Cave Painting
"Cave Painting" by Patrick Howlett, Winter 2009, pp. 116-17
There is not much paleolithic-looking work in this grouping of 27 artists, but what the show might have in common with those early stabs at the medium of painting is an exploration of what abstraction can represent.
The show was organized by Bob Nickas and parallels his forthcoming book on abstract painting. Nickas has an interest in and a knack for putting many works in close proximity and installing art so as to slow down, perplex and engage the viewer. One of the few sculptural works in the show is a teen-size mannequin in ball cap and shades by John Miller and Richard Hoeck. Commissioned for the exhibition, the piece was moved around the gallery daily for the duration of the show, acting as a perpetual, uncanny reminder of the mysteries of looking.
The hanging sets up some dynamic dialogues between varied works, suggesting broad connections and revealing differences. For example, near the entrance, six paintings by Josh Smith, hung high on the wall, announce the details of the exhibition, serving as easel-made posters. Underneath sit Monica Baer’s subtly different pair of pale-pink monochromes, their upper left corners carefully cut away to create lacy patterns based on spiderwebs, exposing the stretcher bars. The repetitive nature of both artists’ work highlights how the programmatic can be paired with the handmade. Nearby is Amy Sillman’s Untitled (Blue Shape), made from a very different, layered operation of shapes and structures that posits the image as possessing its own evolving logic.
Another wall smartly sets up formal tensions through figure/ground relations and a thoughtful staging of the various meanings of reflection. Daniel Hesidence’s monochrome of swishy magenta invites the viewer to get lost in its washy depth, while Jacob Kassay’s electroplated canvas has a mirror-like surface that reflects its surroundings in hazy, diffused light. Anja Schwörer paints an opaque triangular pattern onto tie-dyed fabric, creating a sharp tension between two design paradigms, while Richard Aldrich’s whimsically shaped canvas bears a protrusion from behind that playfully echoes the small rectangular figure stuck on its surface. Here, the evocative interplay between works is a result of Nickas’s keenly sensitive hanging.
Other groupings suggest other themes, from the cosmic to the cathartic, and while a few works stand out from the crowd (Bernd Ribbick’s esoteric-looking panel, a drawing by Tomma Abts that is revealingly related to her paintings), the show as a whole demonstrates a pervasive awareness of painting as a necessarily performative activity. I asked Nickas if he saw a common link among the artists and he responded that many do not identify with the term “abstract painter.” There seems to be a back-to-basics interest in placing abstraction outside of its modern and expressionist legacies by using its painting vocabulary to explore the myriad operations and meanings of image construction—in ways that are familiar, but still capable of building new perspectives.
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