Panel on Al Held at Cheim & Read, Wednesday at 6PM

Al Held’s early works in gestural abstraction from the 1950s are the focus of the fourth of Cheim & Read Gallery’s exhibitions surveying the artist’s oeuvre. Presented in conjunction Nathalie Karg Gallery, this show examines his breakthrough in Paris while studying on the G.I. Bill and his continuing exploration, back in New York, of dimensionality, color, the grid and emerging geometric motifs that would eventually find their way into his celebrated “Alphabet” paintings of the next decade. Wednesday’s panel brings together the exhibition’s catalogue essayist Matthew Israel and two painters, Keltie Ferris and Nathlie Provosty, with me, David Cohen, moderating what should be an illuminating conversation. 547 West 25th Street, between 10th and 11th avenues.