finders keepers
April 25 - March 31
Opening Reception Friday April 25, 6-8 PM
Curated by Cate Holt and Hannah Beerman
“Heidegger’s discussion of the broken hammer suggests when the hammer is working, it disappears from view. When something stops working or cannot be used, it intrudes into consciousness. We might call what cannot be used broken. A break can be how something is revealed: for Heidegger a break is how we are given any access to properties or the like”
—Sarah Ahmen, What’s the Use
Artists:
Sylvia Atwood Sharon Butler Wells Chandler Erin Lee Jones Julia Kunin Sam Linguist Keiko Narahashi Katherine Spencer Steven Thompson Scott Vander Veen B. Wurtz
20 Jay Street, 3rd floor
DUMBO, Brooklyn, NY
Image: Sharon Butler, TEC, 2025, objects, two-sided paintings, installation variable. Studio view.
New Members Exhibition
March 8–29, 2025
Opening Saturday, March 8, 3–6p
Featured Artists:
Sharon Butler, Beth Dary, Carrie Golkin, Erick Johnson, Sarah McDougald Kohn, Russell Maltz, Tom McGlynn, Christian Nguyen, Megan Olson, Alex Paik, Debra Ramsay, Leslie Roberts, Marcy Rosenblat, Sonita Singwi, Audrey Stone, Jason Stopa, Tamar Zinn
Gallery MC
545 West 52nd St, New York, NY 10019
Gallery Hours: Fri–Sun 1–6p
American Abstract Artists is pleased to announce an exhibition featuring its most recently inducted members. This exhibition not only highlights the innovative works by these new member-artists but also continues the organization's 89 year legacy of fostering abstract art and the communities around it, thereby extending the legacy of both non-objective art and American Abstract Artists.
About AAA
American Abstract Artists was founded in 1936 in New York City with the aim to serve as an exhibiting organization and a forum for discussion at a time when American abstract art was facing critical neglect. AAA is one of the few 20th century art organizations that has remained continuously active and the group now offers a uniquely multi-generational viewpoint.
About Gallery MC
Gallery MC, established in 2004, is a non-profit multicultural interdisciplinary art gallery committed to the research, production, presentation, and interpretation of contemporary art.
Image at top: Sharon Butler, The Hole, 2025, acrylic, pencil, canvas, on canvas, 12 x 9 inches.
XXS
BRINTZ + COUNTY
Palm Beach | 375 South County Road
February 8th - February 22nd 2025
Artists include:
Keltie Ferris, Katherine Bradford, Kadar Brock, Michael Berryhill, Sharon Butler, Ethan Cook, Wendy White, Julia Wachtel, Matthew Day Jackson, Tony Matelli, Joanne Greenbaum, Enoc Perez, Rachel Rossin, Petra Cortright, Diana Al-Hadid, Andrea Marie Breiling, Gina Beavers, and many more
Brintz + COUNTY is excited to present XXS: The Small Works Show, curated by Wendy White. Featuring small-scale paintings and sculptures by over 100 artists from the U.S. and abroad, the exhibition celebrates the power of art to unite us .
"Cities have the capacity of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody." Urbanist- Jane Jacobs
In a world overflowing with images, products, and endless choices for entertainment , true connection can feel elusive. Community doesn’t happen by accident—it takes intention. XXS embraces this spirit, creating a visual conversation among artists whose works, though small in scale, come together to form something greater. And that feeling seen and valued—a part of something larger than oneself—is essential for engaging in meaningful connectedness.
Installed salon-style, the exhibition mirrors a cityscape—artworks interwoven like neighborhoods, with colors, forms, and ideas building off each other. There’s no hierarchy, just a dynamic rhythm of voices—distinct yet connected and enhanced by each other.
Art is more than a solitary act; it’s a record of its maker and a bridge to others. In bringing these works into close proximity, XXS fosters dialogue, shared experience, and a sense of belonging. In this case, more is truly more.
