Surface

Surface is one point of entry. Looking becomes physical. The surface records time and touch. Built up or pared back, it carries decisions, revisions, and gesture. In some, the surface rises from the canvas, as in Bielen’s and Michalik’s heavily impastoed paintings. In others, the material itself becomes the surface, as in Blum’s stained silk and English’s poured polymer paintings. The surface can be manipulated through process, as in the unconventional drawings of Cohen’s paper pulp lines and Strafella’s stamped typewriter marks. Or gesture itself becomes the process, as in Hoffer’s loose paint strokes and Didioardo’s excised gestures.