Moira Dryer, who died of cancer aged 34 in 1992, was a luminary of an ascendant new abstraction in the New York scene of the 1980s. Starting out as assistants to Elizabeth Murray and Julian Schnabel and a rare female presence on the roster of Mary Boone Gallery, the young Canadian artist managed exhibitions in her short career at Boston’s ICA and at SFMOMA. Her style was as forcefully her own as that of her perceived peers Terry Winters, Philip Taaffe or Peter Halley with all of whom she shared generational traits: insistently handmade and rich in material presence, her mark making was lyrical yet emotionally neutral in a way that exuded knowingness and attitude. A show of paintings and rarely exhibited drawings inaugurates a new back room second gallery of 11R, as Eleven Rivington is rebranding itself since leaving its eponymous address around the corner and doubling down on Chrystie Street. An acid green and shocking red untitled casein painting on board sporting a striking image of granular stripes is no less sumptuous and absorbing for its no-nonsense factuality.
Exhibition on view through February 7 at 11R’s west gallery, 195 Chrystie Street. between Rivington and Stanton street, New York City, 212 982-1930
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