Ilana Savdie paints big, with irreverent abstractions that span the rainbow. So do her themes, from gender to global power, in what the Whitney calls a “riotous excess.”
Raised between Colombia and Florida before settling in Brooklyn, she is herself a model of diversity. In other words, just another day in the galleries, only this is the lobby gallery at a major museum, through October 29. It has me thinking about the place of contemporary art in the museum. It has me thinking, too, about what to expect from abstract painting today. And I bring this together with other recent reports that ask much the same question, on JP Munro and “Abstraction from Nature,” as a longer review and my latest upload.
This could be the most fun I have had in ages in a hoary institution like this one. If not, it is entertaining enough, and Savdie will try anything once to make it so. She counts among her inspirations the carnival in Baranquilla, her birthplace in Colombia, and carnival is as good a description of the work as any. It takes its intensity from stains blending into one another and raised fields of acrylic and oil dotted with wax. Flat, hard-edged colors have biomorphic outlines that hint at still more. When a more regular element appears, in paired stripes, they earn that name Barnett Newman gave to his verticals, “zips.”
Blue spills across some paintings like sky or sea. Others have a paler color at center, like a profiled face or a chasm. It could be pulling one into something dangerous or pushing one out and away. They would be at home in more than one downtown gallery with a taste for abstract art as installation. Sure enough, Savdie opens with drawings in pen and acrylic, in black on white, hung against wallpaper or wall painting of her devising. It depicts tight rows of fuzzy red balls interrupted by fleshy blobs, like the artist’s hand or bare butt.
As for the imagery, I could make out a hand or two, its nails extending to the point of claws, but little more. One painting claims to include a trickster from Francisco de Goya and his graphic imagination, another a half human, half elephant, and half monkey from the carnival. (If that adds up to more than one, think again of excess.) They sure tricked me, who could not see either one. Nor could I see the loftier themes of which the curators, Marcela Guerrero and Angelica Arbelaez, make so much. Savdie gets to stand for sexual diversity and Latin American art today.
If that threatens to devolve into a formula, this could indeed be just another day in the galleries. The Whitney, to its credit, makes the lobby gallery free and open to walk-ins, although without access to a bathroom, much like Chelsea galleries a few blocks away. The wall with works on paper opens onto a modest gallery at that, with room for fewer than a dozen paintings. One can almost imagine a dealer’s desk in the narrow entrance. It could serve as a model to other museums willing to offer reasonable access. Instead, they are risking their mission and their finances to appeal to collectors of contemporary art.
That includes the Frick and the Morgan, although both have done so with flair. Sure, the Whitney has always spanned the historical and contemporary, only starting with the Whitney Biennial. Sure, too, private galleries face the same dilemmas. Is there anything left for abstract painting now that anything goes, beyond today’s taste for elusive imagery and the artist’s hand? Can one see half the subtext claimed for their exhibitions as well? I cannot swear that Savdie adds up or stands out, but she is still putting on a show.
Read more, now in a feature-length article on this site.