This sampling of contemporary incarnations of abstract painting by eight artists, all of whom are women, evokes a wide range of painterly associations. Strikingly, however, almost all of the works forego the traditional (for abstraction) flat treatment of the picture plane in favor of the kinds of depth inherent to illusionistic space – implying, whether tacitly or overtly, an engagement with depiction.
In the warp-and-woof play of Canan Tolan’s work, for example, a plaid pattern is destabilized by contrasting surface yellows and recessive darks. Carrie Yamaoka’s resin-slick surface of even deeper blues and blacks is alternately inky, cosmic and oceanic in effect. Amy Ellingson and Lisa Corinne Davis employ diagrammatic sensitivity in their constructions of geometric forms. Dannielle Tegeder’s fresh take on Suprematist forms has them ascending towards the extended field of a secondary canvas while Rebecca Smith’s metal wall sculptures suggest forms slipping off the grid in an almost liquid gesture of melting and submersion.
The chaotic underpinnings of abstract process are visible in the wrestling-with-formlessness evident in both Andrea Belag’s big-stroke chromatic transitions and Catherine Howe’s deliciously sloppy tableau of ill-contained areas of color and bursts of materiality.
The exhibition remains on view through Friday, July 29. There is a closing reception for the show as part of Chelsea Art Walk 2011 on Thursday, July 28, 5-8 PM