Image at top: Sharon Butler, Miami, 2024, acrylic on canvas, 12 x 9 inches (Sold)
"Sharon Buter: As Close as Two Coats of Paint"
January 29, 2025, 17:30-18:30 pm
Free and open to the public
RHA Talks and Lecture Series
Drawing and writing form the backbone of Sharon Butler’s painting practice. In 2007, fascinated by art, writing, and the possibility of new digital platforms, Sharon founded Two Coats of Paint, a blogazine that focuses primarily on painting in NYC. From 2016-20, she became intrigued with drawing on her phone, posting one digital drawing each day on Instagram. The visual language developed in these tiny digital images eventually became the basis for the paintings and drawings she continues to make today.
On January 29, as part of the Wednesday RHA lecture series, Sharon will provide a comprehensive insight into her dual roles as an artist and as the founder and publisher of Two Coats of Paint. In her discussion, she will delve into her creative process, sharing the inspirations, techniques, and concepts behind her work in the studio. Additionally, she will explore her journey in establishing and growing Two Coats of Paint, highlighting its impact on the art community as a space for critical dialogue, artist interviews, and thought-provoking commentary on contemporary art. This event promises to offer a unique perspective on the intersection of art making and writing.
Based in New York City, Sharon has had solo shows at Jennifer Baahng Gallery(2022), Theodore Art(2021, 2028, 2015), and Pocket Utopia(2014). She has received awards and residencies from Creative Capital and the Warhol Foundation, Connecticut Commission on the Arts, Connecticut State University, Pollock Krasner Foundation, Yaddo, Blue Mountain Center, Pocket Utopia, and Counterproof Press at the University of Connecticut.
Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts
Gallagher Gallery
15 Ely Place
Dublin 2, D02 A213
Ireland
Out of the Blue
Summer group show
Blue represents a historical conundrum. Is it cool or warm, masculine or feminine, obscene or pure? Does it evoke sadness? Royalty? The serenity of a calm sea? Blue has run the gamut of connotations, from being considered barbaric in the ancient world to being the most popular color in America. Out of the Blue asks what the meanings we encode in the color reveal about us and our relationship to the contemporary zeitgeist.
Opening, Wednesday, July 17 from 6-8pm
July 17 - August 24, 2024
34 East Broadway
New York, NY
Inquiries: Eva Frosch
+1 646-820-9068
Image: Sharon Butler, Then Look Up (March 20, 2018), detail, 2024, oil on canvas, 80 x 24 inches, 5 canvases. Available on Artsy.
Sharon Butler: Buildingdrawing
June 1 - July 6
Furnace Art on Paper Archive / 107 Main Street, Falls Village, CT
Opening Reception, Saturday, June 1st, 4 pm - 6 pm
Inspired by peddlers’ carts, the shelves are replete with motley objects and function as portable mini-galleries or project spaces. They can be maneuvered around the gallery, so that the drawings and other items sway, jingle, and jostle, like housewares sold itinerantly in a different era.
Nearby, double-sided drawings, installed in transparent holders, emerge from the wall at a 90-degree angle, rendering both sides visible.
Critic Thomas Micchelli has observed that Butler's work shares "Rauschenberg’s dissolution of the barriers between painting and sculpture." As the freewheeling (so to speak) and improvisational nature of the exhibition suggests, Butler sees process as metaphor and makes paintings and drawings in part to document her life and experiences.
Butler is an American artist and arts writer. She is known for teasing out ideas about contemporary abstraction in her paintings, drawings, and written work, and particularly for a style she called "new casualism" in an influential 2011 essay published in The Brooklyn Rail. She coined the term to identify a distinctive incarnation of abstraction that featured a self-amused, anti-heroic style notable for off-kilter composition and a sense of impermanence. Artists’ apparent interest in irresolution, she suggested, reflected the percolating uncertainty and instability of culture and society. Like casualism itself, Buildingdrawing is playful – even whimsical – in the moment but grounded in serious considerations about life, art, and the future.
