Category: In General

by David Gibson

Artifice and systems of geometric complexity artfully coexist in the paintings of Lorien Suarez-Kanerva. They are passionately endowed manifestations of a world filled with symbolic structures that press so heavily upon one another that they give birth to new generations of form. The artist’s search for universal meaning brings us into metaphysical thickets and continuums of transcendent form. The experience they engender is called Liminality, in which travelling over a threshold between radically different environments, one feels a great unease. This is the conscious mind confronting subconscious understanding. Suarez is confronting oblivion in her paintings, and in portraying the elements that comprise its infinity, she bypasses liminality to realize a dynamic grace.

Suarez-Kanerva’s current retrospective, New Spiritual Abstraction, emerges not only through her own complex ministrations, but from a legacy within art history itself. Beginning with Wassily Kandinsky and continuing to the present time, there has been a strain of spiritual endeavor in art that has touched every generation. Each artist within the legacy of this spiritual endeavor has used the basic elements of composition to reach through form into meaning and beyond. When artists say “spiritual” they are in fact regarding religiosity without its attendant connection to creed. There’s a very idiosyncratic drive within each that connects these forms and gestures to a more introspective and complex perspective. What’s required is an innate ability, even a native aptitude, toward the use of form for the discernment of truth. Yet what is equally required is the willingness to continuously engage with progressively transformed models that may easily slip into new visions.

Suarez-Kanerva chooses the widest possible subject–the universe, because in choosing actual objects or real places there are always symbolic aspects or specific narratives applied to them. The universe is both a theme and a palette waiting to be portrayed. But as human beings we cannot throw off all association, all metaphor; some ideas are inherently part of our personal and collective identity. In denying symbolism, Suarez merely makes more room for it to creep in.

There’s a patchwork quality the Wheel Within A Wheel works that suggests a communal strategizing for construction, like that of an Exquisite Corpse. The combination of so many different mediums resulting in an image that seems inherently unfinished. It’s important to collect all these types of imagery into one composition to show the complexity of perception. The imperfect image is proof that knowledge is only as finite as the quality of encounter possible in our own overt evolutionary state. Not every area of the image needs to be filled in. There must be some room left for changes in the future.

Her Elan Flow series depicts from its very first image, the forces at work that invisibly shape recognizable matter in the universe, identify waves of gravity and other radiation flowing like eddies and tides from one planet to another. They are painted not as spheres but as flat spherical forms resembling targets. Placed in close proximity to one another, a view of an overt multiplicity, they become a tapestry of undulating forces. As Suarez-Kanerva moves from one painting to the next in this series, she alters the forms minutely so that we can perceive the formal changes as if they were interstellar gradations in the growth of a galaxy, like a cosmic petri dish. This is the quantum character of transformative material growth, which happens equally at the grandest and the most infinitesimal scale simultaneously. Suarez-Kanerva’s engagement with the forces at play beyond everyday human life, viewable only via a Hubble telescope, or through evidence taken down by a deep space satellite like Voyager, whose travels dwarf understanding, and can only relay images in modes of transfer now decades old.

In her Wheel Within A Wheel series, we are presented with a progressively developed series of images that likewise countenance the intimate details of cosmic or chemical interactions that hidebound to the very essential aspects of life itself. Suarez-Kanerva’s attempts to revisit and reclaim the pictorial authority she began in the Elan Flow series. But instead of attempting to capture the forms of space, she actualizes the complexity and dynamism of interacting psychological spheres at the outset. The types of depiction range more broadly and are contingent not of idealised forms finding their place in the depths of space, but metaphysical reckonings that take into account the very fabric of reality, its density and its detailed temperament, and allows us to peer into the layers themselves. Suarez-Kanerva’s search for meaning has led her through various versions of a focused objective: to manifest the immense forces that exist in the greater universe beyond earth, of which our planet likewise partakes. Wheel Within A Wheel suggests an infinite order arranged around a cyclical progression, driving immense forces. Yet what is collectively expressed in the greater variety of these works are many diverse and divergent strains of life, all coexisting within the multiversal context of existence, inherently cooperative in the play between complex models ostensibly realized.

The spiritual aspect of Suarez-Kanerva’s aesthetic is not merely a theme, it is an organizational and moral imperative. Art in her hands connects the viewer to their essential humanism–the aptitude and potential for the expressive realization of belief. The artist’s compulsion to depict nature beyond the sphere of shared experience invites our imagination to cross over liminal pathways into new worlds. The future beckons us from other planes of existence, of which Suarez-Kanerva allows a mere glimpse as she unlocks the doors of perception. Her forms are exemplary choices in the game of ultimate fate. She shines a light through the keyhole, illuminating the path forward. Beauty and knowledge await us in the great beyond.

