When the postmodern painter Philip Taaffe seized upon her work as a source for his hip art historical appropriation paintings of the 1980s, Riley's stock rose anew. And now, she's signed onto Pace's power roster. Pace's show mixes early gouache studies and recent paintings, so that '60s glamour transforms to market-tested formalism before your very eyes. She applies dense brushstrokes of dark oil color to loosely defined stripes and grids. These paintings carry titles such as Hawthorne and Marianne Moore.
Color is high key, but compressed into micro-flares.
Loose grids in dark blues and reds create the impression of stained glass. Gregory Coates also pushes his painting surfaces to the extreme. It featured rubber bicycle inner tubes wrapped tightly around wooden shipping skids, then painted with powdery blue dry pigment. In it, sculptural materiality gave way to pure color sensation. Now, Coates continues to explore this methodology in a series of compelling wall works .