Butler has been awarded the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant and the Creative Capital/ Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writing Program Grant. She has also received residencies from Counterproof Press, Yaddo, and the Two Trees Cultural Space Subsidy Program.
For inquiry please contact: Kathleen@Furnace-artonpaperarchive.com
Link to gallery website
Please join us: For the 2024 iteration of Dumbo Open Studios, painter and Two Coats publisher Sharon Butler will have some new paintings on view, and she has also organized “BIG TOP,” an exhibition of 13 talented young artists she met while teaching in the University of Connecticut’s MFA Program.
Butler’s recent paintings and drawings capture her perceptions of New York, focusing on the light, space, geometry, and her experience of the city. In the work selected for “Big Top,” she was looking for visually seductive approaches that might stir the viewer.
Artists in “BIG TOP” include: Mahsa Attaran, Becky Bailey, Logan R. Bishop, Jennifer Davies, Monica Hamilton, Kenny Heyne, Hanieh Kashani, Ben Kue, Sonja Langford, Erick Maldonado, Rossie Stearns, Noah Thompson, and Sammy Wood / See images of their work here —> https://twocoatsofpaint.com/2024/04/invitation-big-top-at-dumbo-open-studios-opens-april-12-5-9pm.html.
We wish to thank the University of Connecticut Department of Art and Art History and their MFA Program for making this show possible. Special gratitude to Department Chair John J. Richardson, and exhibition assistant Kenny Heyne.
Check out all artists, galleries, and events on the 2024 DUMBO Open Studios official website.
The Sarah Moody Gallery of Art is pleased to present the exhibition, Sharon Butler: March, February 27 through April 5, 2024. Butler will present a lecture on Wednesday, March 20, at 3:00 p.m. in the Camellia Room of Gorgas Library (2nd floor). There will be a reception for the artist following the lecture in the SMGA from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m.
Sharon Butler is an American artist and writer on art interested in ideas about contemporary abstraction, especially in a style she identifies as “new casualism.” Butler describes her paintings and drawings as exploring “the tension between exacting, mechanical processes — often digital and screen-based — and the humanism inherent in images and objects made by hand.” And, she writes, “the slippage between the two.”
In 2007, Butler founded Two Coats of Paint, an NYC blogazine. The project has expanded to include a small residency program, podcast, small press, and other initiatives. Between 2016 and 2020, she became obsessed with drawing on her phone, posting one digital drawing each day on Instagram. The visual language developed in these tiny digital images — the ‘Good Morning Drawings’ — eventually became the basis for the paintings she continues to make today.
Sharon Butler’s solo exhibitions in New York at Jennifer Baahng Gallery, Theodore Art, and Pocket Utopia have been written about in The Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, artcritical, The New Criterion, The James Kalm Report, Time Out New York, Tussle, and New York Magazine. She has received awards and residencies from Creative Capital and the Warhol Foundation, Connecticut Commission on the Arts, Connecticut State University, Pollock Krasner Foundation, Yaddo, Blue Mountain Center, Pocket Utopia and Counterproof Press at the University of Connecticut. She holds an MFA from the University of Connecticut and a BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art. Butler lives in Queens, NY, and works in Brooklyn, NY. Her website is https://www.sharonlbutler.com/
Funding for this exhibition is provided by the Farley Moody Galbraith Endowed Exhibition Fund.
Gallery Director: William Dooley
Department of Art and Art History
The University of Alabama
307 Garland Hall
Box 870270
Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0270
(205) 348-5967
Image at top: Sharon Butler, Among Friends, 2020-2023, oil on canvas, 52 x 135 inches (3 panels).
Small work: I have two pieces in community-minded winter shows. A digital drawing of a weedwhacker is on view through February 11 in “Holiday,” at LABspace, 2642 NY Route 23, Hillsdale, NY. (Inquiries: julielabspace@gmail.com) / At Tappeto Volante Projects, 126 13th Street, Gowanus, Brooklyn, NY, a small painting (image above) will be included in “La Banda 2024,” a group show opening on January 18 with a reception on January 30.
