November 7, 2013
2013: The Year in Review
Amy Feldman Raw Graces @ Gregory Lind. Her highly elastic forms, which veer from wackily geometric to ecstatically biomorphic, give shape to the notion of things being altered by unfamiliar forces. Feldman's main gambit is subverting the rectilinear conventions of painted, pictorial space. She builds her forms with wavy lines that sit at odd angles to the edges of the paintings, which, in turn, set up an uneasy dialog between positive and negative space and between the shapes that appear at the outer edges. Works that immediately caught my eye were In or Outer, Ohm Home and Squared Up. The first features interlocking rectangles that recede into the picture plane; the second has a trio of stalagmites/stalactites interacting with a pair of warped parallelograms. The third combines a frenzy of circular gestures in a juicy, pulsating mass. Descriptions of this sort don't do justice to these pictures' dislocating physical impact. They are to painting what Harold Lloyd is to physical comedy: exemplars of the well-executed pratfall, tempting fate, but landing on one's feet.