Terry Winters / In Blue / 2008 / Oil on linen / 88 × 112 inches / Matthew Marks Gallery

Terry Winters has a bunch of interesting gems in the Brooklyn Rail interview with Phong Bui, David Levi Strauss and Peter Lamborn Wilson here are a couple

Bui: Are you saying that time can be condensed in the physical act of painting could have a pictorial equivalence of objects being eroded by real time?

Winters: Yes, in that every construction is a destruction. The paintings are a consequence of both of those activities and it’s through the unpredictable and uncontrollable nature of that activity that the pictures emerge. In a way, I’m trying to move forward and to work quickly and proactively. And the destruction that happens in the course of that is what allows the images to develop.

Levi Strauss: Looking at these paintings, one sees into a very complicated space, initially created by the transparency of the paint against the urgency of the grid. You have the knots, that are made from squares and rectangles painted so as to evoke spheres that are then set in motion, and these knots are suspended in a grid, with another grid behind, which is also in motion and bent or warped by radiating lines. Out of all this movement, the eye and mind create what can be a quite vertiginous space. I’m curious about how that space operates when you’re making the painting. Are you painting inside that space, or do you only go into it afterward, in viewing it?

Winters: No, I’m in the space. I mean, I’m not trying to manipulate it in a conscious way. I’m trying to feel my way through the process. It’s haptic. I’m building it right on the surface and the optical consequences are somehow woven into the surprise of the image itself. In some way, all the meaning is tied up in that space. It’s that Joycean condition about the organized chaos, the “chaosmos”. The painting is a product of all the conscious decisions that I have made but the result is something unforeseeable. It’s a paradoxical object.

{Read the full interview}

 Thought this was interesting.

Andreas Gursky / Hamm Bergswerk OST / 2008 / C-Print mounted on Plexiglass in Artist’s Frame / 120 7/8 x 88 inches, 307 x 224 cm / Matthew Marks Gallery

A photograph made in a coal mine near Gursky’s home in Düsseldorf, called “Hamm, Bergwerk Ost”, will also be on view. The photograph shows a locker room ceiling and the innovative way in which the miners store their clothes. Founded in 1873, the mine extends to a depth of 1,500 meters and employs 2,500. Earlier this year it was announced that the mine will be shut in 2010 as part of a government plan to close all coal facilities by 2018 because it has become cheaper to acquire coal from abroad.

Andreas Gursky will be on view at Matthew Marks Gallery, 523 West 24th Street (between 10th and 11th Avenues) and 526 West 22nd Street, through Wednesday, December 24th, 2008. The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M.

It’s been a busy week between work, painting, and hanging a group show last Sunday, but I was able to get to a bunch of shows that I will try to write about this weekend. Stay tuned….

Chihung Yang @ ChinaSquare
Tom Leaver @ McKenzie Fine Art
Tony Magar @ Mike Weiss Gallery
Andre Butzer and Walter Robinson @ Metro Pictures
Miriam Schapiro @ Flomenhaft
Subhankar Banerjee @ Sundaram Tagore
Andre Millner @ Tria Gallery
Monica Mary @ Explorations
Deborah Ragasto & Michael Souter @ Allen Gallery
Tening Rigdol & Palden Weinreb @ Dinter Fine Art
Rudol De Crignis @ Peter Blum Chelsea
Los Carpinteros @ Sean Kelly
100 Stories @ Hosfelt Gallery
Peter Hujar @ Matthew Marks
Martians & Homeland Insecurity @ Esso Gallery
ASS•AS•SIN: hashish anyone @ Lombard-Freid Projects
New Ukrainian Painting @ White Box