Alex Kwartler: Open to the world

Contributed by Shirley Irons / In a dream, I asked Alex Kwartler if his work was about the unreliability of images. God no, he yelled. “Off-Peak,” his current show at Magenta Plains, presents modestly scaled paintings that read across the room like music, with beats and rests, highs and lows. Their subjects include tender representation, stark pop, painterly abstraction, tin can lids, dots, drains, and shipwrecks. They echo and repeat. Their consistency lies in his assured, skillful paint handling. When you can do anything with paint, why not just do it? 

Some are less seductive than others and a few miss. The foot in the face doesn’t reverberate as much as the walking fingers, a hat’s-off to the obsolescent Yellow Pages or maybe to a Black Flag song (put your feet up). A black bag (black flag?) with weighted contents is both mute and dangerous. In the two paintings of shipwrecks, survivors move farther away from one painting to the next. These are nostalgic, magical works that embrace much more than what is presented on the surface. 

I encourage this intuitive approach to picture-making with my students, but, since it runs counter to art-market and assumptions about museum standards, it’s not an easy sell. It requires a kind of confidence in one’s judgement – an openness to the world and the art-making process and continual curiosity about a larger reality. Leidy Churchman, an artist with similar trust in the process, seeks to hold space for the fluidity of reality. Kwartler seems to harbor the same sentiment.

If the unreliability of images isn’t of interest, that of language certainly is. We know that meaning becomes strongest when the viewer brings their own interpretation into play, and Kwartler’s work gives the viewer room to wander. It’s sly and generous, porous, deadpan, and often heartbreaking. I thought of Paul Thek. There is no doubt about Kwartler’s sincerity. I think. 

“Alex Kwartler: Off-Peak,” Magenta Plains, 149 Canal Street, New York, NY. Through February 28, 2026.

About the author: Shirley Irons is a New York-based artist.