RICHARD KALINA

From “On the Rim of the Wheel,” by Erik La Prade: The lost history of the Lower Manhattan artists’ building at 76 Jefferson Street. Published in Ursula - a Magazine of Contemporary Culture, #10, April 2024, by Hauser and Wirth Gallery.

Bloomsbury Academic has published Richard Kalina’s The Changing Boundaries and Nature of the Modern Art World: The Art Object and the Object of Art. The book, a selection of twenty-seven critical essays published over the last thirty years, was published this May in London as part of Bloomsbury’s series, Aesthetics and Contemporary Art.

Read more: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/changing-boundaries-and-nature-of-the-modern-art-world-9781350154735

About The Changing Boundaries and Nature of the Modern Art World

Concentrating on the shifting boundaries and definition of art, Richard Kalina offers a panoramic view of the contemporary art scene over the last 30 years. His focus is on the ongoing development of concepts, the transformation of art worlds and the social matrices in which they are created.

Discussing painting in general and abstract painting in particular, his survey takes in photorealism, sculpture and art forms found outside of the modernist tradition. Kalina's group of artists includes Mel Bochner, Joan Mitchell, Cy Twombly, Franz West, and Alma Thomas who, in their ongoing projects, explicitly or implicitly questioned the aesthetic assumptions of their times.

Merging an examination of animating philosophies and context - political, social, and personal - with a sharply focused look at the works of art themselves, Kalina brings us closer to understanding the social matrices in which art is embedded and responds to bigger questions about the object nature of the work of art in today's world.

Reviews

“For over 30 years, artist and critic Richard Kalina has asked his readers to look beyond artworld rhetoric for authenticity and value in our ever-changing visual landscape. This selection of essays traces key developments and A-list artists, while foregrounding influences and individuals on the margins of accepted artworld practices.” – René Paul Barilleaux, Head of Curatorial Affairs, McNay Art Museum, USA

“In this series of essays, Richard Kalina takes us on an expansive and insightful expedition through some of the most salient art and art criticism of the post-war years. In doing so, he articulates coherent and meaningful analyses of some of Modernism's (and post-Modernism's) most persistently elusive concepts.” – Marshall N. Price, Chief Curator and Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, USA

Pamela Salisbury Gallery, Hudson, NY
Richard Kalina
Selected Work
June 27, 2020 - July 26, 2020

Acquired by Mumok: Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna Austria
The Highlands, 1980 was acquired by Mumok: Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna Austria

Opening: “The Unusual Suspects” at DC Moore Gallery
This show curated by the artist, critic, and Fordham University professor Richard Kalina brings together abstract paintings by 21 contemporary artists including Amie Cunat, Federico Herrero, Carrie Moyer, Odili Donald Odita, and Stanley Whitney. The show meditates on the evolving and ever-changing nature of abstraction. A panel moderated by Kalina with four artists in the show followed.

Click on the link to view:

Panel Discussion: Abstract Painting: Wrong Questions, Right Answers?
Paolo Arao, Amie Cunat, Carrie Moyer, Odili Donald Odita
Moderated by Richard Kalina
June 20th, 2019

Richard Kalina is easily one of the most informed experts on contemporary art in America today. He has taught at Fordham University, Yale and Bennington College; is an influential art critic with decades of experience writing for Art in America and other well regarded publications; and he is an accomplished painter whose work is included in the collections of such beloved institutions as the National Museum of American Art in Washington, DC, the Milwaukee Art Museum, and the Indianapolis Museum of Art. This summer, Kalina has brought that wealth of experience with him in his role as curator for an exhibition at DC Moore Gallery in New York, titled The Unusual Suspects: A View of Abstraction. The show features work by more than 20 contemporary abstract artists, including younger artists like Paolo Arao and Federico Herrero, mid-career artists like Carrie Moyer, and legends like Barbara Takenaga, Shirley Jaffe, Valerie Jaudon, Joanna Pousette-Dart and Kalina himself. Multiple Modernist and Post Modernist aesthetic positions are referenced in the various works, from Hard Edge Abstraction and Process Art, to Pattern and Decoration, Lyrical Abstraction, Op Art, Minimalism, and beyond. Yet, one of the key points Kalina is trying to make with this exhibition is that such labels as the ones I just offered are no longer relevant. His impetus for curating this exhibition is to shatter the idea of art movements, and instead get us thinking in terms of an expanded field of simultaneous methods and ideas interconnecting in the vibrant realm of contemporary abstract painting.

— Phillip Barcio, "Richard Kalina Curates an Abstract Art Show at DC Moore Gallery"
IdeelArt, July 3, 2019

“In his 12th show with Lennon, Weinberg, Richard Kalina continues with his architecturally inspired canvases, but returns to pure oil painting for the first time since the early 1980s. Featuring overlapping and interlocking geometric shapes in a variety of bright colors, the works create the illusion of three-dimensional space through the artist’s use of color theory—different shades that seemingly retreat or advance from view.”
— Sarah Cascone, “Editors’ Picks: 16 Things Not to Miss in New York’s Art World This Week – Richard Kalina at Lennon, Weinberg,”
artnet News, February 19, 2019.

Richard Kalina
Future Perfect
February 21 – March 30, 2019
Lennon, Weinberg, Inc.
514 West 25th Street
New York, NY 10001
Gallery hours: Tuesday – Friday 10–6; Saturday 12–6
» Press release
» Catalog:  Flip book

Richard Kalina, Roy Dowell
Synchronicity: A State of Painting
November 9 – December 23, 2017
Lennon, Weinberg, Inc.
514 West 25th Street
New York, NY 10001
Gallery hours: Tuesday – Saturday 10–6
» Press release
» Catalog:  Flip book

Acquired by the University Museum of Contemporary Art at the University of Massachusetts
Resting State — Turquoise, 2015 has been acquired by the University Museum of Contemporary Art at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. The painting was donated to the museum by Alex Katz.

