Shape In All Its Forms

An Online Exhibition
April 15 – June 17

Juried by Hunter Drohojowska-Philp

For many of the artists, shape was expressed in color. Most chosen here are painters and many were able to deliver a big punch. Shaped canvases or shapes within traditional formats — formal considerations since the dawn of Modernism —may not seem able to deliver anything new, but they did. Whether derived from the internet, Pantone charts or nature, color bloomed. Sensorially deprived, as we all are, I responded. 

Paintings here may be of quite unnatural intensity or soft response whether rendered in acrylic, oil or pastel. Some are literally soft. Made by quilting or stuffing, they offer rollicking pleasure combined with inviting tactility. Shapes themselves could be hard-edged geometry or voluptuous curves and often combinations of both. 

Every rainbow comes after a storm. Another group of works selected offer drama via the seeming neutrality of blacks, whites and grays. Using paint, collage, charcoal or graphite, the artists allow texture and chiaroscuro to define shape as light reveals shadows. A few defined time, quite literally made as they were during 2020, the year of drastically changed circumstances. 

In the end, the simple premise of Shape became a container for a vast array of options and proof that artists will never be done with this examination. The deeper they dive, the more treasures they find. 

– Hunter Drohojowska-Philp

All following commentaries have been written by Hunter Drohojowska-Philp

Wall 1

Dustyn Bork

“Dustyn Bork built his paintings around a void so the shapes are revealed as both exterior and interior presentations.”

Ryan Brady

“Ryan Brady used angular arrangements of stretcher bars as part of his compositions to disrupt the usual ideas about front and back.”

Ethal Poindexter

“Ethal Poindexter embraced the principle of pleasure in making literally loopy compositions in bold, singing colors.”

Brigitte Radecki

“Brigitte Radecki creates dialog in works titled Flatland by using tones of a single color to affect perception of the flat supports.”

Yvette Cohen

“Yvette Cohen stacked painted shapes on the wall in precarious arrangements that jog between notions of two and three dimensionality.”

Ruin Kenzie

“Ruin Kenzie painted the metal or wood surfaces of cut-out shapes that are combined in unconventional, even eccentric ways as totems.”

Frederick Smith

“Frederick Smith found compelling tension between the geometry of thin lines and geometric forms within his oppositionally shaped canvases in shades of ochre.”

Katya Derksen

“Katya Derksen drew from a conceptual palette, the colors used by Texaco, in placing stripes of colored tape on a tile to vibrate on the diamond shape used for road signs.”

Steve Novick

“Steve Novick made subtle interventions on found panels of wood so that the natural grain butts against the daubs of unnatural color.”

Annie Sailer

“Annie Sailer’s compositions of rounded edges and lipstick pinks play with organic, indefinite shape and an unusual, sensual palette.”

Aleya Hoerlein

“Aleya Hoerlein found radiance in simplified forms that vibrate in their proximity to one another bringing to mind the abstractions of Agnes Pelton or Georgia O’Keeffe.”

Diane Novetsky

“Diane Novetsky created curvilinear puzzles of bright, clear colors that recall art deco shapes celebrated during the Pattern and Decoration movement.”

Mel Reese

“Mel Reese painted seemingly simple and original shapes of color on neutral grounds that on closer examination revealed the tension between matte and glossy that confounds the eye.”

Edward Mills

“Edward Mills’ encaustic diptychs are modernist studies in using line to create organic or geometric forms”

Mike Childs

“Mike Childs combined angular and gently curved shapes that bring to mind windows and buildings in suggested or imagined landscapes.”

Jennifer Small

“Jennifer Small’s tightly organized and sharply colored paintings produce a dynamic energy.”

Joseph Ostraff

”Joseph Ostraff layered iconic forms and patterns in off-key colors that suggest both built and mental environments.”

Kathy Lucoff Godin

“Kathy Lucoff Godin used gestural method and neutral tones to convey the sensibility behind Moroccan tapestries and the women who make them.”

Nicholas Wood

“Nicholas Wood integrated curvilinear shapes in Easter egg pastels within deliberate and constructed geometric forms.”

Amy Bassin

”Amy Bassin’s abstractions, rosy or verdant, were based in both shape and concept on U.S. maps in atlases.” 

Shamira Nicolas

“Shamira Nicolas used Arabic and English numbers as the foundations for her calligraphic abstractions.”

Eric Dever

“Eric Dever’s concentric circles of interlocking gray tones hum atop their surfaces of unprimed linen or burlap or canvas.”

M. Benjamin Herndon

“M. Benjamin Herndon cubes were rendered barely visible in his near black studies of graphite and oil on canvas.”

Katherine Hunt

“Katherine Hunt combined organic fiber forms, the hues and shapes of large stones, that appear to teeter in their positions.”

Julia Bloom

“Julia Bloom made use of the slow sense of time passing in the pandemic by typing accounts of daily activities and then partially obscuring them with crisp hemispheric shapes of black charcoal.”

Stacey Lawrence

“Stacey Lawrence painted bold black shapes on the texts of vintage maps or collaged surfaces in ways that bring out new meaning.”

Rita Bard

“Rita Bard’s fantastical black silhouettes collate references to figures and forms in centered compositions that beckon further investigation.”

Gerri Spilka

“Gerri Spilka’s geometric abstractions of persimmon and lime were not painted but pieced fabrics enhanced by quilting.”

Niraja Lorenz

”Niraja Lorenz composed elaborate relationships of circular and hexagonal forms of variously colored fabrics.”

Karl Goulet

“Karl Goulet riffed on the notion of a shaped composition with his stuffed paper and gold pillows of vaguely erotic suggestion.”

Sienna Martz
”Sienna Martz’s tufted and tassled or stuffed wall works combine the influences of soft sculpture and Sheila Hicks with the levity of Pop art.”

Steven Rahbany

“Steven Rahbany arranged his serpentine stuffed shapes on wood panels to establish a contradictory response between soft and hard or sewed them into a flat canvas.”

Helena Chastel

“Helena Chastel balanced polyhedrons in painted aluminum and other materials in vertical totems with sly allusions to Modernist sculpture.”