Each month Giampietro Gallery pairs painters for concurrent solo shows, and through October 5 Zachary Keeting and Clare Grill have work on display. Grill, whose paintings were recently included in “Dying on Stage: New Painting in New York,” draws on history, making lovingly eroded small-scale canvases that abstractly illuminate aspects of the simpler life–carving, darning–that frames and affirms their resonance today. Keeting is all about bold color and surface, creating energetic abstractions using masking, pouring, and blotting strategies to flatten the brushstrokes and keep the lively surfaces lean.
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“I make paintings about things fading away,” Grills writes in her artist’s statement. She continues: I come to each piece differently, sometimes by looking at my things, or out the window, or at pictures of familiar places, or old drawings, or other times by reading a string of words I’ve copied down somewhere. I mess with the images these thoughts cook up, layering and wearing them away. I’ve become less concerned with image really, and more with just painting. The image surfaces according to the way the paint looks like it feels to touch.
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Where Grill’s images are paired down and spare, Keeting’s overflow with layered shape, color, brushstroke–like a jangled conversation between ornery, opinionated guests at a loud dinner party. His recent turn toward black and white, though slightly enervating, allows him to explore more contrasting forms and pulsating compositions.
“Zachary Keeting: recent paintings,” Giampietro Gallery, New Haven, CT. Through October 5, 2013.
“Clare Grill: Steeped,” Giampietro Gallery, New Haven, CT. Through October 5, 2013.
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