The New Criterion | The Critic's Notebook: Jill Nathanson: Light Phrase
February 2, 2021 - James Panero for The New Criterion
“Jill Nathanson: Light Phrase,” at Berry Campbell Gallery, New York (through February 6): Anyone who has ever mixed colorful paints will notice that the results are not brighter colors but duller murkiness. That’s color theory 101. In her alchemical experiments with pigments and polymers, Jill Nathanson looks for ways to prove color theory wrong. Through abstractions created of translucent layers of acrylic, polymers, and oil, which she pours onto panels, Nathanson brings out the light of her color-filled combinations. In “Light Phrase,” her latest exhibition at Berry Campbell Gallery, in Chelsea, Nathanson looks to enlarge and refine her fluid forms. The artist Christina Kee provides an essay for the online catalogue that further explains Nathanson’s unusual process. —JP
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