30 May 2017

It will be more like scratching than writing

Goldfinch

Reviewed by Alan Pocaro

Thoughtfully assembled by curator Matt Morris, "It will be more like scratching than writing" is a challenging group exhibition featuring works by artists Caroline Kent, Sofia Leiby, Suzanne McClelland, and Emil Robinson.

Outwardly, these works share little natural affinity with one another. Robinson's pressurized images show the signifiers of painterly abstraction, but at heart they display an interest in the construction of illusory space. In contrast, Leiby's austere images register primarily as flattened surfaces, like scraps of paper radically enlarged for detail. Kent and McClelland's visceral abstractions seem a more organic pairing and act as the exhibition's cornerstones.

Despite differing approaches, these artists share a seriousness of purpose evident in their careful examination of pictorial tensions and underlying ideas about painting as space, site, and object. This show is a refreshingly complex visual statement in a milieu that too often rewards rapid consumption.