C4 N THE NEW YORK TIMES, FRIDAY, AUGUST 7, 2020WARREN ISENSEE
Through Aug. 28. Miles McEnery
Gallery; milesmcenery.com.
. ...................................................................
Over the past two or three years,
Warren Isensee’s abstract paint-
ings, while always good, have
taken a sharp turn for the better.
For nearly a decade Mr. Isensee,
who has been exhibiting since
1998, cultivated a distinctive
geometry of parallel lines whose
softened edges and pulsing color
contrasts conjured the tubular
glow of neon, compartmentalizing
them into squares and rectangles
with black outlines.
But recently a kind of dam
seems to have burst. In paintings
from the last year or so, viewable
in person and online, Mr.
Isensee’s lines of color curve,
bulge and undulate, forming
gorgeous often quatrefoil patterns
that evoke gears, jacks and also
intarsia Renaissance tables, their
inlaid stone updated with a car-
toonish bounce. Thicker rubbery
versions of the black outlines
push the colors in and out,
squeezing them into narrow
ribbons or allowing them to ex-
pand into quasi-shapes. The
leftover spaces outside those lines
are filled by weird shapes —
nodules, lozenges, light bulbs and
boomerangs outlined in two or
three colors. Over all, there is a
strange effect: The surface has
such energy that it seems to make
the canvas all but disappear.
Much of the above occurs in
“Interstellar Overdrive,” domi-
nated by four large gear-like
outlines, and also in “LOL” and
“Wild Kindness,” in which the
gears morph into less regular
shapes suggestive of butterflies
or cartoon splats. In “As Prom-
ised,” a single black outline turns
in on itself and becomes much
more complicated, curving
through the center and rippling
along the edges, resulting in a
symphony of polyp shapes.
Mr. Isensee sets out his compo-
sitions in small, delectable col-
ored-pencil studies that are also
on view. He then turns to canvas,
painting freehand, in oil, pro-
ducing a luscious surface. His
palette tends toward calibrated
variations on the primary colors:
brighter and more pure outside
the black outlines, paler within.
Figuring out the inter-workings
of these paintings — their contra-
puntal colors, geometric high
jinks and bodily, mechanical or
decorative suggestions — is
tremendously thrilling for both
mind and eye.
A formalist vocabulary contin-
ues to operate in these works. In
particular Mr. Isensee seems to
build, at least partly but elabo-
rately, on the work of Paul Feeley,
the uncategorizable abstract
painter of the 1950s and ’60s.
Feeley’s emblem-like shapes are
almost quoted verbatim in “Out of
Touch.” But these paintings go
beyond formal. They are complex
collaborations of line, shape and
color in which everything co-
alesces into a kind of visual equal-
ity, to beautiful, and inspiring,
effect. They also testify to how
much time and work is required
to become the artist that only you
and no one else can be.
ROBERTA SMITHSOJOURNER TRUTH
PARSONS
Through Aug. 16. Foxy Production;
foxyproduction.com.. ...................................................................
Let’s say you start “Sex and Love
With a Psychologist,” a tricky new
show by Sojourner Truth Parsons,
with the painting “Ocean With
Piano.” There you’ll find a paper-
doll ballerina on point in front of a
matte black background.
Behind the dancer are several
views of a full moon, “attached” to
the painting’s bottomless dark-
ness with trompe l’oeil blue tape,and beside her is a lavender
doppelgänger. If, then, you turn to
“Tell Them That It’s Human
Nature” and find the same balle-
rina behind a seated, naked
young woman, and both of them
enclosed together in another
painting-within-the-painting
under another piece of blue
“tape,” you may think you’ve got
the point: The show, as billed, is
about sex, love and escalating
levels of self-consciousness, as
well as a steady cultural drum-
beat of highly stereotyped images
of femininity.
But since you could just as
easily find a different progression
entirely — crisscross the gallery
following the round yellow moon,
instead, or simply linger in front
of the jagged, fractured face in
“My Perfect Look” — it’s almost
impossible to get your footing.
The secret, I finally realized, was
in those changeless black back-
grounds, which the paintings’
reds, yellow, and hot pinks throw
into such relief. Though they look
thick and velvety online, if you’re
able to visit in person you’ll dis-
cover that they’re painted quick
and thin.
