Danny Simmons: From There to Here was reviewed by art critic Benjamin Genocchio in The New York Times this past week. Though critical of a few of the works, overall it is a positive review of the artist's debut exhibition at Spanierman. Genocchio also remarked, "The paintings in this show, pulsing and occasionally brash, are very different from the usual polished but staid art that you see hanging in galleries in the Hamptons. They shake things up." We are happy to be pushing the bounds of the East Hampton art community! Genocchio writes:
Totemic, mythic imagery abounds, giving the best of the paintings visual force and a disquieting strangeness. Whimsy is also prevalent, be it in the artist’s twisted looping lines or amped-up color schemes.
Mr. Simmons, 56, lives in New York, where he has been showing in galleries and museums to growing acclaim since the mid-1990s. He regularly spends summers in East Hampton, where one of his brothers, Russell Simmons, the hip-hop impresario, owns a home in the Georgica neighborhood. His other brother is the rapper and minister Joseph Simmons, who stars as Rev Run in the MTV reality show “Run’s House.”
The Spanierman show of almost 50 paintings comes with a handsome color catalog. It tells us that Mr. Simmons likes to rise at 5 a.m. to paint, working in silence and allowing his paintings to grow intuitively, a method he shares with many of the best abstract artists. It is a risky, gutsy way to make art, somewhat hit or miss, but when it succeeds, the results are a marvelous tangle of lines, shapes and collage elements, including, in one work, bits of wood nailed to the canvas.
Take a look at the entire review, Sensuous Abstractions, on the NYTimes website.
Any readers out there who saw the exhibition?
What was your impression of Simmons's work?
What was your impression of Simmons's work?
Danny Simmons: From There to Here will be showing until Nov. 23, 2009.
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