Elliott Puckette Exhibition

Paul Kasmin Gallery (297 10th Ave.)

[Image: Elliott Puckette "A Love Letter" (2018) gesso, kaolin and ink on dibond, 72 x 180 in. Courtesy the artist and Paul Kasmin Gallery.]

This event has ended.

Paul Kasmin Gallery presents an exhibition of new paintings by the artist Elliott Puckette, her eighth solo exhibition at the gallery. With this body of work, the artist challenges herself to push her use of line by first translating it into three dimensions, making ephemeral sculptures out of wire.

The wire forms are the springboards for the paintings. Made quickly, and deliberately without excessive control, their unpredictable form nods to the automatism of late Abstract Expressionism. Puckette documents the silhouettes of the layered, criss-crossing maquettes by etching into a picture plane prepared with gesso and kaolin and washed with ink. This labor-intensive process is a method by which to slow the line: to subtract it from the painting rather than introduce it as an addition, and the translation of the wire sculpture into painting foregrounds the line’s dynamic potential. The arabesques billow outward, threatening to skirt off the edge completely, and then tighten unexpectedly into dense tangles. These marks, recording Puckette’s brisk, confident gestures, come alive against textured backdrops of cloudy grey, deep blue and darkest purple. The focal point of the exhibition is a large-scale, three-panel painting, A Love Letter. Made from a life-size wire sculpture, it emphasizes the style’s spatial and emotional complexity.