Colin Snapp and Daniel Turner at Martos Gallery

Installation view of Colin Snapp and Daniel Turner at Martos Gallery, New York, through July 29, 2011.


Detail view of Daniel Turner, untitled iron oxide stain, 2011

Daniel Turner's works often evince a just-barely-controlled aggression. He has scuffed crisp-white walls with rough, grey abrasions and packaged tar under folds of plastic and vinyl, keeping toxicity just out reach, rendering it almost sexy. In his best pieces, abuse and pleasure are uncomfortably bound up together.

At Martos Gallery, Turner has laid a long, thin blanket of rust across a stretch of the floor. My photographs fail to convey this, but the work bubbles with earthy, ocher, primal colors, and it wouldn't look out of place in Washington's Hoh rain forest, where Colin Snapp, the other artist here, shot some of his large-scale photographs.

Like Turner's piece, Snapp's photos are immediately cold and forbidding: dark or washed-out, blurry and almost illegible. But then, assuming you're not up too close, you notice leaves or a hint of a flower, some warmth creeping up through the severity.

"Tilted Arc" and Drawing, Koons and the Met, Childe Hassam, etc. [Collected]

Koo Jeong A, Mystral, 2010, in "Koo Jeong A: Constellation Congress," at Dia at the Hispanic Society, New York, through June 26, 2011. Photos: 16 Miles [more]

• The United States Government destroys art: Greg Allen on Richard Serra's post-Tilted Arc drawing show at Castelli in 1989. [Greg.org]
  
  
• "If it looked like an anti-tank fortification, it was ahead of its time." — John Perreault on Tilted Arc, in a piece on Serra's current drawing show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. [Artopia]
  
  
• Jeff Koons is loaning paintings to the Met, Laura Gilbert notices. [Art Unwashed]
  
  
• Tyler Green surveys recent and proposed arts-funding cuts in the U.S. and asks, "Why aren't Americans angrier?" [Modern Painters]
  
  
• Mark Grotjahn, Amanda Ross-Ho, Jonas Wood, et al.: Picks from "Greater LA," the giant show now on view on the second floor of 483 Broadway in SoHo. [Two Coats of Paint]
  
  
• Hotelier Andre Balazs is looking forward to the extension of the High Line. "As you walk along it, the intimacy and titillation is very tactile, very suggestive,” says Balazs, of the elevated park. "It’s a sexual way of interacting with the city. ... Walking from 13th Street to 30th Street along 10th Avenue is utterly banal. ... But walking from 13th to 30th Street on the High Line feels like you’re on your way to an orgasm.” [NYT]
  
  
• 1918: "CHILDE HASSAM ARRESTED." — "Mr. Hassam then congratulated the policeman, saying that if every one was as alert there would not be so many dangerous enemy aliens traveling about the country." [NYT]
  
  
• May 19: "We Regret To Inform You There Is Currently No Space Or Place For Abstract Painting," featuring Daniel Turner, Ben Schumacher, Sarah Crowner, and more, at Martos Gallery, 6–8 PM. [MG]
  

• May 20: David Reed, Katy Siegel, and Lynne Cooke discuss Jo Baer's work, at The Artist's Institute, 6:30 PM. [TAI]
  
  
• May 21: Hilary Lloyd at Artists Space, 6–8 PM. [AS]
  
  
• May 22: Spring Open House 2011 at MoMA PS1, 12–6 PM. [MoMA PS1]
  
  
• May 23: "Fünf Räume" ("Five Rooms") at the Austrian Cultural Forum, 6–8 PM. [ACF]