Once I ventured out to see Aubrey Levinthal’s first New York exhibition in 2020, through the top of the COVID-19 pandemic, I described her as a figurative painter “attempting to get on the elusive and unsettling with out growing a story that may be simply extracted by the viewer; she is in pursuit of the ambiguous, uncanny, and withdrawn as integral options of on a regular basis life.” The present two-person exhibition Lacey Black & Aubrey Levinthal: Day by day Night time, at Monya Rowe Gallery, reaffirmed my preliminary sense of her work as an exploration of formal points, such because the figure-ground relationship, to be able to convey the stress between outward appearances and internal states. In her latest work, Levinthal pursues this preoccupation whereas pushing into new territory that emphasizes her formal abilities, with participating outcomes.
Levinthal’s pairing with Black, who’s exhibiting at Monya Rowe for the primary time, is impressed, if solely as a result of it clarifies that autobiographical portray could be about creativeness as a lot as statement. Whereas Black and Levinthal share some formal methods, such because the layering of semi-transparent shapes, they achieve this with completely different objectives in thoughts. Black seeks to remodel actuality right into a magical or dream world, whereas Levinthal makes use of formal gadgets to translate inside states into enigmatic outer appearances.
On the heart of the thinly painted “God on the Metro-North” (2024), Black depicts a face taking a look at us and one other partially overlapping it and confronted away from us. Floating on this latter head are a long-stemmed pink flower and a younger girl’s face and fingers held in prayer, whereas 5 tear-like shapes descend from the opposite determine’s seen eye. Is she taking a look at herself or a ghost? On one facet of the heads are two tall, lit candles on an ethereal desk; on the opposite is an aerial view of man diving right into a swimming pool. Each heads are framed by a flaccid oval that might be a window or a practice on a monitor. Past it, on the portray’s periphery, are animals, bricks, and different unexplained objects.
Whereas it’s tempting to concoct a story for this portray, and that’s a part of its visible attract, I believe its resistance to narrative is extra highly effective. “God on the Metro-North” doesn’t must be outlined in phrases to be compelling. The slippery relationship between the incongruous and congruous particulars by no means settles, leaving us with unanswerable questions.
The identical could be mentioned of Levinthal’s seemingly less complicated work. In “Fitness center Mirror” (2024), the artist explores the evocative prospects of foreshortening. A girl in a inexperienced sweatsuit lies on a floor of black fitness center mats, her proper knee up, her left leg bent in entrance of it, like a protecting barrier. The supine determine’s fingers and legs are outsized — the hand clasping the shin of the proper leg is big and flat, as if a rolling pin has gone over it many instances. We’re trying not on the girl however at her reflection. A slight vertical shift between the left and proper facet of the hand signifies that the mirror is manufactured from two abutting sections. A strip of pink separates her head from the inexperienced of the remainder of her outfit. She appears to be misplaced in thought. Levinthal has revamped the educational system of foreshortening in order that it connects the lady’s frame of mind with how she sees herself. She uncovers the anxiousness of people residing their on a regular basis lives.
One of many hardest issues to render with out a portray devolving into acquainted tropes is a person with nothing important happening round them. By specializing in her mastery of formal gadgets, from foreshortening to tightening the seam between the portray’s flatness and three-dimensional kinds, Levinthal has broadened her prospects.
Black additionally focuses on up to date life, although her trajectory is completely different. In “Parade of Incarnations” (2024), she depicts a parade of historic people and kinds, from Abraham Lincoln to Martin Luther King Jr. to a skeleton pushing a harlequin in a wheelchair. As with “God on the Metro-North,” the viewer is invited to give you a story that accounts for all of the figures and particulars. The titles counsel a non secular dimension to Black’s preoccupations that’s offset by her fancifulness, a perception that the miraculous could be discovered within the on a regular basis, in a spot the place desires and the waking world meld collectively. Black and Levinthal share a expertise for bringing inward and outward states collectively till they’re one.
Lacey Black & Aubrey Levinthal: Day by day Night time continues at Monya Rowe Gallery (224 West thirtieth Avenue #304, Chelsea, Manhattan) by October 12. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.