The title Entropvisions is in homage to my mother, the poet and art critic, Harriet Zinnes. In 1990 New Directions published a collection of her poems titled Entropisms, a word she made-up combining entropy - the tendency toward disorder - and tropism - the growth towards or away from a stimulus. Similarly, my short reviews combine entropy and tropism by suggesting growth towards a vision of art from the chaos of the art world. Through the back door, my title also pays homage to my physicist father, Irving Zinnes, whose long discussions with my mom got her thinking about entropy and tropism in the first place.
William Eckhardt Kohler at Catskill Gallery
2021.11.21
What a busy Friday I had! Starting in Tribeca with William Eckhardt Kohler (thoughtfully curated by Kyle Staver and Janice Nowinski at Catskill Gallery) to a group show at Zurcher curated by Loren J. Munk, then Larry Rivers at Tibor de Nagy, Kyle Staver and Catherine White at Steven Harvey, Lennart Anderson at the NY Studio School and finally Jasper Johns and Jennifer Packer at the Whitney, I saw quite a diverse group of art, but all of it strong. The exhibitions were the type I love, where I discover new avenues into the work, enlarging my perspective. Cathy Diamond joined me for the Anderson and Whitney shows, providing even wider interpretations and responses - thank you Cathy! I'll post a few images from these shows in the next few days. To start, here are some of William's paintings.
William's paintings are slow paintings. At first I was struck by the thingness of place, and the figures and objects in those places. But the longer I looked, the more I got sucked into questions asked by his intangible narratives. I felt I was looking into William's history of artistic inspiration and sources, from Jungian symbols, mythology, love, and art itself. Paintings suggested multiple meanings, or perhaps no specific meaning at all but simply being in the act of creation and searching. An added bonus for me was having a long and thoughtful conversation with the artist himself.