“Layers”
473 25th Street, Suite A, Oakland
Through December 27, 2024
Color field paintings hold me as rapt as a cobra to a flute. They are visual music to me. Hypnotized before them, I sway subtly to their static vibration, their windowpane depths a resonance that arrests all senses but also heightens them; silently sonic.
And so it was with a great deal of pleasure that I viewed “Layers,” the superbly curated new show on view at Slate Contemporary Gallery. The group exhibit allows the pieces to play off one another other in a silent symphony of pure form that enraptured me like a charmed serpent.
The show features new paintings by Angela Johal, Maya Kabat, Eric Bohr, and Mikey Kelly; and sculptures by D'lisa Creager, Peter St. Lawrence, and Randy Colosky. The acrylic on canvas paintings by Angela Johal are the most immediately striking. They’re Rothko-esque in their sophisticated and well-balanced color gradations, but extremely precisely rendered, the exactingly layered rectangles of their compositions almost pulsing. Even up close, (and I mean close—I almost touch my nose to a painting if it calls me to) the precision of the lines is hairline fine. As impressive as Johal’s craftsmanship are her refined color configurations, with the reds, magentas, pinks, grays, and blacks of “Portals No. 20” particularly catching my eye.
D’lisa Creager’s “0122-02,” 2021, and “0122-01,” 2022, hanging wire sculptures, augment Johal’s paintings, and the pairing held me in place for a long while. Made of copper wire with black patina and black wire respectively, the pieces are both interior and exterior, woven in such perfect complexity I couldn’t grasp how she’d crafted them. Although fashioned formalistically, Creager’s shapes remain organic-looking, juxtaposed with their elegantly ceremonial shapes. I was told by gallery associate Angie Garberina that Creager studied under famed sculptor Ruth Asawa’s daughter, Aiko Cuneo, and the influence is undeniably apparent. I found it an inspired curatorial decision to display Johal’s and Creager’s work alongside each other in a kind of geometric point-counterpoint.
Eric Bohr’s “Frontiers 58” is a beautiful composition in red, pink, beige, and blue, with touches of orange. I was reminded a bit of the work of Kenneth Noland, even that of Frank Stella, but to be honest I rather prefer Kelly’s work better than either of those two giants of American abstract expressionism. Kelly’s work is less flashy, its color arrangements more thoughtful.
On the other side of the gallery were paintings by Maya Kabat: oil on shaped canvases. Her unusually shaped work was “chunky” by comparison to the other paintings in the show, but no less polished or accomplished. And their embrace of the thick oils she uses was a good contrast to the delicacy of the other works displayed. In “Super Spatial 19” the rough oil strokes of an almost insane green on its sort of bas-relief canvas was touch-for-the eye, so to speak. The equally strange shades of flat purple, pink, white and slate gray were a weird and wonderful combo. I loved them for the tactile quality, and really wished I could have touch it!
I did in fact, however, touch one of Peter St. Lawrence’s ceramic pieces (clandestinely, of course, just the lightest of a fingertip brush). I couldn’t resist the sandstone look of “Querencia Dia.” The sculpture’s interior portions is glazed in white, making for a delicious variation in friction. His mid-20th century Mexican modernist style pieces are lovely, recalling Rufino Tamayo’s work, but St. Lawrence’s sculptures are smoother, more abstract, quieter.
Sadly, I saw only two of Randy Colosky’s sculptures, and only one on display in the exhibit proper (the other was in Slate’s crowded salon area). A shame, as his cast lead crystal pieces are exquisitely simple, appealing to my love of restrained form. “Fractura 6A”—the one in the main gallery area—is a sensitively rendered work in a light emerald, almost aquamarine tone. It is remarkably gorgeous, and rather resembles a serpent, though in the most abstract of ways. And, like my own serpentine attraction to art that honors form over representation, I was entranced by its beauty.
“Layers” is a show of excellent works, curated superbly. Bravo, Slate!
