For the first time I saw the geometric abstractions of Stephen Westfall in the In the mid -1980sWhen he put his graters against monochromatic grounds. What quickly distinguished him from others who worked in this mode was that his grilles were crooked, as if his upbringing and consciousness of earthquakes made him aware that everything could collapse. Together with creating and exhibiting his art at the moment, Westfall – who seems to have boundless energy – regularly fored Art in America and periodically organized exhibitions aimed at geometric abstraction.
Westfall’s passion for the roots of geometric abstraction in the United States, and his champion of lesser-known artists such as Ward Jackson and Ralston Crawford, unveiled him as sincere, non-dogmatic, one-sided, intellectual curious and cocurters and carefree with trends and the trends and the trends and the marketplace. These qualities, in combination with the arch of his career, created my curiosity when I heard that he had put together an intergenerational exhibition, A flat gardenIn Alexandre Gallery.
Westfall’s definition of flat painting is simple. Everyone works at a rectangle and makes planes with fresh edges without trusting or making gestures on tape, or what can be conceived as lines. It is refreshing to see a group show that the curatorial explanation belongs and includes both old friends and unexpected twists. (I realized research into the exhibition that I had written about 10 of the 16 artists.) Asymmetrical and always susceptible to the movement of air, a titllless table with Alexander Calder (ca. 1950–60s) the tone for the exhibition, for The exhibition, which I would characterize as a non -fixed geometry. In his mobile phones, a sculptural form that he invented, Calder’s playfully challenging exploration of a destabilized geometry in violation of the geometric abstraction of the abstract expressionists and the logical progressions of on -art.
I was happy to see “Untitled” (1999) by Harriet Korman, in which intertwining curved shapes section of a rectangle. Three of the sections of the painting are brown, a color that the artist has included in many works over the years; This is not an easy performance, because Brown does not always work optically in abstractions.
Odili Donald Odita’s Use of Scalene Triangles and reconstituted black wood veneer, which compiles an image of blackness, is a reminder that abstraction is not a pure white invention. Small vertical stripes that inflate the prefabricated black surfaces of the paintings add a visual element to the work of this beautiful artist.
Two welcome surprises in the exhibition are works by Joanna Pousette-Dart and Polly Apfelbaum. Known for its stacked, soft arched shapes, the Maverick, formed paintings by Pousette-Dart are not sufficiently appreciated in the United States. Carter Ratcliff wrote in these pieces HyperallergicPousette-Dart “found an original way to be original.” The two stacked forms in her recent painting “Night Stripe” (2024), which measure 30 1/2 x 37 3/4 inches, ensured that I wanted to sit in a room surrounded by paintings of similar size.
The glazed terracotta -work “Blok stripes” (2022) by Polly Apfelbaum is the biggest surprise in the exhibition. I started to consider Apfelbaum as an installation artist whose “Fallen Paintings”, as she calls them, consist of many painted dust components that are arranged on the floor in situ. In the past they have made a strong first impression on me that never lasted. “Block Stripes” (2022) is a promising Uitbijk in her Ouevre. The muted colors of the vertical stripes are covered along the top and bottom by small blocks in a different color. Perhaps this work signals a new path of exploration for the artist.
The linear elements and curved and arabeske shapes, each in a solid color, in Patricia Trieb’s “Torque II” (2024) are derived from a wide range of sources. Thin painted on a broken white surface, the works of Trieb are drawings in paint, in which brush -like areas are visible in the shapes. Their lazy sensuality is compelling. The figure-ground relationship oscillates between painted forms and the unpaved spaces in between. The interaction of the forms forms a different visual dialogue in the image plane. The documents are inviting and remote, direct and elusive. A well -investigated museum research by the artist is appropriate.
In Westfall’s own “Summit” (2024) he interrupts his field of flat, overlapping triangles that push in from the edges with a volumetric shape in two colors that descend diagonally from the top left corner of the painting. It is this kind of disruption that the viewer repeatedly encounters in the exhibition, a feeling that geometry has never been established and can still be astonishment.
A flat garden Continue in Alexandre Gallery (25 East 73rd Street, second and third floor, Upper East Side, Manhattan) up to and including 1 February. The exhibition was compiled by Stephen Westfall.
