Every so often, both established and emergent painters, sculptors, and photographers mount solo shows that stop you in your tracks. Some of these exhibitions even acquire legendary status. Need I mention Barnett Newman’s abstractions at French & Company, Philip Guston’s Klan imagery at Marlborough, or Susan Rothenberg’s horses at Willard? This fall, which already boasts a rare blue moon, Amy Sillman is holding her own landmark exhibition at Gladstone. For starters, it’s multifaceted. Four types of works are on view: paintings Sillman planned to include in a show that was postponed last May due to COVID-19; canvases she subsequently executed during the lockdown; 60 by 40 inch unframed drawings that are displayed in an alcove-like space as if they were a frieze; and a generous sampling of flower studies she made while sequestered without a studio on the North Shore of Long Island.
Sillman is an inventive abstractionist. She melds formal properties so skillfully you’re never sure whether she’s more interested in color, line, or shape, the subject of a memorable exhibition she curated from the collection of the Museum of Modern Art when its new building opened last year. She often includes fragments of bodies like legs, torsos, and heads to her otherwise nonfigurative canvases. They provide scale and add an emotional wallop. As for her palette, she favors lavenders and greens—colors other artists avoid.