Young blood Kansas City

Here is great article from REVIEW on the newest show at Spray Booth Gallery in Kansas City.

“Is Modernity our Antiquity?” This question was posed to numerous magazines for the 12th edition of Documenta, the international exhibition/survey of contemporary art occurring every five years in Kassel, Germany. The question though is a very good one as it addresses the sense of nostalgia and rhetoric that we see in North American culture today. Paintings and Drawings: New Work by Max Crutcher and Brook Hsu presents works deeply immersed in the aesthetic and conceptual “inheritance” of modernist painting. Whereas many artists who appreciate modernist art feel a distance from it, Crutcher’s and Hsu’s exhibited works feel in direct succession to the modernist fixations of psychology, process, geometry, and purity. For them Modernism is not an Antiquity, it is an inheritance.

Hsu’s paintings are often very small and have a material body that quietly hums. Crutcher’s drawings use geometry, repetition, and a near-grimy patina that speak of studio rigor. The work is incredibly well complemented — geometric and organic, rhythmic and quixotic, colorful and tonal. Spray Booth operator Andrew Lyles takes a good risk showing Crutcher and Hsu together: their work is quiet, non-literal, and subtle. Paintings and Drawings: New Work by Max Crutcher and Brook Hsu is Spray Booth Gallery’s sixth exhibition, and since February, Spray Booth Gallery has consistently produced exciting and challenging exhibitions like this one.

SEE THE REST OF THE ARTICLE HERE