4 x 2.9 cm82 1/8 x 65 1/2 x 1 1/8 in Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, USA ©Tony Bechara, Courtesy Lisson Gallery.

Tony Bechara, Random 28 (Blue version), 2023 Acrylic on canvas, 152.4 x 152.4 ©Tony Bechara, Courtesy Lisson Gallery.

Tony Bechara, Perseus, 2010, Acrylic on canvas, 152.4 x 152.4 x 3.8 cm 60 x 60 x 1 1/2 ©Tony Bechara, Courtesy Lisson Gallery

New York based multidisciplinary artist Michael Dayton Hermann creates work that draws upon the inescapable bombardment of digital imagery to confront the familiar and examine the subconscious from unexpected perspectives. Hermann has exhibited consistently for the past 20 years following receipt of his MFA from Hunter College in NYC where he studied art theory with conceptual artist Robert Morris and executed his thesis under the advisement of Nari Ward. His polymath approach to life rejects easy categorization. He is as adept in his studio as he is in business, philanthropy, and public speaking aways centering the vital role visual art plays in society.

He is the author of two books: Warhol on Basquiat and Andy Warhol: Love, Sex, and Desire and is a member of the board at Children’s Museum of Art. In his role at the Warhol Foundation, Hermann conceived Andy Warhol: Machine Made, a ground-breaking online auction of five unique NFTs presented by Christie’s, in addition to developing numerous high-profile Warhol projects including The Andy Warhol Diaries docuseries on Netflix and collaborations with Comme des Garçons, Dior, Tiffany, Absolut and many others, generating nearly $100M in revenue to support the philanthropic work of The Andy Warhol Foundation.

The exhibit discussed is REconstituted at Baxter St, Camera Club of New York.

Michael Dayton, Installation view of REConstituted at Baxter St, Camera Club of New York.

Michael Dayton, Installation view of REConstituted at Baxter St, Camera Club of New York.

Michael Dayton, Installation view of REConstituted at Baxter St, Camera Club of New York.

Vincent Donato Roselli (b. 1995) is a self-taught artist from Staten Island, NY.

His first exposure to painting was graffiti, and he continues to incorporate old school street art methods in his practice. Vincent creates within a chaotic studio space, utilizing a variety of found substances from dust on the floor to old brush water left in glass jars.

He has had solo exhibitions at 81 Leonard Gallery (NY), The National Arts Club (NY) and Chinatown Soup (NY) and has also shown work at venues including Prince Street Gallery (NY) and First Street Gallery (NY).

Vincent Donato, Bliss, 2023, Mixed media, annealed steel wire on canvas; 74 x 52.5 in.

Vincent Donato, Peg O’ my heart, 2022, Mixed media on linen, 60 x 50 in.

Vincent Donato, Wreath #3, 2024, Annealed steel wire, doli, beeswax, found objects; 15 x 7 x 2 in.

Chase Biado, 2023, Photo by Ed Mumford

Chase Biado said bridging fantasy and art once felt off limits, as if he were “smuggling childhood interests into a contemporary conversation.” In reality, fantasy is a critical facet of adult life. “We're having these epic mythological experiences — in our heads and in our relationships,” he said. “But on the exterior, we’re going about our daily lives.” Biado's style, draped in jubilation, entices viewers to imagine, for a second, what else is possible.

Chase Biado (b. 1985) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. He received a BFA from Portland State University, Portland, Oregon in 2012. Biado exhibits both under his own name as well as one half of the artist duo A History of Frogs alongside his partner Antonia Pinter. Recent solo exhibitions of Biado’s include The Pit and Noon Projects in Los Angeles, CA. He has also shown with VODA, Seoul, South Korea; Marta, Los Angeles, CA; Bozo Mag, Los Angeles, CA; The Neutra VDL House, Los Angeles, CA; Helen’s Costume, Portland, OR; Ruscha and Co., Los Angeles, CA; and participated in DIMIN’s inaugural exhibition.

Chase Biado, The Elf Disappeared, 2024.

Chase Biado, Music for Field Mice, 2024.

Chase Biado, Another Night in Elf City, 2023.

Dapper Bruce Lafitte (b. 1972 New Orleans) is a self-trained artist who began making and showing work in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to commemorate the then-decimated street culture of parades and marching bands of New Orleans.

