“Freeze Frame,” curated by Elizabeth Cooper. Thrust Projects, New York, NY. Through February 17. Artists include Lisa Hamilton, Jasmine Justice, Joyce Kim, Alisa Margolis, Carrie Moyer, Veronica, Tyson-Strait, Wendy White.
According to the curator’s statement, “Freeze Frame” explores a moment in abstraction at which there is no dominating style or agreed upon direction in painting, though cues are taken from a range of art historical stylistic tendencies, from process and minimalism to gestural, lyrical and pictorial abstraction. In the NY Sun, art critic Stephen Maine reports that the show isn’t an earth-shattering interpretation of abstraction, but it’s a compact, live-wire presentation nonetheless. “Freeze Frame gathers one canvas apiece by eight painters who have developed a distinct approach to abstraction. The exhibition is curated by gallery regular Elizabeth Cooper. Contrary to the slightly hyperbolic press release, the work doesn’t really ‘break through the boundaries of abstraction’ so much as find an idiosyncratic place of its own within abstraction’s extraordinarily diverse landscape. The best works in the show are tough, a bit nasty, and happen also to be the five largest.” Read more.