Visionary Geometry at The Phillips Museum of Museum of Art in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, January 20-April 23, 2026

by Chunbum Park

Maya Perry’s solo exhibition at RAINRAIN, “The Moon Takes Shape of an Outsider’s Light,” is a transformation and trans-configuration of the artist’s hidden psyche as her animal spirit, the brave wolf. The show engages the viewers as if they are reading a story book with pictures. The pictures are carefully put together in a lyrical fashion, as if the artist thought about the choice of words (or imagery) for an extended period of time. The images never fully furnish the audience with straight-forward answers.

Is Perry a brave wolf? Are we brave as wolves, or are we timid and submissive like dogs? The works in the show throw the question out there – whether both the audience and the artist have the guts and the strength to take on the role of vulnerability that exploring the question fully entails.

What is the distinction between a wolf and a dog? How can the artist provide markers identifying the differences between the untamed voice of the wild and the domesticated pet?

Looking at works such as, “The rhythm of the heart that runs” (2025), we see the artist begin the inquiry from the reclining position of weakness, on the bed. The sculptural installation piece consists of a wooden crib for babies with a running wolf and a dead pigeon juxtaposed with one over the other, flanked by large paper cutouts representing moths (or perhaps butterflies).

This central motif of the bed is an important part of the artist’s conversation with the self and the world. Feeling weakness and defeat, perhaps in the studio, the artist becomes contained in bed. While lying down, the artist becomes a dreamer who hopes to run in the wild triumphantly and freely like the wolves.

The decision… to become a wolf or a dog… is akin to the same set of decisions made on the picture plane of the canvas with a brush and paint. What makes a painting truly brave? What leads to a successful painting without compromises and driven by tenacity? What makes a strong painter?

Without masquerading as the wolf, Perry becomes the wolf… by the pure act of throwing the question out there for everyone to see and observe. What is a predator? What is prey?

The two are inextricably intertwined because the predator pretends to be the superior part of the equation in relation to the prey, but, to be the predator, one must become the prey by acknowledging the weaknesses.

The yin and yang of the universe are interconnected and cannot be separated from one another. Without the shadow, there is no light. And dark colors absorb more light internally, while bright colors absorb less light.

The artist narrates her journey of growth and transformation while in bed and dreaming of the other possibilities.

The difference between a wolf and a dog is akin to the question of what is authentic painting and what is illustrational in opposition to painting.

Or rather, the artist questions this hierarchy that believes painting to be superior to illustration, and asks if she is the dog and not the brave wolf because her painting style is semi-illustrational in nature.

In this moment, the power relations flip, and the artist reverses the superiority of painting into a more egalitarian philosophy in which painting sits as one of many different modes of expression. Perhaps the belief that we all had placed in painting was misguided. What is painting? What is illustration? And why must they be in opposition to one another? Within this world view, Perry’s painting is reborn as a hybrid style that borrows from both modern painting and contemporary illustrational styles and motifs.

When we take observance of works such as “Out in the distance there is a howl that breaks all doors” (2025), we cannot be so sure if the depiction of a wolf can be considered traditional painting or illustration. Most likely, this question is moot and outdated, since artists are required to push the boundaries for their field, similar to scientists or engineers. Why must we think in the same way and expect the same results, fixing ourselves to preconceived notions? In this work, the illustrational need or desire to push the colors and forms into greater definition, away from an ambiguous state (which permits greater depths for open interpretation), is repeatedly interrupted. Perry instead breaks up the high level of detail and “perfection” with a touch of painterly strokes and colors. It is as if pop culture entered the vocabulary of fine art through pop art. It is as if matters of illustration and animation entered the collective psyche of the world, so that it would no longer make sense to produce paintings purely in the traditional sense… to capture the essence of the subject. Perhaps the surface is the subject, and the core was not as important as we had thought it was. Or perhaps the core can be contained within the surface. Perhaps.

Perry’s painting does not sit entirely on the surface. While appearing to be essentially illustrational at first glance, her work involves all the nuances of a painterly painting. The looseness of the strokes and the act of letting go (of control) in order to gain another voice (possibly a deeper grasp of the unknown or thought arising from ambiguity and abstraction) all point to Perry’s strong background in painting. Perry’s work is hybrid in nature, so it is difficult to call it purely one thing or the other.

