Also in the Weekly this week, my Editor’s Choice short review of The Red Show at Bridgette Mayer Gallery. Here’s the link and below is the article with some pictures.
“The Red Show”
Through Dec. 23. Bridgette Mayer Gallery, 709 Walnut St. 215.413.8893.
Michael Manuel’s Kyoto, stained glass and audio, from The Red Show.
”The Red Show” has more alizarin per square inch than any show in town, with the possible exception of “Tesoros,” the PMA’s roundup of colonial Latin American art. While “Tesoros” runneth over with blood-red hearts and flowing red robes, the Mayer show—commissioned new works by 13 gallery artists and one outsider—is mostly abstract.
Kate Davis Caldwell’s painted Polaroids
By design or by serendipity, the show suggests the season’s festivities: bubbles and ribbons, ebullience, love and optimism.
Tim McFarlane, All that could be
Tim McFarlane’s big, bold All That Could Be—a monochromatic work in shades of pink and wine—continues the artist’s motif of overlapping ladders that suggest teeming masses of people. Contemplative like Rothko but more generous and community-spirited, this piece may have antiwar underpinnings. For me, the title nods to the Army’s old “Be All You Can Be” slogan, and the flow is tinged with blood.
Neil Anderson, Red Dancer
Also notable in a solid show are Neil Anderson’s eye-popping Red Dancer and Charles Burwell’s Red Line With Three Figures. (Burwell is a new artist with the gallery.)
Charles Burwell, Red Line with Three Figures
Kate Davis Caldwell’s faux Polaroid paintings and Michael Manuel’s eco-themed stained glass with audio component by Clint Takeda are reminders of beauty’s fragility. Excellent show.