Image at top:
Dumbo Open Studios
20 Jay Street
Brooklyn, NY
Opening reception: Friday, April 21, 6-8pm
On view April 22-23, 1-6pm
DUMBO Open Studios is an annual event organized by the Two Trees Cultural Space Subsidy Program. I presented a group show called "Output" that included one of my recent multi-panel paintings, working drawings, and some commerically printed objects, along with pieces by Bill Albertini, and RC Baker.
Image at top: Sharon Butler, "Open Studio," archival ink on canvas, 49 X 64 inches.
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On view at the Silber Gallery
Goucher College
1021 Dulaney Valley Road, Baltimore, Maryland
"Spaces of Memory and Imagination"
Curated by Alex Ebstein
Featuring work by:
Sharon Butler
Giulia Livi
Sookkyung Park
Kyle Tata
Bmore Art pick for best art openings and events in the Baltimore area
Artist talk, Sharon Butler, April 6, 2 pm, Merrick Lecture Hall. Free and open to the public.
On view February 23 through April 6, 2023
Image: Installation view, on left: Sharon Butler, Stacked 2, 2022, oil on canvas, diptuch, 72 x 48 inches. Center: Sookkyung Park; at right: Giulia Livi
On view
February 1 – March 5, 2023
Open Daily, 10am–6pm
Closed February 20, 2023
Opening Reception
February 1, 6-8pm
New York Academy of Art
111 Franklin Street, NYC 10013
212 966-0300
For inquiries please contact
exhibitions@nyaa.edu
“In the Studio: New York Academy of Art Faculty Exhibition” presents 42 works of art from the Senior Critics, Full-Time Faculty, and Adjunct Faculty at the New York Academy of Art. This exhibition displays the breadth and complexity of the work produced by the creative community of the Academy’s faculty. From the meticulous and melancholy renderings of Michael Grimaldi to the mind-boggling bas reliefs of Jiannan Wu and the poetic abstractions of Sharon Butler, this display puts beyond question the value of studying with the world’s artistic masters.
Featured artists:
| Steven Assael | Michael Grimaldi | Clifford Owens |
| John Belardo | Rie Hasegawa | Guno Park |
| Lisa Blas | John Horn | Heather Personett |
| Margaret Bowland | Scott Hunt | Colette Robbins |
| Sharon Butler | John Jacobsmeyer | Jean-Pierre Roy |
| Will Cotton | Edgar Jerins | Manu Saluja |
| Peter Drake | Marshall Jones | Justin Sanz |
| Cynthia Eardley | Evan Kitson | Edward Schmidt |
| Eric Fischl | Nina Levy | Wade Schuman |
| Judy Fox | Greg Lindquist | Dan Thompson |
| Steve Forster | Dik F. Liu | Melanie Vote |
| Thomas Germano | Randolphlee | Alexi Worth |
| Gianluca Giarrizzo | Frederick Mershimer | Jiannan Wu |
| David Gothard | Gina Miccinilli | Zane York |
Image at top; Sharon Butler, Birthday, 2023, oil n canvas, 36 x 48 inches
PITCHES & SCRIPTS
January 20 – March 4, 2023
Jennifer Baahng Gallery
790 Madison Avenue, New York, NY
Jennifer Baahng Gallery is pleased to present PITCHES & SCRIPTS, a group exhibition of works on paper. On view are ink and graphite drawings, collages, inkjet prints, and sewed surfaces produced from the 1980’s through 2020. In pooling together six artists, the exhibition pitches a fermentation of ideas, technologies, and political stances that connote rupture and disintegration, while offering a script for growth, movement, and new life. PITCHES & SCRIPTS runs from January 20 through March 4, 2023, with its opening reception on Friday, January 20, 6 – 8 PM.