In Perry’s “The hybrid between a wolf, dog and human” (2025), which is a stop-motion animation utilizing oil paint and watercolor, we see the final logic of Perry’s train of thought and visual exploration. A painting that moves. A painting that changes in sequence over time. A painting with many layers that can be experienced as a moving memory and not a frozen fragment of it, frozen in time.

Perry becomes the underdog in order to become the wolf in the end. Here we are reminded of a song by Cloud Cult, “No Hell,” which goes, “I saw your soul without the skin attached, and you’ve got the guts of a coyote pack.”

Painting is a continual struggle with the self. To be or not to be, that is the question. To be the wolf, to be a strong painter, requires honesty with one’s own vulnerability, sensitivity, and imperfections. Power, excellence, and success on the canvas are not so straightforward. To gain power, one must let go of power. To be excellent, one must struggle. To succeed, one must exercise the right to fail. To be a strong painter, one must be aware of one’s own weaknesses.

Perry’s painting is informed by a hybrid language that excavates deeper meaning from the surface, like enjoying cakes dug from the peel of an orange, but imagine that the peel has all the savory juice and nutrients (and the seed is inedible). This is the trans-configuration of painting, which applies painterly language to its forms based on an ultra modern, illustrational style and motif, without becoming purely an illustration.

This is the fine line that Perry chooses to walk in order to push the boundaries of the field, and this is the line that makes or breaks Perry’s painting, each a battle that she will engage with to grow and get stronger. This line is a place of new birth (as a young wolf) between what has been considered a dog and an old wolf, between illustration and old modes of painting.

Maya Perry: The Moon Takes Shape of an Outsider’s Light, September 3—October 11, 2025 at RAINRAIN, 110 Lafayette Street, Suite 201, New York NY 10013

by Christopher Hart Chambers

This exhibition of Hiroyuki Hamada’s new sculptures comprises 11 works, both sculptures free standing and wall hanging. I hesitate to term all of the latter, “bas reliefs,” while several of the major works certainly are. And those are very similar in formulation to the free standing sculptures, although they are sans the hallmark pedestals, which stand to be part and parcel with the abstract forms they support.

The smaller wall hung pieces are more akin to bricolage painting; as folded, bent, and twisted scraps of what looks like metal or leather are affixed to flat, subtly toned, apparently wooden substrates. The larger works impart a distinctly Japanese aesthetic in their elegant, zen-like, and graceful simplicity of pure form; as such without any backing besides the wall -or they are free standing. What appear to be natural materials such as white or black ceramic tile, rusted iron, or stone are also displayed on bases of what look to be thoroughly rusted pipes. To be clear on this point: the artist considers these works painted sculptures. They are all constructed of synthetic materials. Hamada’s masterful use of trompe l’oeil surfacing is astounding. The rusty piping is in fact p v c and the aquiline shapes they support are carved insulation foam coated with painted plastreric resin. Polystyrenes have been popular with artists since at least the 1950s and 60s when Jean Dubuffet and Nikki de Saint Phalle first explored the then new found resource. The properties of these mediums allow for direct impulsive carving and so generally disregard the conventional sculptural necessity of pre constructing an armature or so to speak, skeleton within, thereby allowing the artist an unrestrained free hand in expression.

Notably, Dubuffet topped off his monumental works with stucco while de Saint Phalle frequently embellished her works with mosaics. More recently others have crusted the artifice with epoxies, fiberglass, urethane putties, or other substances; then painted them in order to stave off degradation resulting from exposure to sunlight. These are industrial materials often used in construction, or automotive assembly, ship building; even for making surf boards. Significantly, pragmatic considerations have enabled artists to explore and discover various possibilities. These newfound materials were lightweight, comparatively inexpensive, and easily manipulated without the need of a foundry. If Hiroyuki Hamada’s works were composed of what they convincingly appear to be they would weigh more than could be lifted in this gallery’s elevator, or hung on its sheetrock walls. Yet there are laborious old school techniques which could enable his vision with a forge and kiln. Frankly, Hamada’s mastery of faux finishes over the coated, smoothed, and refined forms is so complete that I didn’t notice until he mentioned it. The illusionistic pragmatism is not what grabbed me. I was attracted to the work purely for its aesthetics – its elegance: the simple smooth forms which reference predecessors Isamu Noguchi and Jean Arp’s exigencies, amongst many functional designers, who modeled their modernist forms in traditional materials – whilst Hamada’s tasteful combinations of industrial supplies are not what they seem to be at all, presenting a fascinatingly duplicitous conundrum.

Hiroyuki Hamada: New Sculpture, May 6 – June 13, 2025. Bookstein Projects, 39 East 78th Street, NYC