The pairing of work by Amanda Church and Jenny Hankwitz in Intersection at Steven Harvey Effective Artwork Initiatives was a stroke of genius. Opening per week after A Planar Backyard, curated by Stephen Westfall, closed at Alexandre Gallery, Intersection is one other reminder that planar abstraction is flourishing, even when the artwork world seldom focuses on it. Each Church and Hankwitz, longtime practitioners of geometric abstraction, incorporate curving traces, which units them other than the arduous traces and varieties that characterised Westfall’s exhibition, and each use black as a shade, After that, nonetheless, the variations grow to be extra attention-grabbing than the similarities.
Church’s three work within the exhibition mark a break from her best-known work, geometric abstractions that allude to the feminine physique. Even within the portray “Untitled (Undressed)” (2024), a viewer can be arduous pressed to name the outlined, rounded shapes “humanlike.” For those who insist on studying them as buttocks — and that’s definitely your prerogative — Church has positioned them round numerous irregular, sharply angled black and white varieties. These varieties, like ones within the different two work, are troublesome to learn as purely geometric. That ambiguity imbues the works with a way of pressure, as they by no means grow to be totally representational or summary.
Jenny Hankwitz, “Heartbeat” (2024), oil on canvas
Followers who favored Church’s lighthearted, unsettling, naughty humor (myself amongst them as I included her work in a present I curated for the Maryland Institute of Artwork in 2002 ) may be shocked — these latest work have shed their humor in addition to the sly bodily references. But their elusiveness carries them into a brand new perceptual dimension by which innuendo — the connection between the purely visible and the discursive — is not the principle cost. The separation from language provides depth to Church’s work and opens up a brand new territory.
Jenny Hankwitz’s sinuous abstractions include elongated, bulbous varieties twisting round one another. Working with a restricted palette of 4 to 5 colours, the artist composes interlocking, overlapping, and rising shapes whose inside logic by no means discloses itself. This resistance to interpretation, which she shares with Church, is one in all her sturdy factors, notably as a result of the work hints at issues sufficient to refuse the label of pure abstraction.
What I notably like about Hankwitz’s work is that I can see no apparent precedent. She appears to have discovered her personal solution to abstraction, with out the affect of any celebrated predecessors, corresponding to Frank Stella, Al Held, or Ellsworth Kelly. A tenuous connection to late Henri Matisse is clear, however to deal with that may be a disservice to Hankwitz since her varieties don’t appear to return from nature.
Amanda Church, “Untitled (Everybody)” (2024), oil on canvas (photograph John Goodrich)
The distinguishing attribute of Hankwitz’s portray is every little thing it appears to be in movement. Tubular varieties swell and contract. The shifting figure-ground relationship is troublesome to discern. Are we taking a look at shade, form, or a flat object? Colour will change between edges, at the same time as the form continues. All of the interruptions maintain our eye transferring.
In Hankwitz’s work, unidentifiable issues and summary varieties swap identities. The artist’s bulbous tubular varieties share one thing with Summary Expressionism’s paint-as-paint pours. Like Pollock’s late abstractions, Hankwitz’s artwork expands past the portray’s edges. We glimpse a fluid world of shapes in round and wave-like movement whose inside workings we don’t fairly grasp.
The solidity of Church’s and Hankowitz’s work is simple. Each of them have adopted their very own trajectory with out surrendering to the pressures round them. Doing that over a protracted stretch of time is just not as simple because it sounds.
Jenny Hankwitz, “Finding Rhythm” (2024), oil on canvas
Amanda Church, “Untitled (Two Legs)” (2024), oil on canvas (photograph John Goodrich)
Jenny Hankwitz, “Dont Get Me Wrong” (2024), oil on canvas
Intersection: Abstractions by Amanda Church and Jenny Hankwitz continues at Steven Harvey Effective Artwork Initiatives (208 Forsyth Avenue, Decrease East Aspect, Manhattan) by March 8. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.