Clockwise from top center, Brad Kahlhamer’s “House of Snakes,” 2000; “Bird + Thalia,” 2000; “Friendly Frontier,” 2000; “End of the Trail w/Nice Music,” 1999; “Hawk,” 1988; and “Adult Eagle Monument,” 2000.Credit...Jeenah Moon for The New York Times
Art Fair Review: Picasso Prints and Brazilian Brilliance at the Independent
by Will Heinrich
You really see the importance of color in the paintings, drawings and small sculptural figures — all, in this booth, from the 1990s or 2000s — of Brad Kahlhamer. He sticks to an unmistakable palette, whether he is layering Jackson Pollock-like strands of black and fragments of angular, half-legible writing over abstract turbulence on a large canvas, placing more or less cartoony Native men and women in comic, unnerving situations in watercolor, or summoning little dream gremlins with wood and twine. Beiges, creams and reds evoke the Southwest, where Kahlhamer was born. They also bring to mind Plains ledger drawings — among his influences — and the knotty, constantly shifting questions of race and identity that provide his subtext.
Independent 20th Century
Sept. 5-8, Casa Cipriani, 10 South Street, Manhattan
Will Heinrich writes about new developments in contemporary art, and has previously been a critic for The New Yorker and The New York Observer. More about Will Heinrich