In combination with the
sketchy drawing, this makes the
whole group of paintings look as
much like stage dressings as they
do like a gallery show — which
adds a final, crucial turn to the
work’s self-consciousness.
WILL HEINRICHPARK McARTHUR
Through Aug. 21. Essex Street;
essexstreet.biz.. ...................................................................
Breath is central to two phenom-
ena dominating our moment, the
coronavirus crisis and the rein-
vigorated Black Lives Matter
movement, as well as to “Edition
One and Two Fantasies,” a spare
conceptual installation by the
New York artist Park McArthur
that you can view online or in
person at Essex Street gallery.
The door to the gallery is left
open to suggest ample air circula-
tion and ease of access. Just
inside is “Fantasies” (2020), a
stack of 12 disposable filters on
the wall, taken from a ventilator
that Ms. McArthur uses at night.
(The actual filters are safely
encased in plastic.)
Elsewhere in the gallery,
framed blue-on-white printouts
titled “Form found figuring it out,
show” — like artistic prints — are
appropriated from the medical
device called an incentive spirom-
eter, which Ms. McArthur also
uses and which is designed to
help improve the functioning ofthe lungs.
Ms. McArthur’s work recalls
artists like Michael Asher and
Cameron Rowland, whose institu-
tional critiques consider ques-
tions like who makes an object
and how it is displayed, pur-
chased or consumed. However,
ability (and disability) is what’s at
issue here. Ms. McArthur, who
uses a wheelchair, expands upon
critical disability theory issues
that challenge discrimination and
the single (“able”) version of how
people should be in the world.
This show is somewhat stark
and sterile compared with her
clever and engaging 2014 show of
disability access ramps laid out
on the gallery floor. But it feels
exceptionally timely. Where the
coronavirus and Black Lives
Matter highlight the “I can’t
breathe” of patients and Black
victims of police brutality, Ms.
McArthur shifts it to a personal
register that feels both ameliora-
tive and activist.
MARTHA SCHWENDENERNASREEN MOHAMEDI
Through Aug. 15, by appointment.
Talwar Gallery; talwargallery.com.. ...................................................................
“Pull With a Direction,” a lovely
and engrossing show at Talwar
Gallery, presents a compressed,
in-a-nutshell version of the devel-
opment of Nasreen Mohamedi
(1937-1990), one of the most origi-
nal modernist artists of post-
World War II India. While follow-
ing the trajectory of the much
larger retrospective at the Met
Breuer in 2016, this show’s 25
works are dominated by the early
drawings and some prints of the
1950s and ’60s, when Mohamedi
had various styles and materials
under consideration. (The years
to come are signaled by a handful
of photographs, paintings and
later abstract drawings.) There’s
an alluring wildness to the pro-
ceedings, as different artists often
emerge from work to work.
During those years, Mohamedi
was alternately describing or
distilling natural forms substanti-
ating anew how crucial nature —
especially trees and plants — is
as a path to abstraction. The
delicate linearity of her later
classic drawings is apparent in a
series of nervous twigs and
branches erupting from a pale
pink earth in an ink-and-watercol-
or work dated around 1960. In
pieces from about five years later,
lines thicken and tangle, in wet-
dry undergrowths of ink and
watercolor with graphite and
pastel that involve erasures as
much as additive marks. One
drawing creates the sensation of
looking through an expanse of
unruly fishing net at the gray-
wash wall of an oncoming wave.
Linearity is submerged in a dark
atmospheric aquatint, also from
around 1965, whose hanging
forms suggest Chinese lantern
flowers seen in a nocturnal photo-
graph. By the late ’60s, her lines
are turning toward seismographic
autonomy, but a sense of natural
disarray and intimations of land-
scapes persists.The show implies that the
significance of Mohamedi’s photo-
graphs — which she took
throughout much of her career
but never exhibited during her
lifetime — cannot be overesti-
mated, even though there are
only four here. Two capture the
warp and weft of textiles on
looms; one shows dry twigs in
packed earth, and another fo-
cuses on a shadowy, low-lying
form that might be Post-Min-
imalist sculpture. Effortlessly
combining abstraction and repre-
sentation, expressivity and preci-
sion, mystery and fact, these
images are as important as any-
thing she did.
ROBERTA SMITHGAKU TSUTAJA
Through Sunday. Ulterior Gallery;
ulteriorgallery.com.
