When I saw a listing in Artcards.cc today for Mark Grotjahn, the name seemed very familiar.  Turns out that I saw Mark Grotjahn’s recent solo show at the Whitney Museum, ground floor, last month.  Here’s what I wrote then:

“..The Mark Grotjahn show in the Anne & Joel Eheenkranz Gallery on the first floor was interesting – I passed it on the way out and I see that picture represented on the Whitney’s site is the one I liked the best.

“…on view September 15, 2006 – January 7, 2007
Anne & Joel Ehrenkranz Gallery, floor 1
Conceived for this exhibition, Mark Grotjahn’s cycle of “perspective drawings” pulls the viewer into a dynamic interplay between the large-scale works and the gallery space. A sense of space is evoked by the drawings’ multiple vanishing points, a convention used since the Renaissance to create the illusion of depth and volume. These perspectival referents both create the structure for and become the subject of Grotjahn’s art. The works’ formal organization finds a counterpoint in the modulations of color that play against the vanishing points to create vibrant, three-dimensional surfaces.”

I wish I could say the same thing for the Blue Grotjahn paintings at Anton Kern – but I can’t.  I liked the textures of all the paintings and the reflected light from the canvasses.  The main problem I had with the show – most of Mark Grotjahn’s paintings are repeats – he’s doing what appears to be the same exact painting, over and over again.  That part, I don’t like.

All the Grotjahn paintings are handsome, but they feel shallow too – I’m sure the artist  can tell one painting apart from another – but I can only tell a couple of Grotjahn’s paintings apart.

For me, I’d like to see that each painting is a unique experience; I did not get that awareness from this show.