Fredric Koeppel

There's no denying that David Comstock's abstract paintings are attractive, though to say that they're easy on the eyes would perhaps stray into the area of condescension.

A sense of place depends as heavily on our imaginations as it does on reality, while the definition of "reality" can be as fluid as it is ambivalent. What, then, is the reality of Memphis? Cinematically, the gamut runs from ...

Since ArtsMemphis is a not-for-profit entity, it depends heavily on the support and work of volunteers, many of whom, it turns out, are artists. The group, which raises money and distributes funds to local arts organizations, gives back to those ...

Vast changes came to Europe between about 1600 and 1800. Revolutions in exploration, including the opening of the New World and increased trade with Asia; revolutions in science and religion; revolutions in politics and government, economics and culture; and wars ...

Did the Brooks get fleeced in 1943? That year, Brooks Memorial Art Gallery -- now Memphis Brooks Museum of Art -- was 27 years old. It owned a small collection of paintings housed in a compact and beautiful white marble ...

I promise that at the end of this year, when I'm compiling my list of best exhibitions of 2012, this show, "Ted Faiers: Flat Space, paintings and works on paper 1953-56," will be among those selected. Since 2002, David Lusk ...

If you're feeling a bit of a letdown between Christmas and New Year's, drive down to the National Ornamental Metal Museum for a bright pick-me-up in the form of Sarah Perkins' "Tributary" exhibition. It's a compact show, and the 13 ...

Choosing the five best art exhibitions from a year's worth of looking and writing might seem to be fraught with conflict and contradiction, decision and indecision, but actually, once I went back over the shows I wrote about in 2011, ...

For its last shows of 2011, David Lusk Gallery juxtaposes the witty, elegant and highly finished welded bronze sculptures of Carroll Todd with the purposefully unfinished -- or at least giving that illusion -- sketches and drafts of works by ...

Art is everywhere, it seems, displayed in commercial galleries, shops that specialize in local artists, museums, various stores that just want to hang some art and sell it, the lobbies of performing arts centers, storefront alternative spaces, restaurants.

Melissa Dunn's exhibition, "Looking for One Thing, Finding Another," at Dixon Gallery and Gardens through Jan. 14, exemplifies the nature of her work: that is, the search for a form and an expression the result of which may carry the ...

One doesn't expect to go into an exhibition of abstract paintings by Don Estes and be greeted by splashes of color, but in "Prosody," at David Lusk Gallery through Nov. 26, the artist reveals a radical transformation of his manner ...

Abstraction thrives in Memphis. Five exhibitions currently feature works by painters who toil in the tradition of American abstraction as it has traveled from Marsden Hartley and Arthur Dove in the 1910s and '20s through Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning, ...

Are we truly adrift? Are all matters and perceptions ephemeral? The answer to those questions is "Yes," at least in the light of the exhibition "Adrift," displayed in the Hyde Gallery of Memphis College of Art's Nesin Graduate School.

When Opera Memphis launches its 2011-2012 season Saturday night with Giacomo Puccini's "Tosca," it will deliver a celebrated work that's a combination of political thriller, film noir and soap opera, which is to say, just what we expect from an ...

While it's always advisable to take artists' statements with a grain of skepticism — artists tend to be better at visual than verbal expression — here's Hood-Taylor's in full: "Drunk Doilies is a series of radial-symmetrical drawings done on beverage ...

Visitors going to Flicker Street Studio to look at Elizabeth Alley's spare but resonant exhibition "Go Change" should walk straight in the door, through the L-shaped gallery that is the building's first room and into the large classroom to the ...

"Less is more," blah blah blah, but for some artists even "more and more" is not enough. Jiha Moon's exhibition "Day for Night," at Rhodes College's Clough-Hanson Gallery through Oct. 14, shows an astonishing sense of controlled chaos in the ...

Perhaps we have become too used to Greely Myatt. He's just so here, a euphemism for ubiquitous, as artist, as teacher, personality.

Last year's Horn Island expedition, undertaken immediately after the disastrous explosion of the Deep Horizon offshore oil rig and the horrendous oil spill that followed, produced a somber exhibition that lent the gallery of Memphis College of Art's Rust Hall ...

August is the month of group shows at the city's commercial galleries, but a revolving group show has been taking place for the past several months at 517 S. Main, a narrow, very deep, high-ceilinged store-front that usually serves as ...

One of the mixed-media paintings in Daniel Tacker's exhibition "The City Loves You" at Dixon Gallery and Gardens is titled "Branded." That name seems not just appropriate but also prescient for a show that is deeply entrenched in yet critical ...

In August, art galleries traditionally fall back on what are often called “summer group shows,” gathering works by gallery artists instead of concentrating on a themed exhibition by one artist. The easy way out, perhaps, but these group shows serve ...

Bryan Blankenship has been defying expectations for two decades. A ceramic artist of exquisite taste and craftsmanship, he repeatedly crosses the borders or blurs the boundaries between craft and fine art, between provocation and décor.

First impressions are important, so Memphis' second major Impressionist art exhibit this summer is likely to get a boost from the first. "A Very Impressionistic Summer" continues with the opening Saturday of "Monet to Cezanne/Cassett to Sargent: The Impressionist Revolution" ...

