Jean Alexander Frater, Danielle Mysliwiec, Rob de Oude Exhibition

McKenzie Fine Art

[Image: Jean Alexander Frater "Cool Bean" (2021) acrylic and latex on canvas, 30 x 31 in.]

This event has ended.

McKenzie Fine Art presents an exhibition of recent paintings by Jean Alexander Frater, Danielle Mysliwiec, and Rob de Oude.

The three abstract painters in this exhibition are united by their shared referencing of textiles and weaving techniques in their paintings—both literally and figuratively, their embrace of the grid as an underlying structure, and the celebration of hand-crafting and labor intensiveness in their work.

Chicago-based artist Jean Alexander Frater begins by painting canvas in acrylic and latex. After tearing the painted material into strips, she then weaves them into a variety of complex and irregular abstract patterns, using a painting stretcher as support. In some works, the strips are gathered and tightly twisted, in another they drape and are joined into braids. Some of the paintings are embellished with loops of canvas strapped tightly at the sides or curling playfully along the top or bottom edges. In other works, surface openings reveal the underlying support structure as well as emphasizing the activity involved in their creation. The sculptural materiality of Alexander Frater’s work is always evident in the torn edges of the canvas strips, the embrace of process and the handmade, and the varying dimensionality of the painting’s surfaces.

Danielle Mysliwiec, based in Maryland, creates monochromatic paintings by slowly and carefully weaving individual strands of extruded oil paint onto linen-covered wood panels. Her heavily textured, tightly woven fields are given a shimmering surface richness and complexity through subtle color modulations and deliberate shifts in the grid structure. Raised ridges and knot-like gatherings of paint, as well as directional changes in the weave creates movement and complexity in the work, bringing to mind associations ranging from topographic renderings to animal skins, while remaining wholly abstract. Mysliewiec cites a modernist matrilineage as her influences, among them Eva Hesse, Agnes Martin, Ruth Asawa, and Ann Truitt.

Rob de Oude hails from The Netherlands but has been based in New York for decades. He creates patterned, linear oil paintings by layering multiple bands of color in a grid structure. De Oude makes his paintings with a specially designed easel in a square format; its adjustable guide allows him to carefully measure and vary the spaces between the color lines while also enabling him to skew them diagonally when desired. By shifting colors and altering the opacity, translucency, and width of the painted lines, de Oude creates luminous works that appear to glow from within while also suggesting woven surfaces or even plaid textiles. Because of their precision and optical vibrancy, his paintings are frequently assumed to be computer generated, but they are carefully and patiently crafted by hand.