WTF Is Planar Painting?

I first saw Stephen Westfall’s geometric abstractions in the mid-1980s, when he set his grids against monochromatic grounds. What soon set him apart from others working in this mode was that his grids were askew, as if his California upbringing and awareness of earthquakes made him conscious that everything could collapse. Along with creating and exhibiting his art at this time, Westfall — who seems to possess boundless energy — wrote regularly for Art in America and periodically organized exhibitions focused on geometric abstraction. 

Westfall’s passion for the roots of geometric abstraction in the United States, and his championing of lesser-known artists such as Ward Jackson and Ralston Crawford, revealed him to be heartfelt, non-dogmatic, single-minded, intellectually curious, and unconcerned with trends and the marketplace. These qualities, in tandem with the arc of his career, piqued my curiosity when I learned that he had curated an intergenerational exhibition, A Planar Garden, at Alexandre Gallery. 

Westfall’s definition of planar painting is straightforward. Everyone works on a rectangle and makes planes that have crisp edges without relying on tape or making gestural marks, or what might be construed as lines. It is refreshing to see a group show that hews to its curatorial statement, and includes both old friends and unexpected twists. (Surveying the exhibition, I realized that I had written about 10 of the 16 artists.) Asymmetric and always susceptible to the movement of air, an untitled tabletop mobile by Alexander Calder (c. 1950–60s) sets the tone for the exhibition, which I would characterize as an unfixed geometry. In his mobiles, a sculptural form he invented, Calder’s playfully defiant exploration of a destabilized geometry runs counter to the geometric abstraction of the Abstract Expressionists and the logical progressions of Op Art. 

I was happy to see “Untitled” (1999) by Harriet Korman, in which interlocking curved forms section off a rectangle. Three of the painting’s sections are brown, a color that the artist has included in many works over the years; this is not an easy feat, since brown does not always work optically in abstractions.

Odili Donald Odita’s use of scalene triangles and reconstituted black wood veneer, which composes a picture of Blackness, is a reminder that abstraction is not purely a White invention. Tiny vertical striations inflecting the paintings’ prefabricated black surfaces add another visual element to this wonderful artist’s work. 

Two welcome surprises in the exhibition are works by Joanna Pousette-Dart and Polly Apfelbaum. Known for her stacked, gently arcing forms, Pousette-Dart’s maverick, shaped paintings have not been sufficiently appreciated in the United States. In these pieces, as Carter Ratcliff wrote in Hyperallergic, Pousette-Dart “found an original way to be original.” The two stacked forms in her recent painting “Night Stripe” (2024), measuring 30 1/2 x 37 3/4 inches, made me want to sit in a room surrounded by similarly sized paintings.

The glazed terracotta work “Block Stripes” (2022) by Polly Apfelbaum is the exhibition’s biggest surprise. I have come to think of Apfelbaum as an installation artist whose “fallen paintings,” as she calls them, consist of many dyed fabric components arranged in situ on the floor. In the past, they’ve made a strong first impression on me that never lasted. “Block Stripes” (2022) is a promising outlier in her ouevre. The muted colors of the vertical stripes are capped along the top and bottom by small blocks in another color. Perhaps this work signals a new avenue of exploration for the artist.

The linear elements and curving and arabesque shapes, each in a solid color, in Patricia Trieb’s “Torque II” (2024) are derived from a wide range of sources. Thinly painted on an off-white surface, Trieb’s works are drawings in paint, in which brushy areas are visible within the forms. Their languid sensuality is riveting. The figure-ground relationship oscillates between painted forms and the unpainted spaces between them. The interaction of the forms establishes another visual dialogue within the picture plane. The pieces are inviting and remote, direct and elusive. A well-researched museum survey of the artist is in order. 

In Westfall’s own “Summit” (2024), he interrupts his field of flat, overlapping triangles pushing in from the edges with a volumetric form in two colors descending diagonally from the painting’s upper left corner. It is this kind of disruption that the viewer repeatedly encounters in the exhibition, a sense that geometry is never fixed and can still astonish.