TRUE BELIEVERS: Joseph Marioni / Michael Toenges / Peter Tollens at Larry Becker Contemporary Art, Philadelphia

Installation view, “Joseph Marioni, Michael Toenges, Peter Tollens: We Cannot Look Directly into the Sun… –J.M.”, Larry Becker Contemporary Art, Philadelphia

By EDWARD WAISNIS May 28, 2025
 

“Artists still interested in painting began an analysis—or deconstruction—of painting, turning to the basic question of what painting is, not so much for the purpose of defining it as to actually be able to vivify it by beginning all over again. That question led to examination of the discipline of painting, the taking apart of it as an activity; it led to a restatement of what we already knew along with an investigation of it in depth. We pretended in a certain way that we didn’t know anything about painting. We studied and rediscovered it for ourselves.”
                                       
                                        –Marcia Hafif *
 

Coming at a time when there was–to use Jimmy Carter’s famous phrase, from his infamous speech–a crisis of confidence roaming the garrets of SoHo, Marcia Hafif's seminal text Beginning Again, sounded a clarion for then beleaguered painting. Challenging the proponents of the mode’s demise, who were arguing the crafts stale datedness to the extreme of triteness, in their bid to play an endgame.

Hafif, by dint of her treatise, has come to represent a sort of spirit guide based on her argument to reinstitute a faith, bereft of iconography. Her essay was crucial in rallying a coterie of painters who took up the call for reinvigoration of the creative impulse, from an embedded position, that she argued had been left to wallow. Descriptively, Hafif's tenets coalesced in a form of reductionist work–at times referred to as monochromatic–harking back to the origins of the early avant-garde, specifically Kasamir Malevich.

While the art world continued to shift through a timeline that has showcased the gyrations of neo-Expressionism and post-Modernism to the fractured inclusiveness of the early twenty-first century, these practitioners (of what fans have been known to refer to as serious painting), have unflaggingly continued on the path. Their work can ceaselessly be found displayed at the steadfastly commited to the cause Larry Becker Contemporary Art.

Installation view, from street, of “Joseph Marioni, Michael Toenges, Peter Tollens: We Cannot Look Directly into the Sun… –J.M.”, Larry Becker Contemporary Art, Philadelphia. NOTE: Exhibition has been extended through June 7, contrary to date displayed on window above

As acolytes of Hafif's theorem gallerists Heidi Nivling and Larry Becker have built a program upon this foundation. Establishing their bailiwick, sealing their bona fides as evangelists for this refined niche, by dint of decades-long devotion.

Relocating, from Wellesley, Massachusetts and Linden, New Jersey, respectively, to attend the Tyler School of Arts, where they studied towards careers as artists themselves. Afterwards, convening in Philadelphia, their careers diverged–Larry was a respected, and sought out framer for many years–and ultimately landing upon their fate as dealers.

Amongst their accomplishments, the placement of Robert Ryman’s Philadelphia Prototype, 2002 in the Samuel M.V. Hamilton building  at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, in 2005, which was created at the gallery, turned temporary studio for the purpose.

Their latest exhibition, a three-person affair organized under the umbrella of a homage to Joseph Marioni, who died last year, with a title attributable to a fragment from a Marioni quotation revealingly recognizes obstacles to vision.

Five paintings each by two Köln-based practitioners, Michael Toenges and Peter Tollens, who share the distinction of having been selected, personally by Marioni, to be concurrently shown in an adjoining gallery to his retrospective at Museum Wiesbaden, in 2018, are installed in the main gallery, punctuated by two by Marioni.

Joseph Marioni, “Red Painting [No. 08]”, 2012, acrylic and linen on stretcher, 24 x 20 inches

Marioni’s Red Painting, 2012, a sumptuous velvety cadmium tablet, appears to levitate off the wall, aided by an artist-designed stretcher with diminishing bevels, kicks from it’s first position prominence. Bright Yellow Painting, 2018, centrally perched on an opposite wall, flanked by groupings of Toenges’ and Tollens’ radiates with the light of the sun.  Evocations of the magical to the work of other champions of essence like Robert Irwin’s use of scrims and Wolfgang Laib’s rectangles composed from pollen, contained in an easel-scaled square.

