Maake Mazagine
Phaan Howng in Conversation with Marcus Civin
October 7, 2022
After grad school I got into researching the effects of war on the environment. And during that time I started wondering how the planet would arm itself to protect it from future colonizers with modern day war tactics which led me into this camouflage rabbit hole. Somehow I inherently started to use this line work to suggest camouflage. I think it’s because after undergrad, I went to Taiwan for a month. I was so bored, and my mom asked me if I wanted to take a class to learn Chinese calligraphy painting. In the class, they taught me how to hold the brush, how to apply pressure, and move my arm. It’s all about holding your wrist still and this up-and-down motion while dragging the brush. You get the heavy line when you put pressure down. To get thinner lines, you raise your arm. You can’t have a floppy wrist. The entire time, the teacher is yelling at you, “You’re not holding your wrist right!!” Eventually, it just worked for me, and I realized I enjoyed it. It stuck. It became this language where everything is loosey-goosey at first, and then I go in with fine-line detail. Read full article>
Hyperallergic
Greek Mythology as an Allegory for Gay Dating
October 21, 2022
Paul Anagnostopoulos breathes new life into the Greek vase in his debut solo show, When Heroes Fall, at the Dinner Gallery. Painting mythological scenes with queer subtexts onto terra cotta pots from Greece, he explores 21st-century gay romance in a fresh way. Although the exhibition includes several paintings, the two vases in the back room are its standout works. These painted terra cottas are rife with rich allegory to unpack — whether you’re LGBTQ+ or not. Read full article>
Dwell
How to Start Collecting Art For the Home
October 17, 2022
The art world can be an intimidating space, especially for a novice buyer eager to start a collection. Yes, art can be quite expensive (especially at reputable galleries) but even if you have the dough, art acquisitions aren’t straightforward transactions where you hand off a credit card at a gallery and then you walk off with a $15,000 painting or sculpture under your arm. For the uninitiated, a collector looking to break into this ecosystem of artists, gallerists, and even museums takes a lot of time and effort. (I would even venture to say art collecting is an art form in itself given that it requires a finesse that’s only earned after putting in the work.) Read full article>
Testudo
Paul Anagnostopoulos on Painting as Grief, Joy, and Everything in Between
October 13, 2022
I started this recent body of work with an intense exploration of mythological desire, melancholy, and tragedy, but it really started in 2016 when I put my own interests together and started building a visual language and queer lens for it. Back then, I was predominantly a print maker and drawer, which is likely why my work is still contoured, bold, and graphic. Now painting allows me to work without a print studio and in my own space. Read full article>
Surface
An Electrified Canova Masterpiece Oozing With Homoerotic Heat
September 29, 2022
Cheekily nodding to a Neoclassical statue’s covert portrayal of same-sex desire, up-and-coming painter Paul Anagnostopoulos electrifies its heroic scene with a sea of blues and oranges, rendering a fiery twilight imbued with emotional intensity, atmospheric angst, and nostalgic humor. Read full article>
The New York Times Style Magazine - The T List
Phaan Howng’s Neon Dystopia
May 26, 2022
In the Taiwanese American painter Phaan Howng’s imagined landscapes, flora have evolved to take on a riot of Day-Glo hues as a survival tactic against years of toxic industrial waste in a post-Anthropocene future. It’s a theme the artist has explored since the late aughts, when she held down a particularly wearying day job at an electronics manufacturing company in South Florida and gained a mounting awareness of the industry’s environmental impact. Read full article>
Platform - Spotlight
Adrienne Elise Tarver
May 13, 2022
Adrienne Elise Tarver is getting personal. After years of keeping a distance between her own history and her work, Tarver is unabashedly incorporating herself and the places she's called home into her practice. From her studio in Brooklyn, the artist spoke with Platform about what sparked that creative shift, her interest in tarot, and the unique ability of physical space to give us perspective on our life and work. Read full article>
Artnet
Editors’ Picks: 14 Events for Your Art Calendar This Week, From a Moleskine Art Show to a Cocktail for the Women of Surrealism
May 10, 2022
Fresh off a presentation featuring Phaan Howng at NADA New York, Dinner Gallery stages its first solo show with the artist, whose neon-colored paintings and sculptures evoke a toxic and unnatural landscape where plants have evolved to survive on polluted planets. The artist has created a site-specific installation for the occasion, with colored wallpaper to match her vibrant works. Read full article>
Whitewall
Jen Dwyer Finds the Secret Garden of Individuality
May 10, 2022
Jen Dwyer’s solo exhibition, “Garden of Archetypes” at Dinner Gallery in New York was on view this spring, March 10—April 23. The new paintings and sculptures revealed the story of a female character, in her own private world, as she prepares herself to enter the public sphere. Viewers were welcomed by a likeness of contemporary culture, but drawn in further by a celebration of the one-of-a-kind, intricate self. The artist established an enchanting depiction of the rituals of daily life, sacred memories, and lived experiences, veiled behind curtains. Inspired by ancient male and female archetypes, Rococo style, surrealism, and the modern routines and standards of beauty and fashion, Dwyer confronted the duplexity of adulthood. She asked the questions, who are we when confronted with others? where does our private life end and our public life begin? Read full article>
Cultured Magazine
Politics Take Center Stage at New Art Dealers Alliance in New York
May 6, 2022
Opening just days after a leak of the Supreme Court majority opinion draft to overturn Roe v. Wade, and in the midst of an unjustified Russia-led war in Ukraine, New Art Dealers Alliance, a not-for-profit that operates year-round to support its gallery members and the arts community at large, returns for the 8th edition of its New York fair. The event presents a poignant tableau of art and design works that evoke a particularly honed resilience within these current contexts. Read full article>
The Art Newspaper
Five New York shows explore the pandemic’s effects two years after the city's first Covid-19 lockdowns
March 25, 2022
Jen Dwyer touches on one of the more personal consequences of the pandemic: the way in which our personal lives, private homes, public personae and work spaces all bled together. Spaces that were once private became our Zoom backgrounds and had to be arranged with objects coded with visual cues to project a specific message about our personalities. In Garden of Archetypes, Dwyer presents a female character preparing to leave her private bubble and enter the public sphere. Dwyer defines her character with Rococo-inspired ceramic objects like a pristine, white shirt set aside for future wear and manicured nails tapping on a keyboard. Like our meticulously curated shelves and backgrounds, the show points to the role of material culture in creating and communicating a sense of self. Read full article>
Artnet
Editors’ Picks: 13 Events for Your Art Calendar, From a Fascinating Fernanda Laguna Survey to the Badass Art Women Awards
March 7, 2022
Make sure to see Jen Dwyer’s new sculptures and paintings in her solo exhibition at Dinner Gallery, which tells a story of a woman getting ready to emerge into public life after a long hiatus. Implementing motifs from antiquity, the Rococo, and Surrealism, and meshing them with modern life, Dwyer makes the viewer ponder the complexities of adult life. “Her whimsical and dream-like scenes blur the lines between reality and fantasy, private and public, and taste and value, while revealing the external factors that have helped shape these choices while also alluding to a private world of the imagination,” the gallery notes in its statement. Read full article>