He has exhibited locally, nationally and internationally, notably at the Prospect Biennial, New Orleans, and in solo shows at the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum, Biloxi, MS; M+B Gallery, Los Angeles; Fierman Gallery, New York; Gryder Gallery, New Orleans; Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta, and Vacant Gallery, Tokyo. Lafitte’s work has been in group shows and fairs at the Brodsky Center, New York; Dieu Donné, New York; Tatjana Pieters, Belgium; and the Outsider Art Fair, Paris. Lafitte’s next solo exhibition, The Game is Mine, will be at Alchemy Gallery starting March 7. Lafitte’s work is held in the permanent collections of the New Orleans Museum of Art, and has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine and Victory Journal. In 2009, he was a recipient of a Joan Mitchell Foundation artist award and was a mentee by renowned curator and tastemaker Diego Cortez prior to his passing in 2021.

Canal and Carrollton Ave on a Saturday, 62x42 inches archival ink on acid free paper, 2023

Canal and Claiborne Ave Saturday Night, 62x42 inches archival ink on acid free paper, 2024

Fat Tuesday in the Lafitte Projects, 62x42 inches archival ink on acid free paper, 2024

Mathieu Malouf

"I am genuinely trying to make beautiful paintings. Not beautiful by contemporary standards of beauty, but something more atemporal or enduring. My paintings are not anchored in any particular period. I like art that is beautiful, even if that makes no sense in our era. No one discusses whether things are beautiful or not anymore.

It’s more difficult to paint women than men. I have only painted men—nude men, gay men, famous men. I think men can be more ugly and weird, and it doesn’t really matter; they are more forgiving. But painting women is more difficult. I started noticing how intensely omnipresent women were in art, and I thought that I probably have something to learn from that; by trying to paint women, maybe I’ll discover why. It is a way for me to learn about something that people have traditionally thought is beautiful. Painting women is a way to address art history itself. The Odalisque as a historical genre intrigues me. This was a woman who was essentially enslaved, but she was always richly adorned and confidently portrayed. She looked empowered to me, like Manet’s Olympia. The women in my paintings are not goofy like some of my male subjects tend to be. They are not cynical or sarcastic. Maybe painting beautiful women right now is like a comedian today telling a joke from the 1920s.

Penguins have been lingering in my mind for a while. Unlike women, there are not a lot of penguins in art, maybe in a Sigmar Polke. My attraction to them began as a formal one. They are very aesthetically minimal: only three colors and simple shapes. They are crisp and uncomplicated. My painted penguins are materially simple, they are loose and flat, painted in acrylic–unlike the women, who are painted in oil and highly modeled. These two subjects are hard to paint at once, as they occupy different parts of the brain. Maybe there is an allegory there."  - Mathieu Malouf

Malouf lives and works in New York. He has been featured in exhibitions at institutions such as Swiss Institute, New York (2018); Le Consortium, Dijon (2018); LUMA Foundation, Zürich (2017); Artists Space, New York (2017); Stavanger Art Museum (2014); Kunsthalle Lüneburg, (2014); and SculptureCenter, New York (2012). Work by the artist is included in museum collections worldwide, including the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Mathieu Malouf, Untitled, 2023-24 Acrylic and ceramic plates on canvas 86 x 92 inches (218.44 x 233.68 cm)

Mathieu Malouf, The Writer, 2023-24 Oil and ceramic plates on canvas 60 x 70 inches (152.4 x 177.8 cm)

Mathieu Malouf, The Legionnaire, 2023-24 Oil and acrylic on canvas, artist’s frame 35 x 29.5 x 2.5 inches (88.9 x 74.93 x 6.35 cm)

Tom Burckhardt was born in New York City in 1964. He attended SUNY Purchase and graduated with a BFA in painting in 1986, after which he attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.

His work has been the subject of over thirty solo exhibitions at institutions including the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, TX; the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, NY; and the Knoxville Art Museum in Knoxville, TN. Burckhardt was a participant of the 2016 Kochi-Muziris Biennale in Kerala, India and an artist in residence at the Yaddo Foundation in New York State in 2019 and Pepper House, Kochi, India in 2020.

He has received numerous grants and awards, including three grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant, a Guggenheim Foundation Grant, two Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grants, and the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy. He currently teaches part-time at SUNY Purchase.

Tom Burckhardt, Gruntled, 2023  Oil on linen 34 x 28 inches

Tom Burckhardt, Future Rapture, 2023 Oil on linen 77 x 64 inches

Tom Burckhardt,  Shabby Lingo, 2023 Oil on linen 70 x 60 inches

Catalina Schliebener Muñoz

BARRO NY is pleased to present “Manifesto of Immature Abstraction,” an exhibition featuring the works of Ad Minoliti and Catalina Schliebener Muñoz. This show explores queer approaches to abstraction through the use of colors and

shapes that articulate non-binary narratives which counter the coloniality of gender, sexuality, age, and interspecies life.

