Slip Lanes, a solo exhibition of new works by Gianna Commito at Abattoir, features geometric abstractions that are spatially, materially and conceptually rich, each painting negotiating a complex array of interlocking shapes and patterns, color and surface, volume and flatness. Unflaggingly, Commito’s paintings compress the history of geometric abstraction with nods or recognition towards Analytic Cubism, the shallow organic abstractions of Georgia O’Keefe, and the Precisionism of Charles Demuth. Yet the paintings are admirable in their calisthenic reordering. Gathering simple geometries and motifs such as chevrons, stripes, circles, and triangles from architectural, designed, or decorative settings and rearranging these familiar shapes and patterns into shallow pictorial compositions is both the play and the labor at work in Commito’s paintings. What may appear to be systems of rigidity and design in Commito’s exquisite craft and firm edges is actually a world of wondrous ambiguity demanding active interpretation.
View the exhibition here.
