REVIEW | New Abstraction or Old Genre
August 8, 2024 - Dana Gordon for The New Criterion
New abstraction or old genre
by Dana Gordon
August 8, 2024
On Jill Nathanson: Chord Field at Berry Campbell Gallery, New York.
Viewing Nathanson’s paintings is immersive: while you are looking at the composition—distinctly an experience of the painting’s surface—the interaction of the colors and veils pulls you in. Her many horizontal paintings correspond to the visual field of the eyes, illusionistically drawing you deep into the painting spaces. Two paintings in the show are vertical, including Green Shift (2024): these keep the viewer’s attention on the composition’s surface, less allowing you to swim around in the work’s depth and more encouraging you to move as if amid the overlapping flats of a stage set.
Some of the paintings conjure more drama out of the visual experience of the color field than you might expect. The appearance of object-like shapes in Fluid Bridge (2021) and in Stretch Radiant (2023–24) is unusual for Color Field works. A similar phenomenon occurs in Near Distance (2022), whose title may refer to the space opened up between the “object” on the right and the “scene” behind it. The illusion of perceived space in these paintings can become overwhelming and welcome the viewer to get lost in them, as in Changing Pitch (2022). Some paintings’ titles refer to the physical experience brought to mind by the color interaction, such as Evening’s Garment (2022).
