The current show at Artspace in New Haven, CT, highlights seven painters whose abstract work focuses on elements of color, shape, and surface. The imagery alludes to structures, figures, and recognizable forms, yet remains abstract and unnameable. The painters include Matt Connors, Keltie Ferris, Chris Martin, Carrie Moyer, Baker Overstreet, Palma Blank-Rosenblum, and Chuck Webster. In his Connecticut Art Scene blog, Hank Hoffman wonders if representational abstract art is a contradiction in terms. “Possibly, but the show offers an argument otherwise. The imagery in most of these paintings straddles the line between representation and abstraction, teasing perception with the suggestion of recognition.” Read more.
In the New Haven Advocate, Stephen Vincent Kobasa finds the paintings challenging. “Even the title labels, deliberately placed at a remove from their works, give no easy answers. Chuck Webster�s ‘Slow Path’ serves as a looping segue to the flatworms in drag, waiting to divide, by Pamela Blank-Rosenblum, followed by her machine maps. Matt Connors� ‘This Will Break’ and ‘Complete Removal�’ are puzzles of relation, the colors tugging at each other like some dysfunctional family still in love. ‘Pom-Pom Painting’ by Chris Martin suggests the mad tracery of errant pinballs on their several journeys.” Read more.
‘Unnameable Things,” curated by Clint Jukkala. Artspace, New Haven, CT. Through March 29.
