“Calling You Back to Me”: A solo exhibition by Kelly Ording
1523b Webster Street, Oakland
Opening Reception September 13, 2025, on view through October 26, 2025
Pt.2 Gallery is bright. The lights are intense in the huge white walled space, especially when entering in off the dark street on an evening just days before the autumn equinox. Although familiar with the gallery’s luminescence by several exhibits I’ve attended in the past (Viola Frey, Christopher Robin Duncan, Solée Darrell, and other shows), walking into Pt.2 is always a bit of a shock to my eyeballs. But for Kelly Ording’s new series of geometric paintings—works that are formal, exact, and ordered—the lighting is perfect. “Calling You Back to Me” is a collection whose careful precision is augmented by the space’s stark illumination. All of the acrylic on canvas pieces share a unified palette, and the effect of brilliant light on these works in green is dazzling.
The first piece I saw was “May,” where delicate horizontal lines merge into those that gently wave upward and downward in a multitude of subtle intersections. All six large paintings immediately reminded me of the work of Elise Ferguson whose excellent work my partner and I saw at Shrine Gallery in New York two years ago.
Like Ferguson, Ording’s pieces possess undulating, curvilinear graphic patterns where negative space is just as important as the positive. Unlike Ferguson however, Ording utilizes linear intersections much more liberally; patterns nuanced by their use of the interactions between her paintings’ fine lines. The varying shades of green—along with a complimentary pinkish coral here and there—focus on the harmony of a single palette rather than on bold color relativity. They’re rhythmic yet calm, almost like sonic reverberations rendered visually. These paintings are full of motion: yet it is motion stilled, serene and quiet.
Curious about the show’s title, I learned from the gallery’s literature that “After a break-in at her home, Ording’s emerald ring, an heirloom with deep family significance, was stolen, along with other pieces of her family’s history. The stone had been found by her uncle, a geologist in Colombia, who had it made into rings for his mother and sisters. Passed down to Ording by her own mother, the emerald became her most treasured possession.” Ording created the paintings in the show as an act of acceptance, a way to cope with the fact that the ring would never be recovered. The impetus for an artist’s theme isn’t always apparent, and the six pieces inspired by Ording’s lost emerald ring certainly don’t explicitly tell the story of its theft. But it is always fascinating to learn the creative motivations behind a body of work.
My favorite pieces were “The Return” and “Penelope” (pictured at top), which were so complimentary in their beautifully knotted designs I thought of them as a diptych, though not curated to suggest a coupling. I asked Ording about them and she said that although she had considered pairing them as a diptych, she decided against it, as the lines of the two paintings didn’t quite match up as a mirror image. I’d not noticed; this speaks to the extremely careful craftsmanship and care she puts into her work.
Ms. Ording was very busy greeting and hosting as the gallery filled, and I didn’t want to take up more of her time than I already had with more questions about the physical process of her work. But I did get to meet her two teenage children, Lazlo and Violet, and talk music with Lazlo, who was wearing a tee shirt of Oakland-based metal band Baby on a Rampage.
If you’re as big a fan of paintings that explore form and color as I am, I can’t recommend Ording’s show enough. It’s conceptually centered and geometrically bedazzling, whether viewed from a distance or up close. Just be ready to squint your eyes as you enter the glaring bright lights of Pt.2.
Solo exhibitions by Alicia McCarthy Brett Flanigan are also on view at Pt.2 Gallery through October 26th at Pt.2 Gallery.
