Making my manner in to see Nicole Strasburg’s new Sullivan Goss exhibition Surfacing, various enticements have been there to behold on this spatially beneficiant, three-gallery-deep artwork area. This summer season’s triple play of reveals contains Holli Harmon’s intriguingly multifaceted To Feast on Clouds and the seasonal group present spritzer dubbed Summer season Fling within the massive center area, together with colourful, eye-buzzing works by Penelope Gottlieb, Robert Townsend, and one in all Hank Pitcher’s fetching surfboard “portraits.”
By affiliation, Strasburg’s conceptually elastic variations on seascape work also needs to qualify as summery fare. And but these seaside eventualities, taken individually and as a variegated and built-in ensemble, can tackle introspective and artistically adventurous sub-turns, removed from the realm of idle beachgoer’s escapism.
It has been fascinating to watch veteran outside/plein air/seascape painter Strasburg’s development and gradual evolution through the years. Whereas many panorama and seascape artists may settle into a comfortable — and generally profitable — groove, Strasburg appears the extra restlessly questioning type, discovering new expressive avenues with out ever leaving the inspiration of her nature-oriented iconography.
As an instructive introduction to the exhibition, which extends and deepens the pursuits explored throughout the COVID lockdown and publicly unveiled in her 2021 exhibition Sea Change, a wall going through the doorway to the again gallery belongs to the triptych “Pulchra Mysterium (Stunning Thriller).” Right here, layers of deep colours, extracted from pure, seaside, and twilight sources seen elsewhere within the present, have turned inward and summary, reworking right into a transcendental spectral matrix.
Stroll into the gallery correct to seek out the fuller vary of concepts and variations on her sea theme — and “change” theme — by way of a collection of work which might be various in scale and intention. Following up on previous methods, Strasburg contains square-formatted multiples, with 14-inch sq. work nestled into a bigger suite of 16 photographs, following a comparatively “straight” strategy to seascape representations, with delicate twists.
One of the crucial intriguing photographs right here touches on her rising curiosity in mixing nature with geometric and summary order: “Water Strains” balances the themes implied within the title, with linear grids within the composition’s backside half cryptically contrasting the clouded sea/sky above. In a way, this and work such because the small “A Little bit of Perspective” and the tall “Swash Bar” echo a stylistic trajectory paying homage to Richard Diebenkorn’s slide into his signature “Ocean Park” abstractionism, with nature and geometry within the margins.
Nocturnal topics make their manner into the combo, together with the just about psychedelic fantasia of “Celestial Sea,” with tidy horizontal bands of shade offset by dramatic, screaming yellow arabesques of cloud-play. From a extra life like and environmentalist angle, the evening skyscape of “Twinkle Twinkle” has as its twin twinkle components faint stars above and, as sentry marching throughout the pictorial mid-section, a convoy of twinkly oil rigs on the horizon, a reminder of eco-dread.
And from a special perspective of sunshine and shade fully comes “Channel Surf,” a stunning view of mild waves/shoreline, however with a visible scheme nearly over-exposed and washed out — and blissed out?
Perhaps Strasburg’s Surfacing assortment is extra summery than preliminary impressions counsel. Contemplate it a perspective from a summer season of cautious contentment and the meditative hum of inquiry. —Josef Woodard
Nicole Strasburg: Surfacing is on view at Sullivan Goss, An American Gallery (11 E. Anapamu St.) via September 25. See sullivangoss.com.
