Andrew Masullo at NICELLE BEAUCHENE and Roger Herman at JACK HANLEY

As a serious fan of over thirty years, whenever James Kalm gets a notice of an Andrew Masullo opening, he bust ass to get in and see it. Andrew has a perverse sense of humor, and “Recent Paintings” at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery displays it. Quoting the press release-“What does an artist do with paintings he can’t finish? Or with finished paintings he once embraced but now rejects?” for this show, Masullo has limited his pallet to red, white, and silver (since Pollock the paradigm of “modern painting”). These pictures all bare testimony to their having been reincarnated, resurrected and reworked, giving them a haphazardly humorous new existence as carriers of painterly history and intention. As an example, “2885, 1993-2018” oil on canvas 8 x 6 inches, has the longest duration of fabrication, Andrew noodle with this tiny canvas for 25 years. Upstairs, viewers are invited to stroll through a ceramics show at Jack Hanley by Roger Herman. These colorful vessels bring viewers a brilliant survey of shapes, finishes and forms, with recurrent themes of female nudes, skulls, and splashy strokes of shiny glazes. The mass and rugged shapes of the sculptures, some with window like holes cut in them, are contrasted with a delicately balanced sense of painterly color. This program was recorded May 24, 2018.