The gallery scene suffered a blow when Judi Rotenberg Gallery closed in June, not for economic reasons, but for personal ones, according to co-director Abigail Ross Goodman. After nearly 40 years on Newbury Street, the gallery had become a standout venue for edgy art in the last decade under the leadership of Ross Goodman and Kristen Dodge. Dodge has since opened Dodge Gallery in New York. Ross Goodman will co-curate the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum’s 2012 Biennial.
Rotenberg mounted one of the best group shows of the year, the brooding, often comic “Man Up,’’ celebrating and critiquing masculinity and its high-octane fuel, testosterone. Jesse Burke’s montage of color photos at the heart of the show married aggression with vulnerability, and Steve Locke’s portraits in simple, lush strokes conveyed the competitiveness of male companionship.
Two standout exhibits pushed painting and sculpture displays into installation art. At Samson, Jackie Saccoccio and Jeffrey Gibson each took an opposing long wall and hung abstract paintings, but that was just the beginning. Gibson papered his wall with patterned prints, and Saccoccio filled hers with paint — operatic ges tures in black and white. It was a wild call-and-response, Gibson’s staccato patterns pinging off Saccoccio’s legato strokes.
Similarly, painter Carl Ostendarp and sculptor Gail Fitzgerald, who are married, staged “Plasti-Kool II,’’ a sequel to a smaller 2009 effort in New York. Ostendarp painted the walls in turquoise over powder blue with an undulating horizon line separating the two. Fitzgerald built bright, layered, monstrous sculptures, like tangles of squirming leeches, out of children’s modeling goop. The show delved into 20th-century abstraction, with nods to Jackson Pollock and Roy Lichtenstein, and took a kindergartner’s delight in color and touch.
