Contributed by Riad Miah / After graduating from Pratt and spending a few years staging and curating pop-up shows and one-night events, Devon Gordon opened the ambitious new Zepster Gallery in Bushwick last May. The title of its second exhibition, now up, is “Oh, To Leave a Trace,” after a chapter of Mary Gabriel’s acclaimed book Ninth Street Women. The show features three female artists whose work continues in the contemplatively feminist vein that the book frames.
Gabi Dunayski’s outstanding large-scale painting Pussified Nation depicts unclothed figures in near-orgiastic, semi-violent engagement, toggling between abstract and figurative. It evokes the early works of Cecily Brown and, in some ways, Sue Williams. The marks are kinetic and spontaneous, demonstrating Dunayski’s deft handling of a loaded brush. Reading and digesting theological studies is part of Dunayaski’s art practice, and the overall composition of the painting is reminiscent of the lower section of Michelangelo’s The Last Judgement, which portrays damned and resurrected souls.
Lauren Krasnoff’s paintings boast thick, lush marks and colors, culminating in rich, vibrant images of crowded figures. Her approach to composition thus bears some resemblance to Greg Drasler’s. But whereas his paintings are large, and his palette toned and mixed, Krasnoff’s are small to medium-sized and incorporate swirling, high-key colors. She works quickly, and it shows. Jostling pigments seem to want to jump off the canvas, clustering at corners and edges. While this visual immediacy reflects youthful chutzpah, her rigor imposes fine control.
In three of four graphic works on paper, Phoebe Kong incorporates a cross shape that divides the plane into equal quadrants. The immediately apparent sense is that of peering out a window, yet the space seems confined due to the material presence of the paper, ultimately suggesting the artist’s own interior life. Kong’s imagery, objectively described in her titles, consists of nightmarish mythological figures, like satyrs, who could be either under attack by swarming insects or somehow controlling them. The ambiguity and its persistence are intriguing and provocative.
While each artist is quite original, the three share a deliberate fluidity between abstraction and figuration and, relatedly, an aesthetic appreciation for both structure and collapse. These qualities fit nicely with the thematic thrust of Ninth Street Women: the quest of female artists to make their mark, as it were, distinctively and innovatively within established parameters.
“Oh, To Leave a Trace,” Zepster Gallery, 55 Meadow Street, Suite 108, Brooklyn, NY. Through August 31, 2024. Artists: Gabi Dunayski, Phoebe Kong and Lauren Krasnoff.
About the Author: Artist and educator Riad Miah was born in Trinidad and Tobago and lives and works in New York City. He has exhibited with Lesley Heller Workspace, Rooster Gallery, and Sperone Westwater Gallery. His 2023 solo show was at Equity Gallery in New York.
