THE ONE AND THE MANY: ROSAIRE APPEL, BRETT BAKER, RUTH ANN FREDENTHAL, MARCIA HAFIF, ALAN KLEIMAN, AND HOWARD SMITH

Curated by Geoffrey Dorfman

October 31, 2020 - March 27, 2021

Only that which does not teach
Which does not cry out
Which does not condescend
Which does not explain
Is irresistable.

-W.B. Yeats

Nearly all of these artists were known personally to Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof as radical abstractionists. Each of them followed quite distant but parallel roads, pursuing elemental constituents of the art of painting. None were their students or mentees.

Some of these painters, such as Ruth Ann Fredenthal or Alan Kleiman, reduce contrast to the point of obliterating it altogether, as they appear to pare the act of painting down to its constitutive elements of color and surface. In the past Marcia Hafif’s paintings have occupied the interstice between presentation and explication, the picture’s title being the color used. But her color sense has also activated poetic associations of other places and times. Howard Smith has visited these regions as well, and like Hafif, he has taken an active interest in assembling wall installations in which the pictures become units, discreet cells. In the case of Smith they can sometimes replicate as variations, multiples in a honeycomb presentation. In doing so, he has also used informal unstretched surfaces inviting more variety and playfulness than one might normally associate with such reductive means. Rosaire Appel also exhibits a graphic sensibility as she explores interconnections between reading, looking and listening. Her artful drawings on acetate reference asemic writing and its invisible counterpart, sound, both through mark-making and erasure. Brett Baker is at heart a lyrical painter who for years has worked with vertical and diagonal rods of deep intense color. They dance in asymmetrical rhythms that resolve his compositions in surprising and satisfying ways. At the risk of being glib, Hafif, Fredenthal, and Kleiman seek a unitary image, whereas Smith, Baker, and Appel articulate color through mark-making and discreet units. Hence the choice of title; “The One and the Many.”

The painters in this exhibition bring to mind an art that keeps its own council. Circumspect, rigorous, this sort of art appears to invite the sort of contemplation that doesn’t court the word. These remarkable artists, for all their differences and similarities, stand apart.