The catalogue for Kushner’s current show matches the bold, fearless and knowing provocations of his sumptuous, decorative floral portraits with an intellectual audacity of its own. The horticulturally dexterous veteran of Pattern & Decoration invited 23 professional and personal acquaintances, including artist peers, a poet, a rabbi, a restaurateur, to challenge him with their questions. At one point he muses, “So, are geometry and botany at peace? In dialogue? At each other’s throats? I would like to think that when I am done after working on it for weeks and sometimes months, there is an interesting and intentionally confusing juxtaposition between pure abstraction and linear form—that they each balance one another and create their own tightrope act.”
Two Old Friends, 2015. Oil, acrylic and Palladium leaf on canvas, 72 x 144 inches. Courtesy of DC Moore Gallery; on view through March 18 at 535 West 22nd Street