The remarkable exhibition now at the Newcomb Art Gallery — a retrospective of Ida Kohlmeyer’s painting and sculpture — does much to cement her position among our major artists. Curated by Professor Michael Plante, the show clarifies, especially, Kohlmeyer’s commerce with Abstract Expressionism — her debt to certain of the movement’s pioneers and, notably, her singular protraction of its imperatives.
Texas photographer Ted Kincaid, exhibiting concurrently at Arthur Roger, seems to reexplore one aspect of the old Romantic impulse — its penchant for exalting the look of nature. Of course, Kincaid’s methods, it must quickly be said, are decidedly of our time.
Symbolically speaking, Stewart, whose exhibit “Crosscurrents” is on display at Arthur Roger Gallery, undoes some of the damage mankind has inflicted on the environment. She begins each of her paintings by wall-papering a large canvas with a layer of architectural plans or oil field maps — things that suggest man’s encroachment on the land.
All right, so this is not the title of either of the solo October exhibits at Arthur Roger’s two, separate exhibition spaces. Rather, Jesus Moroles’ is entitled “Broken Earth” at the Arthur Roger Gallery Project location, and James Drake’s is “City of Tells” at Arthur Roger Gallery on Julia.
Fans of Ida Kohlmeyer, almost certainly this region’s best known abstract contemporary artist before her death in 1997, have two — no, make that three — good reasons to rejoice this autumn. Or maybe even four, the most immediate being this System of Color retrospective of iconic selections from her vast output.