NYAB Event - Sandi Slone "Quick Mettle Rich Blood"

Sandi Slone "Quick Mettle Rich Blood"

Allegra LaViola Gallery

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Allegra LaViola Gallery presents Sandi Slone: Quick Mettle Rich Blood, a solo exhibition of paintings and works on paper.
The artist takes the title of her show from Whitman’s sumptuous poem “O-Magnet South.” It is filled with longing and polarities of feeling for the light and darkness of a "glistening perfumed" South by a magnetic northerner. Slone’s paintings are similarly dialectical. Fierce color, radically achieved textures and movement translocate universal events to the emotional life of our everyday world. Duality is typical of Slone’s pictures even as they declare themselves as not seeking resolution: she is known for her ambitious devotion to creating beauty with paint in unconventional ways that parallel the processes of nature and for her faith in the beauty of nature's accidental forces.

Slone received critical acclaim beginning in the late 70's for her freely poured, swept and layered abstract paintings. In her recent work, Slone has taken her experimental approaches of the 1970's and 80's to a more passionate extreme. Often, beneath hovering translucent pools of radiant color, as in the painting Joy Whisper Shouted Out, a parallel image of a former classical life appears where the corner of a geometric image can be glimpsed, creating an unexpected palimpsest.

Slone is entirely unafraid of the void, and often seems to court it with affection: the surfaces often seem to hang in midair unfettered, and appear to push back against an impending darkness. In the moments when an image could be lost it reappears, victorious. Working against the grain has been a life-long voyage for Slone, who has never hesitated to risk failure. We can see this in works like Shoot The Blues, where the sweeping swath of white pushes us to a nearly uncomfortable visual plane. Slone’s courageous manipulations lead to discoveries that are breathtaking. Once we have caught sight of the map we cannot help but embark on the journey.