....................................................................It’s hard to clearly see the diptych
that forms the heart of Gaku
Tsutaja’s exhibition at Ulterior
Gallery. I don’t mean that physi-
cally — the gallery is open, or you
can view the virtual tour on its
website, as I did — but perceptu-
ally. The two paintings, “Spider’s
Thread: This Landscape” and
“Spider’s Thread: That Story”
(both 2020), are bursting with
imagery, including an ominous
plane; plumes of smoke; the
wavy lines of Sanzu-no-Kawa, a
mythological river that the dead
must cross to reach the afterlife;
and anthropomorphized animals
riding horses through the sky.
Such elements swarm the black-
and-white canvases so that your
eye barely knows where to land.
Ms. Tsutaja’s exhibition, titled
“Spider’s Thread,” grew out of her
research on the Manhattan
Project and the American atomic
bombing of Hiroshima and Naga-
saki 75 years ago this week. One
of the paintings represents the
perspective of Japan, the artist’s
home country, the other, the view
from the United States, where she
lives now. In both, time and space
seem to have collapsed into a pair
of nightmarish flashbacks.
The work isn’t overtly didactic,
though; Ms. Tsutaja uses surre-
alism to turn history into a kind
of myth. This is especially evident
in the show’s online component: a
daily drawing by the artist posted
on social media. Scrolling through
these smaller works from the
beginning recalls reading a comic
book. The grand narrative of the
“Spider’s Thread” unravels bit by
bit into something more legible
but no less profound.
JILLIAN STEINHAUERSYLVIA MAIER
Through Nov. 1. Malin Gallery;
malingallery.com.
....................................................................Sylvia Maier’s beautifully crafted
canvases in “About Sangomas
and Soothsayers and Mischief” at
Malin Gallery, which you can visit
in person or view online, are ideal
for this moment in New York.
Coinciding with the reigniting of
the Black Lives Matter move-
ment, and recalling the 2018
exhibition “Posing Modernity:
The Black Model From Manet
and Matisse to Today,” which
opened in New York at Columbia
University and later moved to the
Musée d’Orsay in Paris, Ms.
Maier’s paintings portray activ-
ists, dancers, musicians and
denizens of Brooklyn with a cool
and masterly approach drawn
primarily in classical European
painting.
“Activist Row/Reclaiming Her
Time” (2018) shows a young
woman taking a break from insur-
gency (presumably) with posters
and fliers in the background
depicting earlier civil rights and
radical movements. “The Festi-
val” (2018) captures people at the
Afropunk Festival in Brooklyn,
while “Drummer’s Grove” (2017)
focuses on a vibrant group of
percussionists in Prospect Park.
A young man with a Maori-style
tattoo on his face appears in
many paintings, adding a contem-
porary element to her work that
is countered by works like “The
Beheading” (2020), an update of
Renaissance and Baroque compo-
sitions drawn from biblical
stories. Here, it is women of color
beheading a white man.
Ms. Maier’s work is bold in its
narratives and deft in its execu-
tion. Yet it could depart more
from historical models like those
of Caravaggio, Manet or Puvis de
Chavannes. Her subjects are
inspiring, disruptive and sublime.
It would be nice to see Ms.
Maier’s compositions, brush
stroke, palette or general ap-
proach emulate some of that
same vital energy and revolt.
MARTHA SCHWENDENERVIRTUAL GALLERIESNASREEN MOHAMEDI, VIA THE ARTIST’S ESTATE AND TALWAR GALLERYGalleries and museums are
getting creative with presenting
work online. Here are shows
worth viewing virtually.
Sylvia Maier’s “Drummer’s Grove” (2017), a work of oil on copper.SYLVIA MAIER AND MALIN GALLERY; ANDY ROMERWARREN ISENSEE AND MILES MCENERY GALLERY
Warren Isensee’s “Interstellar
Overdrive” (2019) is dominated by
four large gearlike outlines.
Park McArthur’s “Fantasies,” from- The sculpture is made of 12
used ventilator filters encased in
plastic and interlocking into one
another in a column.
PARK MCARTHUR AND ESSEX STREET/MAXWELL
GRAHAMNasreen Mohamedi’s “Untitled” (circa 1960), an ink, graphite and watercolor work included in the exhibition “Pull With a Direction” at Talwar Gallery.In memory of
PETE
HAMILL
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