The gallery space transforms into an abstract dialogue between queer representations of the animal that reinvent their forms by dismantling colonial imaginaries of the childish, immature, and naive. This deconstruction and critique allows the artists to challenge traditional narratives that intervene in the subjectivation of children, disorganizing and transcending through fantasy.

Ad Minoliti

Ad Minoliti’s vibrant abstract compositions radiate a spectrum of hues, using geometric shapes to implicitly suggest faces and animal figures. These works invite viewers into a speculative universe where childhood becomes the tool from whichto experience critical perspectives on artistic movements.Meanwhile, Catalina Schliebener Muñoz presents works made with vinyl cutouts, colored pencils, and embroidery on mat boards and walls. Oscillatingbetween modes of sophistication and craft, the artist uses pastels and the textureof embroidery to invite deep reflection on social and behavioral norms as well asdefinitions of bodily normality imposed on children.

Across their respective styles, both artists use abstraction to disorient childhood’s symbolic straightness, the imperative of extroversion, and the adult- centric demand for seriousness and coherence of identity.  Ad Minoliti employsgeometry and Catalina Schliebener Muñoz uses fragmentation to reinterpret the role of the visual in the social construction of normality. These abstract deconstructions question the stereotypes of mass media, the historical canon of modern art, and contemporary geopolitical narratives, thereby contributing to the decolonization of the modernist social imaginary.

Ad Minoliti, MARGARITA PUNZO, 2022, Acrylic on canvas, 120 x 120 cm, 47.25 x 47.25 in

Ad Minoliti, OSITE, 2022, Acrylic on canvas, 120 x 120 cm, 47.25 x 47.25 in

Catalina Schliebener Muñoz, Growing Sideways Series, (Lovers after MK) - Pair 2021, Sock Monkeys, plexiglass boxes. 10.5 x 24 x 11 in, 26.67 x 60.96 x 27.94 cm

Catalina Schliebener Muñoz, Coloring Book Series, Minnie II, 2023, Vinyl, colored pencil, and embroidery on mat board, 33.3 x 33.3 in 83.82 x 83.82 cm

Adrianne Rubenstein (b. Montreal, 1983) is a painter based in New York.

Solo exhibitions include Magic Show at Broadway Gallery, New York; Blue at Tanya Leighton, Los Angeles; Little Shop of Horrors at Tif Sigfrids, Athens, GA; and Ruby in the Dust at Deli Gallery, New York. Rubenstein will curate an exhibition at Venus, New York upcoming in summer 2024, and will have an exhibition at Tanya Leighton, Berlin, in September. Her work has been covered in Artforum and The New York Times.

Adrianne Rubenstein, Two Waters With Goldfish , 2023 oil on canvas 60 x 72 inches.

Adrianne Rubenstein, Pink Painting, 2023, oil on canvas, 72 x 96 inches.

Adrianne Rubenstein, Embrace, 2022, oil on panel, 36 x 28 inches

RYAN WALLACE’s (b. 1977) mixed media paintings conjure an ethereal space between the material and intangible.

Repurposing fragments from earlier and developing pieces, the artist seams, layers, excavates, and manipulates the surface of his work to incorporate a wealth of textures and techniques. By limiting his resources, Wallace has developed a rich process-based practice whereby each body of work leads to the next in terms of materials and composition.

Wallace’s work has been exhibited at BAM, Brooklyn; Marjorie Barrick Museum, Las Vegas; and University of the Arts, Philadelphia.

Recent group exhibitions include Volery Gallery, Dubai, United Arab Emirates (2022); Bohemian’s Gallery, Natsume Books, Tokyo, Japan (2022); De Boer Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2021); and The Bunker Artspace, West Palm Beach, FL (2019). His works can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, NYC; Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, among others.

RYAN WALLACE, FLICKER I, 2023 Oil, enamel, acrylic, ink, copper, aluminum, fiberglass, paper, canvas and linen 56 x 36 in.

RYAN WALLACE, PERFUMED GARDEN IX, 2023 Oil, enamel, acrylic, canvas, linen, aluminum, copper and fiberglass 48 x 58 in.

RYAN WALLACE, LEAVES TURN INSIDE YOU IV, 2023 Oil, enamel, acrylic, canvas, linen, aluminum, copper and fiberglass 40 x 30 in.