Image: Sharon Butler, IDIOMERICA, 2002; digital drawing, inkject, paint, pencil, thread, paper; each panel 16 x 20 inches, framed. Installation view
NEXT MOVES, September 15 through November 15, 2022
Opening reception: Thursday, September 15th, from 6–8PM
Press release:
JENNIFER BAAHNG GALLERY is pleased to present NEXT MOVES, the gallery’s inaugural solo exhibition of Sharon Butler’s work. In 2016, Sharon Butler began making digital drawings on a phone app called PicsArt. They were meant to be seen on a smartphone, and she posted one each morning on Instagram as a way of marking daily life. Over the course of four years, she made and posted more than 1200 of them. It was a “growing thinking” and a “time in an alley waiting it out.” Eventually, the impulse to paint – born of the irresoluteness that courses through all painters – took hold. In 2020, to facilitate the transformation of the tiny digital drawings into full-sized paintings, she began drawing geometric grids on canvases. The digital drawings encapsulated in small squares on the mobile screen, infinitely scalable and potentially endless, were transfigured into permanent building blocks.
In Butler’s work, the grid functions metaphorically as a pulsating chord; a portal through which she gets from point A to point B. As such, it encapsulates activity, gathering meaning and power over time. So deployed, the grid builds on Butler’s interest in wabi-sabi and the provisional approach that she has called, in The Brooklyn Rail and elsewhere, “casualism.” Like Piet Mondrian’s valedictory Broadway Boogie Woogie, her paintings apprehend the syncopation and movement of New York City, exploring seriality with conceptual rigor, opting for a serendipitous, ironic approach.
The multi-panel paintings in the exhibition are monumental versions of smaller solo works. They embrace the history of painting and abstraction by way of idiosyncratic conjunctions and addenda. They resound with color, texture, and light, while also establishing compositional formality, tactile physicality, and emotional resonance. These liberal re-imaginings of images that were once originally pixelated retain an expressively vibrational quality. At the same time, an exuberant materiality anchors convergent edges, shapes, and patterns that afford the work visual stability.
In artcritical, critic Laurie Fendrich described Butler’s paintings as “beautiful and grittily compelling.” Fendrich added that “the future of abstraction will be owned by those who accept a post-compositional approach to their paintings. Right now, Sharon Butler has the best of both worlds.” In NEXT MOVES, Sharon Butler proposes restlessness within the strictures of painting, courting risk and glory, and we are in her church.
Sharon Butler’s solo exhibitions have been reviewed in numerous publications, including New York Magazine, Hyperallergic, artcritical, The New Criterion, The James Kalm Report, and Time Out New York. She has been awarded grants from Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation, the Pollock Krasner Foundation, the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, and Eastern Connecticut State University. She has held residencies at Yaddo, Blue Mountain Center, Pocket Utopia, and Counterproof Press. She has served as a visiting professor, artist, and/or critic at Brown University, Cornell University, the Hoffberger School of Painting (MICA), Penn State, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the School of Visual Arts, the Parsons School of Design at the New School, and the Vermont Studio Center. She is the founder of the art blogazine, Two Coats of Paint. She currently teaches in the MFA programs at the New York Academy of Art and the University of Connecticut.
Sharon Butler lives and works in New York.
Media
Reviewd by Saul Ostrow in Tussle Magazine, October 2022
Reviewed by Adam Simon in The Brooklyn Rail, October 2022
"Conjunctions, Addenda, Commutations," a conversation with Raphael Rubinstein and Sharon Butler, Jennifer Baahng Gallery, October 8, 2022.
Jennifer Baahng
790 Madison Avenue at 67th Street, New York, NY
Image: Sharon Butler, Brighter Then Grass, 2022, oil on linen, 78 x 60 inches.
GUIDED BY VOICES
August 13 -September 17, 2022
Yura Adams
Sharon Butler
Adrian Meraz
Lucy Mink
LABspace
2642 Route 23, Hillsdale NY
Contact: julielabspace@gmail.com
Located in the Hudson Valley, east of Hudson, north of Millerton, west of Great Barrington
Image: Sharon Butler, paintings, installation view at LABspace
Jennifer Baahng Gallery
790 Madison Ave, New York, NY
Sharon Butler
Chun Kwang Young
Michael McClard
Mario Merz
Jaye Moon
Mr.
