Emily Ferguson Puts Her Spin on Andersen's Red Shoes @ Half Gallery In Los Angeles

top: Cecile Tulkens
skirt: Mugler couture


photography by Maddy Rotman
styling by Grace Dougherty
hair and makeup by Lilly Pollan


Figures swathed in ribbons as though wrapped in a breeze or a melody, Emily Ferguson borrows from music, cinema, art history and her own biography for this latest exhibition in Los Angeles. The title track of the show is a heavily chiarascuro-ed underpainting capturing an adolescent moment of exuberance, a feeling echoed in “Dancer” albeit a more specified form of activation. The painter had recently rewatched the 1948 movie Red Shoes based on the Hans Christian Andersen story and decided to put her pirouette on this ballet narrative. In real life, Emily considers herself more of a tomboy and likes that her femininity finds a release in these compositions. “Adorned” explores this tension with a young woman sporting a decidedly butch flight cap in the style of Amelia Earhart, but specked with tiny colorful bows, a direct reference to the artists late grandmother who was a seamstress. Perhaps the North Star of the exhibition is a self-portrait done in the style of Alice Neel’s famous nude: a repose of empowerment and vulnerability. 

 
 

dress: Norma Kamali
tights: Falke
shoes: St. John

Read Our Interview Of Painter Anna Weyant On The Occasion Of Her Loose Screw Exhibition @ Blum & Poe In Los Angeles →

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Falling, living, laughing, touching—the still, subdued, painterly fantasies of Anna Weyant sway to and fro from the warmly resplendent hues of the Dutch Masters, to the madness of Otto Dix, to the gold of an Instagram selfie’s golden hour. The work, much of it created under the shadow of a global pandemic, are prime moments of a zeitgeist suddenly hollowed by the screeching halt of life as we know it: backgrounds are blackened out, clouds obscure, and curtains drape with muted uncertainties. Everything is vague and everything is a warm oblivion, like the sand of an hourglass exploded and the grains took the shape of a world that resembled its former self. But time doesn’t stop on a dime, it lurches, chugs forward with ghostlike animation even when your foot is on the break, which is what makes Weyant’s paintings so exciting—brushstroke by brushstroke, they are full of that potential energy. In the following interview, Bill Powers and Anna Weyant discuss her upcoming show at Blum & Poe in Los Angeles. Click here to read more.

Rene Ricard "So, Who Left Who?" @ Half Gallery In New York

Rene Ricard, "So, Who Left Who," will be on view until April 26, 2017 at Half Gallery in New York. photographs by Adam Lehrer

Jay Miriam "Catch The Heavenly Bodies" @ Half Gallery In New York

Jay Miriam's first solo show in New York, Catch the Heavenly Bodies, brings the viewer into a land of painting limbo. At first each figure shares its secret past only with Miriam, eventually breaching the imaginative and entering into the physical world. A Rorschach inquisition begins to take shape while lines stretch and recompose. Limbs grow from arms to legs; faces turn from holy to siren. Jay Miriam "Catch The Heavenly Bodies" will be on view until July 27, 2016 at Half Gallery in New York. photographs by Adam Lehrer

Here Are Six Fascinating Things We Learned About Artist Justin Adian →

Artist Justin Adian titled his recently closed show at Skarstedt Gallery ‘Fort Worth’ after his hometown. The show features Adian’s bold organic paintings created by stretching oil enamel-painted canvases around foam cushions then mounted on wood. Some people would argue that Adian’s work is abstract, and they’d be right most of the time. But Adian also engages in pop culture iconography; one painting references Raymond Pettibon’s infamous Black Flag logo. Adian doesn’t so much mash-up high and low as he does reject high-low as a concept. Good art is good art. Click here to read six things we learned about Adian during his talk at Skarstedt Gallery. 

"Take It Easy" Is Georgian Artist Tamuna Sirbiladze's First Solo Show In The United States @ Half Gallery In New York

"Take It Easy" is Georgian artist Tamuna Sirbiladze's first solo show in the United States. A new set of unstretched banners teetering between the figurative and the gestural include oil stick pigeons, elongated noses and Matisse vases. These vibrant works hang over jungle-green walls mirroring the murals of Balthus at the Villa Medici in Rome. Earlier this year, Tamuna presented larger oil stick paintings from this same series in a group show at Secession in Vienna, curated by Ugo Rondinone. Tamuna is based in Vienna and was married to the late Austrian artist Franz West. Take It Easy will be on view until September 3, 2015 at Half Gallery in New York. photographs by Adam Lehrer