{"id":10902,"date":"2019-03-27T12:06:00","date_gmt":"2019-03-27T16:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=10902"},"modified":"2019-03-27T12:06:00","modified_gmt":"2019-03-27T16:06:00","slug":"laura-chasman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2019\/03\/27\/laura-chasman\/","title":{"rendered":"Laura Chasman\u2019s Paintings Of The Unwelcoming Architecture Of Art Galleries"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cFor more than 40 years I have been a painter of people, looking closely at their faces and what they reveal,\u201d Laura Chasman<\/a> writes of her current exhibition \u201cBarely Visible\u201d at Gallery Kayafas<\/a> in Boston from March 1 to April 6, 2019.<\/p>\n

The Roslindale artist has painted her family, kids, adolescents, monks, elderly women, nurses. Her portraits are often based on photos and brushed in an apparently casual, sketchy manner, like notes quickly jotted in a journal, precisely observed. It\u2019s hard not to wonder if her background as a psychotherapist and in social work has something to do with that.<\/p>\n

\"Laura<\/a>
Laura Chasman “Barely Visible #15,” 2018, acrylic on paper. (Courtesy Gallery Kayafas)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Her 2018 series \u201cBarely Visible\u201d depicts the tall front desks of art galleries in New York\u2019s Chelsea neighborhood and the tops of heads peeking out from behind the barricades. It\u2019s a familiar sight to anyone who\u2019s toured the Big Apple\u2019s white cube galleries\u2014sleek, anti-social minimalism with an air of elite aloofness and intimidation.<\/p>\n

Chasman turns the scenes into wry, loosely-painted, gray, minimalist paintings.<\/p>\n

\"Laura<\/a>
Laura Chasman “Barely Visible,” 2018, acrylic on paper. (Courtesy Gallery Kayafas)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cHigh walled reception areas, along with computer screens, blocked from view the faces of those working within these spaces,\u201d Chasman writes. \u201cAll one generally can see is the top of a head punctuating through these barriers. Using my own photographs as reference, I was inspired to make a series of paintings of people who are barely visible.\u201d<\/p>\n

The gallery desk paintings are accompanied by Chasman\u2019s 2013 paintings of art fair scenes painted in gouache on cardboard FedEx shipping boxes, mulling \u201cthe art market today and the business of selling art.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\"Laura<\/a>
Laura Chasman “Barely Visible #2,” 2018, acrylic on paper. (Courtesy Gallery Kayafas)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cFor more than 40 years I have been a painter of people, looking closely at their faces and what they reveal,\u201d Laura Chasman writes of her current exhibition \u201cBarely Visible\u201d at Gallery Kayafas in Boston from March 1 to April 6, 2019. The Roslindale artist has painted her family, kids, adolescents, monks, elderly women, nurses. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10904,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[416],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10902"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10902"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10902\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10910,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10902\/revisions\/10910"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}