Janet Taylor Pickett
David Salle
Zhang Hongtu
Image at top: TANGO, installation view. Left, Sharon Butler; center, Mario Merz, right, Sharon Butler
"On April 23+24, 12–6pm artists in DUMBO will open their doors to the public as a part of DUMBO Open Studios, giving visitors a look into studios and workspaces across the Brooklyn waterfront. Known for its high density of artist studios, artist residency programs, and art galleries, DUMBO has been the epicenter of Brooklyn’s art community since the 1970’s."
I'll be showing the backdrop constructed of tarp and metalic paint for my collaboration with Julia Gleich in CounterPoint9 (see entry below), drawings made with tarp remnants, and some abstract paintings made in 2021.
Image at top: Sharon Butler, Tarp Remnant (CounterPointe9) 4, 2022, pencil, ink, tarp, grommets, frame, 13 x 17 inches. Private collection.
April 22 to May 21, 2022 / Opening: April 22 (Same night that Dumbo Open Studios opens)
For the word “mod,” like all homonyms, everything is a situation. It’s a slippery term with many meanings that depend on context, which could be early twentieth-century philosophical and aesthetic iconoclasm, postwar architecture, 1960s Carnaby Street, or something else altogether. For Two Coats of Paint, a favorite definition comes from contemporary gaming: mods are created when a player takes the basic code or structure of a game and changes the plot. In one way or another, the five artists selected for this exhibition could all be considered “modders,” whether exploring ideas about Modernism, working modularly, hacking the outcome, or serving as moderators who steer conversations.
Artists include Sharon Butler, Peter Dudek, Steve Hicks, Sheila Pepe, and Adam Simon. Curated by Sharon Butler
Link to images of work in the show are available here.
Platform Project Space, 20 Jay Street #319, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Doirector: Elizabeth Hazan
Featuring new collaborative works by:
Julia Gleich, Gleich Dances with Sharon Butler
Joan Liu with Traci Johnson
Kathryn Roszak with Anna Sidana
Charly Santagado with Barbara Weissberger
JoVonna Parks with Noël Hennelly
Tiffany Mangulabnan with Madge Reyes
Sarah Marazzi-Sassoon with Sophia Chizuco
Eryn Renee Young with Elizabeth Riley
Mar 11-13, 2022
Fri, Mar 11 at 7:30pm SOLD OUT
Sat, Mar 12 at 7:30pm SOLD OUT
Sun, Mar 13 at 4pm SOLD OUT
The Mark O'Donnell Theater at the Actors Fund Arts Center
160 Schermerhorn Street, Brooklyn
Read about the artists of CounterPointe9
A Group Exhibition Co-curated by Mary Shah and Rick Wester
July 15 – September 11, 2021
Featuring:
Debe ARLOOK, Cat BALCO, Sharon BUTLER, Max KELLENBERGER, Amanda MARCHAND, Tom MCGLYNN, Jill MOSER, Stephen MUELLER, Andy RICHTER, Alyse ROSNER, Wendi SCHNEIDER, Andrew SCHWARTZ, Mary SHAH, Barbara TAKENAGA, Alex TURNER, Lydia VISCARDI, Nicole WASSALL, Tenesh WEBBER, Alex YUDZON
Image: Sharon BUTLER
Triptych, Left to right: May 15, 2019-02, 2020, October 21, 2019-3, 2021 , July 2, 2018-02, 2020
Bill Albertini,
Stephen Bron,
Eric Brown,
Sharon Butler,
Peter Krashes,
Sylvia Plimack Mangold,
Michelle Vaughan,
Andrew Witkin
June 18 - July 31, 2021
Opening Friday June 18, 1-8 pm
Gallery hours Thursday- Saturday 12-6 pm
Image: Sharon Butler, October 21, 2019 (1), 2020, oil on canvas, 12 x 12 inches.
