Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / “Personal Space,” the group show now up at Springs Projects, is especially impressive for the steady, uninflected confidence it reflects in art as a part of life, devoid of commercial pandering or sheepish self-doubt. Considerable credit for this virtue goes to Tommy White, co-founder of the gallery. As he hung the work, all made by his adult students from the Art Students’ League, and forged the show’s overall coherence, White consulted the artists to ensure that each individual voice was preserved. His curatorial hand is masterful, harmonizing seeming divergence and distinguishing apparent similarity. For a group show to sing, of course, the artists themselves need to possess a sufficiency of talent and heart. This gang does.
If there’s a flagship, it might be Valentina Luna’s Atmósfera XIII, centered on the back wall of the main room. It’s a large, red, rectangular abstraction, horizonal with vertical striations whose Rothko-like effect pulses outward, urging further scrutiny of whatever is inside its radius. In the alcove to the right are Thomas Gaffney’s Kingsmill, a coldly portentous depiction of the bullet-riddled van that remained after the Irish Republican Army had executed ten Protestant workers the vehicle was carrying in that County Armagh town at the height of the Troubles, and his heavily shadowed untitled painting that is clearly referential yet not immediately decipherable and consequently ominous – not unlike some of White’s own work. Bruce Maclean’s bronze sculptures are comparably enigmatic, but their smooth solidity, like a hot rod to non-gearhead, inspires awe rather than doubt. Milan Debert’s and Juliet O’Connor’s small oil paintings, in the small room on the left, are firmly representational. The one artist is darkly expressionistic, the other numbingly hyperrealist, and both powerfully convey discontent and unease. Yuki Kano’s complex watercolors, plus a kindred linocut, offer meticulous abstraction exuding both O’Connor’s level of exactitude and Debert’s flair for mapping surfaces.
The fluidity between abstract and representational is a common theme, here handled with uncommon nuance. Xiangling Lin‘s painting and sculpture, both abstract, are distinctly bifurcated and balanced, plainly registering two figures without saying so. On the opposite wall, Julia Meshcheriakova’s uninhibitedly energetic Tomorrow is decisively non-referential, pulling viewers forward without disclosing what they might find. Kazuko Kobayashi’s suavely reductive oil-on-wood abstractions surmise a less busy future. Then Kenichi Ikeda’s Fish Heads and Still Life with Lemons abruptly subvert the still life, casting off the customary demureness and variegation with mordant wit. In Chinatown, Noah Cross lugubriously announces that he believes fish should be served “with the heads still on.” Ikeda does him one better, cooking only the heads, which could require many lemons to choke down. Across the room, Richie Chen explores the visual motif of the yellow sphere more earnestly in Harvest and Vigil, locating vitality in the anticipation of both life and death life.
24 x 18 inches
11 3/4 x 8 1/4 inches
20 x 16 inches
Portraiture – representation at its most unabashed – gets its due. Fabian Pearl’s two untitled self-portraits are radically different in style, one ethereal but literal and the other enshrined but distorted, yet both cast a wistful look to the past. Stripes and Forgiven – Chris Herrera’s achingly realistic drawings of a Black man in full profile and a white woman with head turned away, respectively – seem resolutely in the present and provocatively juxtaposed. Xiya Wang, in her painting In Motion and drawing No Love Like Family, casts a sharp eye, by turns noirish and sardonic, over timeless gender and domestic tropes. There are innumerable parameters for teasing out a group show – line, color, shape, school, style, content, and many more. Adhering too closely to any one of them can spell dull rigidity, not closely enough exasperating dissonance. White has vaulted over these pitfalls by focusing on how the vibe of each artist overlaps with those of others.
“Personal Space,” Springs Projects, 20 Jay Street, Suite 311B, Brooklyn, NY. Through April 4, 2026. Artists: Richie Chen, Milan Debert, Thomas Gaffney, Chris Herrera, Kenichi Ikeda, Yuki Kano, Kazuko Kobayashi, Xiangling Lin, Valentina Luna, Bruce Maclean, Julia Meshcheriakova, Juliet O’Connor, Fabian Pearl, and Xiya Wang.
About the author: Jonathan Stevenson is a New York-based policy analyst, editor, and writer, contributing to the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, and Politico, among other publications, and a regular contributor to Two Coats of Paint.
