Kirstin Mitchell’s tranquil gradient series and alluring minimalist statements, in a single room punctuated by quirky objects, seem notably different from the complex gestural abstractions by Karen Schwartz that fill the rest of Hathaway Gallery’s expansive spaces. But Schwartz’s Making Sense and Mitchell’s Midnight at the Oasis, both on view through July 11, present art that engages physical process, everyday materials and the traditional medium of painting to elicit human experience.
Schwartz’s large diptych Ma/No Maas! (2016) and her bold Inside Outer Space (2017) introduce Making Sense at the gallery entrance. Hung a few inches apart, each diptych panel comprises linen primed with a medium taupe; but the similarities stop there. Opaque white paint flows from the top of one panel as if poured or spilled, covering its surface with vertical drips. The letters “MA” appear like graffiti, written over all in a slightly darker taupe than the ground. In contrast to the authoritative presence of “MA,” on the other panel “NO MAA” is scrawled upside down in bright red, atop layers of pasted papers, brush marks and splatters of white, lavender, blue and black with red handprints in the lower right. Scraps of paper with sketches of flying cranes, wrinkled and bunched sheets splattered and stained with white, lavender and smeared with shades of blue, red, yellow and ochre form the backdrop for gestural automatism markings that animate the chaotic surface of the “No Maas!” side. The deliberate misspelling of the Spanish phrase “Mas/No Mas!” (meaning “More/No More!”) in the title alludes in the chaotic “No Maas” panel to impassioned youthful rebellion against the staid, maternal authority of the first. Interestingly, the diptych is hung with the “No Maas!” panel to the left (typically read first), and the “Ma” side on the right.