On May 13, to help kick off another online edition of Dumbo Open Studios, Sharon Butler and Two Coats of Paint have organized a marathon art conversation on Clubhouse featuring a lively crew of DUMBO regulars. Artists and arts organizations will join us throughout the day to talk about art, exhibitions, issues and ideas. The Two Coats of Paint Club will open rooms from 9:30am to 7pm (and at miscellaneous times throughout the ten-day event). Guest hosts include Matthew Deleget from Minus Space, Becky Sellinger from Smack Mellon, Beth Dary and Jeff Wallace from the Main Window Dumbo project, Elizabeth Hazan from Platform Project Space, Alexi Worth, Laura Karetzky, Teri Hackett, Samantha Taylor, Lauren Skelly Baily, will host, and many other artists will join them throughout the day. Read more.
DEEP STATES
featuring Berwald Borgsjo Sharon Butler Billy JacobsPeter Krashes Alix Lambert Lara NasserMichelle Vaughan Oliver Wasow H.C. Westermann
October 30 – January 10, 2020
Opening day viewing Friday, October 30, 1-6 pm
Gallery hours Friday-Sunday 1-6 pm and by appointment
“In a world that has REALLY been turned on its head, truth is a moment of falsehood.”― Guy Debord
Theodore:Art is pleased to present Deep States, an exhibition informed by and circling ideas of hidden powers,control, paranoia, and distrust of the powers that be.Although the term “Deep State” has been applied throughout the 20th and 21st Century to various regimes inmultiple countries, as a basis of comprehension we will start from the idea that if the Deep State is the unelected government, then by definition it is an undemocratic government.
The artists herein suggest projections of thatunelected power that affects our lives. Their responses are mysterious, documentary, hallucinatory, anxious,dreading, pissy, contemplative, and ultimately subjective. The impossibility of visually defining the identity andlimits of a mythical entity makes the act of attempting to do so both heroic and sisyphean. The Deep States eludethe grasp of the mind, the long arm of the law, and the influence of societal norms.
Image: Sharon Butler, Mueller Report (10.07.2016), 2020, oil on canvas, 16 x 16 inches.
"Sharon Butler: Morning in America"
January 15 - March 7, 2021
Theodore:Art
56 Bogart Street, Brooklyn, NY
Theodore:Art is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings by Sharon Butler.For the past few years, Butler has produced daily drawings on her phone. The Good Morning Drawings, digitalsketches uploaded to Instagram, reflect the peripatetic experience of a contemporary painter with a complexlife—teaching, traveling, parenting, working. The small geometric abstractions serve as foundational ideas on whichto build firm structures that investigate painting and its discontents more thoroughly in the context of a complex andchaotic world.
In March of this year, during the Covid lockdown in New York City, Butler had the chance to reflect on personal andsocio-political anxiety as refracted by the diaristic nature of the Good Morning Drawing series of the recent past.The time in the studio was quieter, oriented towards a kind of distillation of paramount issues and aspects of theartist’s life and world view -- a kind of slow breathing exercise of the mind. This show represents an exhale of relief.We are still here, Butler still finds the lifeblood of painting closely connected to the roller coaster of the experienceof daily life.
A painter and arts writer, Sharon Butler is widely known as the founder of Two Coats of Paint, a project whichincludes an influential art blog, an artist residency, and other initiatives. She has shown work at Theodore:Art (2016,2018) and SEASON (Seattle). Thanks to the generosity of the Two Trees Cultural Space Subsidy Program, Butlermaintains a studio in Brooklyn, under the Manhattan Bridge. She has received grants and residencies from CreativeCapital/The Warhol Foundation’s Art Writers Program, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation,Yaddo, ConnecticutCommission for the Arts, and Counterproof Press. She currently teaches at the New York Academy of Art and inthe MFA program at the University of Connecticut.
Her exhibitions at Theodore in 2016 and 2018 have receivedcritical attention from Time Out NY, Hyperallergic, Artcritical, and New York Magazine.
