“Back to the Future: The Paintings of Louise P. Sloane” at Spanierman Modern, New York (through October 26): For half a century Louise P. Sloane has developed a mode of abstraction that is both subjective and non-objective. Now at Spanierman Modern, New York, “Back to the Future: The Paintings of Louise P. Sloane,” a survey exhibition, brings together twenty works that spell out this signature progression. Working at first with paraffin, beeswax, and pigment powders, then moving on to acrylic and paste, through hand-made texture Sloane adds a personal depth to her forms. “Despite her allegiance to modernist objectivity and formal issues,” Lilly Wei writes in the catalogue essay, “her vision of the non-objective is mixed with personal intimations, even if they are scrambled, half-concealed.” As the written word comes to the surface of increasingly bold and color-filled compositions, gesture becomes script, even as the statements remain enigmatic and subsumed.
—James Panero