Douglas Melini, The Broadest Bloom, 2011
Acrylic paint on canvas with handpainted canvas
64 x 54 inches
September 1 – October 1, 2011
I overheard two artists in the gallery chatting about the deluge of abstraction that’s been around and one quipped to the other that abstraction flourishes in conservative times.
Hard edge abstraction seemed to be the one to take a look at as it’s probably the most ubiquitous and the one that tends to get the most formal. I tend not to be so into formal and prefer when the formal is infiltrated by the personal. That is when abstraction sings to me. How the artist leaks the personal into the formal is the magic of what artists are. My simplest explanation for that process is the word “intentionality.”
When I interviewed Andrew Masullo about his work for his November 2010 exhibition at Feature, he let me know that he didn’t consider his paintings to be abstract – abstracted from something – but rather he referred to them as nonobjective. It is an interesting distinction to consider.
The seven artists in this exhibition are some of my favorite hard-edgers and all have formal concerns that have been usurped by their person. The eccentricities of their expressions hint that the coup may be achieved in endless ways. Ann Pibal is represented by Meulensteen, New York; Todd Chilton, Chicago and Douglas Melini, New York, are not represented by galleries; Nancy Shaver, Cary Smith, Richard Rezac and Andrew Masullo are Feature artists.