For information and images, please contact Stephanie Theodore at 212 966 4324 or theodoreart@gmail.com
"Sharon Buter: Morning in America"
January 15 to March 7, 2021
at Theodore:Art
56 Bogart Street, Brooklyn, NY
Reviews:
Laurie Fendrich, "Accidental on Purpose: Sharon Butler at Theodore:Art," artcritical,web, February 26, 2021.
James Panero, "Gallery Chronicle," The New Criterion, March 2021.
Loren Monk, "Sharon Butler at Theodore:Art," James Kalm Rough Cuts, video review, January 26, 2021.
Image: Sharon Butler, "May 29, 2018," 2020, oil on canvas, 52x45 inches
Sharon Butler, February 11, 11:30am.
Lecture Location: Lipcon Auditorium, Palmer Museum of Art
Free and open to the public.
The Penn State School of Visual Arts John M. Anderson Endowed Lecture Series was established in 2001 through the generous support of John M. Anderson, Penn State Professor Emeritus. The result of Dr. Anderson’s love of the philosophy of art and painting, his endowment contributes to the creative and intellectual life of the campus. The series sponsors leading artists and scholars who lecture, give master classes and workshops, and critique student work throughout the academic year. Dr. Anderson, an Evan Pugh Research Professor of Philosophy, was a long-time faculty member and three-time department head in the Department of Philosophy and the first director of Penn State’s Institute for the Arts and Humanities. Lectures are free and open to the public.
Artist and curator Jason Stopa invited Katherine Bradford and Craig Stockwell, along with Two Coats of Paint founder Sharon Butler and Hyperallergic editor Thomas Micchelli, for an evening of conversation on the occasion of “New Skin” Stopa’s latest curatorial project, on view at the gallery through January 25. The exhibition, which includes works by Michael Berryhill, Shirley Kaneda, and Clare Grill, among others, places emphasis on works that toy with idea of representation, conjuring ideas of objects, but leaving space for imagination.
Monica King Contemporary
Date: January 15, 2020
Location: Monica King Contemporary, 39 Lispenard Street, East Entrance, Tribeca, New York, NY
Price: Free
Time: 6 p.m.
An Editors Pick in Artnet News
Image at top: A snap shot during the discussion, courtesy of Gweneth Leech.
I'll be one of the two Visiting Artists (with Jorge Macchi) up in Johnson, Vermont, for the week of April 8. If you're in the area, please join us for my artist's talk on Tuesday, April 8, at 8 pm.
From the VSC website:
The Vermont Studio Center was founded by artists in 1984. Our location--situated along the banks of the Gihon River in the historic village of Johnson, Vermont--was chosen with the intention of fostering creativity through community, collaboration, and quiet reflection supported by the unspoiled beauty of the northern Green Mountains.
Over the last 30 years, VSC has grown to become the largest international artists' and writers' residency program in the United States. Our mission is to provide studio residencies in an inclusive, international community, honoring creative work as the communication of spirit through form.
Image: Maxwell MacKenzie
Sharon Butler: New Paintings
Theodore:Art
56 Bogart Street
Bushwick
Brooklyn, NY
September 7 — October 8, 2018
Opening reception, Friday, September 7
From the press release:
"Butler just spent a month at Yaddo, and used the time to, among other things, ruminate and transform ideas developed in her daily Good Morning Drawings, her digital sketches uploaded to Instagram. The Good Morning Drawings reflect the peripatetic experience of a contemporary painter with a complex life—teaching, traveling, parenting, working. In her Dumbo studio, Butler stops to digest the actions and surroundings of her days as depicted in the Good Morning Drawings, to build firm structures that investigate painting and its discontents more thoroughly in the context of a complex and chaotic world."
Please contact gallery for images and information.
Stephanie Theodore
Phone: 212.966.4324
Email: theodoreart@gmail.com
Image at top: New paintings, work in progress at Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, Summer 2018.