Last night a friend and I checked out Joseph Hart’s opening of his new show Stagecraft at David Krut projects. As you must know from this blog, I’m not a huge fan of abstract art. But I am completely in love with Joe Hart’s recent work. Some of the pieces in the show were huge. From afar they made really beautiful weightless compositions of lines and abstract shapes. And then up close there is so much texture- tiny little pencil lines, parts where the paint was much thicker, or remnants of drawings that got painted over. Everything in his work seems perfectly thought out but also completely natural. I asked him a little about his process and he mentioned he often puts a piece away for a while, then takes it back out and adds, deletes, and cuts and pastes pieces. Unfortunately I couldn’t afford to buy one of his amazing works but luckily they were selling this little catalogue of the work from the show, which will have to do for now, sigh.

© Julia Rothman 2007