Richard Kalina: Panamax
February 18 – March 26, 2016
Lennon, Weinberg, Inc.
514 West 25th Street
New York, NY 10001
Gallery hours: Tuesday – Saturday 10–6
» Press release
» Catalog:  PDF / Flip book

Acquired by the Springfield Art Museum
The watercolor, The Principles of Immortality, by Richard Kalina was acquired by the Springfield Art Museum.

Acquired by the Nasher Museum
An important Richard Kalina painting, Midnight Rider from 1972 has been acquired by the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University.

“Three essential elements can be found throughout Richard Kalina’s tenth show at Lennon, Weinberg, Inc.: circles, grids, and bright jewel tones. In the artist’s larger works, brightly colored circles connected by precisely angled lines are placed at regular intervals upon a carefully measured grid. The backdrop is a subtle collage of squares of white paper layered atop light brown linen. Kalina’s pleasing variations on this systematic theme introduce colored borders, cut-outs, and concentric circles in different colors. In the smaller pieces, the grid becomes less precise, rendered freehand on a sheet of paper, and the angled lines between the circles disappear altogether. In some instances, the circles’ cheerful watercolors fade to white in the center. By playing with his three key elements, Kalina has created a visually striking, rigorously organized array of work that is both abstract and accessible.”
— Sarah Cascone, “Five Chelsea Gallery Shows to See Now – Richard Kalina at Lennon, Weinberg,”
artnet News, March 26, 2014.

“Experience pays off—again—in Richard Kalina’s 23rd solo exhibition, his 10th at this gallery. The paintings and watercolors are energized by scattered dots, some of them vaguely targetlike, connected by lines that deftly subdivide the pictorial field. The result: A subtle push-pull in perceptual space that evokes the kind of cognitive complexity inherent in today’s highly networked urban life. Leave it to this artist—who is also a professor, book author and critic—to capture that glorious, electron-swift muddle.”
— “Exhibitions- The Lookout: Richard Kalina at Lennon, Weinberg”, Art in America, March 28, 2014.

Richard Kalina: New Paintings and Watercolors
February 20 – March 29, 2014
Lennon, Weinberg, Inc.
514 West 25th Street
New York, NY 10001
Gallery hours: Tuesday – Saturday 10–6
Opening Reception: Thursday, February 20, 6–8 pm
» Press release
» Catalog:  PDF / Flip book

Richard Kalina recently participated in Conceptual Abstraction, an exhibition curated by Pepe Karmel and Joachim Pissarro at the Hunter College Times Square Gallery. The show reprised and updated the 1991 Sidney Janis Gallery exhibition of the same name. Conceptual Abstraction was reviewed by Holland Cotter in the New York Times in November.

Elisa Decker’s review in the May 2012 issue of Art in America begins:

“Richard Kalina’s recent paintings are systemic yet intuitive, summoning – despite their rigorous abstraction – the optical play of color and light in Seurat’s work. This handsome exhibition, Kalina’s ninth at the gallery since 1993, included six watercolors and eight medium-size works on linen, which employ a collage technique that the artist has been fine-tuning over the last decade. Many of the titles refer to scientific concepts ranging from physics to cybernetics, yet the results feel like poetic interpretations rather than literal illustrations. Though the precision of the works lends them an immaculate appearance, closer looking reveals a handmade touch.”
» Read the full text

Richard Kalina
New paintings and watercolors January 19 – February 25, 2012
Gallery hours: Tuesday – Saturday 10–6
Opening reception: Thursday, January 19, 6–8 pm
» Press release
» Catalog

Richard Kalina was recently elected to membership in the National Academy of Design. The National Academy was founded by Samuel F.B. Morse, Rembrandt Peale, Asher B. Durand and Thomas Cole in 1825 and was modeled on the Royal Academy in London. National Academicians are drawn from the fields of fine art and architecture.

The New Yorker — August 9, 2010

GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN: ART
RICHARD KALINA
This mini-retrospective showcases twenty paintings by the artist, who is also a well-respected critic. Starting with post-painterly abstraction (represented here by a crumpled striped canvas from 1970), Kalina went on to experiment with postmodern pastiche and now makes elegantly tessellated collages, his strongest work yet. The buoyant hexagons of “A Cartesian Diver” traverse a grid, the intersections of which are cut into squares of raw canvas, giving the delicate composition a satisfyingly rough contrast. A painter’s painter, Kalina has affinities with other New York artists who came of age in the sixties and seventies, from Jennifer Bartlett to Philip Taaffe; this show will hold the greatest appeal for fans of formal abstraction. Through Aug. 13.

LENNON WEINBERG
514 W. 25th St., NY, NY
212-941-0012
lennonweinberg.com

New York Magazine — August 9-16, 2010

CRITIC’S PICK
A Long, Colorful Run

“In this era of the 40-month career, it’s great to see an artist like Richard Kalina develop over a 40-year arc.”

Profile
In this era of the 40-month career, it’s great to see an artist develop over a 40-year arc. Richard Kalina has a tight touch and a structured mind that creates playfully rigorous fractal-geometry-like compositions. In this survey of his patterning and wallpaper-like designs, the black-and-white Vertical Forms is Morandi meets Mondrian; A Cartesian Diver is a cotton-candy-colored screen saver. This show radiates the joys of a life lived in art (pictured, Luquillo, 1970). — Jerry Saltz