We expect an art of chaste and enigmatic power from Terri Jones, and she fulfills that expectation in "Whirl," her exhibition at David Lusk Gallery through July 30. She also indulges a streak of playfulness -- or serious play -- ...

On Saturday at Beauty Shop Restaurant in Cooper-Young, Joel Hilgenberg exhibits 100 small envelopes on which he has drawn, stamped and written a veritable history of his dark cultural consciousness in what could be called a collaboration with the U.S. ...

"Digital Mettle: Jewelry and Objects of CAD," at the National Ornamental Metal Museum through Sept. 11, is an exhibition as confounding as it is beguiling, as confusing as it is benign but ultimately is a harbinger of the future for ...

The full extent of French artist Jean-Louis Forain's widely varied career will be displayed at Dixon Gallery and Gardens beginning Sunday in "Jean-Louis Forain: La Comedie parisienne." At 130 works, it is the largest exhibition in the museum's history and ...

It's a clever idea for Lisa Kurts Gallery to mount an exhibition called "Kurts-Bingham Retrospective" (through the end of July), because the result is a gathering of many of the artists that Memphians have loved for years, including local painters ...

Niles Wallace slyly poses a question in his exhibition "Sticks & Stones (one thing follows another)," at Gallery Fifty Six through June 25. It's not the traditional question whose implication we often expect at displays of ceramic art, that is, ...

Chuck Johnson's exhibition of paintings, "Above Ground," on display at L Ross Gallery through June 30, is so restful to gaze upon that my suspicions were raised; I do like art to jab and unsettle me a bit. On the ...

As different in weight and implication as the materials may be, it makes sense to juxtapose pastel-on-paper drawings by Pinkney Herbert with painted steel constructions by Susan Madacsi, as David Lusk Gallery has done. The two exhibitions -- "Broken Time ...

When Dixon Gallery and Gardens opens the largest exhibition in its 35-year history June 25-26, actress and businesswoman Priscilla Presley will be a guest for a grand reception that includes art collectors from around the country and members of the ...

"Oh, I'll never run out of ideas," said artist Jason Miller. "I have so many ideas on the drawing-board that I haven't gotten to yet." Perhaps there's such a thing as too many ideas, but you can certainly say this: ...

"Magritte and Delvaux: Surrealism from the Musée d'Ixelles — Belgium" creates a mystifying and dream-like mood in one intimate gallery at Memphis Brooks Museum of Art.

There's great talent, and then there's star power. Internationally famed violinist Joshua Bell brought both to the Cannon Center for the Performing Arts on Thursday night, playing Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto in D Major with the Memphis Symphony Orchestra, under the ...

Larry Edwards' exhibition in the Mallory Wurtzburger area of Dixon Gallery and Gardens is titled "3 Themes," and indeed it's evident that there is a "Pinocchio" theme, a "battle" theme and a "freak carnival" theme.

John Torina's career seems to have been an extended exploration into the nuances of painting light. As his exhibition "In the Gloaming," at David Lusk Gallery through May 28, reveals, his proficiency has attained near-mystical levels. There is a reception ...

The first exhibition in the city related to the 2011 Memphis in May International Festival honoring Belgium may be small, but it's no flash in the pan.

An audience can tell when an orchestra is playing at the top of its ability. Perhaps it was because Saturday night's performance at the Germantown Performing Arts Center was the last concert in its 2010-11 season, but the IRIS Orchestra, ...

The exhibition of recent photographic work by Lauren Coulson and Annette Fournet at Askew Nixon Ferguson Architects is one of the most stimulating and provocative shows displayed at the firm's gallery in years.

What better way for an artist to celebrate his 75th birthday than being interviewed on the radio and installing an exhibition of new works? That's what transpired this week for Anton Weiss, the Nashville-based artist whose show "Remnants" opens tonight ...

The two shows discussed today actually close today, so time is limited. I encourage readers, though, to make an effort to see at least one of these because they are powerful and strangely moving displays. The most public and provocative ...

"What is reality?" is a question of such mind-boggling implications that perhaps it's best left to philosophers, poets and artists, all of whom might offer radically different interpretations. "I don't know if I could define reality," said artist Annabelle Meacham, ...

Visit Harrington Brown Gallery on a gray gloomy day, of which there seem to be an abundance this month, and you will be revitalized by the brilliantly colored paintings of Leya Evelyn. On display through April 5, these abstract pieces ...

Despite our disdain, pennies are real money. The profile of one of our favorite presidents, Abraham Lincoln, adorns one side of this humble 1-cent coin, while his austere memorial in Washington is depicted on the other side, or at least ...

"These 18," the name of Huger Foote's exhibition of photographs at David Lusk Gallery (through Saturday), offers a rich field for interpretations. First, that since the photographs are untitled, a thematic exhibition title is unnecessary. Or, these are the 18 ...

Perhaps working in black and white leaves an artist with a void that only color can fill. Local art patrons used to seeing David Comstock's black-and-white (or positive/negative) paintings may be surprised to see the range of colors he employs ...

Well, bless my heart, all those fancy hearts hanging up at Memphis College of Art must mean that it's time for the 19th annual "Works of Heart" auction that benefits the Memphis Child Advocacy Center. "Works of Heart" occurs from ...