With the fervor of scientific experimentation, Marioni treated detail–spanning the afore-mentioned stretchers, the Belgian linen substrate, hand-ground paint, that the artist put through rigorous viscosity tests using sheets of glass–of paramount focus throughout his practice; a legacy of exemplars that stand for the ‘school’ that his oeuvre represented.

Marioni treats the edges of his mirror-like veneers by attentively coaxing the syrupy layers to stages of sublimity. This detailing is something that Brice Marden, Pat Steir and Jake Berthot, to name just a few examples, of painters prized.

Peter Tollens, “Untitled, 248/98, Oct 97-Feb 98”, egg tempera and oil on linen, 22.5 x 19.75 inches
 

Tollens' touch falls somewhere between the surface inflections of Ad Reinhardt, Robert Ryman, and Nicolas de Staël with their flat striations of gritty blocks of low closely keyed color, conjuring strategies established by mentor Marioni.

Peter Tollens, “Untitled (red), April/May”, 2007, oil paint on wood, 20.5 x 15.75 inches
 

From the intensely clotted viscera of Untitled (red), April/May, 2007 to the dense forestal silviculture that is Untitled, 248/98, Oct 97-Feb 98, 1998, it’s density achieved with egg tempera underpainting.

Michael Toenges, "29-07-35-30," 2007, oil on linen mounted on wood, 16 x 13.75 inches
 

In obvious ways, by eschewing surfaces of quietude favored by Marioni and Tollens for the tumult of jostling frosting-thick dollops of pigment, Toenges injects distinction into the solemn proceedings.

Toenges’ 29-07-35-30, 2007 mines variegated roiling impasto that conveys tension akin to the surfaces of windswept waters or the textures of tree bark.

Michael Toenges, "01-12-40-35", 2012, oil on linen, 16 x 14 inches

Toenges breaks the votive of this show of monochromes (more accurately, subtle modulations of color) with multi-colored swatches of squiggly goo. The painters hand is memorialized in static crags of entombed oil.

In 01-12-40-35, 2012 the wrinkled skin–a result of shrinkage during the drying process–as record of the passage of time, bringing allusions to human frailty. Projecting into space, Toenges works toy with bas-relief that evokes Bram Bogart’s paeans to extreme accumulation.

Installation view, “Joseph Maroni, Michael Toenges, Peter Tollens: We Cannot Look Directly into the Sun… –J.M.”, Larry Becker Contemporary Art, Philadelphia
 

Four Marioni's, spanning the artist’s penultimate decade, square off in the rear gallery in what amounts of a chapel-like inner sanctum. The sedate Light, 2017 commemorates the hum of illumination, with tones ranging from beige to Naples yellow; a counterbalance to the blaze of Bright Yellow Painting. intense ultramarine variations adorn Blue Painting, 2012 with a redolence of an uninflected azure sky.

Joseph Marioni, “Violet Painting”(detail), 2004, acrylic and linen on stretcher, 78 x 62 inches

The hulking Violet Painting, 2004 predominates the chamber with sheer scale whilst proffering an  infernal portal of ever enfolding depth and mystery–a ‘black mirror’ for the soul–achieved by multiple reflective layers of blue predominant purples.

Joseph Marioni, “Maroon Painting [No. 10]", 2009, acrylic and linen on stretcher, 32 x 28 inches

Marioni’s technique becomes abundantly evident in Maroon Painting, 2009 showcasing the once liquified glazes that have become fixed veils reminiscent of sheets of rain running down a window pane; George Eliot’s phrasing, describing jewels: “…fountains of pure colour” †, came to mind as a fitting coda.
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* “Beginning Again” by Marcia Hafif, ARTFORUM, January 1978, pp. 34-40.
† “Middlemarch” by George Eliot, Oxford University Press, p.14.

Joseph Marioni, Michael Toenges, Peter Tollens: ...we cannot look directly into the sun… –J.M.
Larry Becker Contemporary Art
43 North 2nd Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106
March 15–June 7, 2025